I remember when the Red Dragon was introduced in Rise of Empires back in 2020 and everybody was like “What the heck is this thing?”. There was not so much use for it back then, the only good thing was that it increased the building speed in the city.
But things have changed since then, and as the game expanded, the Red Dragon has become an essential part of every player’s town as it can help us become powerful faster in Rise of Castles. It can be used in combat and resource productivity. Keep reading to learn about the benefits of upgrading your Red Dragon in Rise of Castles: Ice and Fire!
The Red Dragon’s story
Rise Castles’ new storyline is quite epic and spans multiple chapters, where you are guided by a simple yet profound tutorial in the first few chapters. The Red Dragon is introduced in Chapter One: Rags to Riches, where an empty, ruined Altar appears outside of your small, undeveloped town.
Chapter One: Rags to Riches
The Red Dragon’s soul appears in a pillar of light and transforms into a giant red dragon egg on top of the Altar. You are then tasked with taking care of the egg until it hatches.
To do this, you need to gather resources and build up your town so that it can support the Dragon. By completing a series of tasks, the Power of Faith, a yellow medallion that appears at the top of your screen, gets periodically refilled.
Chapter Two: Dragon Rises
Once you upgrade the castle to level 2, the medallion is automatically fully replenished and you are guided to tap it, and the Red Dragon hatches from the egg. It is a beautiful cutscene, and one of the most memorable moments in Rise of Castles. But the Red Dragon is just a baby at this point, and you need to help it grow stronger by feeding it food and sending it on quests.
Chapter Three: Princess and the Dragon
The Red Dragon grows quickly as you progress, and in Chapter Three: Princess and the Dragon, after refilling the Power of Faith medallion once more, the baby dragon transforms into a Young Dragon, which now has Talents.
These Talents are random abilities that can be unlocked when the Young Dragon levels up, and each one offers a different benefit to your city. The talents can be research and building speed boosts or increased gathering and crop production.
The Altar building
The Altar building is where you can hatch and level up your Red Dragon. The building itself cannot be upgraded and by tapping it you will see three icons: Details, where you can see a short description of the structure, Dragon, and Explore.
The Dragon icon is where you will go to see your Red Dragon’s level, Background Story, Advancement Preview, Power of the Dragon, Skills, and dragon Combat Talents. The Explore icon leads to a page full of quests. By sending the dragon on these quests you can level up your Red Dragon and help it learn new skills.
What is the Red Dragon good for anyway?
The Red Dragon is a powerful creature that can help you by speeding up resource gathering or by decreasing the building construction time. A second major use of the Red Dragon is in battle. It can now be used in both PvP and PvE battles, and it can make a big difference in the outcome, especially if you are struggling to level up your heroes.
The Red Dragon’s evolution
As I mentioned before, the Red Dragon has now multiple uses. The more you level up your Red Dragon, the more useful it becomes and its evolution is spread out over 3 stages. These stages are:
Baby Red Dragon
The Baby Red Dragon is the weakest form of the dragon, and it has no use in combat or production boost. Luckily it will only be in this stage for a short while as in Chapter 3 when you upgrade your Castle to level 3, the Baby Dragon transforms into a Young Dragon.
Young Red Dragon
The Young Red Dragon is where the dragon starts to become useful. It can now be used to speed up construction, help with resource gathering, and has a new ability, the Power of the Dragon. The only way to level up the dragon at this stage is by feeding him chunks of meat from defeating Marauders on your map outside the Castle and hunting deer inside the Castle.
By feeding the Young Red Dragon, you will gradually fill up the Dragon’s Power. Once it’s full you can tap it and activate it for 45 minutes.
During this time, the moving speed of your workers is increased by 100% and the construction of your buildings can be instantly finished when the remaining time is less than 40 seconds. Once you advance the Power of the Dragon to level 20, the Young Dragon can be transformed into an Adult Red Dragon.
Adult Red Dragon
The Adult Red Dragon is currently the most powerful form of the Red Dragon. It can now be used to not only speed up construction and resource gathering more efficiently but also to be sent in combats with your legions.
Besides the Power of the Dragon’s Talents page, five new sections are now unlocked: Combat Talents, Skills, Levels, Tiers, and the Duplicated Dragon. There is also a new way at this stage to level up your dragon, the Dragon Exploration. More info about all these new features can be found below.
How to level up the Red Dragon
Currently, there are two main ways to level up the Red Dragon:
- By upgrading the Power of the Dragon’s level, which can be upgraded up to level 100
- By using Dragon EXP items from special quests to increase the dragon’s level up to level 60
Both need to be upgraded in order to advance the dragon to the latest stage (not yet available). Additionally, you should also increase its Combat Talents and Skill to further enhance its strength in battle (more info on this below).
Power of the Dragon
The Power of the Dragon is basically a tree of talents that can permanently increase your town’s gathering and building construction speed. The more you upgrade the Power of the Dragon, the more bonuses you’ll get.
How to upgrade the Power of the Dragon
You can upgrade the Power of the Dragon by two methods:
- By feeding the dragon with chunks of meat from defeating Marauders outside of your Castle, or by hunting deer inside your town’s area.
- By sending the dragon on “Exploration” quests. These are special missions that the dragon can go on solo and will provide a good amount of EXP, as well as resource rewards, upon completion.
1. Feeding the Red Dragon
To feed the Red Dragon, you need to tap the Altar building, then the Dragon button, and after this the Power of the Dragon button, visible on the bottom-left side of your screen.
The Dragon Talent page will appear and you will see two buttons at the bottom, one with small chunks of meat and a second one with bigger chunks. If you don’t have any of these it will say “Obtain”, otherwise it will say “Use”.
By tapping the “Obtain” button for the small chunks (the one on the left), it will automatically select an existent deer in your town. If you already have some pieces, you can tap the “Use” button and it will feed the dragon. The same thing goes for the big chunks, but sometimes it might send you to hunt deer instead of hunting Marauders.
How to get small chunks of meat
The first way to feed the Red Dragon is by hunting deer. To do that you can tap the deer visible around your town and hit “Hunt”. A few seconds later, a few workers hunt the deer and bring the meat to the Altar. The entire process takes less than a minute but you can increase the speed of your workers while the Power of the Dragon is active.
How to get big chunks of meat
To get big chunks of meat, you must defeat Marauders all over the map near your Castle. You should look for Iron Swordsman, Desert Snake, Bloodthirsty Rebel, and Bandits all below level 15. They drop occasionally small and big chunks of meat. Although the drop change is not always guaranteed, you can increase your chance by equipping your legion with purple, orange, or gold Scavenger equipment items.
2. Exploration quests
The Exploration quests can be found by tapping the Altar building and after that the “Explore” button. There you will see a list of quests, each with its own name, success rate percentage, and rewards. The stronger your dragon is, the higher the success rate it will have in completing the quest.
Once the success rate is 100%, you can the the “Explore” button on that quest and it will instantly complete, giving you the rewards. Is a great, quick way to get more resources in Rise of Castles.
The higher the difficulty of the quest, the higher the rewards will be. Sometimes these include resources, gold, and even Wisdom Medals and Recruitment Tickets. But the most important ones for your dragon are the “EXP for Power of the Dragon” items, which will increase the “Power of the Dragon” experience bar and are automatically consumed upon receiving them.
The Dragon’s Levels
Unlike the second stage of the dragon, the Young Dragon, where you only have the Power of the Dragon to upgrade, now in the third stage, the Adult Dragon has also levels. These levels can be increased with Dragon EXP items received from doing missions from the White Crow building and by defeating Savage Giants.
You can also get Dragon EXP items from certain events in the Benefits Center, such as the Dragon Awakening Spell. However, these events have a limited time and you’ll need to be quick if you want to get your hands on them!
Once you get a Dragon EXP item, a small EXP icon will appear above the dragon’s Altar. If you tap on it, it will take you to the Dragon’s level page where you can use this item to increase its current level experience bar. The Adult Dragon can be upgraded up to level 60.
The Red Dragon’s Combat Abilities
The Red Dragon’s combat abilities are a great addition to your army. The more you upgrade these abilities, the more powerful your dragon will become on the battlefield with better combat buff effects. These combat abilities are split into two different types: Combat Talents and Skill.
The Dragon’s Skill
This represents the actual damage of the Red Dragon in combat. This Skill has multiple levels and the more you advance this skill, the higher its damage in combats will be. For instance, with a level 2 Skill, the dragon spits deadly fire to engulf all enemy squads and deal 95% damage in rounds 2,4,6, and 8.
How to upgrade the Dragon’s Skill
To upgrade the Dragon’s Skill you will need Words of Truth items. These items can be obtained from missions in the White Crow building.
Combat Talents
These Combat Tallents affect your troop’s Resistance, Might, and damage in combat while the Dragon is present in your legion.
As an example, the Roar 1 talent requires the Dragon to advance to tier 3 of 1-star, and once unlocked, it will increase your legion’s front row Tactical Might by 4% while the Dragon is present/checked in your legion. The more you upgrade the Dragon’s Tier the more Combat talents can unlock at certain stages.
The Dragon’s Tiers and Stars
The Dragon’s Combat Tallents are represented by tiers and stars leveling system, where each tier has 3 stars, and each star’s progress is divided into 10 segments. Only to pass the first segment out of ten available, you’ll need 110 Blaze Stones.
This makes (unless the required amount of Blaze Stones changes while progressing) a total of 1100 Blaze Stones to push the Dragon to T0 – 1 Star. So yeah, you’ll need a considerable amount of Blaze Stones to fully upgrade the Dragon’s Combat Talents.
How to upgrade Combat Talents
To upgrade the Combat Tallents or the Dragon’s Tier, you need Blaze Stones. Currently, the only way to get Blaze Stones is from the new event, the Battlefield of Honor.
You will get Blaze Stone as an individual reward for having at least a 10,000 score damage, and you will also get an Alliance reward, whether your Alliance wins or loses the event.
The Duplicated Dragon
The Duplicated Dragon is a premium clone of the Red Dragon. You can purchase it for 1 day (around $5.49), 5 days (around $21.99), or 30 days for about $109.99. To buy the Duplicated Dragon, tap the Altar building, and after that, the Dragon head button.
Next, tap the Summon Duplicated Dragon icon visible on the top-right side of your screen. Finally, tap the “Purchase the duplicated dragon” button at the bottom of your screen and choose your period.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I use the EXP for Power of the Dragon items?
You cannot use the EXP for Power of the Dragon items, and you cannot find them in your bag either, because they are instantly used upon receiving them.
Why I did not receive any big chunks of meat after defeating multiple Marauders?
You did not receive any big chunks of meat because the drop chance is not guaranteed. You can increase your chances by equipping your legion with some purple, orange, or gold equipment pieces.
Can I use the Red Dragon to attack someone else's Castle?
No, you cannot use the Red Dragon to attack someone else's Castle but you can include it in your legions, which will increase your troop's Might, Resistance, and troop size.
