Economy

The Hatchery is where you turn your permanent gold into permanent power. There you can:

• Claim your dragons' relics
• Open Dragon Chests with keys (Dragonbone / Dragonglass / Dragonfire) or straight with gold

It's one of the best uses of your gold, because everything you pull out of it — relics, stars (Star Rank), access to Habits — is permanent and survives reign resets.

The right reflex: spend your gold at the Hatchery when you want to grow a key dragon (raise its star rank with its relics) rather than burning it on throwaway resources. Go for the chests that push the dragons you actually play.

Gold is the only permanent currency in the game: it never resets between reigns. It's your most valuable capital.

What you spend it on:

• Opening Hatchery chests (an alternative to Dragonbone / Dragonglass / Dragonfire Keys)
• Buying at the Market: basic resources, relics, Cores
• Speeding up or unlocking certain purchases at the Hatchery

Because it's permanent, gold put into relics, Cores or keys is a definitive gain for your dragons. Trading gold for basic resources (which do reset) is a comfort purchase for the moment.

The golden rule, so to speak: spend your gold on what's permanent.

Gold piles up in several ways, and since it's permanent, every coin you earn stays yours for good.

The main sources:

• Events (the game regularly runs ones that reward spending gold and resources, among others)
• The daily login and your House Level progress
• Campaign rewards (Heirs of the Dragon) and leaderboards (personal / faction / alliance)
• The Gold Store Bonus, which is permanent too

Since the exact amounts aren't confirmed here, hold on to the principle rather than figures: do your events, your daily login and the campaign, that's where gold comes in steadily. And keep it for permanent things.

No, gold never resets. It's the only permanent currency among your resources, alongside your dragons and everything attached to them (relics, stars, Habits, keys).

That changes how you handle it entirely:

• Basic resources (wood, stone, iron, food) and Meat reset → spend them inside the reign
• Gold doesn't reset → stockpile it and invest it in permanent things

Concretely, at the end of a reign, if you're torn between burning gold or resources: burn the resources (they're about to vanish anyway) and keep your gold for the new season or for one big permanent move — relics for a key Legendary, Cores, chest keys.

Meat is used to feed your dragons, which raises their Reign Level. It's an alternative to combat: instead of earning XP by killing enemy troops, you give meat to the dragon to push it forward directly.

Leveling a dragon raises its 4 stats (Strength, Instinct, Intelligence, Initiative) and the max army size it can lead.

Watch out: leveling through meat is capped per campaign stage (a ceiling that rises as you progress), and Reign Level resets every reign.

So meat, like the basic resources, is throwaway: use it to boost your key dragons fast during the reign, not to build up a stockpile.

Yes. Meat raises the dragon's Reign Level, and that level resets every new reign (an 8-week season). Everything you gained in level through meat (or through combat) goes back to the base at the new season.

Don't confuse it with two things that never reset:

• The dragon's Star Rank (stars)
• Its Habits

So at the start of a reign, it's normal to have to re-grind the level of your dragons. Meat is exactly what speeds up that re-grind instead of doing it all in combat.

Strategic takeaway: don't stockpile meat "for later" between two reigns — it (and the level it gives) belongs to the current season.

Both methods raise a dragon's Reign Level — the choice depends on your situation:

• Combat gives you XP on top of loot and objectives (you advance on several fronts at once). XP = enemy troops killed, and the Combat Training research boosts it by +2.5%/level in PvE.
• Meat is a direct shortcut: you gain levels without fighting, handy to catch a key dragon up fast early in a Reign.

The recommended approach: fight for your main progression (you earn XP + rewards + event objectives), and use Meat as a targeted boost on the dragon you want ready right now.

Either way, remember that this level resets every Reign: it's effort to redo each season.

Upgrading a Habit costs two materials at once:

• 1 Breedmark matching the dragon's breed
• 1 Core matching the dragon's rarity (🔵 Rare, 🟣 Epic, 🟡 Legendary)

The life of a Habit: locked → unlocked (lvl 1) → raised to lvl 5. Every dragon has 5 Habits, each over 5 levels.

An important nuance: Star Rank unlocks the slots, but Breedmarks + Cores are what raise them from 1 to 5. That's why a dragon can sit on plenty of stars with low Habits — you simply ran out of materials.

There is a Habit Growth event: upgrading Habits scores points there, and higher-rarity dragons score more — with each dragon's 5th Habit the most valuable of all.

Cores are what upgrade your dragons' Habits. Their rarity has to match the dragon's rarity:

• Rare Core 🔵 (blue) → upgrades the Habits of Rare dragons
• Epic Core 🟣 (purple) → Epic dragons
• Legendary Core 🟡 (gold) → Legendary dragons

A Core alone isn't enough: raising a Habit takes two materials together — a Core (rarity) + a Breedmark (breed).

Cores are permanent (they don't reset) and come from chests or the Market. Since a Legendary Core is useless on anything but a Legendary, keep them for the dragons you actually play — don't burn your top-end Cores on dragons you'll never field.

Breedmarks are the other half of what it takes to upgrade a dragon Habit. Where the Core depends on rarity, the Breedmark depends on breed — Champion Breedmark, Hunter Breedmark, Sentinel Breedmark, Warrior Breedmark.

The confirmed recipe for one Habit upgrade = two materials:

• 1 Breedmark matching the dragon's breed
• 1 Core matching its rarity (🔵 Rare / 🟣 Epic / 🟡 Legendary)

Breedmarks are permanent (no reset) and come from chests and the Market.

What to take away: because you need the right breed AND the right rarity at the same time, raising one dragon's Habits means collecting both — which is exactly why you focus on a few key dragons instead of spreading yourself thin.

You get Cores and Breedmarks mainly two ways:

1. Chests (Hatchery, Conqueror's, event chests)
2. The Market, where the game sells rare / epic / legendary Cores in exchange for your surplus relics turned into Relic Shards

Both are permanent (they don't reset between reigns), so you can stockpile them from one season to the next without worry.

Buying strategy: since a Legendary Core 🟡 is only good on Legendaries and a Breedmark only on one breed, buy according to the dragons you actually field. There's no point buying a Legendary Core if you have no key Legendary to push: turn your shards into materials that match your real roster instead.

You have four base resources in Dragonfire, each produced by its own building:

• Wood (Lumber Mill): building construction
• Stone (Quarry): building construction
• Iron (Foundry): military equipment and elite troops
• Food / Grain (Granary): feeds your armies

Separately, there's also Meat (to feed your dragons and raise their level) and Gold (the only permanent currency).

The crucial point: the 4 base resources RESET every Reign (the 8-week season), and so does Meat. They're disposable: don't stockpile for the sake of it, spend them. Only Gold is permanent and survives the reset.

Production runs through the resource buildings in your Stronghold, upgraded via the Infrastructure research tree:

• Granary → Food/Grain
• Lumber Mill → Wood
• Quarry → Stone
• Foundry → Iron

Each research node at max level (I) gives +6,000/h of production on its resource (Granary I, Lumber Mill I, Quarry I, Foundry I = +6,000/h each).

Two levers to go faster:

1. Level your Infrastructure research
2. Harvest the resource tiles on the map (see the "how to farm" articles)

A reminder: building production resets every Reign, so you re-grind your output each new season.

Each resource's maximum storage is raised by the Storehouse, a node in the Infrastructure tree.

The confirmed value: Storehouse I (max) = +500,000 capacity per resource.

Why it matters: without enough capacity, your production overflows and is lost (the surplus isn't stored). If you see a gauge stuck at max, that's your signal to level the Storehouse.

But watch the trap: since resources reset every Reign, there's no point filling your stores to the brim "for later". Level the Storehouse just enough not to waste your current output, and spend rather than hoard.

Iron (produced by the Foundry) is the most "military" of the four resources. It mainly serves:

• Military equipment
• Elite troops (the stronger units cost Iron)

So it's the resource to watch when you want to strengthen the quality of your armies, not just their quantity.

Conversely, Wood and Stone mostly go into building construction, and Food/Grain into maintaining your armies.

Like all base resources, Iron resets every Reign. If you're going for elite troops, do it during the Reign you need them, not in advance.

Two Infrastructure research nodes directly cut what your army costs the economy:

• Rapid Recruitment: −37.5% training time at level 11
• Bannerman's Bargain: −30% training cost

There's also the global Efficiency (E) mechanic:

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New cost = (1000 / (1000 + E)) × Original cost

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In plain terms, +1,000 Efficiency ≈ −50% time/cost, and it stacks from several sources.

The Barracks, for its part, raises troop capacity. Go for Rapid Recruitment plus the Bargain first: you rebuild your army far faster each Reign, which is exactly where the re-grind hurts.

Yes. That's THE economic rule to internalize. With every new Reign (8 weeks), these go back to zero:

• The 4 base resources: Wood, Stone, Iron, Food/Grain
• Meat
• Resolve
• All buildings and research in Infrastructure / War Tactics / Dragon Care
• Your Stronghold tier and tile ownership

What never resets: Gold, your dragons, their Star Rank, their Habits, Relics, Breedmarks, Cores, and the keys (Dragonbone / Dragonglass / Dragonfire).

The moral: don't hoard base resources, spend them within the Reign. Save and accumulate everything permanent instead (gold, Relics, keys).

They're the three key types used to open Hatchery Chests:

• Dragonbone Key
• Dragonglass Key
• Dragonfire Key

Without keys, you can also open chests directly with gold.

Good news: all three keys are permanent — they don't reset between Reigns, like gold and Relics. So you can stockpile them calmly from one Reign to the next and do a big batch of openings when a favorable chest event shows up.

You get them through events, progression rewards, and you can also buy them at the Market (with Relic Shards).

Keys (Dragonbone / Dragonglass / Dragonfire) mostly come from playing regularly:

• Active events (especially Hatchery chest events)
• Progression rewards (campaign, leaderboards, House Level)
• At the Market, trading your surplus Relics converted into Relic Shards

If you're out of keys, you can always open chests with gold.

Since keys are permanent (they don't reset), the smart play is to set them aside and spend them at the right moment — for instance when a "Hatchery Chests" event gives you bonus rewards per opening. Opening 30 chests during an event pays more than dribbling out one key at a time.

Every Hatchery Chest gives 3 guaranteed rewards. Reward #2 can be very generous: for instance a Legendary dragon plus an Elite Drop (100 Relics), or even a Super Drop (1,000 Relics).

The game includes a Pity System so total bad luck can't sink you:

• A guaranteed Epic Elite Drop every 130 pulls
• A guaranteed Legendary every 250 pulls

So even on a cold streak, you know you'll eventually hit Epic and Legendary as your openings pile up.

Tip: open in batches (ideally during a chest event) to push toward the pity thresholds, rather than opening one chest here and there.

The Conqueror's Chest is a premium chest: it only gives Epic and Legendary Relics (no Rares). So it's a high-end source for pushing your best dragons.

Its confirmed quality: reward #1 is 75% Epic / 25% Legendary. You're essentially guaranteed at least an Epic per opening, with a real shot at a Legendary.

Who benefits: if you're building around key Epic or Legendary dragons, the Conqueror's Chest concentrates value exactly where it counts (no "diluting" Rare Relics).

Like all Relics, what you pull out is permanent: an investment that doesn't evaporate at the next Reign.

The Caraxes Chest is an event chest: it specifically boosts Caraxes and Zivern Relics. Opening it gives you a far better chance of growing those two particular dragons.

The appeal: if you play (or want to play) Caraxes or Zivern, it's the ideal moment to raise their Star Rank fast, since the chest concentrates their Relics.

Conversely, if those dragons aren't in your plans, the event matters less — better to save your keys and gold for a chest aimed at your key dragons.

It's the perfect illustration of how event chests work: they target specific dragons, so open them when the target matches your strategy.

The Market is the game's trading hub. You can do two big things there:

1. Trade gold for base resources (wood, stone, iron, food)
2. Convert your surplus Relics (via Relic Shards) into targeted Relics, Cores and keys

The Market sells Relics per dragon (each dragon has its price in shards) as well as Rare / Epic / Legendary Cores.

It's the place that lets you steer your progression: instead of being stuck with the random Relics from chests, you convert your surplus into exactly what your key dragons need.

Not every exchange rate is confirmed here — check the prices shown in game — but the logic is clear: useless surplus → shards → what you actually need.

Relic Shards are the "recycling currency" for your surplus Relics. You get them notably when you receive Relics for a dragon already at maximum Star Rank: since you can't raise it further, its excess Relics convert into shards.

At the Market, you trade those shards for:

• targeted Relics (for a specific dragon you want to push)
• Cores (Rare / Epic / Legendary)
• keys (Dragonbone and the rest)

It's extremely useful because it turns useless surplus into directed progression. Relic Shards are permanent.

Example prices seen in game (indicative — check current values): a dragon's Relics are bought back in batches of a few thousand shards.

Use it sparingly. Trading gold for base resources at the Market is handy to unblock an urgent build or training, but it's a poor habit as a rule.

Why: gold is permanent, while the resources you buy reset at the next Reign. So you're converting durable capital into disposable consumables.

The best uses of gold at the Market remain permanent purchases:

• Targeted Relics (to raise a key dragon's Star Rank)
• Cores (for Habits)
• Chest keys

Simple rule: buy resources with gold only if it unlocks an important milestone right now (e.g. reaching a Stronghold tier the campaign requires). Otherwise, keep your gold for the permanent.

On the world map you'll find neutral resource tiles your armies can harvest: Wood, Iron, Stone, Food, plus Ruins, graded by level (Lv. 1 to 13).

The principle: you send an army to a tile to harvest it over a march/collection time. The higher the tile's level, the bigger the yield (but usually further away and more contested).

A few good practices:

• Scout the area around your stronghold first (e.g. around Last Hearth, King's Landing)
• Go for nearby tiles to cut march time
• Match the resource type to what you're short of this Reign

The Swift Stride research (+3.5%/level march speed) speeds up your farming round trips. It's the main source of "free" resources on top of your building production.

Around your area, the map is full of wild PvE targets: Hunters, Wildlings, Outlaws, Shadowcats and more. Attacking them pays rewards and XP for your dragons, with no risk of a player striking back.

Their strength scales with their level, so start with targets within reach and climb gradually.

Three PvE research nodes that make this farm far more profitable:

• Relentless Assault: +1.5%/level damage against non-players (up to +15% at level 10)
• Stalwart Defense: −1.5%/level damage taken in PvE
• Combat Training: +2.5%/level dragon XP in PvE

PvE farming is one of the best ways to raise your dragons (Reign Level) while harvesting — far safer than picking fights with players.

Resources stored in your stronghold can be taken by other players during attacks. A few principles to limit the damage:

• Don't hoard: since base resources reset every Reign, keeping huge reserves is not only pointless but a magnet for raids. Spend them (building, research, troops).
• Stay active: an account that spends fast has little to steal.
• Play in an alliance: being in a strong, supportive alliance discourages attackers and gives you backup.
• Keep your armies ready: a credible defender gets attacked less.

Your real capital is safe from plunder: your gold, your dragons, their stars, Habits, Relics, Cores, Breedmarks and keys are permanent and can't be raided like base resources. Concentrate your value there.

Since almost all of the economy resets at the start of a Reign, you have to re-grind fast and in the right order:

1. Rebuild your production (Infrastructure: Granary / Lumber Mill / Quarry / Foundry) to restart the resource flow.
2. Re-grind your House Level quickly: it reactivates the Heirloom buffs you've already paid for (they stay unlocked but are switched off until House Level climbs back).
3. Farm nearby tiles and PvE targets to recover resources and dragon XP.
4. Re-level your key dragons (combat + Meat), since Reign Level reset.

Meanwhile, don't touch your permanent (gold, Relics, keys) unless it's a decisive move: that's what gives you your edge from one Reign to the next. The rule: re-grind the disposable, protect the permanent.