ARDOR NATION @ardornation - Tumblr Blog

a pearlcatcher, tired of being the second best child, slips out in the dead of night and silently strikes down other pearlcatchers in their sleep. shattering their pearls and stealing a single shard from each before smashing their own on the ground. they shove the shards into each other and glue them like pieces from puzzles that were never made to fit and their hands start to shake as memories cloud their vision and fury and pain ring in their ears. but as the sun rises their mangled pearl is complete and they stumble up to lightweavers home unsure who is commanding their body and their mind is slipping but they need to see her. to show her. lightweaver stops them before they reach the beacon. the pearlcatcher smiles reaching out towards their deity. shell be so proud. shell be so proud. shell be- the mantra continues to echo in the pearlcatchers mind as lightweavers magic burns them to dust.

bluebrine

new breed- actual water dragons! :D

so i kinda went through every new breed suggestion i could find, but none were quite to my liking… so i made my own! these guys are from the water flight, and i tried to make them as aquatic as i could considering apparel restrictions. ive taken to calling them gulpers for now C:

gulpers are from the murky waters on the border between the tangled wood and the sea of a thousand currents. the poor water visibility there makes sight hunting difficult, and so they use their barbs to sense vibrations in the water instead. they are ambush predators, waiting hidden in the silt with only their feelers exposed for prey to pass by.

gulpers arent picky eaters either! they’ll try to eat anything they can fit in their mouths. the expandable pouch on their throats allows them to swallow a large amount of water- this can be used to make a vacuum that draws in food. this pouch can also be used to hold excess water which can be discharged with great pressure as a defense mechanism.

behaviorally, gulpers are patient dragons whose hunting tactics often cause other breeds to see them as lazy gluttons. in reality, while gulpers can sit around all day waiting for food to swim into their mouths, they are capable of being surprisingly agile if need arises. they strike with extreme speed and precision, and will defend their territory fiercely, though they would much rather avoid conflict if possible.

anyway, thats my take on a possible water breed for now! :D there are lots of good ideas for aquatic dragons (whales, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, sea turtles… etc) and i hope to draw more varieties later. i just hope fr does introduce some kind of aquatic species in the future! ovo

diveremblem-deactivated20191105

Like okay

yeah

Water Flight has all this knowledge and we keep it for ourselves, you got me, it’s a dick move. The whole “can’t mess with destiny” seer trope is tried and true and it works in this setting, but I mean chances are you can find some water clans out there (like mine) who eschew secrecy and instead seek to improve the life of those their visions show them

But

ARE WE NOT GONNA TALK ABOUT THE MASSIVE UNDEAD DRAGONS THE LIGHTWEAVER’S HUBRIS CREATED??

HOW ABOUT THE RUINED CITY FOREVER COVERED IN NIGHT??

NO?

sweet-puff-deactivated20170804

What undead dragons??? What city covered in night??? QUIT SPREADING YOUR LIES.

diveremblem-deactivated20191105

WAKE UP SHEEPLE

YOU’VE ALL BEEN BLINDED BY THE GLITTER

sweet-puff-deactivated20170804

cungadero

bonding with familiars like

dramarising

there seems to have been a miscommunication

Undel: Please consider making your “blood” black or green to help further indicate a decaying creature

Flight Rising Community: THE COLOR RED IS BANNED FOREVER, BANNED, WE CAN’T USE A SINGLE BLOOD DROPLET OR WE WILL BE FORCIBLY EJECTED FROM THE SITE, PLAGUE’S NEW COLORS ARE PINK AND PURPLE, OH WOE WOE WOE IS ME

rage-puff

Yes. But. Literally. This is a problem.

This is happening literally right now.

“or change them to the pink used in the veins”

This is what is happening RIGHT. NOW. EVERYONE.

Look. I am not going to advocate gore. I am not going to advocate that ignoring people who have problems/phobias/anything with ANY element of the site, but THIS. IS. A. PROBLEM.

Why?

Accent users are being denied because of information and rules THAT ARE NOT PUBLIC TO THE SITE.

PLEASE LET ME REPEAT THAT NICE AND LOUD FOR THOSE OF YOU IN THE BACK.

PEOPLE. ARE BEING HELD. TO RULES AND GUIDELINES. THAT ARE NOT PUBLIC.

This is a pet site. I’m not going to equate this thing to a real-world dictatorship or some other obscene horror, but the fact remains that the TOS you may now have agreed to may have a SEPARATE set of rules on which you can be judged.

You may have your items seized. Including retired items. You may have a skin or accent taken away from you with LITTLE or NO compensation from the staff, if that skin or accent you bought- KNOWINGLY OR NOT- was stolen/traced/copywrited. YOU, THE BUYER, WILL NOT GET EVEN AN APOLOGY, OR COMPENSATION. You, as an accent maker, may potentially use real money to buy gems on the site to submit an accent that will be rejected based on a set of rules you were UNAWARE you were supposed to work from. Period. Full stop.

This is not ‘omg we can’t have gore’ this is not ‘but this is a T rated site!!!’ this is not ‘think of the children!’

This is. The public. Being unaware. Of RULES.

THEY HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE WITH THE NAMING SCANDAL AND RELATED BANS. THIS IS NOT OK. THEY WILL CONTINUE TO DO THIS UNLESS WE ALL SPEAK OUT TOGETHER ABOUT HAVING CLEAR, PUBLIC, AVAILABLE RULES AND GUIDELINES. NOT ‘WE WILL UPDATE THIS LATER’. THAT IS NOT HOW A MONEY-RECEIVING-ENTITY SHOULD OPERATE. REGARDLESS IF IT’S YOUR MONEY OR NOT.

This has gone from 0-60 REALLY fast.

This is a problem. DO NOT IGNORE THIS.

lo-fr

Ignoring the blood/gore things for now I have to agree that the way staff handles things sometimes is not really okay. As a person who has had four user made accents pulled (for various reasons), one of which was promised to be grandfathered in and THEN later removed, and only being compensated for two of the four (one of which wasn’t the right price but whatever), it’s extremely frustrating and put me off of purchasing accents for quite a while. While I’m back to it now, I’m still extremely wary because I do spend real money on this game sometimes and it’s rather aggravating to have that just disappear-

pchk4-rising

consider: sighthound mirrors

misplacedflight

Artifracture is 100% more hilarious if you imagine the Earthshaker is the one praising you and trying to be the ‘cool dad’. “So what’s hip and happening with you kids?”

wild-rising

and on the subject of nests/eggs

I have two headcanons for eggs.

1. I don’t think eggs come out like we see in the site art. I think they come out more like normal bird eggs with each species having eggs relative to their size. These are uncharged dragon eggs and while fertilized by the male dragon are dormant and will not hatch. If an uncharged egg is left uncharged for too long it will rot, killing the hatchling inside.

To prevent this rot eggs must be placed in the clan’s nesting grounds. These are special places in the clan where sprites of that Flight gather in groups and are essentially the heart of the clan. These areas become highly charged by the element of the sprites there and they might even attract other elemental creatures like bears or elementals. Its in these highly elemental charged areas do the normal looking eggs quickly change shape and size and color to reflect their element that we’re familiar with seeing.

Its in this state that hatchlings, which previously had no elemental alignment, are charged with the element of their nest and clan and why hatchlings come out as their clan’s element and not one of their parents’ or some odd combination of the two.

2. A male and female dragon get together and instead of like… traditional mating they more like bond magically. I’m kinda bringing up a Mass Effect Asari element here if anyone’s familiar with that. Basically all Asari are ladies/single gender and reproduce without the need of semen and just kinda mutate their egg themselves using genetic coding from their partner (I think that’s how it goes? Been a while since I read up on my ME lore so excuse me if I’m a bit off track there). Female dragons do that in this situation.

The ‘egg’ that comes out is less egg and more like a collection of magical energy (and it doesn’t come out of the cloaca. Look it up kids) and is again placed in the nesting grounds. Nesting grounds are as in the first headcanon. Once deposited in the nests a shell forms around the energy into what we know via site art.

To have eggs in this way dragons don’t even have to like each other or really even be male or female (its a bit more difficult if they’re the same gender). They just have to have strong feelings about each other in some way.

I’m actually really fond of both headcanons and would explain some things. I also think that only dragons of the original region would have actual hard eggs while dragons who originally come from different Flights would do the energy thing. That or dragons with vastly different size differences could use the energy egg thing and those of similar sizes could have eggs (I like both for different reasons lols). So a PC and imp could technically have normal looking eggs the good old fashion way but usually go the energy route because imps are so much bigger than PCs. Meanwhile an imp and a nocturne could only do the energy way because 1. size difference, and 2. one is a Light breed, the other a Shadow breed. Same for other breeds.

I think that made sense yes?

void-tech

Selling/auctioning these gen2 Peregrine dragons! Check out this thread if interested.

osiemfr

Okay, putting it in fresh post for easier editing.

How to do accents. First what is important is .psd

(I’m only using photoshop, I can’t really help much with other programs)

what’s important in .psd is “accent parts” folder

in accent parts folder you should have base layer, here named “accent goes here” and shadow and lines layers clipped to base layer.

(I didn’t downloaded .psds from the site in ages, so I don’t remember if all of them are organized the same way, should be similar. If not you can make new empty layer that will work as your accent base and clip copy of shadow and lineart layers to it)

Shadow and lineart layer should not be edited, you can change their color, but that’s all!

What is important to you is “accent goes here” layer (which I will call accent base, or just base layer). Here is what happen when you draw on base layer:

shadows and linearts are clipped to the base so they will be there whatever you draw.

Now here goes your first trick. How to create mask to make your accent always stay within base

(gif starts with “hold ctrl, click on base layer”)

—-

So alternative way of adding masks

right click* on the dragon base layer then “select layer transparency“ in CS2, ”select pixels” in CS6

right click* on lineart layer “add transparency mask”

click on the folder with accent parts

now go to menu layer>layer mask>reveal selection

*make sure you are right clicking on the little layer thumbnail image

—

Now to the accents making part.

All you have to do is draw on the base layer.

here is simple tattoo style accent, one gray layer:

done

here is another tattoo style accent, this time with color:

it was done on multiple layers, later flattened together to create accent base layer and then had shadow and lineart clipped to it

now for other type of accent, that mimic accesories:

basically it’s image with it’s own lineart, own shadows and lights, that have orginal shadow and lineart on top of it.

here how these accents look finished.

Basically all you have to remember is for these two layers

to be there on top of your accent image and for nothing to stick outside off the base.

One more example of how it look on actual accent and not these small quick examples above

Skins work the same as accents, but they just cover more area.

And I guess that’s all that really is to it. The rest depends from your idea and art skills ^^

I hope that make sense, feel free to ask if something need clarification ^^

wild-rising

For people who were interested in my sky whale headcanon. These are images I was going for. Like just a massive flying creature bigger than anything we can comprehend. It ‘reads’ ‘whale’ for the most part but there’s something… ‘monster’ about it. Extra fins, air bladders and dangly tentacle bits about the mouth like villi. So at a glance you know its a whale but it… isn’t? (kinda like how all of the coli familiars read as something we understand but they’ve been changed)

They mainly hang out above the lower cloud cover and even up HIIIIIIIGH in the stratosphere where most dragons can’t go without some help because of oxygen levels. Sky whales? Noooo problem. Just like sea whales they can hold their breath at super high altitudes until they come back lower to higher oxygen levels. They breach downwards into lower parts of the atmosphere so often times you see sky whales upside down. You can see them breaching upwards out of the clouds but as most dragons have no need (or really ability) to fly that high its a much rarer sight.

Also like sea whales they mainly eat small creatures like insects but won’t say no if a bird (or heaven forbid a small dragon) flies into their mouth. They follow locust and grasshopper patterns. Some pods will even follow huge swarms of small birds. They are also sometimes known to skim the top of rivers, lakes, forests and the ocean for ‘krill’ to eat. As they mainly live in and around the Windswept Plateau their main diet consists of Wind bound insects and birds. HOWEVER a great way to brefriend a sky whale is to bring insects from other Flight territories in HUGE quantities and release them near the whale. The whale will gobble that shit RIGHT UP.

And like I said before, sky whales mainly hang out in and around the skies of the Plateau but have been seen at the edges of the Wastes, Wasteland, and Sea. They also usually fly over the Icefields on their way out to sea to mate and have their young before returning to the Plateau.

itsalwayssunnyineverbloom

What is this “Healbot” build?

Hi everyone!

Decided to make a public post since reblogs can only reach so many.

Healbot is a healing build I came up with that is strictly meant for level 25 dragons farming the end zones. The idea is to do just enough in a single heal to keep you going (about half of a level 25′s base health, which is slightly more HP than the damage that most melee mobs do in the Workshop), and allocate as much of the rest of your stats to QCK so that you are constantly able to do stuff.

(image courtesy of Oriel)

Lots of small little heals vs praying for a chance to use one big heal before the enemy kills you.

oriel-fr Made a wonderful guide over on the forums that explains in detail! According to them, you can very definitely level your healer with this build while in higher zones and it is still quite effective. I have only one healer so I can’t tell you what ratios to put your stats at while leveling, like the Culex guides can, but as long as your end goal is the above stats, it doesn’t really matter!

So now you know what Healbot is. Happy farming! :)

wild-rising

thinking about nests

and how downright inhospitable some of them would be for dragon parents that aren’t their children’s element.

Like Fire is literally a pool of lava. Like a fucking POOL OF LAVA. Ice and Water dragons would be especially affected by how utterly unbearable that would be to get close to their eggs. So dragons would probably invent a plate/pad so that non Fire/coatl dragons could even get near the damn things. And its basically just a metal and/or stone plate infused with ice and wind magic to keep it cool. It basically acts the opposite of a heat rock you’d use in a lizard terrarium. It keeps a dragon cool in someplace very hot.

Most Fire clans would have at least one cooling plate in their nesting grounds for non Fire dragons. Larger/older clans with more nesting pools would have more (also five nests is fine for in game but I think very large clans could have a dozen nests, especially if they’re part of a city or something).