Improving the odds for a Diamond... My theory

[Zulac99]

This is just a theory.

As I understand it you get a diamond when you breed two dragons and if the pairing comes up with 4 colors you then get a Diamond Dragon. I think the odds should be 1 in 16 of doing that.

But now with the 3 color dragons you can breed two dragons and utilize 5 colors, for example a Turkey and a Winter. There are no duplicate colors with that combination.

It seems to me that the odds of randomly getting 4 different colors if you are selecting from 5 rather than 4 should be much better. What do you think?

[Takiofallen]

No mathematically it lowers your chances. when using 5 colors you have a 90 + % chance of not breeding a dragon. The reason for this is you increase the amount of fails you can get when adding 5 elements. So your chance of diamond goes from 2 0f 21-24 (depending on the combination) to 2 of 31-35

[Zulac99]

Well without knowing how TL actually does the math there is no way of knowing for sure.

But consider this, if you had a 4 color dice. and rolled it 4 times without getting the same color twice you win.
Now if you roll a 5 color dice 4 times yours odds would be better of not rolling the same color twice.

[Takiofallen]

Well this is actually basic math. Now matter how many colors you add the breeding takes 4. Adding another color does not add another diamond to the mix but it adds a lot of other non diamond dragons. If you took a bag of marbles with 4 colors and one was a diamond your chances is 1/4 which is 25% if you add a another color and make it 5 your chances got to 1/5 and drop to 20%

[Zulac99]

Again. you are actually trying to get 4 different colors that make up the diamond. ANY 4.

If you had a big bag of marbles that had 4 colors you chances of drawing 4 different colors are low.
But if you had 5 colors in the bag and you took out 4 your chance of having 4 different colors are better because you had an extra color that you didn't need that stayed in the bag.

[OrdinaryJoe]

Again. you are actually trying to get 4 different colors that make up the diamond. ANY 4.

If you had a big bag of marbles that had 4 colors you chances of drawing 4 different colors are low.
But if you had 5 colors in the bag and you took out 4 your chance of having 4 different colors are better because you had an extra color that you didn't need that stayed in the bag.


But it doesn't matter if you breed with 4 different colors or 5 different colors, it still comes out to 100% chance of having the color requirement (at least 4 colors) for a dragon possibility. It is a certainty that your breeding will have a possible outcome of a diamond dragon, right?

[OrdinaryJoe]

This tends to make more sense... Adding the 5th color seems to increase the fail rate.


Well this is actually basic math. Now matter how many colors you add the breeding takes 4. Adding another color does not add another diamond to the mix but it adds a lot of other non diamond dragons. If you took a bag of marbles with 4 colors and one was a diamond your chances is 1/4 which is 25% if you add a another color and make it 5 your chances got to 1/5 and drop to 20%

[Zulac99]

OK let me try again with the dice example.

You are trying to roll the die 4 times with out getting the same color.
With 4 colors, each roll of the die has a 25% chance of getting a duplicate color.
With 5 colors each roll has only a 20% chance of getting a duplicate color.

Yes you do open the possibility of more color combinations. But the only one that you care about is getting the 4 color combo that makes a Diamond, and I maintain the odds are higher of getting that.

Theoretically. :)

[Takiofallen]

I see what you are trying to say but thats not how the breeding works in the game. If breeding worked that way in the game you could breed pure dragons with hybrids and thats not possible. Example if you took a poison dragon (forest/magic) and a familiar dragon (forest/magic) took there elements and picked them out by random technically you could pick 2 forest out and breed a forest but that is not how the game works. To make it easy for you Take each element and make it that color marble. wether it's 4 or 5 marbles they are all different colors, if you pick 4 they will all always be different. How a diamond is chosen is if the breeding uses 4 marbles at all. So using 5 won't make a difference because there all different anyway.

[OrdinaryJoe]

OK let me try again with the dice example.

You are trying to roll the die 4 times with out getting the same color.
With 4 colors, each roll of the die has a 25% chance of getting a duplicate color.
With 5 colors each roll has only a 20% chance of getting a duplicate color.

Yes you do open the possibility of more color combinations. But the only one that you care about is getting the 4 color combo that makes a Diamond, and I maintain the odds are higher of getting that.

Theoretically. :)



But you are not rolling the dice...

Imagine you have two bags of marbles... one with 4 different colored marbles, and the other bag with 5 different colored marbles.

Now, take the 4 marbles out of the bag of 4. You have 4 different colors, so you have met the requirement for the possible diamond outcome.

Now, take 4 random marbles out of the bag of 5. You have 4 different colors, so you have met the requirement for the possible diamond outcome.

In both cases, you met the requirement. You can do this over and over again, and you will always meet the 4-color requirement.

This proves that adding a fifth color does not increase your chances of getting the 4-color requirement.

It does however, increase the number of possible non-diamond outcomes as takofallen has pointed out.

[Zulac99]

That's a good point.
Pity, I thought I was on to something.