Fire Hatchlings
(Formerly "Dragons")
A Young Fire Hatchling's Guide
Playing a fire hatchling is unlike any other character type in crossfire. Fire hatchlings can eat flesh to gain resistances, up to 95%! But for this wonderful ability, they cannot wear armour, or wield weapons. The only types of equipment they can use are rings, amulets, bracers, girdles and cloaks. Fire hatchlings also gain various abilities as they gain levels. And as they gain levels, their armour and AC increases, up to a maximum of 83 armour at level 110. Also, fire hatchlings have "focuses", which affects them greatly. Fire hatchlings are often more challenging to play, but they can be very rewarding.
Eating food to gain resistances:
By eating flesh dropped from monsters, a fire hatchling can increase it's resistances to whatever the monster is resistant to, permanently. This doesn't happen every time, and as your resistance grows higher, you need to find higher level food. At lower levels, zombies will build your cold resistance quickly, and ogres help build your electric resistance. At medium levels, skulls and wyverns are good food. At higher levels, you'll have to find things, but resurrected warriors and evil masters are quite tasty. Explore. Eat everything.
Chart of various tastes:
Delicious
Good chance of gaining resistance. This usually adds 1 to a (couple of) resistance(s)
Very Good
Little chance of gaining resistance. This usually adds 1 to a (couple of) resistance(s)
Good
Very little chance of gaining resistance. This usually adds 1 to a (couple of)
resistance(s)
Boring
Almost no chance of gaining resistance. You are very near to where this flesh
stops helping (Takes a ton to get the resistance up more)
No Taste
No help whatsoever. No chance of resistance gain. Either you are well beyond the
listed resistance or it never gives a bonus to resistances.
Disgusting
Human food. Ick. No chance for gaining resistance.
Ancient Elemental's Residue
Changes your focus only.
Titles:
Unlike all other players, Fire hatchlings cannot set their titles arbitrarily. As your resistances grow, you'll gain the titles of "big, ancient, and Legendary". Also your title will show your highest resistance, as in "Cannibal the Legendary Fire Dragon".
Focuses and abilities:
A fire hatchling's focus is where his experience and resistance is concentrated. Also, depending on your focus, you will gain different abilities as you increase in level. I believe it was 10 levels to get the first benefit then 5 more for the next. Here's a list of the focus benefits:
Fire:
Fire attuned
Fire claws
Dragon's Breath (gives you the spell if you don't have it)
Cold:
Cold attuned
Cold Claws
Large Icestorm (gives you the spell if you don't have it)
Lightning:
Lightning Attuned
Lightning Claws
Ball Lightning (gives you the spell if you don't have it)
X-ray Vision (always on, never have to cast it again)
Poison:
Poison Cloud (gives you the spell if you don't have it)
Poison Claws
Choosing or switching a focus at the proper time is vital since it costs 1 level to switch metabolisms. If you're not careful, you could end up (temporarily) loosing abilities.
To change your focus, go to the fire hatchling guild in Scorn, and buy an ancient elemental's residue of the appropriate type. As an example, eating ancient electric elemental's residue (food+0) (electricity metabolism) will change your focus to lightning.
Equipment:
As a fire hatchling's equipment choice is rather limited, choosing the right equipment is critical. You may find yourself carrying around a number of rings and amulets, and changing those as circumstances change, more so than with other types of characters.
Hints on playing:
Amulet of sustenance will come in very handy. If you are in areas where you are finding very little edible flesh then you will notice your food dropping quickly without one.
I like playing the "Chaos" Dragon as the added benefit of having Fire, Lightning, cold, poison and physical attacks helps greatly against creatures. To become a "Chaos" fire hatchling (my name not the games) you just gain levels as a fire, switch to the cold, gain levels switch to the next and do that with all of the types.
When going against creatures that are not immune to physical attack or are not vulnerable to one of your claw attack types, then use the skill Karate. You will attack quicker and have more damage.
When eating flesh, if it doesn't list a resistance it will have no taste, if it doesn't list food+(some amount) then it is poisonous.
Any god can be used when using the Dragon race. I like Gaea, Ruggeli, and strange but true, good ol Mostrai (Holy word kills titans without destroying their flesh)
Face of death is the best spell to have as it also kills creatures without destroying flesh, unfortunately it is denied by Gaea.
At high resistance levels I have found that the chaos lair, wizards tower (Dragon man Red/White/Blue/Highlord), warrior proving grounds (chaos pit), Butakis prison (underground), Butakis royal church (underground), and The Ice/Electric/Fire Antechambers in the wyvern's nest are the best places for food.
X-ray vision is only good for 2-3 spaces, not the entire map. So it lets you see through a wall you are next to, but not much farther than that.
You can set autopickup to only get corpses. Try 'search-items <monster your killing>' Keep in mind though this will slow you down. For further instructions, type in search-items without any arguments.
Peace is a great spell for fire hatchlings because you can get critters to stop attacking, and then kill them, so that they leaves all the yummies without burning/freezing/electrocuting it.
Fire hatchlings (and fireborn, but that's a different guide) make good monks.
Attack and Damage values increase with character Level. Resistance is increased by consuming monster parts.
Summary provided by:
Phillip Stolarczyk
http://theperlguru.com/crossfire/DragonGuide.txt
And by "Zalasta" at the Crossfire Web
Board
