Dragon Island is the latest casual adventure title from Alohafactory, that’s available on both iOS and Android platforms. Like the rest of the company’s games, Dragon Island offers a simple yet very addictive gameplay suitable for players across all ages and levels of expertise. Dragon Island has earned well over a million downloads from the Google Play Store alone in less than 2 months following its release and has also claimed spots in top lists of games.
Dragon Island sets you on a unique journey across different islands inhabited by dragons and brimming with quests and adventures. The main goal center around collecting, hatching, and taming various dragons and the means to do so involves gathering resources and completing quests for each island’s alpha dragon.
In addition to your own means of collecting resources your dragon companion as well as other dragon allies can help you in your objectives. There are additional ways provided as well to boost your capabilities and make quests easier.
There is only a quick and simple tutorial that greets you after stepping into the world of Dragon Island and considering the simple and straightforward gameplay mechanics, it is more than sufficient. Gathering resources and taking them to drop off marks make up the basic mechanics but resource types, as well as the means to procure them, provide a mix of new challenges and sub-mechanics as you hop from one island to next.
We honestly feel that anyone can make good progress in Dragon Island regardless of what they do and how much time they can dedicate on it. However, if you are the type itching to hatch more and more pet dragons as well as dominate each and every level, then you came to the right place. We have put together a comprehensive beginner’s guide for Dragon Island to clear each island in the game!
1. Learn To Prioritize
Dragon Island may throw you into a fantasy world where tasks ahead of you are ale simple and straightforward. Everything revolves around gathering a specified amount of a resource or mix of resources to complete a task. Whether it forms part of the main quest to clear the island, secure dragon eggs to help you farm items faster, or other such improvements to lighten your burden, it all follows the constant formula.
As simple as tasks in Dragon Island may be, you can expect a lot of these tasks to be simultaneously present. The farther you travel across your adventure; the more simultaneous tasks will become available as well. This leads to more types of resources that make each island bigger than the previous one.
Likewise, having multiple pending tasks that require various resources to accomplish can sometimes lead to an overwhelming scenario. As such, it is best to make a habit of prioritizing objectives to more efficiently accomplish each one.
Each island in Dragon Island will start you off having access to the tomatoes, which stand as the most basic resource. Once you have gathered enough, you can opt to pursue the main quest with it or invest it somewhere else. In this instance, the best option is to go for acquiring a dragon egg that you can install on the tomato farm to have a dragon help you gather tomatoes on their own.
There will basically be a cycle of unlocking new areas and deploying dragon eggs on them for passive farming. Additional dragon allies can also be utilized later to transport resources from the farming areas to the alpha dragon. Having these helpers around make everything else a lot easier and will ultimately lead to a faster accomplishment of each quest.
There are also stalls that can provide you boosts like an increase your inventory space and you should know how big of a help this is given the nature of your activities. Getting these targets out of the way sooner means you will be able to transport more of the resources you need faster.
2. Focus On One Task At A Time
Prioritization dictates putting more value on one task over another. There will certainly be instances when 2 or more targets will be equally appealing to you, which may lead you to try and accomplish several feats simultaneously. While there is nothing wrong with progressing different quests at a time, doing so ultimately leads to a longer completion time for each of the affected task.
There really are no strict requirements as to which of the available tasks ought to be prioritized. What seems more important at one time may be a little less important in another situation and there are also personal preferences that can impact your choice. Regardless of your considerations, an equally important habit to consider is focusing on one task and completing it before taking on another.
For example, the availability of dragon eggs you can purchase with tomatoes may make you want to unlock them first before fulfilling other quests. It does not necessarily mean that you will proceed to target purchasing the next available dragon egg. For starters, the first one may suffice for idle gathering of tomatoes on the farm while you focus your attention on bigger inventory space or unlocking the pig pen or fish pond.
Different scenarios and different islands will certainly give you a mix of quests to accomplish and it will not matter as much what your prioritization schemes are so long as you adhere to completing tasks one by one. Of course, focusing on one task is not absolute as multitasking will sooner or later form part of your adventure and even without much effort, some tasks will be progressed with the aid of your dragon companions.
3. Choose The Right Dragon Companion
Dragon Island is not just about performing quests for the alpha dragon on each island you visit or employing dragon helpers to make gathering and transporting activities easier. Hatching dragon eggs and utilizing them as companions serve as a core feature in the game, enabling you to have added boosts to your performance in a variety of ways.
While your trusty axe is sufficient enough to help you gather tomatoes, butcher pigs, and even eliminate monsters that visit the island, the first dragon companion you will have can aid you with its attacks. There will be other dragon pets that can attack your targets later on but, more importantly, there are also a multitude of other dragon companions that have a variety of useful buffs to take advantage of.
Some pet dragons can boost your movement speed and it will be a big help to you especially if you have a lot of tasks that involve moving different resources around. There are also pet dragons that can increase the size of your inventory when you equip them. The best part of having pets is actually being able to switch between them instantly. You simply need to tap the Pet button at the left side of your screen and tap on the dragon whom you want to accompany you.
4. Defeat Enemies Fast
We mentioned earlier that Dragon Island is a type of adventure that lets players make progress regardless of how they choose to proceed with their adventure. As such, it goes without saying that there is not much pressure to rush into completing tasks or hopping on to the next island.
However, Dragon Island is likewise designed in such a way that you will always find yourself itching to discover what the next island has to offer, driving you towards performing faster and efficiently across the objectives to acquire a new egg and hop on to the next location.
Working continuously to accomplish various quests and uncover more of each island’s secrets, regardless of its number can become a relatively easy feat after some time. If any, you would want nothing more than to be able to keep working as steadily as possible without any interruptions or distractions. The islands in Dragon Island, however, hosts more than just dragons and resources as monsters will randomly appear to pester you and your dragons while at work.
Despite being your natural enemies, monsters in Dragon Island will actually not harm you or your dragons. However, their mere presence will prevent your dragon allies from working and will hamper production and delivery as well. Monsters also travel randomly towards different areas of the map, intent on causing work stoppage across different resource spots.
Fortunately, you can easily kill each of the monsters. A trio of slashes from your trusty axe is enough to eliminate them and having a pet dragon that attacks intermittently helps in clearing them out. Locating each of the monsters may come as the bigger part of the challenge, but arrow indicators point the way to each one that is not visible on your screen. The number of monsters currently present are also flashed on your screen, making it easy to determine if more “search and destroy” activities need to be done.
While monsters appear to trouble you time and again, going after them as a group also comes with its own set of rewards. Once all monsters have been defeated, you will earn a crate reward. You will want to hack away at it as it contains a mix of resources you can use to complete quests at hand.
5. Watch What You Carry
Aligned with ensuring that gameplay is as easy as it can be, Dragon Island is designed in such a way that simply stepping within designated areas in each structure will quickly and easily have you pick up items or let them go. Being able to grab resources this way is certainly convenient and bringing any mix towards the alpha dragon is likewise hassle-free.
Considering efficiency, however, this same feature can lead unintentional picking up of items you currently do not need or picking up more of it than intended. In some cases, the extra items you carry will be deposited and counted towards the next target in line but there are instances when there are no current succeeding quests or the same will not require any of the items you have.
Given that you have a limited inventory capacity in Dragon Island, and despite the number being upgradable, it goes without saying that attention should be given to what you actually pick up and carry. It may not be as significant in the initial islands but sooner or later, not being careful in its management can lead to slow dons or even wastage of some resources.
As an example, suppose the only quest that needs tomatoes is the dragon egg vendor, needing 5 more of it to hand you an egg. Carrying 10 tomatoes to him will leave you with a remaining 5 and if no other quests need tomatoes for the moment, these items will just be a hindrance to you, further limiting the number of other resources you can carry.
On the other hand, the alpha dragon who provides the main quests will just take everything you bring to him. If he only needs 10 tomatoes for the current quest and you carry 15 tomatoes, he will take all of them. He will also take everything you carry, including all other resources that are not needed in the quest. Even if some or all of those resources are needed for the next quest, they will not be counted and will just be considered as lost resources you need to gather again.
Being conscious about the specific number of each resource you pick up is just about half of the challenge relative to maximum efficiency. The circles where items need to be dropped off are something to be careful about as well.
As easy as it is drop off items, it becomes equally easy to drop items off on locations other than your intended target. If you are focused on completing a particular quest, then this means that you need to take extra care on not accidentally stepping into drop zones for other quests.
6. Employ Some Multitasking Strategies
The best way to go about completing quests in Dragon Island is still to focus on one objective at a time, following your prioritization as determined by what you see most suitably fits your needs. With dragons to help you gather resources as well as some dragons that aid in transporting them, you can become even more efficient by learning how to multitask properly.
Multitasking does not necessarily equate to ignoring priorities or loosing focus on a specific task. These strategies can in fact work hand in hand to help you clear quests at a faster rate. The dragon helpers deployed to collect tomatoes, pigs, or fish, for example will continue to perform their task until the stocks are full or monster appear to bother them.
You can expect idle farming to not go as fast as you can if you manually tend to the task, but it is helpful enough in that you forego the activity completely and tend to ones that can only be performed manually.
The dragon transporters will only carry resources to the alpha dragon, which means that if you need some of these resources for other targets, you need to pick up and drop off the items yourself. Having dragon transporters are enough to leave you to focus on tending to the other quests unless you prioritize the main quest.
If there are still other objectives present, you can focus on manually transporting needed resources for them and if only the main quests are present, you can transport resources from areas that do not have dragon transporters.
Some of the resource structures in Dragon Island are processing plants. Pigs can be cooked and fish can be frozen as part of some requirements for some quests. Given that no dragon will aid you in bringing the needed raw materials for these plants, it becomes among the tasks you can only tend to on your own.
A good example of an opportunity to multitask presents itself when fish and cooked meat are needed for the quest. You can plan your route in such a way that you can grab fish and bring it to the alpha dragon, grab some pigs to bring to the cook, and finally grab some cooked pork to bring to the alpha dragon.
Cycling through these activities give each of the areas sufficient time to generate or produce the resources you need, leading to an efficient production line and ultimately a faster means of accomplishing tasks.
7. Every Boost Counts
As a casual game that is absolutely free to play, it should be no surprise that Dragon Island contains some ads. Ads in mobile games have been around for quite some time and given that their existence may come as a bother to some players, it becomes basic for us to help players understand the value of their existence.
While there are some mobile games that can heavily rely on micro transactions to generate income and sustain the continued existence of the app, most casual games like Dragon Island can be played and enjoyed without ever needing to spend anything. As such, it becomes necessary to slip in some ads to ensure its continues availability and development for everyone to enjoy.
Although Dragon Lair does contain some ads that pop up in the middle of the game, most of the ads you will see form part of its ad boost feature. Just to be clear, ad boosts are not required for you to complete quests. Rather, what these ads provide are an extra means for you to boost your progression in your adventure.
One of the best ad boosts in our opinion is the flight mode that can be accessed through its icon at the left side of your screen. Playing a 30-second ad will give you wings and tremendously boost your movement speed for 3 minutes.
There are also boosts that increase your weapon’s attack as well as one that gives you infinite inventory space for a limited period of time. Both these boosts can be randomly seen on the ground and you will also need to play a 15 to 30-second ad to earn them.
In addition to the shop that grants you extra resources if you play an ad the start of each adventure, piles of resources also pop up on your adventure. These ads will grant you instant resources if you choose to play an ad after walking through them. All ad boosts can be ignored even after touching them so you are never forced to watch anything other than the skippable ones that randomly pop up.
8. Switch Between Online And Offline Modes
Despite most ads in Dragon Island being helpful to progressing your adventure faster, it can still happen that the ones that randomly appear can bother you. In case you are a type of player who gets distracted by video ads that pop up and play, then you should know that Dragon Island can be played offline.
Being a single player adventure game, the only reason for Dragon Island to require internet connectivity is for the ad boosts. You can simply turn off the Wi-Fi or network data on your device before launching the game to play in offline mode.
Playing offline means that no ads will play for the duration of your session. While this will get rid of the randomly appearing ads, however, doing so will also prevent you from taking advantage of any ad boost. In any case, you can always play online mode in some sessions while occasionally shifting to offline gameplay from time to time.
Dragon Island is certainly an adventure that is difficult to put down once you get hooked on it. This is where we end our Dragon Island beginner’s guide and we hope that you learned a great deal from the simple tips and strategies that we presented. If you happen to spend as much or perhaps even more time island-hopping and dragon egg-hatching than we did, we would appreciate hearing your stories or discoveries on your adventure down in the comment area!