Strategies

This is a list of user ideas on how to accomplish various goals and tasks, different ways to play the game, things you may not have thought of before, and just general things you should know.

Money Strategy

 * Air Hybrid breeding: Breeding an Air Dragon with a Plant Dragon, Fire Dragon, Water Dragon, Cold Dragon or Lightning Dragon will produce a dragon that can be sold for 1,000,000. Each combination takes eight hours to breed and eight hours to hatch. This means you will have to wait 16 hours total before you can sell the Dragon.
 * Air Dragon breeding: Breeding an Air Dragon with an Air Dragon or a Fire Dragon with a Water Dragon will produce more Air Dragons. Air Dragons sell for 500,000 and each breeding and incubation time is only two hours, so each cycle is just four hours from breeding to cash. If you check in every two hours to start a new cycle you can gain a lot of money very quickly.
 * Iron Dragon/Magnetic Dragon breeding: Breeding a Magnetic Dragon or Iron Dragon and selling it for profit yields the most DragonCash per hour; even more profit than the Air Dragon since the introduction of Metal Dragons into the game. While both yield the most DragonCash per hour overall, the Iron Dragon is preferred over the Magnetic Dragon, since it results in slightly more XP per hour, as well.
 * Visit friends: Visiting friends each day and tapping the party hats is an easy way to earn extra cash. The higher your level, the more cash you get! The more friends you have, the more money you can make this way.
 * Goals: Many in-game goals offer monetary rewards for the completion of certain tasks, like breeding a certain dragon or constructing a building. Frequently, the money offered for the completion of goals that require purchases are greater than the purchase price of the item.
 * Collect money from habitats: Dragons produce coins simply by being in their habitats. Different dragons produce money at different rates and the amount of money that can be collected is limited by the habitat. Plant dragons produce money very quickly, but they are limited by the low threshold of the plant habitat to only 200 coins, or 500 coins for a large habitat. Plant dragons are therefore most useful when you are actively playing and are able to collect the accumulated money often. Earth dragons produce money at a slower rate, but their habitats can store more DragonCash. They are better for long term moneymaking when you are not around to collect money at frequent intervals. The optimal strategy for most DragonCash per minute by means of collection from habitats is known as the Panlong Waterpark Strategy.

Experience Strategy
Example: Dragon Fruit (3000 units of treat) costs 75,000 coins and gives 125,000. Add the 60,000 you get for feeding the treats to your dragons (3000x20) and you get 185,000  for 75,000 coins (2.47:1 ratio). Other treats produce different ratios depending on their unit price. This strategy is most beneficial to your park as a whole, because higher level dragons earn more money and attract more visitors.
 * Goals: Many of the built-in goals throughout the game supply 100,000 or more experience points for breeding a single dragon or building certain structures.
 * Buy and sell from the market: Buying and then reselling things is a quick, allbeit expensive way to get XP. Decorations can be built instantly and give the half purchase price in experience. For example, a yellow tree costs 500 dragoncash and gives 250 . Buildings and habitats may take longer to build, but they give out experience in a 1:1 ratio with purchase price and are therefore more cost effective. Some buildings, such as treat farms, take no time to build at all while still giving out more experience than decorations. These are the best items to buy and resell.
 * Breed dragons: Hatching dragon eggs gives experience, so breed your dragons often. Basic dragons do not give very much, while hybrids and rares can give much more. The Metal Dragon achieves the most per hour.
 * Grow treats and feed them to your dragons: Harvesting treats you have grown on your treat farms gives out experience points. Feeding these treats to your dragons gives 20 per unit fed (cited here). When you add these two XP sources together the experience/money ratio becomes quite lucrative.
 * Participate in the Colosseum: Each day, a different elemental event will ocuur in the Colosseum. Winning the gold trophy in these daily events will not only net you a lot of XP (the amount earned varies), but also money and gems. Silver trophies will earn you less XP and bronze trophies will earn you none.

Gem Strategy

 * Form a circle of four friends: Each day, you get three free gems for gifting to friends on your Game Center friend list. In order to ensure that you get the same amount of gems that you give, form a "gem circle" of four people. Gift your gems only to each other and every day each of you are guaranteed to receive three gems. If you purchase the Dragonsai Gem Tree you can gift an additional three gems daily and can expand the circle to seven friends.
 * Participate in the Colosseum: Gold trophies give five gems, silver trophies give two or three gems and bronze trophies give no gems. High level dragons which include the element displayed in the Colosseum have the best chance of winning a gold trophy.

Shrine Strategy
Breeding Hybrids(dragons with more than 1 element) will fulfill more than one shrines requirement per dragon thus costing less time and food. With the Love Dragon you can fulfill three per dragon, and with the Panlong dragon you can fulfill four per dragon. The most food efficent way is to use Panlong (36 hours), Lichen (6 hours), and Magnetic Dragons (4 hours). However, this method takes a while due to Panlong's long incubation time. The most time efficent way to level up all shrines is to use Poison (30 minutes), Sandstorm (2 hours), Storm (5 hours), and Rust (6 hours). Although it will require 33% more food, it completes the process much faster.

Dragon Leveling Strategy
When leveling-up dragons, it is generally beneficial to level them all up together equally, not one by one, since there are diminishing DragonCash collection returns of DragonCash&rarr;Food&rarr;Dragon Level investment.