Dragonbred Incubator Guide: Clutches, Trays and Instant Cards

The Dragonbred incubator is where every clutch waits between laying and hatching. Each tray holds one whole clutch, you start with three trays, and a clutch warms in 3 minutes to 4 hours, by the rarest egg it could hatch. Eggs never hatch by themselves: when a clutch is ready, you crack it. Its tray is free at once, and the brood moves to the nursery, where it grows up for about a day before it can breed.

That's the short version. The rest of this guide covers how clutches move through the incubator, which skills grow the incubator, and how to read the outcome screen when the eggs open.

How a clutch moves through the incubator

Laying is instant. The moment you pair a female and a male on the Breed tab, the dam lays a clutch of one to six eggs, about four on average. Those eggs land in the nest first.

The nest is a cold waiting room. Eggs sitting there don't warm. A clutch needs a whole tray to itself, so it stays in the nest until a tray is free, and then the oldest waiting clutch moves in. On Home, the Incubator shows every clutch with eggs, and the Nursery under it shows every brood growing up.

A few rules worth knowing up front:

• The nest holds as many clutches as you have trays. With three trays, that's three in trays and up to three waiting.
• A tray frees the moment its clutch hatches. The brood grows up in a nursery place instead.
• The nursery has three places to start. When every place is taken, a ready clutch waits warm in its tray until a brood grows up.
• Eggs keep warming while the game is closed.
• A ready clutch sits there until you open it. Nothing hatches behind your back.
• "Leave cold" throws a waiting clutch away. The game asks once more before it does, and those eggs are recorded as Left cold.

Trays: start with three, earn up to six

Every keeper begins with three trays. The rest come from the Keeper branch of the skill tree, which you climb with the skill points you earn levelling up, once you've learned the three skills of the trunk below it. Each rank also costs some Scales: 500 for a first rank, 1,500 for a second, 4,000 for a third.

All three ranks make six trays.

Whether you need more trays depends on how often you breed. A tray is only taken while its clutch warms and waits for you, minutes to a few hours, so three trays turn over many times a day. The slower step is the nursery: each brood keeps its nursery place for about a day while it grows up, and you start with three places.

A worked example: you have two pairs going and breed each of them twice a day. That's four broods a day against three nursery places that each turn over about once a day. One ready clutch a day ends up waiting warm in its tray for a place, and soon the trays fill too. A first rank of Bigger Nursery (Keeper branch, above Good Feed) clears that backlog; Extra Tray helps when you lay several clutches at once. With five or six of each, most keepers find the bottleneck moves to Scales and pen space instead.

Warm and grow times: by grade

A bred clutch warms, and its brood then grows up, by the best grade any of its eggs could hatch, going by the odds the Breed tab shows. The dam rests afterwards by her own grade; the sire doesn't rest at all. Rarer dragons take longer:

Two things worth knowing:

• Normals-only pairings warm in 3 minutes. If the odds for a pairing show nothing but Normal babies, it's a Common clutch, however many hidden genes the parents carry, and it is ready almost right away. Its brood still grows up for a Common's 23 hours.
• Members' broods grow up in half the time: 11½ hours instead of 23, 22 instead of a Legendary's 44. Membership renews monthly.

The breeding slip on the Breed tab shows the warm time, the growing time and the dam's rest for the pair you've picked, next to clutch size, hatch chance and infertility. Check it before you commit a tray.

The nursery: hatchlings grow up before they breed

A hatchling can't breed straight away. Once a clutch hatches, its brood moves to the nursery, a place of its own apart from the trays, and you'll see the young there with a countdown. They show on your cards as Hatchling with the time left, and the Breed tab greys them out until they're grown.

You can feed a growing brood from its card in the Nursery, on Home. Each feed costs a few Scales, by the brood's grade (2 for a brood of Normals, up to 20 for a Legendary's), and takes 2 hours off, once every 2 hours, up to 6 hours for each day the brood takes to grow (so 6 hours for a brood that grows up in a day, 12 for an Epic, Mythic or Legendary one). It's never required: a brood left alone grows up all the same. Hatchlings can still be released, or listed with the Trader's Head Start skill, but their nursery place stays taken until the brood would have grown.

You start with three nursery places. Bigger Nursery in the Keeper branch of the skill tree adds one place a rank and has two ranks, for five in all. If every place is taken, a ready clutch can't hatch yet: its eggs stay warm in their tray until a brood grows up, you feed one along, or you spend an Instant Card on one.

Hatch levels and what they change

The incubator has a hatch level, shown in words from Fair to Superb. The higher the level, the more of your healthy eggs hatch. It rises only in the Breeder branch of the skill tree: every rank of Strong Shells adds two levels, and it has two ranks.

The first rank costs two skill points and 2,000 Scales, and every clutch you lay afterward hatches better, for as long as you play. Strong Shells opens after Warm Hands, which grows from Quick Recovery at the foot of the Breeder branch.

The second rank gives less than the first and costs more Scales, so most keepers leave Superb until they're breeding for something rare and want every egg. Past it, Sure Hatch at the top of that line means no egg dies in the incubator at all.

Instant Cards: when to use one

An Instant Card skips one clutch's wait. Spent on a clutch that's warming, its eggs are ready to hatch at once; spent on a brood that's growing up, the babies are grown and its nursery place is free. Every other clutch keeps its own time, so your other babies stay babies until you choose otherwise.

Tap the bolt on a card in the Incubator or the Nursery, or use the card on a clutch's page or right after you breed. The best use is the clutch you're most eager to see, or a brood whose nursery place a ready clutch is waiting for.

Where Instant Cards come from:

• New keepers get one in the tutorial's free crate, and spend it there on their first clutch.
• Membership gives five each month.
• The Daily Pass gives one every week on its free track, and more on the member track.
• Crates sometimes include one: 1.5% from a Wooden Crate, 4% from an Iron Crate, 8% from a Lava Crate.
• They can be bought with real money from the Store.

What an Instant Card doesn't do: shorten a dam's rest after laying. She still needs her break, and stays greyed out with a countdown ("Resting · 5h 12m") until it's over.

Cracking eggs: the five outcomes

When a clutch is ready you can crack the eggs one at a time or all at once. Each egg ends one of five ways.

The middle three tell you different things. Infertile and Did not develop point at the pairing, usually relatedness. Failed in the incubator points at your hatch level.

Rare-or-better hatchlings, and a first of its look, arrive with a chime and a glow. If nobody in the game has hatched that look or combination before, you also hold its world first, and it walks out to a full-screen WORLD FIRST of its own; world firsts covers them.

After the hatch, "What the clutch taught you" shows how the clutch changed what you know about the parents. A het Albino that throws an Albino baby gets stamped PROVEN. This is the reason to hatch and look, rather than rush past the screen. Hets and possible hets explains how those percentages move.

A simple incubator routine

Here's a rhythm that works for most keepers in their first few weeks:

1. 1Breed in the morning, crack the clutch when it's warm (an hour for a Rare), and the brood is grown by the same time the next day.
2. 2Tend your broods when you drop in. Three visits a day takes six hours off each.
3. 3Save Instant Cards for the clutch you most want to see.
4. 4Once the trunk of the skill tree is learned, spend your points on Extra Tray, then work up the Breeder branch to Strong Shells.
5. 5Read "What the clutch taught you" every time, then decide who to keep.

If you're just starting out, the beginner's guide puts the incubator in context with the rest of your first week. The best way to learn it is to fill a tray in Dragonbred and crack your first clutch.

Frequently asked questions

How long do eggs take to hatch in Dragonbred?

A bred clutch warms for 3 minutes if its odds show only Commons, 10 for an Uncommon, an hour for a Rare, two for an Epic or Mythic, and four for one that could hatch a Legendary. You still crack the eggs yourself once they're ready. The hatchlings then grow up in the nursery for 23 to 44 hours before they can breed, half that for members.

Can I speed up the nursery?

Yes. Feed a growing brood (2 to 20 Scales a feed, by its grade) to take 2 hours off, once every 2 hours, up to 6 hours for each day it takes to grow. An Instant Card grows one brood up at once.

How many incubator trays can I have?

You start with three and can have up to six. The other three come from the skill tree's Keeper branch: three ranks of Extra Tray.

Do Instant Cards work on one clutch or all of them?

One. A card skips the wait of the clutch you spend it on: its eggs warm at once, or its brood grows up at once. Every other clutch keeps its time.

What is the difference between Did not develop and Failed in the incubator?

Did not develop comes from the pairing: it is inbreeding. Failed in the incubator is a healthy egg that didn't hatch, and a higher hatch level makes it rarer.