Dragon Cave

A land far away, where the existence of dragons is known to people. A land where wizards care for dragons for thousands of years. A land where you will be swamped with requests by new players to click their eggs.

This is the world of Dragon Cave.

Dragon Cave is a popular adoptable site created by T.J. Lipscomb, with sprite contributions made by the users. Upon registration, each user is given a scroll that they can fill up with dragons of many different kinds. The dragons' growth is made possible by the amount of views received.

The site's community is known for their tendency to whine at every opportunity, letting a simple, rather fun game sometimes be overshadowed by Serious Business discussion. Even the slightest changes are often met with staunch resistance. In the DragCave fandom, it's best to tread lightly.

Tropes used in Dragon Cave include:

• Actual Pacifist: Every single white dragon.
• Abusive Parents: If you decide to act like this, you may end up with a neglected dragon. They are incredibly rare and difficult to get, and are therefore some of the most desired dragons in the game.
• Aerith and Bob: Members are free to name their own dragons, and often the lists of their dragons names can end up like this, or else pass into the bizarre and the surreal.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: "The Guardians of Nature" which are the personifications of....well, guess.
• Art Evolution: Most of the sprites haven't changed since their introduction, but since the site's creation the egg sprites have become more polished and male and female dragon sprites of the same breed now often have different poses.
  • Also, many of the original sprites were very rushed, and has restrictions on the number of colours used. Now that sprites have more time and colours available to them, they tend to be more detailed and realistic.
• Balloon Belly: The Balloon Dragons.
• Brainwashed: Averted. Many people assume this about the daydreams, but the creator has said many times that all it can do it distract you, not control someone's mind.
• Breath Weapon: Some dragons are explicitly stated to use breath attacks, though others lack breath powers and others use various forms of magic.
• Combat Tentacles: The Dark Green or "Vine" dragons use their masses of vines to attack and eat anything around them.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The Black Marrow dragons, black and red Halloween dragons with skeletons that grow through their scales and eat carrion also happen to be kind mates and doting parents.
• Dishing Out Dirt
• Easter Egg: Quite literally. For Easter 2010 and 2011, there was a "Festival of Eggs" in which several very pretty eggs made by the people who sprited the dragons would randomly appear around the site. They don't hatch into anything, though.
• Emoticon: There is an entire hidden page devoted to these, which shows a different face each time you refresh it.
• Everything's Better with Chickens: Inexplicably, a rare chicken egg can be found in the Cave.
• Everything's Better with Chocolate: Heartseeker dragons smell like it.
• Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Suspiciously Yoshi-like dragon eggs appear very rarely.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Some of the dragon species run into this, especially those named after a colour. For example, the Cheese Dragon is....a dragon made of cheese.
• Fire Ice Lightning Dragons
• Fluffy the Terrible: The Flamingo Dragons, who despite their name and pretty pink colour, are some of the most violent dragons in the cave.
• Four Seasons: A seasonal dragon will take the appearance of whatever season its laid in.
• Fragile Speedster: The whiptail dragons.
• Gotta Catch Em All
• Hellfire: Hellfire Wyverns, naturally.
• Improbable Species Compatibility: With a few exceptions, almost every dragon type can breed with almost every other type. This leads to some odd combinations such as Skywings (dragons with wings but no legs that spend all their time in the air) and Water/Deep-Sea dragons (basically sea serpents).
  • Now they're just encouraging it, too, with a breed of dragon that can only be obtained by breeding Skywings and Water dragons.
• Incest Is Relative: You should see some family trees.
• Living Shadow: The aptly named Shadow-Walkers, at least most of the time.
• Lotus Eater Machine: Daydream dragons are implied to sometimes have such an effect.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Guardian dragons have large shields at the end of their tails, and their wings are also heavily armoured.
• Magic Wand: White dragons never leave home without their staff.
• Our Dragons Are Different: They need views to even hatch.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Vampire dragons were originally introduced on Halloween '09, and cannot breed but can bite eggs to turn them into vampire eggs.
• Our Zombies Are Different: More of the classical necromancy version, where you can raise a hatchling or adult dragon and turn it into a zombie on Halloween. Somehow this manages to completely change their skeletal structure.
• Retcon: The formerly all-female Pink dragons "traditionally being thought as female" due to their color, along with a sprite change.
  • Another formerly all-female breed, the Purples, now have males as well.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Quite a few, but the Pillow dragons stand out as being literal balls of fluff who love to cuddle.
• Serious Business: People are killing pixel dragons? The murderers!
• Shout-Out:
  • A couple to Pokémon:
    • Pokémon Night itself, when many of the dragons' sprites were replaced with those of Pokémon for a joke.
    • The Legendary Trio - the codes of three of his were abbreviated versions of Articuno, Moltres, and Zapdos' names (Arco, Mlts, Zpds). The Guardian of Nature dragon's description and the fact that a player must obtain all three of the Legendary Trio in order to summon it are references to Pokémon 2000.
    • Shallow Water dragons' Breed-Specific Action is Splash. Like in the Gameboy games, when you use this, it will say "DRAGON used SPLASH! But nothing happened!" After roughly 100 times using this action, you will gain a Magikarp badge on the top of your scroll.
  • And a couple to Portal:
    • One of the treats in the 2010 Halloween trick-or-treat scavenger hunt is a cake. If you look closely, you will see the word "LIE" written on the side of the slice.
    • In addition to the default scroll skin and a St. Patrick's Day skin, there is also a Portal-themed skin you can use for viewing the site.
    • The Desert Sands release was the Sunstone and Moonstone dragons, which are orange and blue. The release's image said "The Blue and Orange conspiracy theory continues." Members immediately thought of Portal, but in reply TJ linked to a site pointing out Orange-Blue Contrast.
  • TJ's fake egg "<3", which can be seen here. One member had commented how the released dragons matched up with the elements on Captain Planet and joked how the release was missing "the element of heart", so TJ added the heart egg.
  • Saurian, a language invented for the game Star Fox Adventures, is used a lot on this site:
    • TJ used to post all the announcement threads in Saurian, requiring users to translate the message.
    • All of TJ's dragons are named in Saurian (thus, dragons descended from his are known as "Thuwed" dragons, as "thuwed" is Saurian for "dragon" and appears in the names he gives his dragons - for example, "Wahc Fadb Thuwed", which is literally "Girl Pink Dragon").
    • In the Halloween 2011 Haunted Mansion event, there were "spells" that were really just words in Saurian.
    • One of the 2012 Valentine's Day valentine messages was "Xuff0 Lucokado'j Tu0" - "Happy Valentine's Day" in Saurian.
  • TJ has apparently stated that the chickens are a reference to the Harvest Moon games.
  • The Leetle Stack of Pancakes has the code IHOP, which is a reference to the International House of Pancakes.
  • For the 2011 Christmas Dress Up, the Green/Pebble dragons were given ham, and a veeery familiar cape and pair of orange shades...
  • The ever-quotable "Arrow in the knee" meme from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was part of one of the 2012 Valentine messages.
  • As a shout-out to Homestuck in the 2012 Valentine messages you could send: "I desire you for my flushed quadrant."
  • All of the Holiday Stories are dragon-themed parodies of actual stories and songs, such as The Twelve Days of Christmas and A Christmas Carol.
• Single Gender Race: Sweetlings, Heartseekers, Winter Magi, and Yulebucks are always male; while Chickens, Snow Angels, Bright Pinks, Ribbon Dancers, Rosebuds, and '09 Valentines are always female. Used to be true of the Purples (formerly all-female), Pinks (the all-female ones became known as Bright Pinks when the current either-gender Pinks appeared), and Hollies (formerly all-male).
• Stock Ness Monster
• Telepathy: All dragons use telepathy to communicate, save for a few sounds made by hatchlings.
  • Averted with the Drake species, who can only breed among themselves and have an animal-level intelligence.
• Teleporters and Transporters: Magi dragons have the "Teleport" Breed Specific Action which allows for safe trading and gifting of eggs and hatchlings.
• The Matchmaker: Heartseeker dragons.
• Adoptables Game Cruelty Punishment: Formerly, if a member killed too many of their dragons, their scroll would automatically be erased. As it is now, members can only kill a certain number of dragons before having to wait.
• Whip It Good: The Whiptail dragons.