I've been playing video games since the tender age of four. As a result, most of my articles are related to video games.

Hello there! This is article Flight Rising tips and tricks series of guides. In the previous guide, I touched upon the following subjects:

Starting your dragon clan (signing up to the site, choosing your flight, creating your starter dragon and mating with the randomly generated dragon the game provides you).

The basics of trading, feeding your dragons, gathering treasure and items, and competing in the Coliseum.

An explanation of dragon stats, including the combat stats all dragons use in the Coliseum.

If you're looking for more information not covered in the first part, then please keep reading! First, let's start out with some more details about how dragon babies are formed.

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How Dragon Babies Are Formed

First, a daddy dragon and a mommy dragon that really love each other get together...

Ahem, actually we already know that part. What this section is going to talk about is how you can determine what colors and genes your dragon progeny will inherit. So, first let's talk about genes.

Thanks to Inksword for suggesting and explaining this topic over at the official Flight Rising forums!

What are genes?

Genes are how the game determines a dragon's colors and overall appearance. You have primary genes (also called body genes) that determine the color and appearance of a dragon's body. A dragon's secondary genes (also called wing genes) determine the color and appearance of their wings. Lastly, a dragon's tertiary genes influence both the body and wings, but only in appearance (as far as I can tell.

So, how are genes passed on?

Okay, when you mate your two dragons, the game looks at the genes both of your parent dragons and then takes a look at the internal color wheel (pictured to the right; click on the source link for a bigger version of the picture) and traces an imaginary line from one of the colors to the other (the route taken is the shortest possible). When they meet, every color touched by the line (including the parent colors) becomes a possible color for the dragon hatchlings. Makes no sense? Don't worry, I'll use my own progenitor dragons as an example to explain the concept better in the next section.

But, those genes say two things in their description. What's up with that Basic?

Basic is the generic type of appearance gene which doesn't alter a dragon's appearance. You can buy primary and secondary genes from the Marketplace (with treasure) to alter a dragon's body or wing appearance (think of it like a tattoo and you'll have a good idea of what they actually do). You can also buy tertiary genes from the Marketplace that affect both the dragon's body and wings; those are purchased with gems.



How Are Genes Inherited?

Well, you now know how colors are inherited and have seen an example that should hopefully clear it up a bit. Genes are inherited much like breeds, in that rarer genes have a lesser chance of being passed down to hatchlings than common genes do. According to the Genes entry in the Flight Rising Encyclopedia, there are rarity tiers for each of primary, secondary and tertiary tiers. The official example is as follows:

Example: Harold is pairing two dragons that have Basic and Tiger primary genes respectively. The Tiger primary gene would have an unlikely chance of being passed down due to its high rarity. However, if both parents exhibited the Tiger gene, the chance of it being shown in the offspring is 100%. (Source: Flight Rising Encyclopedia —Genes)

A Personal Example: The Mating of My Progenitors

Okay, so here are the colors of both of my progenitors:

Winterfate: Male Guardian

Primary: Teal

Secondary: White

Tertiary: Lemon

Fiya: Female Fae

Primary: Royal

Secondary: Orange

Tertiary: Red

Now, here's Oberon, one of the hatchlings that my progenitors had:

Oberon: Male Imperial (originally a Fae)

Primary: Steel

Secondary: Coral

Tertiary: Tomato

If you check the color wheel, you'll see that Oberon's colors are in between my progenitor's colors.

To recap, the potential colors of a hatchling will be based on the colors of both progenitors.

Well, that's enough about breeding for now. Let's talk a little more about the Coliseum!

Thanks to Inksword for suggesting the following topic!

List of Elemental Debuffs

Earth: Petrify —Drastically reduces incoming damage, and prevents the target from acting.

—Drastically reduces incoming damage, and prevents the target from acting. Plague: Virus —Corrupts all healing on the target, turning it to damage instead.

—Corrupts all healing on the target, turning it to damage instead. Wind: Berserk —The target is uncontrollable and will attack both friend or foe at random.

—The target is uncontrollable and will attack both friend or foe at random. Water: Slow —The target's turn frequency is reduced.

—The target's turn frequency is reduced. Lightning: Paralysis —The target will frequently be unable to act when their turn begins.

—The target will frequently be unable to act when their turn begins. Ice: Freeze —The target is unable to act. Damage may break this effect early.

—The target is unable to act. Damage may break this effect early. Shadow: Blind —Attacks made by the target will frequently miss.

—Attacks made by the target will frequently miss. Light: Silence —All battle stones except the Energy stone are disabled.

—All battle stones except the Energy stone are disabled. Nature: Poison —The target takes a moderate amount of damage over time.

—The target takes a moderate amount of damage over time. Arcane: Amplify —The target takes significantly increased damage from magic attacks.

—The target takes significantly increased damage from magic attacks. Fire: Burn—The target takes significantly increased damage from physical attacks.

Elemental Resistances and Weaknesses Chart

Flight Rising Reddit

Creating a Good Coliseum Party

Basically, there are several universal tips that I can give you when making a party in any RPG game. Although Flight Rising's emphasis is on the dragon breeding, the Coliseum has enough of an RPG that the fundamentals will hold up here. In the previous article, I mentioned that you will want to have a tank, a healer/backup damage dealer, and a main damage dealer. Here are some other things you should observe:

As noted in chat above and glossed over in my previous article, each element has a special debuff that only they can do, which is triggered upon using certain abilities of said element. Thus, it follows that you will want to have three dragons of different elements in your coliseum party.

A good coliseum party should have their weaknesses covered by each other if at all possible. For example, Water attacks deal only half damage to Ice enemies. You'll want to have a Fire dragon in your party to trump those Ice enemies. However, Fire is themselves weak to Earth and Shadow and deals only half damage to Water, so you'll want your third dragon to have some way of combating that. As you may already be figuring out, there's no way to make a no-weakness team, so I'd recommend you pick the three dragons that can best complement each other and have great debuffs.

Check the photo to see the full list of elemental weaknesses and resistances for each dragon element (curiously, being weak against an element doesn't necessarily mean that your element does half damage to that element; the strengths and weaknesses system isn't as binary as in most other games.

You'll want to make sure you use the right battle stones for each dragon role. For example, having Shred on a magic type dragon is terrible (as Shred does physical damage AND Meditate, which is the main Energy Stone for magic, debuffs the user's physical damage output for two turns as well).

Some More Coliseum Tips

A commonly used strategy to successfully build up a good Victory Chain is to have your magic dragons Meditate when there's one weakened enemy left (especially if said enemy uses Physical attacks, as those hit softer). This will build up bonus Breath so that they can blast enemies right out of the gate in their next fight.

If your mages hurt, so do theirs. Identify which enemies are using magic and focus them down first. Even if they don't have an elemental attack, any mage worth their salt has Contuse, and that debuffs damage output by 25% which makes battles more a slog in the best case, and may tip the battle into a loss for your side in the worst case.

Try not to overkill enemies. After a few battles in the Coliseum, you should be able to estimate enemy health based on the damage you are inflicting. If your physical dragon's Scratch can finish off an enemy, don't use your magic dragon's elemental Bolt to land the killing blow, as that is rather wasteful. (Meditate if that weakened enemy is the last one, unless that enemy's final attack would be a killing blow itself).

You can buy (from the Marketplace) and find Fragments (in the Coliseum) that will grant a stat boost in one stat to a single dragon (the weaker fragments work on all dragons, but the stronger ones are element-specific). Don't forget to equip these once you unlock the appropriate slots (if memory serves, the first one unlocks at Level 5) so you can squeeze as much potential out of your dragons as you can.

Now you should have a better idea of what to do in the Coliseum. In the next few sections, I will be touching on subjects that are of particular interest to Draconicrose, so thanks to them for giving me the topic ideas to work with!

Gems 101

As mentioned in my previous article of tips and tricks, Gems are the official virtual currency of Flight Rising. 5 United States Dollars (USD for short) get you 500 gems and you get bonus gems by spending additional money in one go, to a max of 1500 bonus gems (11500 total) for spending 100 USD. Now, the question I always ask myself when playing a game with microtransactions is:

Do I see myself playing this game a month from now? A year from now? Even longer?

If you can't answer a hard yes to at least the second question, then don't buy a lot of gems. However, if you can't see yourself ever stopping, then you might want to splurge on the largest package (for reasons of cost efficiency more than anything else).



Besides being used to purchase certain items at the Marketplace, Gems can also be used to buy items being auctioned by other players at the Auction House and is also often used as barter material for Treasure (as of the time of this writing, the Treasure to Gem exchange rate is roughly 200:1).

The Marketplace

The Marketplace is where all of the player to game transactions (basically, the in-game shop) are handled (this contrasts with the Auction House for player to player transactions, which I won't cover in this article because a. it is already starting to run long and I have some other things to talk about and b. it's something you'll only really want to use in a serious capacity once you have some game experience).

Accessing the Marketplace will reveal six categories and two types of shops:

The two types of shops are Treasure shops and Gem shops. Both types of shops should be pretty self-explanatory.

Apparel: This is what equipment would be in an RPG, but don't forget that this is a simulation. Here, apparel serves only the role of making your dragon look good (or weird, if you have no fashion sense). People who love beautifying their dragon will be at home here. Apparel exists in both types of Marketplace shops.

Familiars: Familiars are dragon companions. Each dragon can be accompanied by one familiar and the effects are largely cosmetic. However (!) , each dragon can bond with their familiar once per day (via the dragon's details menu in the Dragon Lair), increasing their relationship with their familiar and getting rewarded for doing so. Up to now, I have gotten two of my familiars past the Wary stage (Wary gives 15 treasure each time you bond; it takes 4 days to get a Familiar from Wary to Tolerant) to Tolerant (20 treasure per day and a Rusted Treasure Chest which contains over 1000 Treasure and a few items of varying worth). As time goes on, I will be able to make a table with each of the various mood levels, but that will probably take months, given that each level takes longer and longer to attain. Familiars exist in both types of Marketplace shops.

Familiars are dragon companions. Each dragon can be accompanied by one familiar and the effects are largely cosmetic. However , each dragon can bond with their familiar once per day (via the dragon's details menu in the Dragon Lair), increasing their relationship with their familiar and getting rewarded for doing so. Up to now, I have gotten two of my familiars past the Wary stage (Wary gives 15 treasure each time you bond; it takes 4 days to get a Familiar from Wary to Tolerant) to Tolerant (20 treasure per day and a Rusted Treasure Chest which contains over 1000 Treasure and a few items of varying worth). As time goes on, I will be able to make a table with each of the various mood levels, but that will probably take months, given that each level takes longer and longer to attain. Familiars exist in both types of Marketplace shops. Battle: Battle items are divided into several categories and are used solely in the Coliseum, as their name implies. You have the Item category that covers usable items (pardon the redundancy) such as Health Potions. You have Battle Stones, that allow your dragon to attack, defend, heal, and other such things and you have Augment Stones, which are the official name for the Fragments I referenced previously. Battle Items exist only in the Treasure shop.

Battle items are divided into several categories and are used solely in the Coliseum, as their name implies. You have the Item category that covers usable items (pardon the redundancy) such as Health Potions. You have Battle Stones, that allow your dragon to attack, defend, heal, and other such things and you have Augment Stones, which are the official name for the Fragments I referenced previously. Battle Items exist only in the Treasure shop. Specialty: Specialty Items are the category of gene change and breed change scrolls. Genes are purely cosmetic in purpose, but changing the breed of a dragon affects their breeding cooldowns (although it doesn't affect their Coliseum stats at all, which is a bit quirky). Specialty Items exist in both types of Marketplace shops.

Specialty Items are the category of gene change and breed change scrolls. Genes are purely cosmetic in purpose, but changing the breed of a dragon affects their breeding cooldowns (although it doesn't affect their Coliseum stats at all, which is a bit quirky). Specialty Items exist in both types of Marketplace shops. Skins: Another type of cosmetic item. This one serves as a paint job for your dragon that graphically overrides your dragon's natural colors for as long as they have a skin equipped. Skins are only sold in the Gem shop.

Another type of cosmetic item. This one serves as a paint job for your dragon that graphically overrides your dragon's natural colors for as long as they have a skin equipped. Skins are only sold in the Gem shop. Bundles: Self-explanatory. Basically, a group of items being sold in one single package, usually for a discount. As of the time of this writing, only Apparel Bundles exist. Bundles are only sold in the Gem shop.

The Trading Post

The Trading Post is home to three enterprising dragon salesmen, each giving you a different service:

Pinkerton's Plunder Pile: Pinkerton is tired of his sister's (Crim) obsessive hoarding habit (I would counter-argue that dragons are naturally covetous, so perhaps he's the weird one for trying to curb her habit?). You can visit the Plunder Pile once a day to get a free item (unhatched dragon eggs are an extremely rare, but possible, acquisition from this Pile).

Pinkerton is tired of his sister's (Crim) obsessive hoarding habit (I would counter-argue that dragons are naturally covetous, so perhaps he's the weird one for trying to curb her habit?). You can visit the Plunder Pile once a day to get a free item (unhatched dragon eggs are an extremely rare, but possible, acquisition from this Pile). Crim's Collection Cart: Sister to Pinkerton, and an obsessive hoarder. She will post an offer for an item. If you have said item, you can sell it to her for a non-trivial amount of Treasure (usually 500). If you don't, you can request another offer. Crim can request up to five items each hour (I believe it is ten during your first lifetime visit).

Sister to Pinkerton, and an obsessive hoarder. She will post an offer for an item. If you have said item, you can sell it to her for a non-trivial amount of Treasure (usually 500). If you don't, you can request another offer. Crim can request up to five items each hour (I believe it is ten during your first lifetime visit). Swipp's Swap Stand: As the name of this establishment implies, Swipp will trade you a piece of apparel, a familiar, or a chest for a large amount of certain materials. He only has one offer up at a time and shuffles it every few hours.

Final Thoughts

Well, this just about concludes the second part of my Flight Rising tips and tricks for beginners series. If you still have some questions, do not hesitate to visit the official Flight Rising forums! Flight Rising really has a great community and most people are quite helpful over there.

I'd like to thank you all for reading once again!

Until the next time, take care and have fun! ;)

- Winterfate

© 2013 Darrin Perez

Asher Socrates from Los Angeles, CA on February 21, 2016:

Super indepth and highly detailed write up on the Flight Rising stradagies game. Those tips and tricks you offer here are very valuable. Keep up the fantastic work!