If this is your first time creating a dragon design, you might find yourself scratching your head at all the weird traits and genes and mutations and so on. It’s a lot of stuff, and kind of intimidating! This page should guide you through the process of creating your dragon in a quick and simple way.
Step One: Creating the Body
Even though your dragon is rolled with certain physical traits, you’re allowed to swap them out for base element traits! If your dragon is a Storm/Jungle dragon that was tragically born wingless, you may switch it to either Leather Wings (base physical trait of Storm) or Insect Wings (base physical trait of Jungle). You can even switch a Storm trait (such as Leather Wings) to a Jungle trait (Insect Wings). You can do this as many times as you like, so if your Jungle/Storm egg is 100% batty, you can switch it to 100% fairy dragon. This is part of the recessive trait system and you do not need to note when you do it, ask for permission, or use any kind of items to do it. The physical traits that you make recessive will not pass on to offspring.
You can see the base traits of an element on their elemental page (use the main menu to navigate them). Water has two base leg traits to pick from so that your dragon will never end up stranded in the middle of a landmass with no means to walk.
What Colors do I Use?
For the main color of the dragon, you must use the colors listed on an elemental page. Fire dragons are generally red, metal dragons are generally silver, and so on. For crossbreeds, you can mix and match, but not blend. A Fire/Dark dragon can have black scales as its base, but have all of the markings on top look red! Experiment to see which color combinations you like best.
Some markings require certain colors. Koi can only use colors that appear on koi fish, for example. Read individual marking guides to find out if one of your markings fits this description.
For stuff like wing leather, horns, etc., you may use any natural element color or any color that appears on the dragon. You can extend markings to them or make them exclusive to the wings. You may color the base of the wings a solid color or apply a gradient between two colors. Dorsal and ventral wings may be different colors. Feathered wings and raptor tails may either use the normal gradient across the whole wing or use different solid colors for each layer of feathers (black primaries, white secondaries, etc. within color rules) for up to two different-colored layers. The top and bottom of wings can have different colors. You can find out more on coloring traits and modifiers here.
Picking Your Markings and Modifiers
Now that you know how to color, let’s learn how to pick out which markings you want! If you don’t like a display or modifier trait, you can move it to the ‘recessive’ line of your written import form and simply make it invisible. These markings might still pass to offspring even though they don’t show, but they are slightly rarer because they are recessive.
Elemental magic buffs also will not apply to them, so think carefully if you want to remove a marking that a dragon’s eggs might appreciate it. Or just toss it out. Especially if it’s Pharaoh, that color scheme, yikes. Markings just don’t work out sometimes, so don’t let them hold you back from creating a cool design!
Once you’re done with all of that, sidle on over to the character submission section. Follow the guidelines there to submit your dragon. Unless your dragon has the Independent trait, it will need to be submitted with a Rider. If you have any questions during the design process, feel free to submit your WIPs either on the submission page or on the Discord Design Help channel.