18-25 June 2018 Dragon of the Week review: the Sylvan Dragon

Hello Dragon Ladies and Lords! I needed to take some breath after the last post, so the review of the Sylvan Dragon got a little bit delayed and it is possible that some of you have already bred. Nevertheless I hope that you forgive me the break that I really needed and that this text is useful for those who hasn't bred Sylvan yet and aren't sure if they should try. Meanwhile I have drawn (and calligraphied) a fanart inspired by the Codex entry about Sylvan. I'm not sure what are the flowers at its tail, but Idoine91 from the DML Forum says they may be Hibiscus, so I drew also some Hibiscus trees and flowers in the background. Do you like it? Can you name all the dragons in the drawing? I'm sure you can! But let's get back to Sylvan itself!

Breeding

The required parents for Sylvan Dragon are Ice and Salamander. They are both dragons from the first three collections in the Dragons' Codex, so I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't have them. Their elements: wind, water, earth and fire would suggest that other possible outcomes will have short breeding times and thus, we will be able to get this dragon without reducing dramatically our chances of finishing the ongoing solo event  without spending gems. Vain hope! When you look at the table below you'll see three possible outcomes that breed for 12 hours! And the number of long outcomes is even higher for VIP members who can actually also breed a Mystic Dragon...

Dragon	Elements	Rarity	Breeding time	Hatching time
Smoke Dragon			0 h 30 min (0 h 24 min)	0 h 45 min (0 h 36 min)
Bee Dragon			0 h 45 min (0 h 36 min)	1 h 20 min (1 h 04 min)
Dust Dragon			2 h 00 min (1 h 36 min)	3 h 20 min (2 h 40 min)
Boiling Dragon			4 h 00 min (3 h 12 min)	6 h 30 min (5 h 12 min)
Snow Dragon			4 h 00 min (3 h 12 min)	6 h 30 min (5 h 12 min)
Mud Dragon			6 h 00 min (4 h 48 min)	8 h 30 min (6 h 48 min)
Tribal Dragon			12 h 00 min (9 h 36 min)	0 h 05 min (0 h 04 min)
Clownfish Dragon			12 h 00 min (9 h 36 min)	16 h 50 min (13 h 30 min)
Elemental Dragon			12 h 00 min (9 h 36 min)	16 h 50 min (13 h 30 min)
*  Mystic Dragon*			(9 h 36 min)	(13 h 30 min)
Sylvan Dragon			16 h 00 min (12 h 48 min)	23 h 30 min (18 h 48 min)

*To breed the Mystic Dragon you need an active VIP status of level 4 or higher

So, if you are a VIP member of level 4 or higher, after you looked at this table you probably thought "maybe I should let my VIP status expire as soon as possible to have better chances of breeding Sylvan". Should you? Let's try to see! The exact odds of breeding a dragon of specific rarity depends on parents' levels and the formula isn't publicly known. However, I think it is a reasonable assumption that all the dragons of the same rarity have the same chance to be bred. We also know (Andras from Gameloft has clarified it after my question) that when there are more possible outcomes of some rarity, there is a higher chance to get any offspring of that rarity, but it's not proportional (i. e. twice more possible uncommon outcomes doesn't mean twice chances to get any uncommon offspring). Turning off VIP status would mean 4 rare outcomes instead of 5, which means that it would increase the chances of breeding Sylvan by less than 20% (how much less - nobody knows, except for Gameloft). It would also mean lower chances to get an unwanted offspring with high breeding time - but those chances would be reduced by less than 25%. And remember that active VIP status of level 2 or higher means 20% breeding time reduction. So, after you switch it off, the breeding time of all the dragons will increase by 25%*! So, if you are only playing twice a day, letting your VIP membership to expire may be a wise idea, since you won't benefit from shorter breeding time. But otherwise, don't do so! You will probably need more attempts to get your Sylvan Dragon, but they will take less time, so who cares about the number of tries? Especially that we have a Crowded Nursery ongoing, so getting more rares (in less time, to emphasize this once again) could possibly help you earn 4 extra gems more easily.

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* Hey, Vicia, what is going on here? You've just said that VIP status reduces the breeding time by 20%, so why are you saying now that switching it off increases the breeding time by 25%? 

Keep calm, world isn't going to collapse and I haven't lied to you :) It's a simple math. Look: imagine the breeding time would normally be 1 hour = 60 minutes. A VIP member would have it reduced by 20% × 60 minutes = 12 minutes, so the breeding time for a VIP member would be 60 minutes - 12 minutes = 48 minutes.

Now, if that VIP member lets their VIP membership expire, the breeding time would be increased for them by 12 minutes. 12 minutes divided by 48 minutes = 1/4 = 25%. See?

There is no paradox there, even if it may seem so. 12 minutes are 20% of an hour, but 25% of 48 minutes. The % are different, because we are comparing those 12 minutes to different numbers. I hope you get it. As we were comparing non-VIP chances to VIP chances, not vice-versa, we should be also comparing non-VIP breeding time to VIP breeding time to get any useful information from those numbers. 

Big Kick Cup and breeding Sylvan

Another important thing to be mentioned here is that the Big Kick Cup solo event is ongoing and having the breeding den blocked by Sylvan may be a bit problematic. On the other hand, breeding Fire Dragon with Wind Dragon 12 times, and then getting 10 Bees or Smokes from trying to breed Sylvan would be so frustrating. So, can we optimize it anyhow? Let's make some math again. I guess you have already done Tier 6, so all we have to do is to think about Tier 8, because Tiers 7, 9 and 10 don't require you to do any breedings. 

According to the Wiki, you'll need at least 18 hour 40 minutes. However, it takes about 5 hours 40 minutes for the pool of  to fill, so if you want to take a healthy 8 hours sleep, you'll loose at least 2 hours 20 minutes, which makes the Tier 8 require about 21 hours to complete. Sylvan's basic breeding time is 16 hours, which would leave you 5 hours to get 11 , that unfortunately have 1 hour cooldown and a pool of only two. Considered that after breeding Sylvan, you'd still have one stopwatch left in pool and assuming you'd be lucky to only get Smokes, not Bees later breeding Fire+Wind, breeding Sylvan at the first try would cause you to get delayed for at least 5 hours. Not too good, is it? But hey, if you would have Chronos ready meanwhile, it would speed up things by 6 hours. Amoura's power could also be helpful, as well as speeding up breeding for watching the ad. And don't forget about 20% breeding time reduction for VIP members. And if have tried to get Sylvan once and failed, deciding whether you should try again actually needs different numbers, as that failed breed gave you a stopwatch as well. Complicated, isn't it? It's hard to consider every small factor, but the simplified version of determining whether it's good idea to try to breed Sylvan is following. If you aren't a VIP member, can't neither Amoura nor Chronos soon and can't watch two ads to speed up breeding by 1 h, being at Tier 7 with 30  is the latest moment when you should try to breed Sylvan. Having an active VIP status of level 2 or higher "buys" you extra 12 , being able to use Chronos during the breeding (assuming you'll get Sylvan this try) buys you extra 24 , being able to use Amoura buys you 4 , and being able to watch two ads to speed up breeding buys you another 4  (depending on the time, it may actually mean 8 , if that breeding would start one day and end the next one). Sum it all up. Then, if the sum is under 50, it is the highest number of  that you can have in Tier 7 when you start breeding. If the sum is over 50, convert all the  exceeding 50 to  with the formula 4  = 1  and you'll get the higher number of that you can have when starting the breeding. So, for example, if you aren't a VIP member, but can use Chronos and Amoura and watch two ads (the breeding would start and end one day), it means 30 + 24 + 4  + 4  = 62  = 50  + 12  = 50  + 3 , so it is a good idea to start the breeding if you have 3 or less . Got it? If it isn't your first breeding since you started Tier 8, you can add one extra  to your result per each  already had. 

There's an useful trick: one of the time-consuming facts is that the  have 1 hour cooldown, so breeding Smokes for 30 minutes isn't so helpful. But you start a Tier with a full pool of 2 , and you'll in most cases also have 1  left in pool after a misbreed of Sylvan. So if you have enough space in habitats (or can move some dragons to Vault), it is a good idea to buy a new Fire Dragon and a new Wind Dragon and feed them to level 4 (not even one level higher!) and breed them twice after you enter Tier 8 and once after every misbreed of Sylvan. This will buy you some extra time. 

I know all of this is quite sophisticated and may be hard, but we really need some optimization now: we've just said goodbye to the Jinqiu Dragon with its truly nightmare breeding table to welcome the Sylvan Dragon with another hard breeding table, the solo event is ongoing (and Neon is really worth an effort!) and many of us hasn't breed Furnace yet, who is as amazing as hard to breed... And a day still lasts no longer than 24 hours. So, if you have any problem with understanding all of this, please leave a comment, contact me via contact form or on Facebook and I'll do my best to help!

Dragon review 

The section about breeding was pretty long because of the VIP-related contemplation and the solo event stuff, so I'll try to be concise here. 

If you think about using Sylvan in your battle team... Just. Stop. Even. Thinking. About. This. Really. Regardless to whether a bi-elemental is or isn't a reasonable choice for a battle dragon - look, there is Spikey Dragon with the same elements as Sylvan! Spikey has got the same stats, better element order (Spikey would be resistant to light, plant and void attacks at the cost of being vulnerable to legendary attacks, while Sylvan is resistant to earth attacks, that have no on-hit effects, and takes 150% damage from wind and light attacks) and is only common. Low rarity is actually an advantage when talking about a battle dragon, because it means easier enchantment. Plus, getting Spikey is very, very easy as it is guaranteed offspring when breeding the Light Dragon with the Earth Dragon. So, let's leave the question is Spikey could be a good battle dragon in some cases open and agree that we won't think about Sylvan as a battle dragon anymore. 

Sylvan Dragon can live in a light habitat, which is really great thing: you can enjoy new, pretty dragon without having to keep a place in a habitat with poor gold capacity. Sylvan's base gold/hour maybe isn't amazing, but still acceptable even for an advanced player. And a new player who hasn't unlocked light element yet won't benefit so much from having Sylvan: earth habitats can't store much gold, so even a great gold/hour wouldn't mean much there. Not to mention that Sylvan's gold production actually looses for example to Agent. But it is still a pretty nice dragon to have, especially if you are active. 

There are 11 tri-elemental dragons that have both light and earth element, 8 of them are limited-time (including the prize from the recent event: the Turf Dragon), Paladin is available through card packs, Fossil is available through enchanted breeding and Professor is a reward for the mentor program. So, if you ever meet a situation when you'd have to feed a dragon with those two elements to level up the temples, you'd probably have some better choices. However, all of them are (more or less) hard to get, so it may happen that you'll rather feed a dragon that you already have than wait to obtain some of them, which could stop your progress for too long. In this case, Sylvan would be better choice than Spikey (70 more gold/hour to benefit from level ;)

And the last thing: breeding. Of course, Sylvan can be replaced by Spikey for any breeding as they have the same elements, and as a limited-time dragon it would never be a parent for the Dragon of the Week or enchanted breeding, but as a two-elemental it may actually take part in some regular breeding. This is a great fact for the new players: you can breed Sylvan now, benefit from his pretty high base gold/hour, and when you unlock the light element, you won't need to spend your precious time on breeding Spikey - you might just start breeding better dragons, like Stardust or Emperor. I know you'll need Spikey one day to finish your Codex, but chances are you'll breed it accidentally while attempting to get someone else. And if you already have Sylvan, you can try for example breeding it with Rouge Dragon or with Nightmare Dragon. 

Conclusion

Sylvan Dragon isn't a must-have. However, it's so pretty, cute and lovely! And can be useful especially to the new players. Breeding has been hard lately, so the decision whether to try for Sylvan is up to you. I personally do believe that obtaining it is possible without loosing chances of getting other dragons (Masque, Neon, Furnace) and if I'm lucky to get my first Sylvan soon, I'll try to get another one. This will require a lot of planning though and if you don't have a predictable daily routine that allows planning the breeding precisely, better don't copy me!

Please tell me in comments what do you think about this Dragon. Have a wonderful day at your Dragonlandia!