User blog comment:Smaugtastic/Secrets to Dragon Story/Tourney Battle Plan/@comment-25462635-20160426202107/@comment-26035215-20160428071031

I'm just gonna refer to your part about 'not wasting' food on other dragons aside from pure diamond types and champions.

In this game, it's impossible imo to actually 'waste' food. Food is an infinite, but very dispensable currency in this game, making it very hard to hoard on food, and a harder question to what you should invest your food in. In this post however, Smaug emphasizes on cost efficient ways to make use of such food to attain to do well in Tournies.

In DS, some dragons can be quite capable in the tourny, able to face off certain dicoloured dragons better than the Champion types. I'll give you an example. I have a Marshmellow dragon as well, but I did not bother raising it up past level 7. The sole reason is simply because I'd rather spend the 300k+ worth of food possibly spent on the Marshmellow Dragon (to level 15) on a Champion Dragon that can perform better than most Dragons already can 70% of the time depending on the opponents type, rarity, etc etc.

If let us say, I have a level 10 Champion type and a level 7 Marshmellow, and the Champion fails to take down the opponent (lets say a level 14 Sandstorm Dragon, which is a Purple/Yellow hybrid) at 55% chance, the level 7 Marshmellow Dragon can have a go at the Sandstorm Dragon and attempt to defeat it at 45% chance.

Assuming that I battle another Sandstorm Dragon at level 14, and I have enough food (about 312k) to max out Marshmellow to level 15 to use it against the opponent, I will now have 80% chance of defeating the Yellow/Purple hybrid. Now, the level 15 Marshmellow Dragon is fit to battle against such hybrid combination for a 80% chance of defeating it.

But if I used the 312k food on a level 10 Warrior Princess, not only will I have a small surplus of food, but also the exact same chance of defeating the level 14 Sandstorm dragon at 80%! And thanks to her typing, Warrior Princess can face the other 70% of the opponents and singlehandedly defeat them without much worries whatsoever.

The huge difference here between the level 15 Marshmallow and the level 15 Champion (Warrior Princess) is the sheer diversity Champion types can face and conquer in Tourny.

Sure, people can argue that "But a level 10 Marshmellow has the same probability of defeating DARUDE SANDSTORM as a level 10 Champion! Why not use a level 10 Divine Dragon instead??" A Divine Dragons have 60%/85% chance of defeating the Sandstorm dragon at level 10/15 respectively, but the same argument can be applied against this example.

Do you want to spend 350k+ worth of food to get your Divine Dragon to level 10 JUST for this battle, and NOT for a better overall chance to facing pretty much everything else? I can understand that the Divine Dragon is gonna do better against Sandstorm, but in this game, the jack of all trades wins the battle.