I just did some more math on it because my in head calculations were annoying me, and get to a similar conclusion. ;D
Assuming the old breeding rules for the sake of a best case scenario AND assuming you would lose $5M (conservatively) a day from not breeding on just one of the cave/islands while setting it up, you get something like:
Solstice Setup (24 hour incubation) Habitat: $5M Income Lost from Breeding $15M = ($5M * 3 Solstices) Total Cost: $20M Habitat income per day: ~$1.3M Days to recover costs: ~15
Double Rainbow setups: (60 hour incubation): Habitat: $10M Income Lost from Breeding = $25M ($5M/24 * 60 * 2 DR) Total Cost: $35M Habitat income per day: ~$1.4M Days to recover costs: ~25 Extra income over a solstice habitat per day: $105k Days to recoup costs replacing a solstice habitat: ~333 days.
(The numbers are probably a bit different with reduced breeding times, but meh).
It's only 10 extra days to recoup costs for the initial setup for DR's over solstices, but its a little less than 12 months to recoup costs when building to replace a solstice habitat. Of course, this is best case scenario with the old rules.
However, if you factor in the new breeding rules, and plug in a DR taking a week to get as a minimum, this quickly blows out to 57 days to recoup costs and 761 days to replace a solstice habitat. Solstices don't change all that much because of the short fail times.
It might be worth it if you were new and building from scratch. With replacing, considering how long it takes to get everything to 20 in the first place, you'd still be ahead in the very long term. Given the likelyhood of BFS changing something, it's not going to put you THAT much further ahead for it to be worth it, as you say.
I also sat down and figured out just how much money I'm making from my non-epic habitats. I'm not totally happy with the way it's calculated, but at first guess I'm making between $500k-$800k per habitat per day less than with the solstice habitats. Definitely a bit of extra income to be squeezed out there if I had the room in the HC.
Last Edit: Dec 11, 2013 19:01:02 GMT -6 by Kelthorn
Now I have an Ouroboros and a Zombie in the same habitat, my DR in breeding will live with my Rainbow, and I built a Large Earth Habitat in case if I get Mistletoe or Forest. All done for DC.
For gems I have the following: Colosseum 3 gemstones (all have 1g a week) Dragon Track
I am using a local park, and have entered a friend code already. I may have mentioned this but it's tempting for me to use gems. So easy to waste...
Most Notable DC ways: Colosseum Olympus habitat: Cyclops(10) Apoc habitat: Ouroboros(10) and Zombie(10) Large rainbow habitat: Rainbow(10) and will be getting DR soon Large sun habitat: Sun(10) and Sun(10) Seasonal habitat: Summer(10) Dragon Track Putting dragons in habitats that hold the most (will not list them here)
I always try for epics(with cave;my only place to breed) and don't use any particular strategies (Like Panlong armies, Solstices, and Leap/Rainbow/DR armies) to earn DC. I also keep epics obtained on accident (the second Sun for example) because the bigger bux! I only started about July this year. I use no boosts because I get into a huge clutter rearranging the dragons. However, I didn't get cluttered when I switched them around to the higher filled habitats.
Treats: x1 Large (for Dragon fruit that I plant starting the colosseum) x2 Huge (rarely; I plant Beanstalks) Dragon track I rarely plant Beanstalks because they cost a lot and now I have about 61,000,000 DC at the time.
Breeding can hold on because there are too much combos!
Hoped someone likes my optimization, I try my best to make things clear and that I try hard (for breeding and practically everything)on DV, and like the way my park is now. Thanks everyone!
It's only 10 extra days to recoup costs for the initial setup for DR's over solstices, but its a little less than 12 months to recoup costs when building to replace a solstice habitat. Of course, this is best case scenario with the old rules.
Actually, this logic is flawed (I made the same mistake myself).
It is not just replacing - it is the choice of building a DR habitat over a Solstice habitat that will take over a year to pay for itself.
To see this, the easiest way to do it is to start both habitats at the same time. The Solstice habitat starts slightly negative, but with a few weeks is up and running and you are breeding for profit.
The DR habitat starts off even more negative (more expensive habitat) and takes a few more weeks before its up and running. By the time it IS up and running, the Solstice habitat has already earnt 10's of millions, in both earnings and breeding for profit. The differential between the two habitats at this point is so vast that it'll take about a year before the DR habitat 'overtakes' the Solstice habitat.
In short, breeding DR's for income is a very poor investment decision.
It's all a moot point now though with the breeding rule changes - Solstice are the clear winners at the moment.
Actually, this logic is flawed (I made the same mistake myself).
You're right, of course. I just plugged this into my spreadsheet, and the solstices will earn $62M while you're waiting for the DR's to finish breeding. This translates to an extra 590 days it'll take for the DR habitat to catch up to the solstices.
Of course, in practice it's probably not that bad. For example, I'm busy breeding mistletoe right now and am not earning any cash that way. But even given that, it does put it out near the "I'd have everything to 20 by then anyway" point.
The non-rational part of me wants to upgrade the HC right now just to save the hassle of having to sell anything... I know in my head it's worth $180M in gems but I really really really want to have two of everything sitting there in my HC waiting to be leveled up.
Hi...not sure if this is the best place to post this question but I'm frustrated by the lack of money I'm making at level 17... Is there something I'm missing or does it just take a lot of time to get to the point where you beaucoup money built up? I've made enough to buy a second island and several habitats, some decorations..etc but every time I get to 1,000,000 I spend it on an upgraded food farm or a habitat I need or whatever and I'm back to nothing AGAIN. I want to buy more food to upgrade my dragons so I guess my question is what is the advantage of having higher level dragons? Do they make you much more money? Some I want to upgrade just because they look cooler.. Also, I know I've read that it doesn't make a difference when breeding but is that true? It seems to me higher level dragons would yield better results...thanks!
Hi Nance, You are at a difficult stage of the game. Lots of things to buy, and not enough earning potential yet.
Higher level dragons earn you more DC. So it is worthwhile leveling them to at least L10. It starts to get very expensive fairly quickly beyond that though, so it may be better to hold off taking them higher until you get them all to L10
Avoid buying decorations at this stage. Hey cost you DC and give you nothing in return
Upgrade your farms to large so you can grow pumpermelons and dragon fruit. But avoid the huge farms. They are good for FAST levelling, but cost way more cash than you can afford at the moment. I regularly spend 55,000,000 DC on food but it eats away at DC like you wouldn't believe. Try to avoid spending more on food than you can earn in a day. That way you will slowly level your dragons up , and build your DC reserves at the same time.
Boosts are worthwhile, but take a lot of care placing them to optimize your income. Used carelessly they can actually decrease your earnings.
Avoid shrines. They used to be worthwhile, but a game change a while ago made them pointless expensive decorations.
Ruthlessly sell off your excess dragons. Some are worth quite a lot of DC. But keep, level up and display all your epics. They earn lots of cash and their habitat limits are quite high. However, keep all your habitats full, and have as many as you can. At the moment keep one slot spare though. See below for upgrade strategy.
Always keep your dragons in the highest capacity (DC limit) habitat you can. Tree dragons should be in earth habitats, not plant habitats. They earn the same in both places, but you can go longer between collections. On that matter, you should only have ONE plant habitat so you can keep your plant dragon in it, and at the moment your lichen as it is breeding anyway and not earning cash. Sell the others and replace them with higher capacity habitats.
Buy large habitats and sell off the old small habitat rather than upgrade. This way you can discount the cost of the habitat slightly as you get some cash back from the sale. If you upgrade, you lose that extra cash. The same holds true for farms. Only buy a habitat when you need it for a dragon. I have lost track of the number of friends who have had a rainbow habitat sitting there empty for months. Without the dragon, it is just an expensive decoration.
On the level up for improved rare dragon chances. BFS claim this to be the case, but the effect, if any, is only small. Testing has not shown much improvement. On the other hand, breeding on the island pretty much doubles your chances of a rare dragon.
Last Edit: May 4, 2014 16:32:33 GMT -6 by GregDarcy
Main GCID: GregDarcy Secondary: GregDarcyToo All gems friends spoken for. Happy to accept friends for party hats. I blame Apple's auto incorrect for all my typos. I actively discourage challenges. All challengers are unfriended.
Hi Greg, thank you for all the advice, that helps a lot. The one thing I don't understand clearly is correctly placing boosts. What do you mean by that? I assume they need to be near their habitats but I don't know what you mean by using them carelessly and decreasing income? Please clarify. Thanks! * oh I just looked at the ? On the boosts and I see they deduct money from the opposite element...how do you know how far away to place them? Right now I only have the lightening boost and it's on a different island than my water habitats..is that the best way? Also, I have a little over a million DC now what is the best way to spend that would you say? Leveling up dragons or buying another island? I do have a weakness for decorations as aesthetics are important to me I enjoy moving things around and trying to make the islands visually pleasing.
Boosts don't affect habitats. They affect dragons. They affect all dragons on the island with the boost.
So if you have an island with (to keep it simple) A single Earth habitat. Then you put a Water boost on that island. Any dragons with the water element (Mud, River,...) you have in that habitat will get a +20% boost. Any dragons with a lightning element (Quake, Crystal) element will lose 20% of its earning potential.
If you then put an Earth Boost on the island, Your Mud and Rivers will get a 40% boost. Your Quakes and crystals will come back to (almost!) zero effect.
If you follow it through, You will realise that you can NEVER boost an opposite dragon (Plasma, Current) as they will be affected both positively and negatively at the same time. They actually end up earning slightly less that if they are unboosted because of the way BFS do the math.
It can get really complicated with dragons with more than two elements. Some limiteds have up to four elements. You can triple boost Bloom for example, but only double boost Panlong even though it has 4 elements.
Boosts never affect Epic dragons.
Main GCID: GregDarcy Secondary: GregDarcyToo All gems friends spoken for. Happy to accept friends for party hats. I blame Apple's auto incorrect for all my typos. I actively discourage challenges. All challengers are unfriended.
Boosts don't affect habitats. They affect dragons. They affect all dragons on the island with the boost.
So if you have an island with (to keep it simple) A single Earth habitat. Then you put a Water boost on that island. Any dragons with the water element (Mud, River,...) you have in that habitat will get a +20% boost. Any dragons with a lightning element (Quake, Crystal) element will lose 20% of its earning potential.
If you then put an Earth Boost on the island, Your Mud and Rivers will get a 40% boost. Your Quakes and crystals will come back to (almost!) zero effect.
If you follow it through, You will realise that you can NEVER boost an opposite dragon (Plasma, Current) as they will be affected both positively and negatively at the same time. They actually end up earning slightly less that if they are unboosted because of the way BFS do the math.
It can get really complicated with dragons with more than two elements. Some limiteds have up to four elements. You can triple boost Bloom for example, but only double boost Panlong even though it has 4 elements.
Boosts never affect Epic dragons.
In fact when double boosted a dragon will gain even 44%. The boost makes a multiplier by 1.2. and the second boost is multiplied afterwards. (Again * 1.2 which is the same as an instant multiplication with 1.44 = 44 %) And that's why an opposite dragon is affected slightly negatively : at first it is boosted positively and afterwards the 120 % are boosted negatively ( * 0.8) which results in 96 % of the total or in other words a negative boost of 4 % Nance, if you like decorating then decorate ( at least a little). What Greg said describes how to optimize your income, but the game should also be fun ! That's the great plus of DV : everybody can play it like he/she wants to. If you get a kick out of the maths you can optimize, and if you like to decorate just do it.
In the past breeding Cactus dragons was good for cash ( they take only 30 minutes to breed and sell for a decent money). With the implementation of the Ash dragon this isn't appropriate anymore. But if you are not desperately in need of both breeding sites ( and have two Air dragons) you can breed air+air= air in between other breedings. The air dragon takes two hours to breed and sells for 375.000 DC. So that's an easy way to gain cash. If you can spare the breeding site even longer there are other good combinations to breed which don't occupy that much of your time.
dragon list (last dragon : Gatren) DV friend id: Crumble#7733 friend link coop friends always welcome, but all my gems are spoken for
Hey. I give you plenty of good advice too. You just don't like it.
crumble608. you go and do math on the poor girl. Then you say she ought to have fun. Make up your mind! for you too!
I should point out though that paths can be good decorations at this stage as you get all your money back when you sell them. You only get half back with other decorations.
Main GCID: GregDarcy Secondary: GregDarcyToo All gems friends spoken for. Happy to accept friends for party hats. I blame Apple's auto incorrect for all my typos. I actively discourage challenges. All challengers are unfriended.
Hey. I give you plenty of good advice too. You just don't like it.
crumble608. you go and do math on the poor girl. Then you say she ought to have fun. Make up your mind! for you too!
I should point out though that paths can be good decorations at this stage as you get all your money back when you sell them. You only get half back with other decorations.
GregDarcy : who says that maths and fun are opposites ? I've always loved maths ! Discovering what would be best to optimize the income in DV is entertaining for me but decorating is even better. I did that math on Nance because one can understand boosts better when knowing that they take effect one after the other and are not only summed up.
dragon list (last dragon : Gatren) DV friend id: Crumble#7733 friend link coop friends always welcome, but all my gems are spoken for
Hey. I give you plenty of good advice too. You just don't like it.
crumble608. you go and do math on the poor girl. Then you say she ought to have fun. Make up your mind! for you too!
I should point out though that paths can be good decorations at this stage as you get all your money back when you sell them. You only get half back with other decorations.
GregDarcy : who says that maths and fun are opposites ? I've always loved maths ! Discovering what would be best to optimize the income in DV is entertaining for me but decorating is even better. I did that math on Nance because one can understand boosts better when knowing that they take effect one after the other and are not only summed up.
Hear, hear! Or in this case: Read, read!
I love my vine dragon avatar created by ElektronX. Now, if only BFS would add it to the game...
DV friend ID: Likylind#5293 Baby park: DORULIND#1400
Hey. I give you plenty of good advice too. You just don't like it.
crumble608. you go and do math on the poor girl. Then you say she ought to have fun. Make up your mind! for you too!
I should point out though that paths can be good decorations at this stage as you get all your money back when you sell them. You only get half back with other decorations.
GregDarcy : who says that maths and fun are opposites ? I've always loved maths ! Discovering what would be best to optimize the income in DV is entertaining for me but decorating is even better. I did that math on Nance because one can understand boosts better when knowing that they take effect one after the other and are not only summed up.
hey you all saw me blow the Gem —> DC conversion by an order of magnitude. Give me a break.
Main GCID: GregDarcy Secondary: GregDarcyToo All gems friends spoken for. Happy to accept friends for party hats. I blame Apple's auto incorrect for all my typos. I actively discourage challenges. All challengers are unfriended.
GregDarcy : who says that maths and fun are opposites ? I've always loved maths ! Discovering what would be best to optimize the income in DV is entertaining for me but decorating is even better. I did that math on Nance because one can understand boosts better when knowing that they take effect one after the other and are not only summed up.
hey you all saw me blow the Gem —> DC conversion by an order of magnitude. Give me a break.
Perhaps we could all chip in and get you a calculator for your B-day, oh wait this is 2014, might be one on your phone!
Looking around and enjoying life!
All Dragons are safely in their habitats or in the HC
Party hat friends are welcome - facebook.com/jmissall
The DragonVale Gold Optimization spreadsheet was created with objective of helping me quickly decide which were the best gold generating dragons in each habitat, and as such, which one to keep and delete based on their gpm.
It is mostly aimed at medium and hardcore players, since you will have lots of habitats and dragons to choose from … but there’s nothing wrong for beginners to plan early :-)
The spreadsheet use a wide array of MS Excel functions, several tabs (8 visible, the rest are hidden), 36 pivot tables and over 6300+ formulas! To keep the file low and fast, there are no pictures – if you want to see what an egg or dragon look like, check dragonvaledb.com or the wikia. Also, to ensure optimal compatibility with various versions of Excel and lookalike (tested on MS Excel 2010), it contains ZERO macros!
My goals for my park are: 1) at least 2 of every epic on display 2) 2 of all limited/rare/golden hybrids 3) 2 of all normal dragons, and where I can't manage that, drop the lowest earners first 4) put every dragon in the highest cash limit habitat it can go in
I set up my park before the giant habitats came out, and then upgraded, so there are some leftovers details from then.
My islands are: 1 x Plant, 1 x Lighting, 3 x Sun, 3 x Treasure 3 x Fire, 4 x Air 3 x Water + colosseum racetrack nursery etc 4 x Cold, 3 x Moon and Celestial 4 x Light, 3 x Seasonal, 4 x Rainbow 4 x Dark, 5 x Olympus 6 x Earth, Dream and 1 x Rainbow 6 x Metal, 3 x Apocalypse
An Opposites island with 1 x cold, water, metal, dark and 2 x Earth and the farms An egg island
The only exception to goal 1 is only 1 Bronze on display, and only 1 Dusk, because that's all I have. And I wrote a program to work out the best possible setup of dragons in habitats, so that all the habitats of one type, earn cash as close as possible to the same rate.
Within those goals, I've optimised my park as well as I can.
Wisp + Wisp can be excellent when the stars align, but the Wraith dragon fails really bring that average down quick.
Most people seem to prefer the relative stability of Plant + Dark, since Nightshade and Fungus have such similar breed times. Light + Plant is slightly better on average but the breed times swing more.
Of course, we've probably got a new dragon showing up in just about 2 hours, so Air + Air might be the safest bet at the moment...
Last Edit: Aug 5, 2014 8:31:02 GMT -6 by Bloodstone
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Also, I know I've read that it doesn't make a difference when breeding but is that true? It seems to me higher level dragons would yield better results...thanks! 
hey you all saw me blow the Gem —> DC conversion by an order of magnitude. Give me a break. 
