Dragon Cave: Announcement Thread

Quote from idril

Four eggs just means that there is also sprite dimorphism for the gendered hatchlings

That's good. I'll only need two then. Other eggs are dropping too - confusing the issue.

Got two silver opals from Alpine, no luck with green opals - but at the moment I'm locked with two-coloured eggs (I'l be giving two away in a few hours' time).

Some are saying the green opals are in the forest. Could be. I still haven't seen any at all.

Edit: gone

i keep forgetting to clear out my eggslots at the beginning of the month, haha.

anyways, it looks like the opalescent eggs could be uncommon. i've only seen one of those, but i've got two reds already.

Hatchlings

Which ones are those - the opalescent, or the red ones?

And how does anyone already have hatched eggs? They haven't even been out for 24 hours, and my experience is that eggs can't even start cracking until they're down to 6 days 0 hours.

They're TJ's.
Last time I looked one of the opals (I think) was second stage.
The first 6 are the opals and the other 4 are the reds.

As they are now

Oh, that's right. I forget that TJ "cheats".

And of COURSE those are the opalescent. They're the more interesting looking ones, of which of course I caught NONE. (sigh)

At least now I have a better idea of when the monthly eggs will be released, and I can try not to be egg-locked again.

Those opalescent hatchies are really nice. Can´t wait to see them grow up.

I hope they are not too rare.... like the Coppers.

I have no opalescent either. I've only seen one.
The other eggs seemed to be dropping much earlier this time. This morning. (UK time)
Usually only the new eggs drop for a much longer time.

EDIT. Just now,well at 10 o'clock, there were hardly any new eggs of either kind, but lots of cave blockers.

Yeah, I noticed that. I thought we were supposed to get the eggs for 24 hours before they went to the regular schedule. This way only the fanatics who stay and look for them exactly at midnight are the only ones who will get the new ones. The older way was better - at least you'd have more in the system before they went to their normal rarity.

This is why I say TJ can never have the 'fair playing field' he insists it is as long as he insists on everything being scheduled by cave time.
The time the US gain at the beginning of the day Europe should gain at the end of it. That never happens now.

Well, technically speaking, everyone has the same number of hours where everything is available. It's just that you have to know where your timezone fits in with their timezone, and I imagine that isn't easy if you aren't in the U.S. It isn't easy for me using this site, for the same reason. I'm not even entirely sure which time zone DC is on. (I think it's east coast, but I'm not positive.) This actually gives west coast people an advantage; it starts at midnight on the east coast, but at 9pm on the west coast. That's not an unreasonable hour to stay up for. (Although I always forget, and I usually don't start hunting until after midnight on the west coast.) I have no idea what the equivalent time in Europe would be. But if it's, say, 8am, it might actually be easier; staying up late is often harder than getting up early, at least for me.

I'm not saying that having them only for a few hours, like it was this time, is reasonable. Having them drop for the full 24 hours is better, because A) it makes it not quite as HORRIBLY competitive (once someone has 7 on their scroll, they can't get any more, anyway, and others get a chance), and B) it gives everyone an equal chance, regardless of schedules (work, sleep, children, etc.). Each of the May drops got almost a full 24 hours, and in the past it was always 24 hours. In July I think it was 24 hours as well, but I'm not sure. I think that because TJ gets them automatically, he doesn't understand it from the POV of someone who has to fight with a crappy internet connection, limited hours on the computer, etc. Or maybe he just doesn't care.

Quote from MiaSkywalker

I think that because TJ gets them automatically, he doesn't understand it from the POV of someone who has to fight with a crappy internet connection, limited hours on the computer, etc. Or maybe he just doesn't care.

I think it's a little bit of both. When he did that thing with making Java Script required and made some sort of silly statement about testing it out on different simulated systems or whatever, it was pretty clear that he doesn't really have much of an idea what some of us deal with on old systems, lousy connections, etc. And that in spite of numerous complaints he apparently has his own reasons for ignoring what we try to tell him.
This month also seemed a lot harder than last month so maybe this is just one more thing TJ is messing with and changing up without bothering to tell people about it. It's very frustrating.
There have been a number of interesting posts in the release thread, and some mention of maybe bringing ideas for a different way to handle new drops to the suggestion forum for discussion. I'd like to see that happen, especially if Skauble starts the topic.

DC time is US eastern time and it sucks being on DC time for new releases.

DC midnight is 5am for me. No way am I going to get up for that!
This time I started hunting about 9am and the regular dragons started dropping about 11am, maybe before, so people on DC time or close to it had more time to madly click without the chance of a misclick.
TJ tries to baffle people with technical jargon that doesn't always hold water and no, he doesn't care. As long as he has his sycophants telling him he's wonderful he'll never listen.

Actually Blobber I think you probably picked a good time to start hunting. I've been on vacation for the last two releases, so like a lunatic I stayed up for the releases, determined to 'get mine', lol. Both times I was completely unable to grab a single thing until around 3 or 4 hours after the after the first drop (about the same time you started hunting) when all the fast people were finally locked and gone.
I think for the next one I might save myself the headache and just set my clock to get up early instead of staying up all night and spending hours wildly frustrated and raging at measly 2 second long drops, so I'll be the one getting up at 5AM, yikes!

Does anyone have a gold shimmer dragon they can breed for other people? Just wondering, because I noticed that was the only shimmer egg color no one was giving out.

I have two but they rarely give shimmer eggs. Also, until very recently I was bound to give their eggs back on another forum, from where I got all my shimmer eggs.