For a while, I’ve been wondering… are dragons profitable?
As most of you have probably experienced, the answer is no, they are not profitable… well, unless you’re the lucky one to get a superior chestplate from your first dragon.
In this post, I’ll explain how dragon loot drops work, and look at some data to see if it’s profitable.
Understanding Drop Rates
The Hypixel dragon system has this idea called “weight”, and the more weight you have, the better loot you’re going to get.
Each eye you place gives you +100 weight, up to 4 eyes, or +400 weight.
Your placement in damage gives you additional weight based on your rank:
| Place | Additional Weight |
| 1 | +300 |
| 2 | +250 |
| 3 | +200 |
| 4-7 | +125 |
| 8-15 | +100 |
| 16- | +75 |
The total amount of weight essentially corresponds with how much loot you’re going to earn from the dragon. In order to have a chance at winning the item, you must have at least the amount of weight required to roll for that item.
| Item | Cost In Weight |
| Aspect of the Dragons | 450 |
| Ender Dragon Pet | 450 |
| Chestplate | 400 |
| Leggings | 350 |
| Helmet | 350 |
| Boots | 300 |
| Travel Scroll to the Dragon’s Nest | 250* |
From top to bottom, that is the order in which the server will roll. This means that if you score 450 weight, then it will roll for the Aspect of the Dragons first. If that fails, then it will move onto the Ender Dragon Pet. If that fails too, it will go onto the chestplate, and so on. After one item is obtained, then the remaining weight you have will be converted into frags, with each frag being 22 weight.
*Can only be obtained from Unstable Dragons. You have a chance to obtain this if you place at least 2nd without placing any eyes.
This is why if you deal any damage at all to the dragon during the fight, you get at least 3 frags.
If you place top in damage and place 0 eyes, you have a chance of snagging the boots, or receiving 13 frags (300/22 = 13.6, but it’s rounded down).
Ender Dragon Pets
Ender dragon pets are unbelievably rare, and can be dropped from any dragon. According to one of the admins (Dctr), the chances of getting the legendary ender dragon pet is 0.04%. Only 1 out of every 2500 dragons will drop a legendary dragon pet, and that’s not even guaranteed.
Using math, 4 out of every 2500 dragons will drop an epic legendary dragon pet.
Imagine flipping a coin. 1 in every 2 flips should be heads right? If you flip the coin 4 times, and it lands tails, tails, tails, tails, that means you just got unlucky.
Getting one of these would easily make back multiple times the amount of money you spent on summoning dragons. The epic one goes for around $100 million, and the legendary one currently goes for about $300 million.
Other Drops
The dragon also drops ender pearls and enchanted ender pearls, no more than a stack of each. They sell for negligible profit compared to the other dragon drops, so they will not be factored in these calculations.
Which Dragons Spawn Most?
Well, the dragon spawn chances are as follows:
- Protector: 16%
- Old: 16%
- Wise: 16%
- Unstable: 16%
- Young: 16%
- Strong: 16%
- Superior: 4%
All dragons have a 4/25 chance of spawning, except superior dragons, which have a 1/25 chance of spawning. It’s completely random.
Note that the time of day, server day, season, etc, does not determine the type of dragon, as the specific dragons do not have set spawning intervals.
All armor drops except superior armor will result in a loss of money. This is because summoning eyes cost about $550,000, and all armors other than superior can be bought on the auction house for under $1,000,000.
Place 4 eyes?
By placing 4 eyes, you’re not guaranteed to GET a piece of armor, but rather, you’re guaranteed to ROLL for all the pieces of armor. Currently, the drop chances for the armors are unknown, but it does seem that having a higher dragon weight will increase your chances of getting a loot drop.
Even if you place 4 eyes, you can still get fragged, meaning that all of the loot drops refuse to give you anything. Getting any armor piece is worth way more than frags, because each armor piece requires at least 40 of their respective frags, but even then, you’re way more likely to lose money than to gain it.
Place 2 eyes?
Placing two eyes is more likely to earn profit, because you have the chance to earn two armor pieces if you place two sets of two eyes, and you also have two chances of getting a good dragon. Generally, placing two eyes earns more than placing 4 eyes. Never place more than 4 eyes, because the bonus per eye only goes up to +400.
What’s Profitable?
Pretty much with all dragons, you lose money UNLESS you get an Aspect of the End, an Ender Dragon Pet, or any superior dragon spawn.
Everything else will lose you money.
Gambling with dragons is dangerous, because all you need is ONE Ender Dragon pet for it to all be paid off. This is the gambler’s mentality, thinking that since you didn’t get it so far, your chances of getting it next are higher. Unfortunately, that is not how probability works. If you think this way, then you might take out loans from friends trying to go “double or nothing”, but the vast majority of the time, you’ll end up with the nothing.
One superior frag is about 200k, and one piece of superior is around 10 million coins. Getting an ender dragon pet is an instant win, the epic being about 100 million coins, and the legendary averaging at about 300 million coins.
Don’t be fooled, because the drop chance for a legendary ender dragon pet is so low, one of the admins mentioned that it would cost over $2 billion in summoning eyes to guarantee that you would get it.
Data on Pigical
You can find the Hypixel Dragons Loot Tracker here.
Using the loot tracker for a popular YouTuber Pigical, I took his data from the last month and plotted it on this spreadsheet: HERE.
If you would like a blank spreadsheet for you to make a copy of and use for yourself, you can click here. File > Make a copy. If it’s grayed out, that means you haven’t logged into your Google account. Log in, then the button should be clickable. You can track your Dragon loot. Update the prices in the PriceTable if they change drastically.
Basically, dragons = not profitable, but he did get a legendary ender dragon pet, meaning that all of that debt is paid off in one go.
Experiment
We decided to experiment and try this out to see whether or not dragons are profitable.
After we gathered one double chest full of summoning eyes (54), we summoned 27 dragons, placing two eyes each time. We got top in damage most of the time, but occasionally got outdamaged. Our eye placer placed in the top three each time.
Here’s the end result:
And here’s an estimated amount of money we earned from dragons.
If we put everything on the auction house, we would earn an estimated $30,061,701.60 coins in profit. Remember that we have to pay tax on some of these items, so we probably overall would lose money. Additionally, many people in the auction house like to under-bid just the right amount of money so that in order to outbid would be an overpay. So, overall, we likely will lose some money. Although we made slight earnings, we also spent some money on getting into splashes.
Note: While we were fighting dragons, we were able to leech a few ourselves. We joined a lobby with some dragons in-progress. This will also help you to minimize your losses.
Tip to lose less money in the long run:
Get your friends to leech frags on the dragons too. This will help you lose less money. We were able to leech around $3 million worth in frags.
Summary
TL;DR: Dragons are not profitable, almost every dragon armor will lose you money. Getting lucky with the dragon spawns and the drops are the only way to make money. Be sure to score in the top 1 or 2, in order to maximize the amount of money you earn back. Even if you read this and still want to try your luck at dragons, knowing that the odds are heavily stacked against you, I wish you the best of luck.
thank you, kind person, for I probably would have wasted millions if you didn’t post this.