
MEGATHREAD: Elemental Event: Etherstone Caverns, May 19-22
With thanks to all who contribute to this guide!
This Elemental Event will run from Tuesday, May 19 until 19:00 GMT on Friday, May 22; to participate you will need version 13.4.0 or later 13.6, at least 100 dragon power, and a high quality, stable internet connection.
Please keep event-specific questions and discussions in this thread; good luck and happy merging!
#ANNOUNCEMENTS
Event Notes
- This is a repeat of an early beta test of the Elemental Events; the EE event format was still going through significant changes (and glitches) at that time, so this version may be quite a bit different from the first go ‘round.
- WARNING: Last month’s similar repeat had no Infinite Harvestable behind the silver capsule lock; it remains to be seen if it will be there this time.
- NOTE: You may need to update to play; recent EEs have had higher version requirements than has been typical for most other events.
- REQUEST: Please share your point requirements and Event Portal level in the comments below; we’re trying to put together info on this, but A/B testing and the odd difficulty system has made this a bit of a challenge.
- WARNING - Points: Players at high difficulty levels may find it impossible to earn enough points to finish the event using only the free harvestable items placed on the map. In the last event, higher-level players could clear the full map and still be ~100,000 points away from earning the final prize.
- According to responses from Gram Games, this is deliberate — the event is specifically designed to be pay-to-win.
- WARNING - Capsules: In recent events, all players have had a Silver Capsule lock, with only a Gold Capsule located on the map; opening this lock therefore requires purchasing a Silver Capsule for 60 gems. An infinite harvestable has typically been located behind that lock, which enables players to continue grinding out points even after all the free harvestables have been exhausted, but it does have a cooldown timer that slows progress.
- Screenshots of the rewards screen at the start of all events are strongly recommended
Links to other posts about Elements Events:
- Post about the initial EE beta (Mount Mysris)
- Post about the glitches in the initial EE beta
- May 2025 - EE:Etherstone Caverns
- August 2025 - EE: Starbloom Vale
- September 2025 - EE: Brinefall Isle
- October 2025 - EE: Renarus Badlands
- November 2025 - EE: Oria Islands
- December 2025 - EE: Olympeka Cliffs
- December 2025 - EE: Castellia Caverns
- January 2026 - EE: Mount Mysris
- January 2026 - EE: Engar Mountain
- February 2026 - EE: Swiloor Tundra
- March 2026 - EE: Echoes of Draelar
- April 2026 - EE: Trinith Ruins
News and Updates:
- GLITCH: Long run times may cause severe lagging and sudden crashes; hard-closing the game and relaunching gives a temporary fix. Rebooting is even better, and highly recommended at least once per day if these issues are occurring.
- GLITCH: Event and Season Portal tasks involving nests, eggs, or dragons may not register properly.
- GLITCH: Dragon images and labels may be incorrect in camp, with dragons looking like a completely different breed or level than what is on their label. Dragon/egg numbers continue to not always show accurately in the Discovery Book.
- NOTICE: Imgur, the image hosting site used for many of the guide screenshots, is not currently available in the UK unless you use a VPN.
- BETA: Ancient Dreamwood is a new camp-based item related to the Prize Hunt mini-event that was recently released to a small number of early beta testers. It provides the opportunity to collect a daily reward item, with the value of said reward item increasing as Prize Hunt (formerly known as Bunny Bingo) goals are achieved. wiki link Reminder: Please use Spoiler tags and the “New and/or Beta” flare when posting about major new features or beta tests like this.
- BETA: Daily Dash is a task-based rewards system accessed from camp; Daily Goals refresh every 24 hours, and the Weekly Progress resets at 19:00 GMT on Mondays.
- BETA: Item Storage Now out to most players, this new feature grants item storage in a similar fashion to the Egg Storage Facility. NOTE: There have been numerous glitches reported for this feature; numbers listed on the storage facility may be inaccurate, and it may discharge items when you exit camp. Initial Post
- BETA: Camp Dawnvale The testing pool continues to expand as devs work out the kinks in the new secondary camp; WARNING: once a player gets access to this feature, it will affect the possible rewards offered by events or other features. Wiki page Reminder: Please use Spoiler tags and the “New and/or Beta” flare when posting about major new features or beta tests like this.
- REMINDER: If you are experiencing technical issues, please contact Game Support with a description of the problem, where it occurred (if in an event, please name it and if it’s an OoC, please specify Act 1 or 2), approximately when it occurred, and (if possible) attach a recording or screenshot(s) of the issue. Programmers need official support tickets to start an investigation, and having multiple players reporting on the same problem lets them directly compare affected accounts.
- Popular Links:
- Friend Tag List 2026
- Dens List 2026
- MD Web Store - A free, event-related trophy breed egg can usually be claimed soon after the start of a weekend event.
Other Events:
- Next OoC / EE Event: Gemland Kingdom, 22-25 May
- Ezra’s Relic Run: TBA
- Seasons: Thrilling Waves, Apr 21 - May 19
- Card Collection: Seaside Saga, Apr 21 - June 16
- Prize Hunt, aka Bunny Bingo: Held with all weekend OoCs and some (usually holiday) mid-weeks, with occasional limited-access mid-week A/B tests for VIP Club members. WARNING: This event REQUIRES players to spend gems and/or make cash purchases, with the latter most frequently seen in the VIP versions.
- Races: Tuesday and Sunday Wiki
- Next Up: Flowers on Tuesday, Rocks on Sunday
- Shiny Days: Monday and Wednesday Wiki
- Mystic Challenge: Thursday and Sunday
- Elemental Events: Now released game-wide, but the scheduling is still uncertain. WARNING: This event requires gem purchases to finish at some difficulty levels.
- Ezra's Relic Run: 7 to 14 day long event with no predictable schedule as yet; all past event items other than the final Memento reward are supposed to vanish from camp, although they have yet to do so. WARNING: This event may require players to spend gems and/or make cash purchases to complete, and has proven rather buggy at times.
- Quinn’s Lucky Games, aka Spin-the-Wheel: Testing has restarted, but little has changed; it’s still a standard online gambling format, complete with a guaranteed big win at first to give you a nice dopamine high and make you feel “lucky”.
#MAIN EVENT GUIDE
#Link to the CLOUD KEY MAP Tap the link above to see a map with all locked areas identified by the required key item
#CLOUD KEY LIST Tap a key item to go to its wiki page for more info and hi-def images, and tap “view” to see what is hidden under that lock
- Emerald Plains Grass
- L1 Stone (clear) view
- L3 Temple Pieces (clear) view
- L4 Lost Vases (clear) view
- L5 Amphorae (clear) view
- L10 Smallest Temple in the World (clear) view
- L2 Sunday Flower (clear) view
- L4 Three Graces (clear) view
- L10 Zeus's Cup (clear) view
- L1 Destroyed Gaia Statue (clear) view
- Golden Capsule (clear) view
#FEATURED REWARDS
- Primary trophy breed: Aqualis dragon
- Secondary trophy breed: Luminclaw dragon
#EVENT FAQs / OVERVIEW:
NOTE: This format is still being tweaked by the devs, so listed info may or may not hold true for the current event; as always, check the Comments for the latest news on any changes.
Overview
- Elemental Events (EE) maps are similar to standard Out-of-Camp (OoC) events, with land that needs to be healed to uncover point items and locked areas that need keys to open.
- The goal for EE is the same as the main objective in OoCs: earn enough points to collect all the prizes listed on the Reward Screen by harvesting, merging, and collecting event point items.
- Point requirements and event rewards are determined by a calculation involving both a player’s total and average dragon power.
- Healing all the land is not required, and there is no dead land under locks, but the points hiding in those locked areas may be significant.
- Items required to make a key are typically hidden under a different lock, requiring players to open areas in a particular order.
- Unlike OoCs, there are no Event Quests, Act 2, Rush Rewards, or Gold Pass equivalents.
- Idle Trivia: So far, all EE maps have been re-purposed from OoC-type events in Merge Dragon’s sister game, Merge Magic.
Dragons
- Instead of hatching two whelp dragons to do the work, players are allowed to “borrow” 3 of their highest level dragons from Camp, one for each element featured in the event.
- Dragons occupied in levels, Missions, or Breeding may not be available for use in the event; dragons sleeping in dragon homes are still eligible.
- These imported dragons do the normal OoC event actions of harvesting for life flower material and life orbs for healing land; since there are 3 dragons instead of two, idle-harvesting will be much slower unless you keep one dragon selected.
- Note: keeping a dragon selected is risky, and could result in loss of the dragon if the game closes or is interrupted; it also makes it much easier to accidentally delete a dragon, and since the EE event borrows from your own camp, any dragon deleted in the event is removed from the game entirely just like if it was sold in camp or a world map level.
- While high-level dragons may yield more bonus points, their speed has been severely reduced; level 10 platinum dragons may harvest slower than Rock or Tribal whelps.
- Unfortunately, having 3 level 10 platinum dragons seems to indicate a player will have the unlucky ~100,000+ point deficit on the final reward item after earning all possible free points, meaning such players must pay gems if they want to be sure of finishing the event.
Harvesting Points
- A major difference in gameplay between OoC and EE events centers on the harvesting of point items; instead of harvesting one type of point item from both limited and infinite harvestable items, there are 3 separate chains of both harvestables and point items — one for each featured element.
- Infinite harvestables are available for purchase in the event store, and one is usually — but not always — located behind the silver capsule lock.
- Infinite Harvestables have a cooldown timer that limits how often they can be harvested.
- Any dragon can work any harvestable, but using the element-linked breed gives a substantial points bonus.
- Double-tapping a harvestable will summon the correct dragon to it, but if left without direction any dragon can wander over and harvest any unattended harvestable item, so using them up as soon as they are uncovered is critical.
- It’s not possible to complete the event without use of the element-linked bonus points.
- So far, extra harvestables have been obtainable in Treasure Chests obtained from harvesting general items like Fruit Trees or Prism Flowers, but drop rates can be very, very low.
Point Requirements:
- Players at higher difficulty levels will find it impossible to earn enough points to finish the event using only the free harvestable items placed on the map. According to responses from Gram Games, this is deliberate — the event is specifically designed to be pay-to-win.
- Grinding for Treasure Chests or the free capsules may be enough for some affected players to finish, but others may require gem or cash expenditures to earn enough points to collect all rewards.
Capsules:
- Similar to OoC events, all Elemental Events have an Event Capsule lock near the start of the map. In early beta tests these were the standard Gold version, with a Gold Capsule located near the back of the map that players could use to open the lock.
- In most recent events, all players have had a Silver Capsule lock instead of the Gold, but still with just the one Gold Capsule on the map; opening this lock therefore requires purchasing a Silver Capsule for 60 gems.
- An infinite harvestable has usually been located behind that lock, which enables players to continue grinding out points even after all the free limited harvestables have been exhausted; however, IHs have a delay timer that slows harvesting significantly compared to the standard OoC versions.
#SAVING YOUR PROGRESS
- Make sure to save your progress by traveling to the World Map screen (and waiting there until everything’s fully loaded) regularly, and especially before closing your game.
- Exiting directly from the event level to your Camp can trigger a crash and/or loss of items; always exit to the World Map screen first, and again after releasing prize items into your camp, as well as after merging high-level or valuable dragons/items.
#EVENT TROUBLESHOOTING
If the event is not showing up correctly or if glitches are affecting your play:
- Check that you meet the version and dragon power requirements.
- Try hard-closing and then relaunching your game.
- Try rebooting your device (ie, turn it completely off, then back on and allow it to fully boot up before relaunching the game). If you are on wifi and have access to the router, try rebooting that, too.
- Try switching to a completely different internet source.
- Try clearing your game’s cache (google for instructions for your specific phone type).
- If you’re suddenly experiencing multiple issues like lagging or error messages (or if the event vanishes completely), close the game and try again after 2-3 hours. Events are internet-based, and sometimes issues with the servers can cause temporary problems — all we can do for that is to wait it out.
- If none of the above helps, contact Gram Games Support through the in-game link or the Support Web Portal for help figuring out what’s wrong; please include the name of the event and whether the problem is with Act 1 or 2. If you use email, you’ll need your game ID and version number, both of which can be copied for pasting from the Settings tab, or (if you can’t get into the game at all) by hand from the game’s loading screen.
Chronic Problems
- Cloud Save is still unreliable: According to the last official statements from the developers, it is not safe to be used and should be left turned off. (First reported ~2019, got much worse Oct 2022)
- WARNING: Support is apparently telling some players to use CS, however as of July, multiple players have confirmed Cloud Save is both 1) still wiping out player progress without warning, and 2) continuing to hit some players with intermittent saving failure messages, esp when using Facebook IDs. Use at your own risk.
- Glitch: Items from past events Sometimes capsules or booster chests may contain items from the previous OoC event, especially if it was new or nearly new; these items are not usable and can be deleted. (First reported 2023, got worse in mid-2025)
- Glitch: Changing Rewards Event rewards may change during play in multiple types of events, with the devs essentially telling players “so sad, too bad” and not giving any compensation. If it hits, you can send in a report to get it on the record, but issues with changing rewards have been around since 2024 and the devs seem unwilling and/or unable to fix the faulty programming.
edits are on-going