Editing v0.34:Dragon

{{quality|Masterwork|00:05, 7 March 2013 (UTC)}}
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'''Dragons''' are gigantic fire-breathing, green reptilian [[megabeast]]s, eventually becoming the [[List_of_creatures_by_adult_size#end_of_list|largest land creatures]] 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 will however [[drown]] in it). They breathe out a jet of extremely hot ({{ct|50000}} hot, over four times the heat of [[magma]]) "[[dragonfire]]" which can injure things that are immune to normal fire, such as the [[Bronze colossus]] (dragonfire is, however, a blockable attack if a creature is using a shield). Only Dragons and [[Cave dragon|Cave Dragons]] are naturally immune to dragonfire. They are also ''not'' [[Trapavoid|trapavoid]].

Dragons are covetous and seek to steal items from your fortresses to bring them back to their lairs. Dragons generally succeed in doing so on worldgen, but most of the time when they attack a player fortress they get caged, killed or succeed in burning the whole fortress down.

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 long distance (20+ tiles) and they breathe fire often.

Some dwarves [[preference|admire]] dragons for their ''terrible majesty''.

==Dragon Size==

Dragons slowly grow to become one of the largest creatures in the game, finally reaching their adult size of 25,000,000 cm<sup>3</sup> 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 cm<sup>3</sup> 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 23 years, a dragon is the size of a [[giant cheetah]].
*At 100 years, a dragon is the size of a [[draltha]].
*At 200 years, a dragon is the size of an [[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. (The [[giant sperm whale]] is the largest creature found anywhere)

==Defense Strategies==

[[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 melted 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 [[dragonfire]]-safe materials will melt and deactivate them. Also, Dragons make good companions if you are able to reanimate them as a [[Necromancer]]

==Domestication==
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 civilization level and depends partly on the animals available for contact in a given civilization site.  Such a rare megabeast as a dragon is unlikely to have had any civilized 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]]. While a tamed dragon is an immensely destructive tool at your disposal, it is also very eager to use dragonfire against your enemies, which can be ''exceedingly'' [[fun]] if it happens in your booze stockpile or meeting room.

Dragons do not have a {{token|CHILD|c}} tag, and therefore their eggs do not hatch in fortress mode.

==Irregularities, Bugs, and Future Plans==
Dragons have been observed to occasionally wear some armor (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.

Toady has mentioned that he plans to eventually extend the random creature generator of the game to create different species and varieties of dragon within certain constraints, calling it "Half-Random", with ideas for variants including just about anything dragons have been given in literature, such as acidic blood, while maintaining a basic draconic structure.<sup>([http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.msg1012311#msg1012311])</sup>

One of the [[Main:Consolidated_development#Power_Goals|old power goals]] referenced stealing dragon eggs as part of an adventure mode quest. 
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