Enchanting dragons: resources managment tool and the guide

Hello Dragon Ladies and Lords! Daimen from the Clan Duncan asked me to write something about enchanting divine dragons so I decided to make a detailed guide on enchanting dragons in general, with a section on enchanting a divine dragon. In this text, I will share with you a tool that I had created to help me manage my enchanting resources, provide you with some general tips on getting possibly much of those resources, help you decide which of your dragons should you enchant and when and finally, explain what is the difference between enchanting a divine dragon and any other dragon and what are the things that you should focus on when enchanting a divine dragon is your primary goal. So, let's start!

Enchantment resources managment tool

I have created a spreadsheet that will help you check if you have all the needed materials to enchant the dragons that you want to enchant. I recommend using this tool whenever you are about to spend huge amounts of enchantment resources (i. e. when you just bred a dragon that you want to put in your primary team). It may prevent you from fusing elements needlessly if you don't have the needed amount anyhow. Imagine you think you can enchant your Sumo Dragon, but after fusing one last missing extraordinary legendary material you realize that you don't have enough trinkets to fuse a missing light material. So you fight a few battles and you get... an extraordinary legendary material! Frustrating, isn't it? This is why we need patience when enchanting dragons and why I created this tool. To use it, you need any spreadsheet application (like i. e. Excel, LibreOffice Calc, Google Spreadsheets). The download links:

• Click here to download .ods file (for LibreOffice/OpenOffice Calc)
• Click here to download .xls file (for Microsoft Excel)
• Click here to see Google Spreadsheet

(If you are going to use a Google Spreadsheet, you'll have to copy the document I'm sharing to your own disc and work on your own copy)

Basic Manual

It is very simple to use (or at least I hope so). All you have to do is to type in the green cells how many elements of a specific type you have and how many you need. Type exactly how many of them you need in total, not how many you miss (i. e. if you want to give a 4th star to Taiyi Zhenren, you need 40 extraordinary light materials, so always type 40, no matter whether you already have 45 of them, 15, or 0). Once you filled all the needed fields, look back at the left side of the document. The field "Do you have needed materials" will tell you, whether you are able to fuse all the needed materials from materials you already have. If you are, then check "Total trinkets needed" cell, to see how manyyou'd have to spend to fuse all the needed elements and compare the number with the number of you have got. If you have enough trinkets, it means you can enchant your dragon! If the cell "Do you have needed materials" says "NO", you can't enchant your dragon right now, and the field "Total trinkets needed" will tell you what is the maximum possible number of trinkets that you might need once you gather needed materials. It is possible (and very likely) that the number will actually be smaller: you can't predict what tier of materials you'll get meanwhile (and neither do I), so the best you can calculate is the upper bound (the number of trinkets that you'd need if you get only fair materials meanwhile). See the example below: I want to give my beloved Taiyi 4th star, which would cost me 40 extraordinary materials of each of his elements. So I type the numbers of already possessed materials and I can see that to fuse all the needed elements I need 113,420 trinkets.

For this example, let's assume I have that many trinkets and I'd like to see if I can enchant also other battle dragons. Let's say I also want to give 4th star to Pixie Dot, who already has got 3 stars, and all 4 stars to unenchanted by now Furnace Dragon. I can check in game how many elements will I need for my Pixie Dot, but the game will only tell me elements needed for the 1st star for Furnace, so I'll go to the DML Wiki to learn how many elements will I need. Now you can see that some of materials type needs to be summed up. For example, I'll need 40 extraordinary light materials for Taiyi and 32 for Pixie Dot, which means total of 72 extraordinary light materials. Fortunately, I don't have to sum it all up in my head, as all the spreadsheets can do it! All I have to do is to start the line from "=" sign. If you don't know how does it work, see the video below. 

Some extra tricks

Have you noticed that a letter is missing between columns representing different elements? No, it's not a mistake :) I've hidden the columns needed mostly for calculations. If you want to see more details, you can show them

The "Need to get" column will tell you how many specific materials you need to get to be able to fuse all the missing elements from higher tiers and to satisfy the direct need. Thus, getting some elements that had non-zero result in "Need to get" column will in most cases reduce this result for lower tier materials of that element. In above example, the player would need 3611 fair fire materials or 3649 average materials or 916 good materials.... and so on. Or some proper combination of a number of different tier elements. The point is that the player doesn't need 161 excellent materials and 25 extraordinary ones, I hope you get it. 

When none of the dragons that you want to enchant have some specific element (for example, when you are going to enchant dragons that all don't have wind element), you can leave the whole section of that element empty - both "had" and "needed" columns, as whatever would be "had", it wouldn't influence the result, and empty places are treated like zeros, so the "needed" column would be correct this way.

If there are many dragons that you want to enchant, and enchanting some of them is more important to you than enchanting others, you can duplicate the sheet with this tool, and add the materials needed for less important dragons only in the duplicate. This way, the original sheet will show you how many materials you miss to enchant your most important dragons, and the duplicate - how many materials you miss to enchant all the dragons you want to be enchanted. You can even apply this procedure as many times as you want to create groups of dragons to be enchanted with different priorities. If you use the "=[cell address]" formula instead of coping, updating the numbers of possessed elements in the first sheet will automatically update them in all the duplicates. 

Do's and Don'ts 

• Do not change the formulas I have put in the white cells. Changing them will probably result in wrong results.
• Feel free to add any comments or some extra calculations in empty cells. Just make sure they really are empty before you type anything.
• Feel free to share this tool wherever you'd like, even edited (i. e. with your comments or translated to your native language), reupload it on different server etc.
• However, please do not delete the link to my blog that I have put there. It took me a lot of effort to make this tool and this post and I let you all use it any way you like, but I humbly ask to be mentioned as an author. Thank you! :)

Enchanting your dragons

Enchanting your dragons is a very important thing. Each star that your dragon has counts as two

levels for all its stats and for ruins exploration. (If you explore ruins by other set of dragons that the recommended one, the chance of getting a chest depends on the average level of dragons you send - and the enchantment does matter). Enchanted dragons can participate in the Enchanted Arena fights, which is helpful even for low level dragons. And finally, some pairs of specific enchanted dragons can breed some dragons that aren't possible to get in any other way (so called "Enchanted Breeding"). The recipe for optimal enchanting sounds simple: gather many enchantment resources and choose wisely which dragons you want to enchant. But things are never as easy as they seem, right?

Gathering enchantment materials - battles

                             

   

The first and the most important source of enchantment resources are Enchanted Arena battles. Fighting there a lot is obviously a good plan, but fighting wisely and a lot is an even better plan! The number of chests from battles you can open is limited by the number of   keys you have got. You get one key every hour and basically you can store up to 5 keys. VIP members can store between 2 and 4 extra keys, depending on the VIP level. So, the very first step towards optimizing your enchantment materials income is assuring you are in the Enchantment League low enough that you'll be able to spend all your keys - the differences between chests gotten in different Leagues aren't big enough to compensate a lost chest. Which exactly League it would be depends on your dragons' levels and your activity. A very active player who visits Dragonlandia every few hours will be able to battle as soon as their dragons regenerate, so they will probably be able to use all their keys even if they need all their battle dragons to win a battle. Someone who plays only a few times a day won't have that luxury, so they will need to be able to win a battle bringing just one or two dragons from their main team. So make some experiments and find your own perfect League to stay in. Obviously, you shouldn't stay any lower than you need - as long as you can use all the keys, stay possibly high to get better chests! You should also note that the chest awarded depends on your opponent's League, not yours. Usually you are in the same League that your opponent, but it's better to make sure your opponent indeed is in your League - just look at their score before attacking. If it's no lower than 20 trophies below the score required to enter your League, chances are that this player is in your League anyhow, but better don't risk and refresh the opponent whenever they score is even by one trophy lower than required to enter your League. 

When you feel like you are too high, you can drop your score down by loosing some battles. The easiest way is just to attack everyone you meet without refreshing, attack the first defender and then retreat. Another way to make sure you aren't too high is setting dragons with low levels as defenders - many players will attack you and win, reducing your score. But be mindful! You don't want to loose too many points. Keep an eye on your score and put higher level defenders if you are too close to the lower border of your League. If it's possible, try also to have possibly high level Cauldron - potions are useful and sometimes changing just one level 30 defender to a level 45 one results in better potions gotten. 

Occasionally after battle you will get a Super League Chest or a Rare Chest. The Super League Chest is an improved version of a normal league chest that you'd get from that particular battle - the number of cards is the same, but it tends to contain more materials, materials of higher tiers and much more trinkets (basing on my own observations, I'd say it gives you about 3 to 4 times more trinkets). The Rare Chest is harder to get and gives you a lot of resources - numbers are regardless to your opponent's current league. They both are great thing, but unfortunately getting them is random, and the chances increase after each won battle. The counter resets after you actually get them and the battles in which you haven't opened the chest because of no key don't count. Any looses (neither offensive nor defensive) don't matter. So, there is no strategy to increase the chances of getting better chest - simply fight a lot!

Another chest that you can get is the Battle Chest. To be able to get the Battle Chest you must be in League 4 or higher and win 5 battles. Any battles lost meanwhile won't count in any way towards the Battle Chest. After you get the Battle Chest, another one will be available for you after 24 hours cooldown. The Battle Chest is really inferior to the Rare Chest, but being limited to 24 (or even less depending on activity and VIP level) chests obtained from battles per day, we should be happy for any additional opportunity to get the materials. Especially that the Battle Chest  is far better than any normal chest obtained after a battle, including the one from League 7. Important thing to note is that you are able to get a new chest after 24 hours, not one day, so if you don't pay attention to it, you will probably miss it sometimes. This isn't a perfect scenario, so whenever possible, keep in mind when your Battle Chest will be ready and when the you know there are just about 2 hours left (and you will be playing in 2 hours from now), don't fight. Save your dragons health to claim the Battle Chest as soon as possible. As long as you are sure you'll be able to win 5 battles possibly fast, you don't have to worry about having 5 keys, since even battles without opened chests will count.

Gathering enchantment materials - other sources

Although Enchantment Arena battles are main and most important source of enchantment materials and trinkets, you shouldn't forget about other ways to obtain them. 

Remember the chests you get every day by completing your Daily Quest? They are Gift Chests. What is inside depends on your Enchantment League. There is a different Gift Chest for League 1, a different one for Leagues 2 and 3, a different one for Leagues 4 and 5 and finally a different one for Leagues 6 and 7. Generally, they contain less materials, but more trinkets, than a chest obtained from a battle in that League. You can also get a Gift Chest once every 6 hours for watching an ad video. There's not much to be strategic about those chests, but remember you can complete your Daily Quest at any part of the day. So, if you are high in the League 1, 3 or 5, it may be a good idea to wait a bit before you fight on campaign map. If you get to the higher League, even just for a while, and then go fight normal battles, you'll get better Gift Chest!

In the "Chests" menu you can also buy a Rare Chest for 6  enchantment tickets or an Epic Chest for 10 . Enchantment tickets can be obtained in many events or bought for gems. The Epic Chest in fact contains two Rare Chests - after purchasing the "Epic Chest", you'll open two Rare Chests, one just after the another. So, unless you are very close to enchanting one of your dragons and you feel like one extra rare chest could provide you with the needed materials, save your tickets for an Epic Chest - you don't need to be an excellent at math to realize that Rare Chests found in Epic ones cost you effectively one ticket less each than bought separately. Usually when we get enchantment tickets, for example in calendar events, we get 6 of them at once, so you may feel like "I'll never use the saved two tickets and I'm not gonna buy tickets for gems, so there is no point waiting for another 6 tickets in another event". But you should keep in mind two things. First: a saving player would get an extra Rare Chest once per 6 Rare Chest given us by Gameloft in various events just for their patience, which is almost 17% more materials just for the patience and an even more saving player would get two extra Rare Chest once per 10 Rare Chests given in events, which is 20% more materials. Quite a lot, isn't it? And the second thing: Whale-Mart visits out Dragonlandias every weekend with new offers, which sometimes contain the tickets that may help you to close the gap between events giving enchantment tickets.

        

And speaking of Whale-Mart, the Black Market is also quite a nice source of enchantment materials. Sometimes we can buy enchantment tickets for food, scrolls or portal energy, which is really amazing, sometimes we can buy them for lower number of gems - which isn't so great, but can be a good idea in certain cases. Sometimes the Asian fellow there offers us particular type of elements gratis to other purchases, which also can be really helpful if you need materials of that particular elements. I strongly recommend checking the offers every week, buying everything you can buy for scrolls, seriously considering every offer for food or portal energy, and then, thinking about gem offers. But think twice before you buy any enchantment materials or tickets for gems. Whale-Mart offers are limited-time, which may make you hurry and make a purchase that you'll regret later. Ask yourself: is enchanting a particular dragon more important for you than other things that you could spend your gems on? Is the offer you consider really the most effective way to earn the materials you need? For example, in the top screenshot on the right you can see an offer of 100 scrolls and 15 good light materials in exchange of 25 gems. Scrolls are useless for most of the players, thus accepting this offer would mean paying 25 gems only for the materials. 25 gems is also the price for one key. Let's say you are in League 6, so a chest for you will always contain 1-4 (let's assume 2,5 at average) excellent materials, so to fuse an equivalent of that you'd need 15 good materials. And besides that you get 4 other material cards, 40-55 trinkets, some divine average materials, a potion and that battle would actually count towards your chances of getting a Rare Chest. In my opinion, all of this sums up to resources that are 4-5 times more valuable than 15 average light materials. So numbers say that spending your gems on an extra key would be a better idea, don't they? The reason why the offer from Whale-Mart is interesting is that you are guaranteed that the materials you get will be light. We don't know the exact numbers, so to simplify the calculations let's assume the materials you'd get from battle wouldn't be legendary and any other element would be equally probable. This means you'd have 1/10 chances of getting materials of a specific element, so if there are up to three elements of which materials you need and light is among them, the deal from Whale-Mart is good for you, but if you need materials of more elements, I'd buy just one extra key if I were you, especially that this isn't a limited-time offer, so you can wait and buy it during the gem spending event. This is just a very special case, but I can't predict what future Whale-Mart offers will be, what are your needs, your place in Enchantment League etc. to make some sort of a table to show what is worth buying. So I hope with this example of reasoning you'll be able to think through another offer and decide whether it's good for you on your own.

As I have already brought the topic of spending gems on enchanting your dragons, let's compare the two basic ways of doing this: buying keys and enchantment tickets. We already know that the patience is profitable, so let's consider spending 225 gems on 10 enchantment tickets (= one Epic Chest) vs buying 9 keys. So, this text is already insanely long and I want to write about a few more things, so I will not present a detailed reasoning and calculations here, just general basic premises. I have divided the numbers of resources obtained from the Epic Chest by 9 and compared the results with a table of resources obtained from battles in different Leagues and keeping in mind that each opened chest makes you closer to get a Rare Chest or a Super League Chest and buying keys is a more flexible option, I have concluded that buying keys is a better idea for a player in League 6 or 7, while buying tickets is better idea for a player in League 4 or lower. The results for League 5 are to similar to make a verdict without knowing exact drop rates for Rare Chest as a function of won battles.

Which dragons to enchant?

Having your dragons enchanted is obviously a positive thing. On the other hand, if you enchant a lot of ordinary dragons, you may be unable to enchant important dragons in a reasonable time. So, the decision isn't easy. In my opinion, you should take the following priorities:

1. Your primary team battle dragons and Enchanted Breeding parents for dragons you want to add to your team
2. Your secondary team battle dragons and Enchanted Breeding parents for other dragons you want to get
3. All the remaining parents for Enchanted Breedings
4. Dragons that explore ruins if it happens that you are unable to send exact recommended dragons set
5. Other dragons

When you enchant all of the dragons with a specific priority to a desired level start focusing on the next point from the list. And before that, enchant a dragon from a lower priority whenever it doesn't require any resources needed for any higher priority dragons. For example, when you need only light and shadow materials for dragons from point 1, you can already enchant a Bee Dragon from point 2 though you haven't finished the point 1 yet.

Sometimes it will be a good idea to modify this list a bit. For example, when the elements required to breed the Furnace Dragon were revealed at the end of May, we learned that two best possible combinations would require us to use a limited-time dragon or a dragon available through the enchanted breeding. As we have really hard time breeding now, with hard Furnace, new Dragons of the Week with tough combinations and solo event, it would be a wise idea back then to try to obtain Bloom or Beetle before June starts, thus, move their required parents to the priority "0" (more important than 1) on this list. So, treat this list as a good starting point, not a rigid rule to be obeyed at any time. 

The reason why having any dragon who don't play any special role in your Dragonlandia enchanted is a good idea (when it doesn't influence enchantment of more important dragons) is that you can bring that dragon to the Enchantment League battle and use together with one of    potions to make a reasonable damage to a much more powerful dragon. Enchanting your ruins exploration dragons and Enchanted Breeding parents for this usage is better idea than enchanting any other dragon, as having them enchanted gives you some additional benefits. If you aren't going to try Enchanted Breeding soon and you enchant your dragons mostly for this battle usage, I'd suggest you to pick dragons to enchant from the following list. I have put there dragons that can be both parents for Enchanted Breeding and recommended ruins explorers. I tried to put them in order of usefulness, considering materials needed to enchant, offspring from Enchanted Breeding and ruins they can go to, but in many cases it's very hard to say which dragon is "better" to be enchanted, so treat this like a lax suggestion. 

1. Fire Dragon (to level 1)
2. Wind Dragon (to level 1)
3. Plant Dragon (to level 1)
4. Bee Dragon (to level 1)
5. Tree Dragon (to level 1)
6. Armored Dragon (to level 3)
7. Brick Dragon (to level 3)
8. Geiger Dragon (to level 2)
9. Seed Dragon (to level 1)
10. Lava Dragon (to level 4)
11. Ice Dragon (to level 2)
12. Mist Dragon (to level 4)
13. Witch Dragon (to level 2)
14. Venom Dragon (to level 3)
15. Cloud Dragon (to level 1)
16. Magnet Dragon (to level 4)
17. Sunflower Dragon (to level 2)
18. Tribal Dragon (to level 2)
19. Clownfish Dragon (to level 1)
20. Elemental Dragon (to level 2)
21. Agave Dragon (to level 1)

I suggest you to go to the DML Wiki for the full list of Enchantment Breeding parents and ruins explorers if you want to make some more planning. 

Enchanting a divine dragon

And last but not least: a section about enchanting a divine dragons that I have promised! I hope you haven't fallen asleep yet, because here comes the part that I have been asked for :) All I need to say here can be summarize by "simple": gather enchanted trinkets. I've put simple in quotation marks, because I'm just 22 years old, but I guess my hair will be as white as Taiyi's hair once I gather the needed number of trinkets to enchant him. Honestly! You need 408,300 trinkets to fully enchant a divine dragon. This isn't a joke. This is for real! And I'm only talking about the number of trinkets needed to fuse divine materials, not including anything of the 2nd and 3rd element. But well, before you gather that many trinkets, you will probably get all other needed elements without even thinking of them... So gathering trinkets is the only thing you should focus on. In general, all above tips apply to gathering trinkets, as all the sources of enchantment materials are sources of trinkets as well (Rare Chests, Battle Chests etc). But there are a few things to be added.

First, pay more attention to the Gift Chests. They aren't any great source of materials, but they give more trinkets than chests obtained after battles. So spend a few minutes of your times to watch that video ad every 6 hours, and whenever possible, try to be in higher League you can when getting the Gift Chest from Daily Quest. 

Second, consider waiting for the Giant Starter Chest to be available to purchase instead of spending your enchantment tickets on Epic Chest. Those are seasonal chests dedicated to beginner players who need low tier materials. What's important about them is that they cost 4 enchantment tickets and they give as many trinkets as a Rare Chest does - so when you are focused on optimizing your trinkets income, they are a really good deal. The problem is that they are only available for a limited-time and I can't predict when will they be for the next time... but well, you're enchanting a divine. You've got plenty of time to wait.  

And the last idea. Have you noticed that you get some trinkets after defeating each dragon in the Enchanted Arena? For example, 9 trinkets per dragon if you are in League 6. So, technically, your trinkets income is only limited by your enchanted dragons battle power and your determination. At the very least, you should try to defeat some defenders even if you are going to loose a fight to lower your score. When the first defender has a low level, it's simple: attack it with one of your strong battle dragons. You'll get your trinkets and your dragon will only have to rest for 5 minutes. When the first defender is at high level, it's a bit harder, but still doable: you can defeat it using 4 sacrifice dragons (see the section about choosing dragons to enchant) and a First Hit or Minor Curse potion. As this way you'll get just a few trinkets in exchange for a common potion, do it only if you have many spare potions of this kind, otherwise refresh for gold or attack the first defender by one sacrifice dragon and retreat. After you defeat the first defender, sometimes you'll be able to defeat a few more easily, which will give you some extra trinkets. 

If you have really a lot of a time to spend playing Dragon Mania Legends, you can just fight and fight, going up and down in Enchantment League even if you don't have keys. If you have got many sacrifice dragons (and you probably have, as gathering the trinkets you meanwhile gather also materials that you can use to enchant other dragons), you can reduce your score below the required for your optimal League just after you run out of keys, and then get back to your League before you get another key. As many times as you want.

I know this way of gathering trinkets sounds insane and desperate, however, it's not so bad overall. Obviously, those battles don't count towards Rare Chests, but on the other hand, amount of trinkets earned during the battle is in higher Leagues about the half of the amount of trinkets you'll basically get from the chest after the fight. So, three battles won without a key would be like one battle won with the chest. The only problem is that it's very time-consuming. I usually fight some extra battles when I need to wait for some short timer (for example 5 minutes for metal breeding clan quest) and have nothing else to do. I also do so when I'm bored in travel or when I'm listening to an audiobook or a recorded lecture and don't have anything to do with hands. 

Conclusion

Enchanting dragons is a really important part of Dragon Mania Legends game-play and the rarer the dragon is, the harder will it be to enchant. Like in most of the aspects of mobile games, patience pays off while any form on rush to enchant results in unfavorable deals. If you are going to enchant a divine dragon, whichever would it be, I suggest you go to the Taiyi Zhenren Dragon to ask him for a lesson of his endless patience! And if you think about having two divines in your team, think twice, because even endless patience might not be enough to enchant both of them.

If you are still here, I really appreciate it! Please leave a comment so that I know someone would actually read this crazily long text :) Have a wonderful day at your Dragonlandia!

PS. Gameloft has revealed the upcoming Dragon of the Week and schedule for the next week! I'll review the Sylvan Dragon soon, but I need to get some sleep first :D So stay tuned!