Tips and Strategies for Dragon Story - Earning Coin and Gifting

[shawa13]

Dragon Story brings some new strategies to the old hands at Story games. I'm not going to talk about breeding eggs because other people are doing a better job of it. Here's the things that I didn't know and wish I had when I was starting:

Tip#1. Nothing seems to expire - not food or hatching eggs or evolving dragons. I could be wrong, but others have mentioned it in the forums, too.

Tip#2. You can only gift 3 gold a day. If you send gold to all your neighbors, the game picks only 3 to send it to. Better to pick yourself who you want to send gold to.

Tip #3. The fastest way to earn coin is to visit other players and have them visit you. But the strategy is different from the other Story games I have played, because there is a game-limited number of habitats to play. This means that most of the people you visit will be full (their dragons are tired). Leaving a message lmkwc (let me know when clear) is a waste of time, because once the person clears, it will probably be full again within a minute or two. Even writing on the wall that someone is full is a waste of time, IMO, because I know it, and there isn't much I can do about it when I'm not playing. I do have a life and a job, after all.

I found this VERY frustrating for the first few days, but this is what I have worked out to deal with it:

a) Keep the maximum number of habitats for your level with at least 1 dragon so people can tip. You can get the maximum number of habitats from the Menu -> Overview -> Profile.
b) Get a LOT of neighbors, so you have a convenient list of links to run down to visit. You get coins or xp for every visit, so you are advancing in the game by visiting neighbors instead of using the Community list.
c) visit EVERY neighbor as quickly as you want to play. It's still early in the game, but I am averaging 4-5 visits to get one place I can tip -- and sometimes it only has 1 dragon available. I only post a message when I play with a dragon (unless I am chatting for fun). For now, I am including my ID in each post, so that people invite me. I'm sure I will hit a limit of neighbors I want, but I was able to visit 250 neighbors in 90 minutes today. [Note: I don't do this in other Story games. I have a small list of neighbors, so it took a while for me to figure this out.]
d) keep going Home every 4-5 visits to clear your own habitats. If you are visiting a lot of people, you will be appearing on the Community list (especially as your social Egg ranking increases) so people will be filling your habitats with money every couple minutes. This adds up to a LOT of coins very fast!!
e) I have been farming 3 minute Buffbeets while I am visiting, so I get a lot of food very quickly and cheaply too. I plant the food, clear the habitats and go back to the social list. I visit 4-5 people then go back Home, harvest the food, plant new food, clear the habitats and go back to the social list.

[Disclaimer: I don't work for teamlava and I have been playing for 4 days now. I will update as I discover new information]

[driftboutique]

Yeah, I've been doing a lot of these things, but you have an interesting idea about bulking up on neighbors -- I think I'll have to give that a try

One other thing I do is I try to take a "pay it forward" approach to visiting instead of a "tip me and I'll tip you" approach. If people visit me, I give them 1-2 tries and if I can't get through, I delete their wall post and try to play at another island. Otherwise I would get an unmanageable backlog of unreturned visits. I still visit enough neighbors to keep 4 eggs, but they are not necessarily the same people who played with my dragons.

[shawa13]

I have been successful at ignoring the tip you/tip me system. I'm doing that for gifting. I just run through my whole list of neighbors once. If they are clear, great! Otherwise I keep moving. Tonight I visited 307 neighbors in less than 2 hours, had some fun with it, leveled on the xp, and earned 47,000 coins. It's working for me!

[kooky panda]

I run through all my nbrs(I do not post on walls), then if someone sends gold or map request, post on my wall or show up in my newsfeed, I will check them again.

[greygull]

I run through all my nbrs(I do not post on walls), then if someone sends gold or map request, post on my wall or show up in my newsfeed, I will check them again.

Liar lol! You post on my wall almost every day, because I'm not awake when you come around
Or does that just make me special?

Great advice!

[kooky panda]

Liar lol! You post on my wall almost every day, because I'm not awake when you come around
Or does that just make me special?

Great advice!

you are special.

I do have like 3 ppl I do post on their walls and I will post if I need to tell them something.
I do the same in Pet Hotel.

[viviansmo]

Lol... I only post on people's walls when I feel like it. It could be because I know them from here, i like their name, or i like what they posted. How's that for strategy, or lack thereof?

[PinkStarbelly]

Although many people dislike the fact that it's hard to find dragons to play with because of the limited habitats, I think we'll be happier if we adapt and try to find an efficient system that works with the circumstances. The beauty of this game is that we at least can keep track of every single person that played with our dragons by looking in the newsfeed while in other TL games, silent tippers can be hard to catch. I use my newsfeed to repay the plays with my dragons instead of my wall. It's quicker that way. There's a lot of active players visiting each other after midnight PST when the game day resets. I'll repay everyone that visit me and I'd also take the opportunity to check their walls to check for others that just them. I'll do that for a while until I feel that I covered most people in the active playing jungle It's really efficient

[dri2011]

Hey, I like this thread! Those are good strategies. I also figured I can't use the same strategies I do in other Lava games...

[Blownapart]

I do as the OP does, exactly..! I started playing on Saturday last week. I have around 500 neighbours now, that I visit everyday. Each time I play, I post on their wall.

In addition to the OP's post, I'd like to add the following:

1). Having lots of neighbours, especially in the beginning stages of the game when not everyone has a lot of neighbours, increases your chances of receiving gold. I regularly receive 20-30 gold per day. I give my 3 gold to my lowest level neighbours, a) to help them out, and b) to have a higher chance of getting gold in return.

2). As well as visiting my neighbours, I visit the community and leave my code everywhere when I've played with a new person's dragon. This increases the likelihood of getting new players adding me as neighbour, thus increasing my chances of receiving gold. I aim for low level players with maybe one or two eggs. (shows commitment to the game)

3). When I return home after visiting 3-4 neighbours to clear my dragons as described above by the OP, I also check my newsfeed and visit the players who played with my dragons. Again, I leave a message. This is because currently-active-players tend to be visited by currently-active-players as well, thus my comment is likely to be seen and followed and have my dragons played with again.

4). I also use the 3 min food, as in one hour you can get 400 food from that, rather than 100 from the 1 hr food. Or more simply put: of you can manage to plant and harvest the 3 min food 6 x per hour, you are better off. Then when I know I'm going to sign off for a while, I choose the most appropriate food.

I've been playing the game pretty hardcore, which cannot continue. (I have a job and family, after all!). But I am going to keep going until I have at least one of every dragon in epic form. I haven't bought gold and I don't plan to.