Editing v0.34:Dragon

{{quality|Exceptional|11:47, 2 October 2010 (UTC)}}

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|meat=139

|fat=65

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|brain=5

'''Dragons''' are gigantic fire-breathing [[:Megabeast|Megabeasts]], eventually becoming one of the largest beings in the world.

While based on the occidental dragon model, dragons do not fly nor have wings. They are immune to fire and magma (and are not harmed by being immersed in it). They breathe out a jet of "dragonfire" which can injure things that are immune to normal fire, such as the [[Bronze colossus]] (dragonfire is, however, a blockable attack if its victim is using a shield). Only Dragons and [[Cave dragon|Cave Dragons]] are naturally immune to dragonfire. They are also ''not'' trapavoid.

Dragons are the glass cannons of the megabeasts. They aren't especially durable for a megabeast and can be slain quite easily with traps or skilled soldiers, however their dragonfire will melt every other non-shield-using creature in the game (except for [[sponge]]s), they breathe fire over a large distance and they breath fire often.

Dragons can grow to be the largest creatures in the game, eventually reaching their adult size of 25,000,000 cm³ after 1000 years.  As a hatchling, dragons are quite tiny, at exactly 1/10th an adult dwarf's size, but they grow very rapidly, at roughly 25,000 cm³ per year. Dragons reach dwarf size shortly after its second birthday, are more than double a dwarf at about year 5, and add another dwarf in size roughly every two years after that.   

*At 80 years, a dragon is the size of an adolescent [[Roc]].

*At 200 years, a dragon is the size of an adult [[elephant]].

*At 320 years, a dragon is the size of a [[Hydra]].

*At 800 years, a dragon is the size of a [[Bronze colossus]] or an adult [[Roc]].

*Thereafter, a dragon is the largest creature found on land. It should be noted that the [[Giant sperm whale]] is the largest creature found anywhere.

Dragonfire can be blocked if the victim is using a shield, and it often will be.  Dragons are also massively powerful in melee combat, so they can be hard to take down without a good military.  Possibly the best defense is to use piercing weapons like crossbows and especially spears and hope you get lucky and hit a vital organ which can bring it down immediately. An alternative is building one or multiple cage traps, possibly beforehand, which will probably cage the dragon making it harmless. You should know that most cages and mechanisms will be melt or destroyed by dragonfire, so either make sure both cages (or weapons, or supports) and mechanisms are impervious to dragonfire , or more simply ensure that the dragon has no reason to breathe fire by removing animals and dwarves from the trapped area.  While they won't fire on buildings normally, a stray blast (at your outdoor livestock or bait animals, say) that catches any traps, doors, bridges not made of [[fire-safe|dragonfire-safe]] materials will melt and deactivate them.

Dragons can be captured in cage traps and tamed if you're lucky enough to catch one.  Currently, knowledge of animal behaviour is based on the civilisation level and depends partly on the animals available for contact in a given civilisation site.  Such a rare megabeast as a dragon is unlikely to have had any civilised contact aside from adventurers attempting to slay them and other violent contact; as such, your fort will have to build the knowledge base from the ground up, making dragon-taming a highly difficult task.  Bear in mind that even with a skilled [[animal trainer]] at hand, your first attempts to control such a powerful and elusive beast may result in [[Fun|half your fortress burning in dragonfire]].

If you can manage to endure its long-untamed wrath, you'll have a massively valuable pet that can lay [[egg]]s.   Dragons can also be trained as war or hunting animals at an [[Activity_zone#Animal_Training|animal training zone]]. You may have to watch out, though, as even a relatively tame dragon can seriously damage a fortress with one blast of ill-timed dragonfire.  See [[fire]] for details.

Dragons do not have a [CHILD] tag, and therefore their eggs do not hatch in fortress mode.

Dragons have been observed to occasionally wear some armour (breastplates, greaves, leggings and boots). This armor is specified as "Large [metal][armor type]" and gives the dragon the same protection as any other species might get from it.

One of the [[Consolidated Development: Arcs, core-items, bloats, Reqs and Powergoals#Power Goals|old power goals]] referenced stealing dragon eggs as part of an adventure mode quest.