Introduction

The Dragon can provide many boosts via the Dragon Skills. In this guide we will explain how to develop your dragon and how to benefit from a strong dragon.

The Basics

As you play you earn EXP for your Dragon, and as your Dragon increases in level more Dragon Skills will be made availabled, and you can upgrade dragon skills to a higher level.

Upgrading and Enhancing (or Evolving) Dragon Skills make them stronger.

You also get boosts based on the EXP level and the Star level of your dragon.

Leveling Up Your Dragon

Leveling up your dragon is very important because it unlocks new Dragon Skills and it increases the maximum level a dragon skill can be upgraded to.

You get Dragon EXP via most normal playing activities, but in case this is not going fast enough, there are various ways to buy Dragon EXP with in game credits.

Two good ways are the Spire Loot store, where you can purchase 80 x 20,000 Dragon EXP items a day for 3700 Crystals per item (so 1.6 million a day), and holding a Ceremony in the Spirit Altar for example for 54,000 credits giving you 110 x 100,000 (11 million) Dragon EXP.

If you have loads of gold and you haven't maxed your dragon yet, you can consider buying 20x100,000 from the Auction House. Normally this goes for only a little over the initial bid of 20k gold).

You also get some Dragon EXP as rewards for the Dragon Merlin Trials.

Your Dragon can be upgraded until level 70, which takes a total of 960 million Dragon EXP.

Upgrading Dragon Skills

Dragon Skills can be Enhanced and Upgraded, both improving the effect of the Dragon Skill. In this section we explain how to Upgrade a Dragon Skill. If you go to the Dragon - Dragon Skills menu in the Dragon Lair, you see an overview of all your Dragon Skills.

When you select one of the Dragon Skills you will open a detail window showing information about the current rank and buttons to Evolve (also referred to as Enhance) and Upgrade. The requirements are a Dragon Level and Dragon Skill EXP. The required Dragon Skill EXP increase for each Dragon Skill Level, while upgrading your Dragon Lai (and the hero Elyan the White) gives a reduction in the Dragon Skill EXP cost. The rewards for the upgrade are an increase in power and an improvement in the boost.

Dragon Skill EXP will be accumulated during normal game play, but can also be purchased in Spire Loot and Spirit Altar shops.

In the Related link below you can find a complete list of the stats for all Dragon Skills.

Dragon Skills can be upgraded until level 31. Note that the increase in boost is not always the same, for example the Damage boosts have an extra large increase from level 5 to 6, 10, to 11, 15 to 16 and 20 to 21. Also note that the Dragon Skills giving damage boosts give a different type of boost from level 22 onwards (the boosts that was incremented until lvl 21 will no longer be increased).

Evolving (Enhancing) Dragon Skills

Dragon Skills can be Enhanced and Upgraded, both improving the effect of the Dragon Skill. In this section we explain how to Enhance a Dragon Skill.

Similar as in the previous section you can go to the Dragon - Dragon Skills menu and select a Dragon Skill. With the Evolve button you can Evolve (or Enhance) a Dragon Skill.

To Enhance Dragon Skills you need Intensity Crystals, and unlike the Dragon Skill EXP points you need for upgrading Dragon Skills, the Intensity Crystals are hard to come by, especially lvl 3 and higher. Intensity Crystal (IV) shows up quite regularly as an option in Market Place for either wood or gold. The Dragon Merlin trials are a good source for higher level Intensity Crystals as well.

Also from the Trials Shop you can purchase Intensity Crystal I-V. This is in my opinion very good to purchase (especially III-V, I and II are a little too expensive relatively, for my taste).

You need 10 Intensity Crystals for each star (you need 10 x Intensity Crystal (I) to Enhance a Dragon Skill to 1 star, 10 x Intensity Crystal (II) to Enhance a Dragon Skill to 2 stars, and it keeps going like that). You can Synthesize 8 Intensity Crystals to one of one level higher in your Items.

Enhancing seems a lot more expensive than upgrading, and if you haven't upgraded your Dragon Skills to a high level yet the benefit is somewhat disappointing. However once you have upgraded to a high level the for example 42% extra increase you get from a 5 Star Enhanced Dragon Skill will really start to be a huge benefit in itself.

I am not sure how high you can theoretically enhance your dragon skills, but the added benefit of another level of enhancement tends to be quite small compared to the extra cost. Most big players I encounter do not have higher enhancement than 6 Star, potentially increased with +1 by a Relic. I currently have 2 of my Dragon Skills at 6 Stars and keep buying intensity crystals from the Trials shop.

Benefit of Dragon Skills

If you have all your dragon skills upgraded to lvl 31 and enhanced to 6 stars you will get the boosts as in table below:

Using your Dragon

The boosts will only apply if you use your Dragon for the activity. If your base is attacked and your dragon is out on a march, your base will not benefit from the Dragon defense boosts, and of course marches that your dragon is not in, do not benefit from the Dragon benefits either.

Since the Dragon Benefits are a very important part of your combat boosts (especially because of all the damage and damage reduction boosts), there are certain ways you can benefit from your dragon boosts in addition to having your dragon at home/in a march.

A very important way is the Dragon Idol or Dragon Blade temporary relics. These can be purchased by clicking on your avatar in the left top and clicking on the temporary relic icon under your avatar. Equipping these make sure your Dragon Benefits are active when your Dragon is from home. If you feel there is ay change you will be attacked when your dragon is not at home, make sure you have either of these activated. The Blade is more expensive, but gives some additional boosts as well.

The Dragon Shadow scroll allows you to have an extra march with Dragon benefits. This however can only be acquired by spending real money.

Advanced Dragon Skills

At Dragon EXP levels 55, 56, 57 and 60 you can unlock Advanced Dragon Skills, which also require 500 fragments each to unlock.

Several years ago you could get these fragments as a reward from player vs player encounters in the Forbidden Labyrinth, but now they are only available via ceremonies, and you relatively get a small amount.

I have unlocked Rain of Fire and evolved it to 5 stars. Does not make a huge difference, but does give me some extra kills in each battle.

Why is Dragon So Important?

I already mentioned it earlier, and you can see it in the table above, you get a large amount of damage and damage reduction stats from your Dragon. These stats are very important and are not easy to get in other ways (the bulk is coming from Dragon, building prestige levels and gear, with small amounts from Heroes, Accolades, Alliance REsearch and lvl 41+ building levels).

Without your dragon, or with your dragon not maxed, you often become a target for the big players, because it is relatively cheap for them to hit you because of the small gap between your damage and their damage reduction, and they inflict large amount of kills to you because of the large gap between their damage and your damage reduction.

I still encounter many players who have been playing for several years who haven't maxed their dragon yet. They prefer puting their focus on other areas first, but this is not a good strategy, you should always focus on maximizing your damage and damage reduction boosts.

Buying 1.6 million Dragon EXP per day is not going to max your dragon overnight, but it will help you upgrade your dragon faster, as will doing the 11 million Dragon EXP ceremonies.

Emblems

Dragon Emblems are a separate topic, but do realize that when your Dragon Boosts are not active because your Dragon is not in your march or not at home, your Dragon Emblem Boosts will also not be active.

Conclusion

The Dragon is a nice concept in King of Avalon. Initially it might be somewhat misunderstood or undervalued because of the unfamiliar boosts (e.g. Bowmen Damage Against Cavalry), but these boosts are powerful and can be increased to quite high values.