Ben Brocka's answer is certainly accurate, but I thought I'd do some dragon math for posterity, to share some of what I've learned about the game. Below is guidance to make coins as fast as possible (which can in turn fund treats for dragon leveling and decorations and other purchases for XP). If your goals are achievments, unique dragon collecting, park beauty, etc then of course take this guidance with a grain of salt. The spreadsheet I compiled to crunch all of this is epic in proportion, so if you've got some other nuanced question you want to know the answer to.. by all means ask.
Fire Habitats Good - Earth Habitats Bad
Up through level 8, Small Fire habitats with 2 Flower Dragons are the most economical provided you check your park around 4 times a day (which you'll be wanting to do to breed, hatch, and feed). At level 8 you unlock the even more attractive Large Fire habitat, which becomes the best habitat (full with Flower Dragons) if you are checking your park more than twice a day. For below math I assumed checks are spaced evenly throughout the day, and dragon are level 6 (see more on that below).
Before level 8:
Habitat |
Dragon |
Checks/day |
Coins |
Small Fire |
2x Lv 6 Flower Dragons (2hr breed+incubate) |
4 |
30,000 |
Small Earth |
1x Lv 6 Moss Dragon (24hr breed+incubate) |
4 |
31,680** |
Large Plant |
4x Lv 6 Plant Dragons (30s breed+incubate) |
4 |
2,000 |
** considered disadvantaged due to breeding time and risk of breeding Tree Dragon (28 hrs lost)
At level 8:
Habitat |
Dragon |
Checks/day |
Coins |
Large Fire |
4x Lv 6 Flower Dragons (2hr breed+incubate) |
3 |
45,000 |
Small Earth |
1x Lv 6 Moss Dragon (24hr breed+incubate) |
3 |
30,000 |
At level 11-12 some options open up to you, and it becomes more about how you want to play the game. You can focus on some easily acquired dragons to start building a cash reserve, or instead start chasing the rares.
Some options to consider:
Habitat |
Dragon |
Checks/day |
Coins |
Large Cold |
3x Lv 6 Lichen Dragons (12hr breed+incubate) |
3 |
112,320 |
Large Earth |
3x Lv 6 Quake Dragons (12hr breed+incubate) |
3 |
159,840 |
Large Cold |
3x Lv 6 BlueFire/FrostFire Dragons (24hr breed+incubate, rare) |
3 |
150,000** |
Sun/Moon |
1x Lv 6 Sun/Moon Dragon (4 days breed+incubate, rare) |
3 |
233,280 |
Rainbow |
1x Lv 6 Rainbow Dragon (4 days breed+incubate, rare) |
3 |
345,600 |
** Beat by a thin margin, but the best overall dragon/habitat combo above 3 checks/day through level 30.
Above level 12 the only really noteworthy unlock is the Large Metal Habitat. Once unlocked, and fully outfited with Magnetic Dragons it is the best non-rare 1 check per day habitat, at 115,200 / day.
Dragons and Leveling
- As implied above, your first priority for spending should be hitting your habitat max for each level, and upgrading those habitats when possible.
- Your second priority should be filling habitats with dragons. With the Fire habitats this is easy since you can buy Fire dragons and they incubate quickly. When transitioning to Cold habitats you can breed a Fire Dragon with a Lichen Dragon, which will produce Flower Dragons for your Fire Habitats and Lichen and (if you're lucky) Blue Fire Dragons for your Cold Habitats.
- Adding dragons creates income faster than leveling individual dragons, but leveling dragons also provides a valuable income increase, especially once the dragons/habitat cap is hit. Treats/dragon-level are the same for all dragons, and the amount doubles for each level. With active large treat farms it is generally possible to upgrade dragons to level 5-6 as fast as you can produce them. These upgrades should be spread evenly across all dragons to maximize earning potential. Upgrades above level 6 climb steeply and should be more targeted towards the dragons with highest earning potential.
Breeding for Cash
The DragonVale Wiki has a great link on this here: http://dragonvale.wikia.com/wiki/Breeding_for_Profit
Assuming you keep your breeding cave fairly busy in the early levels, this becomes a more significant potential for revenue at higher levels. Consider:
- Breeding and selling 2 Water Dragons / day (8 hours breed+incubate) = 500,000 /day
- Breeding and selling 4 Air Dragons / day (4 hours breed+incubate) = 1,000,000 /day
Both of which are relatively easy to come by once you've unlocked them and have the cash for the eggs and habitat. If you really want to farm, some metal dragon hybrids have an even higher payout later (see the link).
Breeding Opportunity Cost
Breeding is one of the main bottlenecks of the entire game, especially early on (unless you are buying trunks of gems with your real monies). As such, think twice about breeding mating pairs that have a potential for long cycle times. This is especially true of any earth combination, because even after such a long wait, what you get in return is typically not awe inspiring.
Best Answer
EDIT
With the race being put into the game this could not be a much better way to change Gold into XP. The race will always cost you 50,000 gold and the reward is random, but hitting even 1.8m in a reward out of 20 tries would average the results of breeding metal dragons listed below. However, I am going to leave the information below as well because there is nothing saying you can not breed metal dragons while running races.
Based on the data I could find, raising dragons is the best gold to xp exchange granting a 4 to 1 ratio for Earth dragons and a 2 to 1 ratio for Fire and Metal dragons.
Behold, a chart! (Created with v1.7.2 data)
The above ratios assume you are not keeping the dragon and are going to sell the dragon as soon as it hatches. It also only contains dragons that can, at this point in time, be purchased directly for gold and raised.
There may be some long game plan you could do with raising farms to raise dragon levels but there is not currently enough information available for me to crunch those numbers to see if it is more efficient to sell a higher level dragon vs the food costs to get it there.
One last note selling and buying dragons every 5 minutes is not the least tedious thing to be doing, but it does cycle through your hatchery pretty well depending on what types of dragons you are attempting to breed.