10 - 17 December Dragon of the Week: the Block Dragon (and other news)

Hello Dragon Ladies and Lords! It's been so long since the last time I have written anything here and I'm terribly sorry for this. My life is so busy lately and I should be either working or learning (or sleeping perhaps?) now, but not writing my blog makes me so sad that I decided to reactivate it. I probably won't write as much as during the summer, but I'll do my best :) I've just decided that in order to keep the posts within the reasonable time intervals without spending more time than I am able to, between essential posts, I will be also writing some little entertainment notes just slightly related to the Dragon Mania Legends. First post like this will be here Tuesday evening and will include some photos of DML playing in a cool place. But, let's get back to the news for the upcoming week!

News for the next week

The Cinnamon & Ice castle event is starting tomorrow! It will last till 20th of December, which is great in my opinion - the event will end before Christmas, so that playing DML won't interfere with the time we should be spending with our families during holidays. Great move, Gameloft! The prizes in the castle event are: the Cinnamon Dragon, the Snow Globe Dragon and the Li'l Angel Dragon. First two of them are brand new and you can see how they look on the graphics that Gameloft has posted on the official DML Facebook fanpage. The Cinnamon Dragon is an epic with the fire, water and plant elements and the Snow Globe Dragon is an epic with the wind, light and plant elements. I am super excited to get those dragons, they are just so pretty! The mini collection event is also announced to start tomorrow, which means that there will be a list of dragons - if you hatch all of them during the next week (10-17 December), you will get the Frost Fairy Dragon egg. Only dragons hatched during the event will count, so even if you already have a dragon from the list, for example from a last year event, you'll need to get and hatch a duplicate in order for it to count towards the collection event. The Crowded Nursery that will also start tomorrow is a very well-known kind of an event, where hatching dragons give you points that count towards milestone and leaderboard prize. It seems that it will be ordinary event with just gold and food in leaderboard prize, as usual. The golden opportunity event that starts on Friday is the gold spending event, so you should consider saving your gold instead of spending it now. 

Also, Gameloft has promised that all the DML players will receive some free VIP tickets and dragon fury essences based on how many new accounts will follow the official DML Instagram profile. We need at least 5,000 new followers for the first milestone. Can we do this? I'm sure we can. (By the way, you can also check my Instagram profile that will be reactivated soon ;) And the most exciting news that I kept for the end: the divine Aphrodite Dragon will be breedable in short chain breeding 20 - 24 December. Parents are unknown yet, but I will probably write a post with some speculation soon. 

Block Dragon as Dragon of the Week

It has been officially announced that the Dragon of the Week for tomorrow is the Block Dragon with parents being the Mercury Dragon and the Smoke Dragon. If you don't have the Mercury Dragon, better hurry up! ;) The breeding table including the castle event currency that you will get for every breed (assuming there aren't any changes in castle events formula) is the following:

Dragon	Elements	Rarity	Breeding time	Hatching time	Event currency
Boiling Dragon			4 h 00 min (3 h 12 min)	6 h 30 min (5 h 12 min)	133
Ice Dragon			4 h 00 min (3 h 12 min)	6 h 30 min (5 h 12 min)	133
Tornado Dragon			6 h 00 min (4 h 48 min)	8 h 30 min (6 h 48 min)	200
War Dragon			6 h 00 min (4 h 48 min)	8 h 30 min (6 h 48 min)	200
Cloud Dragon			6 h 00 min (4 h 48 min)	8 h 30 min (6 h 48 min)	200
Rustwater Dragon			6 h 00 min (4 h 48 min)	8 h 30 min (6 h 48 min)	200
Razor Dragon			8 h 00 min (6 h 48 min)	11 h 20 min (9 h 04 min)	266
Agnes Dragon			12 h 00 min (9 h 36 min)	16 h 50 min (13 h 30 min)	400
Imperial Dragon			12 h 00 min (9 h 36 min)	16 h 50 min (13 h 30 min)	400
Masque Dragon			12 h 00 min (9 h 36 min)	16 h 50 min (13 h 30 min)	400
Regal Dragon			16 h 00 min (12 h 48 min)	23 h 30 min (18 h 48 min)	400
Block Dragon			22 h 00 min (17 h 36 min)	28 h 40 min (22 h 56 min)	400

So, there are many possible misbreeds, which is especially painful during the castle event, where strict control of the breeding den is a very good help. Luckily, the only misbreed that takes longer than 12 h is the epic Regal Dragon. As the 12 h breeding gives you 400 currency, which is maximum for the pool, any breeding longer than 12 h, no matter how well planned, will always result in lower amount of event currency gained in the given time (compared to the best breeding plan you could make if the event currency was the only important thing for you). The breeding time for Regal exceeds this time by 4 hours, which corresponds to the loss of about 133 currency, and the breeding time for Block exceeds it by 10 hours, which corresponds the loss of about 333 currency. This isn't so terrible, but it still is a problem. Especially that you will probably also loose some currency due to high unpredictability of the result breeding time even with shorter misbreeds, for example when an 6 h breeding will end in the middle of your sleeping hours. There's not too much that you can do about this - use Amoura and Chronos wisely and don't hatch any egg from your inventory except for the eggs for the collection event (to avoid a situation where a breeding has ended, but you can't move the egg to the hatchery and start another breeding), that's all I can advice.

Is the Block Dragon worth it? Definitely! First of all, it is required to get the Lantern Dragon in the Gathering Light collection event. Lantern is a legendary with a great battle potential, and even if you already have got one (like me ;), a duplicate legendary (for example to ascend it for a pretty nice amount of enchantment materials) is always nice to have.

As an epic battle dragon, Block is very good in my opinion. Surely, 64 base attack damage isn't a great score when many epics have it around 70, but a dragon with a defensive element (such as water) will never have very high attack damage. On the other hand, base health of 226 points is pretty good. Light and plant elements with their area damage/poison skills provide this dragon with a great offensive power. Light as a base element makes it resistant to those two elements, and the only disadvantage of having light as a base element is being vulnerable to the legendary attacks. However, water element skill can remove any debuff if you pick the Restorative Resource mastery, including the legendary mark, so the Block Dragon deals pretty well even with its counters. Moreover, it can perform a strong attack against five different elements (wind, earth, energy, fire and void), and to four of those strong attacks would be done with a damaging skill (light or plant one). And if you are fighting an Enchantment Arena battle with your Block Dragon, you can support it with 2x, 3x, or 6x Damage Boost potion - it is a really big choice! Surely, it is neither divine nor legendary and will not be good enough for the most active and advanced player, but is still really good choice for a not-so-active or intermediate player, or as a dragon for a secondary team. Remember that base stats aren't everything. If you feel that you are capable of enchanting your battle dragons to the level 8, divines are the best choices for you, but if not - epics or even rares may be better. They are easier to enchant, and each enchantment star is like two levels, which equals to 1.44x multiplier for the stats. Thus, 4 star Block Dragon would have higher attack damage even that the 3 star Hathor Dragon on the same level! And Hathor has the higher attack damage of all the existing dragons so far (88).

The Block Dragon probably won't ever be a good parent for any breeding, but it may be very useful for beginner and intermediate players to upgrade their temples. There aren't many tri-element dragons with the light element, so having the Block Dragon can provide you with some extra options. It shares it elements set with the Chameleon Dragon and the Herbalist Dragon, but they are both limited-time. Also the gold produced by the Block Dragon is pretty high. It's not a top-class gold generator like Stardust or Bronze, but still much better than an average epic.

Conclusion

Just. Get. This. Dragon. Honestly, it is a great dragon to have, it is a really pretty and cute dragon, it is a dragon that helps you to get the awesome Lantern Dragon. The only situation when I wouldn't advice someone to try to breed the Block Dragon is when they: have no chance to get the Lantern Dragon (i. e. failed to get the Unicorn) or already have it and have Chameleon or Herbalist and want the prizes from the castle event more than Block and are pretty busy this week, so the unpredictable breeding would be too big problems for them. A lot of conditions, right? So, unless they all apply to you, just get this dragon ;) I wish you all a lot of luck in your breedings and upcoming events. Have a wonderful day at your Dragonlandia!