flight rising

A bunch of people have been talking about Flight Rising lately, so I decided to try it out. A few thoughts:

Pros of Flight Rising:

• Colorful! Even your starting dragon can be decked out in jade and denim (like mine). The auction house is a riot of color; every pup is bold and vibrant. It’s not like Wolvden, where you breed a 0m gray darker pup and go “uhh what am I supposed to do with this?”
• Low maintenance: Doing your daily gathering turns to collect food is 10 clicks, and then 1 click to feed everyone, and then you’re done. Food doesn’t rot, so you can stockpile it, and anyway dragons won’t run from hunger.
• Lots of activities: If you want to actively play, there’s lots to do—there’s flash games (which are fun and profitable, unlike fishing) and coliseum battling.

Sidegrade: Mortality (or lack thereof)

• Wolves have a limited lifespan; they grow old and die. Dragons do not. There are pros and cons both ways. It’s sad when a beloved wolf dies. It also means limited time for stat-building. Wolves burn bright; every day must count. Dragons can afford to be more chill.
• But wolf mortality allows me to sate my desire for novelty without needing a constantly expanding den. (I haven’t bought den slots in Wolvden since April 2021.) Also, it saves me a ton on custom decor. Sometimes gear gets passed down from parent to pup; sometimes it gets swapped around. Either way, I get a lot more effective use out of each piece of decor than if it stayed on one wolf forever.

Pros of Wolvden:

• More intelligible visual design: In Flight Rising, many dragons are so colorful/gaudy/ornate that it’s hard to tell what is even happening. I’ve looked at a dragon for a full minute trying to figure out where their head is. Even if I can figure it out, it’s often too busy for my taste. Wolvden doesn’t do this.
• Customization: Wolvden’s marking system is robust, with 10 markings + layers + opacity changes. There are lots of design options, and many are readily accessible through cheap grove items. Flight Rising’s customization feels a lot more basic because the genes are all presets—you can’t, say, reduce the opacity of wing patterns, or add a bit of subtle red to the underbelly.
• Stat training: Building up stats in Wolvden is really satisfying. There’s lots of room for individual development and achievement. In Flight Rising, your dragon gets the same stat points per level as any other dragon, and you follow a build guide to get a cookie-cutter product. There will never be a dragon Elismir or Samanta; it’s just not possible.
• Stat inheritance: Likewise, in Wolvden, it’s very satisfying to see this generation’s hard work pay off in the next generation. (The dream is for every generation to be stronger than the one before. Due to diminishing stat returns, that’s not always going to be the case, but it’s still heartwarming to get a chunky hunter pup and know the parent’s hard work made it possible.) Flight Rising has no stat inheritance at all. Breeding is purely cosmetic.

For these reasons, I don’t think Flight Rising is ever going to capture my interest as deeply as Wolvden. But it’s a nice casual side gig, and I immediately ran to the auction house and bought a bunch of cute pups to fill up my den.