Dragon Chests

This article is **incomplete**. Please help to improve it, and then remove this notice. Missing: for Pink Dragon Chests - picture of the level 4 HUGE Nest Vault is needed in the Chest Visuals table, and its cost is needed in the Pink Chests section.

## Summary

**Dragon Chests** can be harvested or spawned from many objects present in the Dragon world. They can also be found under Evil Fog or offered as a reward for certain Levels. In Camp, they are locked and need to be opened with Dragon Gems.

Depending on the object they were harvested from, their appearance and contents change. They follow the following Merge Chain:

1. Dragon Egg Chest (contains 1-2 Eggs)
2. Radiant Egg Chest (contains 4 Eggs)
3. Dragon Nest Vault (contains 1 Nest)
4. HUGE Nest Vault (contains 3 Nests)

Super Nest Vault and Mega Nest Vault can also be obtained but cannot be merged.

## Merging Dragon Chests

### Rarity

The rarity of Chests increases when merging Egg Chests and when merging Nest Vaults.

So merging three uncommon Dragon Egg Chests will produce a rare Radiant Egg Chest, merging three rare Radiant Egg Chests will produce a rare Dragon Nest Vault, and merging three rare Dragon Nest Vaults will produce an epic HUGE Nest Vault.

The rarity of Chests also varies based on the contents, with Chests containing rarer Dragon Eggs and items being more expensive to open.

The current understanding is that the contents, price, and rarity of merged Chests depend on the Chest that you dragged and dropped when merging. The obvious exploit is that you can use easier-to-obtain Chests as fodder and only one Chest of the desired type when attempting to merge, thus maximizing the outcome.

## Chest Visuals

Visually, Dragon Chests may have five variations - Wooden, Stone, Purple Padded, Red Padded and Pink Chests.

Pink Dragon Chests were added later then the first four, together with the Dragon Missions feature. They inherited their sprites from the Colored Dragon Chests (retired beta, see more details in the Trivia section). Unlike other Chests, they only offer Prism Dragons as their loot.

Only Chests with the same level and appearance can be merged, but for the first four variations their contents may vary.

## Contents of Dragon Chests (Cost in Gems)

***\*\*This list may be incomplete\*\****

Chests contents are determined by where they were harvested from.

Topsoil appears to provide a wide variety of Chest types.

## Maximizing Value

**\*WARNING - MATH\* If this isn't your thing skip to the end (Conclusion) to see the most efficient/recommended way to open Chests. For those of you interested in the stats... \*dead silence\* ... Read on!**

### Contents of Chests

Dragon Eggs are the main reason for opening Chests, and merged Chests contain a higher no. of Eggs.

* Most Dragon Egg Chests contain 1 Egg. Some (like the ones giving Life Dragon Eggs) may contain 2.
* Radiant Egg Chests contain 4 Eggs.
* Dragon Nest Vaults contain 1 Nest (3-7 Eggs).
* Huge Nest Vaults contain 3 Nests (9-21 Eggs).

Chests are further split into 7 price bands based on their rarity and contents (which helps identify them).

**\* 7th price band is for Colored Chests, which are only available in Beta (retired?).**

The graph below shows the cost per Egg of Chests in different price tiers. As you can see, larger Chests tend to cost more on average. Although larger Chests can be as cheap as smaller ones, this is unlikely and crucially, they have a much greater range in price, meaning they could be much, much more expensive.

This graph replaces previous ones that concluded that merging Chests was inefficient. Although merging does not cost anything in itself, there is an effective cost caused by the consumption of Chests (you end up with fewer Chests after merging) and the cost difference between larger and smaller Chests (shown above).

### Conclusion

According to the analysis, Egg Chests (Dragon Egg and Radiant Egg) provide the best value for money. Radiant Egg Chests have a stable Eggs-per-Gems ratio, but the normal Egg Chests will average to the same over time. Furthermore, many Dragon types are available for Coins in the Egg Shop, or via other means (non-Coin non-Gem purchases, Level repeat rewards). Both Moon Dragon and Ice Dragon Eggs are found in Chests, but buying them from the Egg Shop may be more effective at times.

Thus, it is recommended to sell all non-Mystery Nest Vaults, never merge Vaults or Chests, and only keep and open the following Dragon Egg/Radiant Egg Chests:

As well as Chests containing Mystery Eggs (Ruby or Sapphire variety - not Tanzanite) obtained from Dragon Trees or, alternatively, in Super or Mega Nest Vaults. It is also advised to sell Nest Vaults rather than opening them due to how cost-inefficient they are.

**Safe Types**

These following Chest types/cost types will only contain Eggs/Nests that cannot be bought for Coins, and are therefore cost-safe to keep and open even when their source is not known:

* **Wooden Chests** costing **17/51** Gems to open:
	+ Pegasus (from Dragon Trees)
* **Stone Chests** costing **12/36** Gems to open:
	+ Tribal Dragons (from Topsoil)3
* **Red Padded Chests** costing **17/51** Gems to open:
	+ Midas Ducks (from Golden Apples)1
	+ Sapphire Mystery (other sources)
* **Purple Padded Chests** costing **12/36** Gems to open:
	+ Life Dragons (from Life Flowers)
	+ Butterfly Dragons (from Prism Flowers)2
	+ Wise Dragons (from Glowing Dragon Trees, Amber)
* **Stone Chest** costing **30/120** Gems to open:
	+ Winter Dragons
* **Purple Padded Chest** costing **30/120** Gems to open:
	+ Moon Dragons

**Footnotes**

* 1 Midas Duck Eggs can also be obtained from Bearers of the World Crystal (Midas Trees Wonder).
* 2 Butterfly Dragon Eggs can also be obtained from Trinity Domes (Prism Flowers Wonder).
* 3 Tribal Dragon Eggs can also be obtained from Magic Beanstalks (Fruit Trees Wonder).

Note: If your goal is to obtain mid-high level items rather than Eggs then I suggest picking your source and merging Chests from it into the highest possible level and then opening that.

**To help you identify these Chests**

* Cosmos Dragons Chests are the only Purple Padded Chests in price band 2.
* Tribal Dragons Chests are the only Stone Chests in price band 3.
* Dragon Trees Chests are the only Wooden Chests in price band 5.

*\*Disclaimer\* This is according to the information on the rest of this page, which is incomplete.*

However for the other Chest types you will need to manually watch what source they come from and separate them. Where possible, open only Egg Chests, preferably Dragon Egg Chests. Doing this will maximize the value you receive for spending Gems to open Chest.

## Notes & Tips

* Dragon Chests in Levels are unlocked and free to open. It is advised to merge them up to Huge Nest Vaults and open them as they can help a lot within the Level. It is thus possible to complete certain Merge Chains easily in Levels as the Chests essentially provide high level objects for free.
* In general, Dragon Egg Chest contains 1 Egg of the designated type (rarely 2), Radiant Egg Chest contains up to 4 Eggs of the designated type, Dragon Nest Vault contains 1 Nest of the designated type, HUGE Nest Vault contains 3 Nests of the designated type.
* The different incidental objects increase in value as the Chests increase in level.
* The same types of Dragon Chests can be merged together, even if they are from different sources. When this happens, contents of the Chest/Vault convert to whichever Chest was used to trigger the merge.
* It actually costs more to open Radiant Egg Chests than it does to open the equivalent number of Dragon Egg Chests even if you merge by 5. For Vaults it's the opposite, it costs more to open the equivalent number of Dragon Egg Chests than it does to open Vaults.
* Life Dragons can be obtained from the Honey Merge Chain. Pegasus and Wise Dragons can also be obtained by merging Ruby Fire Eggs. Midas Ducks, Butterfly Dragons and Tribal Dragons can be obtained by merging Sapphire Eggs or additionally via creating Wonders.
* Cosmos Dragons can be gotten via beating any Level repeatedly, but their Eggs can also be obtained via opening Dragon Chests specifically from merging Fallen Stars of the Ages. The Dragon Egg Chest and Dragon Nest Vault cost 11/55 Dragon Gems respectively, and look identical to other Purple Padded Chests, therefore it is recommended to separate them from other Dragon Chests to not mix them up.
* You can often find chests in the loot from the mission island. They are usually the Red or Purple Padded Chests.

## Trivia

* In Version 2.9.0 the Dragon Chests system was changed. Before there were only 3 levels and Dragon Chests of the same level all looked the same. Now additional 4th level was introduced (HUGE Nest Vault), and Chests were divided in 4 types (Stone, Wooden, Red Padded and Purple Padded). Old visuals of first 3 levels were retired and now all Chests look different depending on their level and the type they belong to. The visuals of Super and Mega Nest Vaults remained unchanged.

Original VisualsDragon Egg ChestRadiant Egg ChestDragon Nest Vault
* Colored Dragon Chests were introduced around October 2020 for a limited number of players, and as of 2023 this beta test is discontinued. They contained various Event Dragons and had multiple color variants for each level of the Chest. Although other Dragon Chests can't be merged unless they're of the same type and level, for Colored Chests the type of the Chest didn't seem to matter as different colored variants could still be merged together.

Colored Dragon Egg ChestsColored Radiant Egg ChestsColored Dragon Nest VaultsColored HUGE Nest Vaults