I started working on the Flight Rising Legacy Challenge in March of 2014. It took me until January of 2015 to complete it. Part of the reason it took so long had to do with the “cooldown” timing that governs when dragons are able to breed. The rest was due to me deciding to hold off on breeding dragons because I was too busy that week in real life.
The amount of time it took to finish this challenge gave me the opportunity to really think about it. I’ve decided to share what I’ve learned from doing the Flight Rising Legacy Challenge. Your experience may vary, but perhaps some of this will help you. All of the artwork in this post is copyright of Flight Rising.
I learned that the Flight Rising Legacy Challenge requires patience. As I noted, it took 10 months for me to finish the entire challenge. If I had planned things out a little better, it might have taken slightly less time. (More details on what I mean by that coming up.)
In other words, this challenge is not of the “instant gratification” type of gaming experience that some people seek out. If you want that in Flight Rising, you would do better by taking your dragons into the Coliseum or by trying out the games in the Fairgrounds. Don’t start this challenge unless you are ready to put in a long term effort (and find it enjoyable to work on a long project within a video game). I suspect some people may have given up on this challenge due to how long it takes to get done.
I learned that it might be possible to cut down on the length of the challenge by paying attention to the breeding “cooldowns”. However, that’s only going to cut down a small amount of waiting. I found that the quickest way to have a dragon pair be ready to breed was to buy the mate on the same day that the new Heir/Founder was born. All dragons take the same amount of time – five days – to become adults.
That might work if the Heir/Founder and his or her mate were of the same breed. If they were different breeds, you end up stuck waiting for the dragon with the longer breeding “cooldown” to be ready. I suppose it might be possible to only purchase mates that are the same breed as the Heir/Founder, but I doubt it will always be an option (considering the limitations in the challenge regarding mate selection).
I learned that the genetics in Flight Rising don’t match any real world genetics. Forget about the Punnett square. A dragon can end up with a gene that one of its parents had. Or, it could end up with a gene that neither parent had. Somewhere out there is a color wheel that shows which colors are next to each other. Your dragon can “inherit” a gene of a color that was next to one of the colors that a parent had. It’s all a bit of a gamble.
I learned that it is impossible (or, extremely unlikely) to produce a dragon with a “special” gene unless both of that dragon’s parents have that particular gene. Breed a dragon who has the Gembond gene with one who does not – the babies will not have the Gembond gene.
I learned that the original Founder dragon, and the ultimate Heir dragon, could end up looking nothing at all like each other. That was a surprise. I thought there might be at least a vague resemblance, perhaps in color.
Necco is a male Tundra. He was my original Founder.
Primary: Storm Basic
Secondary: Pink Basic
Tertiary: Blue Basic
Ozie is a male Fae. He was my final Heir
Primary: Blue Tiger
Secondary: Splash Freckle
Tertiary: Splash Basic
The two of them look nothing alike and and only share one gene. They aren’t the same breed.
I learned that the Flight Rising Breeding Challenge quickly filled my Dragon Lair to capacity. I would recommend purchasing a lot of extra Lair space before you start the challenge. However, even if you do that, eventually you are going to run out of room due to all the baby dragons that are produced. For me, I hit a point where it was too expensive to continue to buy more Lair space.
I learned that I was going to have to check into the game daily in order to obtain enough food to feed all these extra dragons. There were times when I had to resort to buying a batch of 99 food items off the Auction House because I was unable to Gather enough food for my dragons. This, more than anything else, was what made me consider getting rid of some dragons. The “food scarcity” problem was another way the Flight Rising Legacy Challenge was expensive.
The other problem, when it comes to trying to pay for the Challenge, is with the mate dragons. You have to purchase them from the Auction House. Yes, you are allowed to select the cheapest one available (that is the right gender, the right Dragon Flight, and that hasn’t had any babies yet).
But, even doing that adds up. All told, you are buying 9 mates and one unhatched egg (that will become the original Founder). Or, if you fail to find an egg, you will instead buy a baby dragon from the Auction House who doesn’t have any “special” genes and who hasn’t had any babies yet.
Eventually, it becomes impossible to keep all the dragons. I learned that trying to sell a dragon on the Auction House is a “hit or miss” experience. Personally, I only had a few of the baby dragons I put on the Auction House sell – and all of them were immediately exalted.
The rest of the baby dragons returned to me. My solution was to let them become adults (mostly because I wanted to see how they turned out) and then exalt them myself. This brings “points” to my Dragon Flight instead of someone else’s. With enough points, there would be a chance that my Dragon Flight would gain Dominance for a week (and all the goodies that come with it).
I learned that I needed to get used to the idea of exalting dragons. It is my understanding that some players in Flight Rising feel that exalting a dragon is equivalent to killing it. However, the more official view is that exalting a dragon is a way to honor that dragon. He or she is going to serve one of the dragon deities. I tend to think of it as “retirement” after a dragon has done his or her job, or served a specific purpose, in my Lair.
For me, this turned out to be a good thing. It forced me to get rid of some dragons. I tend to be a “digital hoarder”, hanging onto every little piece of a game that I like to play. When I started the Flight Rising Legacy Challenge, it was so hard for me to press the “Exalt” button that I would repeatedly put a dragon into the Auction House in the hopes that someone else would do that for me. Now, it has become really easy for me to do.
I enjoyed doing the Flight Rising Legacy Challenge. I tend to have fun with long-term video game challenges (or blogging challenges, for that matter) that require a lot of effort and have a specific endpoint. It was kind of exciting to discover what the newest Heir would look like and to learn what genes that dragon had.
The Challenge wasn’t exciting enough for me to want to do it all over again, though. As I said, it takes a whole lot of time (and a lot of Treasure) to complete it. I have learned that after I complete a long-term video game challenge like this one I have absolutely no desire to repeat the experience. It was very interesting while it lasted, though. I am happy that I gave it a try and proud of myself for sticking with it right up to the very end.