How to Protect the Dragon Egg

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What is the Dragon Egg?

The Dragon Egg is a very powerful and unique item, as one one can ever exist at a time in each cycle.

Protecting the egg is a massive undertaking, as it is basically a server-wide game of capture the flag.

Power of the Egg

The egg must be protected at all costs, as many players seek to lay claim to it's power.

When placed in a suitable shrine, if the Dragon Aspects are appeased, the Dragon Egg will grant you and your allies powerful buffs in a large area surrounding the shrine. It is like a more powerful version of a beacon.

Be warned however, the great power contained withing the egg may periodically emit a global pulse which can be sensed by others in the form of an auditory signal. These sound signals are directional, and those who pay close attention may be able to triangulate the location of the egg. There are ways to muffle or disrupt these signals to make them more difficult to track, however the structure requires a constant supply of mana and resources to keep the suppression field active.

Special Abilities

Rumors foretell that the egg itself possesses unique abilities.

• The egg may grant you protection and the ability to levitate into the air when held.
  
• The egg may teleport randomly within a short distance if placed and interacted with.
• When placed upon a suitable shrine and activated by the dragon aspects, the egg may grant unique buffs to your team.
• When activated, the egg will summon a force field around itself with a large amount of Shield HP.
  
  • The amount of Shield HP scales with various factors, such as the quality of the shrine, upgrades, and other bonuses.
  • Breaking the force field will allow the egg to be taken, and the process begins anew.
  • The shield can be repaired using mana.
• If the shrine is powerful enough, the egg may be able to defend itself with various magical abilities.
  • The abilities can changed based on the materials the shrine is constructed from.
  • The most common defense is a short-ranged point defense system that fires hit-scan beams.
  • Typically only targets mobs, however it is possible for some abilities to target players.
  • Mobs can attack the dragon egg, however it is unlikely for mobs alone to break the shield.

Building a Shrine

Constructing a suitable shrine to care for the egg and appease the Dragon Aspects is no easy task. You must choose your materials and design carefully, as you will be judged by those who fly above.

Caretakers from past cycles have documented their findings, however are always new things to discover.

• First and foremost, be creative. The Dragon Aspects judge each shrine and decide it's power level based on creativity.
• The egg seems to prefer aesthetically pleasing designs and a raised center point for the egg to rest upon.
• Shrines can be of any size, however larger shrines are much more likely to grant you more powerful effects.
• The egg must be exposed to the sky, otherwise it will feel trapped and refuse to activate.
• The egg likes nature/wilderness blocks as well as shiny things.
• The egg likes symmetry and creative designs.
• Adding shiny piles can help to improve the overall power, effectiveness, and tier of your shrine. 
  • A shiny pile is a pile of shiny things consisting of materials dragons consider to be "shiny", such as crystals and ores.
    

Shrine Tiers

When the egg is activated, the Dragon Aspects will judge your shrine and decide upon it's "power level" or "shrine tier".

Here are the benefits of building a higher tier shrine:

• Increased egg shield health.
• Increased defensive capabilities.
• Increased potency and range of positive effects.
• Increased suppression field mana efficiency and reduced mana consumption.

Here are some ways to help improve your shrine tier:

• The size of your build is a major deciding factor. Larger builds with a clear theme tend to be better.
  
• The quality of the blocks used in the construction of the shrine.
• The overall aesthetics and theme of the shrine.
• Shiny piles can help improve your shrine tier.
• Think of it like a build competition with judges, higher quality builds are better.
• Try to stick to a magical/fantasy/ancient/elemental theme, however other shrine themes may also yield good results.

Click to view Shrine Examples!

Note that it may take some time (up to several days) for the egg to "activate" after being placed upon the shrine.

Materials and their Effects

The following is a list of documented materials used in shrine construction and what effects they were observed to provide.

Note that you can use multiple materials in the construction of a shrine to receive multiple buffs, however focusing on just one or two materials may make the individual buffs more powerful.

Different forms of the same material may yield better or worse results, depending on it's difficulty to obtain.
For example, let's consider gold ore blocks:

• Raw Gold Blocks seem to hold more value than Gold Ore.
• Gold Ore seems to hold more value than refined Gold Blocks.
• Blocks made from ingots (like Gold Blocks) seem to hold the least value due to the ability to farm gold nuggets and gold ingots.

Dragon Aspects seem to prefer raw ores because it shows that actual work was put into obtaining them.

Note that the effects you receive are entirely decided by the Dragon Aspects themselves.
It is not guaranteed that you will receive what is on this table, as many other factors can influence the shrine.

Material	Observed Effects
Amethyst	Buffs to Mana Regen
Copper	Buffs to Mana Capacity
Diamond	Buffs to Damage Resistance
Dragon Shard Blocks	Unknown
Emerald	Buffs to Shrine Shield Health
Glowstone	Buffs to Night Vision
Gold	Buffs to Haste (Mining Speed & Attack Speed)
Iron	Buffs to Armor Toughness
Lapis Lazuli	Unknown
Netherite	Buffs to Strength
Quartz	Buffs to Movement Speed
Redstone	Unknown
Wood / Nature Blocks	Buffs to Health

Suppression Field

You will need to construct a Suppression Field if you wish to protect the Dragon Egg for the long term. This grants you an array of tools to suppress, distract, or confuse other beings who are attempting to seek out the location of the Dragon Egg.

Some possible things a Suppression Field can do are as follows:

• Reduce the volume of the signal.
• Increase the cooldown between signals.
• Randomize the origin point of the signal to increase difficulty of triangulation.
  
• Limit the maximum range of the signal to 10000 blocks instead of global (very expensive)
• In an emergency, temporarily suppress the signal entirely at the cost of a massive amount of mana and resources.
• Ability to send false/decoy signals from another location.

Egg Hatching

Once the egg has been sitting on a shrine and protected for a certain amount of time without interruption or relocation, the egg may hatch and grant you or your team a Permanent Boon.

Possible Permanent Boons to choose from are as following: (NOT FINAL)

Boon	Duration	Effect
Boon of Essence	Current Cycle	- Grants you and your team +3 Draconic Essence.
Boon of Power	Current Cycle	- Your shrine buffs become permanent with no range limit.
Boon of Reality	Current Cycle	- Grants you one use of the Wish spell. - Allows direct intervention from the Dragon Aspects at their discretion. - One of the Rules of Reality may be altered for the rest of the cycle.
Boon of Forging	Permanent	- Grants you and your team one Tier III or lower item from the Dragon Forge. - Item will also be unlocked in the Spirit Forge.
Boon of Ascension	Permanent	- Allows you to perform a Paragon Ascension on yourself or another player.
Ritual of Summoning	Unknown	- Allows you to begin performing the Ritual of Summoning. - When complete, summons a powerful Ancient Ender Dragon boss battle. - It is not yet known what will happen when this boss is defeated.
Ritual of Ending	Permanent	- Allows you to begin performing the Ritual of Ending. - See more information below.

Ritual of Ending

The Ritual of Ending is often considered the most forbidden decision that anyone can make with the Dragon Egg.

If this ritual is successfully performed over the course of 30 days, the current cycle will become The Final Cycle, thus bringing an end to Dragonstone as we know it.

Here is what will happen if the Ritual of Ending is begun:

• The Dragon Egg enters a panic state, and becomes hostile to everyone.
• The egg's Shield HP is tripled, however it can no longer regenerate or be repaired in any way.
• The suppression field around the egg fails, and the egg continuously broadcasts a loud signal.
• All mobs on the server will attempt to make their way to the egg and attack it.
• Strange things will begin happening to the world as the ritual progresses.

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