Making Dragons Grow

Dragon growth is based on several different factors: Views, Unique Views, Clicks and Time.

Views
Views denote the overall number of views your egg or dragon has received. This can be misleading as the amount of views you can receive is restricted by the amount of unique views you have. For every unique view your dragon accumulates, it can receive a maximum 15 views. So, if an egg has 10 unique views it can't have more than 150 views. Views, some may argue, are a key decider on when a dragon will hatch or grow up, although no formula has ever been released by Dragcave administration.

Usually, your egg starts cracking at around 150-400 unique views, and continues to crack with more views.

Unique Views
Unique views are accumulated every time an individual views your eggs. However, unlike views, you can only gain 1 unique view per IP Address. Unique views are important since they decide how high your views count can go. As was stated in the previous section, normal views can be no more than 15 times the number of unique views. One unique view can be gained for each IP-address viewing the dragon per 24 hours.

Clicks
Clicks, like unique views, can only be given out once per person. A click happens when someone accesses a dragon's statistics page. Clicks are not essential to a dragon's growth, as a dragon can grow without any clicks at all, but the presence of numerous clicks speeds up the growth process. One click is gained when someone clicks the egg, this person must then wait for 24 hours before he/she can give it another click.

Gaining views/unique views/clicks
There are many ways to get views, unique views and clicks for your eggs and hatchlings. Many people use a Click Site to get the views necessary. Another way is to put them in a forum signature (not the dragcave forum since it's not allowed there) using the BBCodes shown in the "Show HTML/BBCode Links" link on the egg or hatchling's view page. Both ways are equally fine, though using click sites has become the more popular way to go.

Time
Even though your egg may have plenty of views and has a big hole in it, or your hatchling has plenty of views and has grown wings and has gendered, hatching and maturing times are randomized. Until your dragon reaches its "magic time", it cannot move on to the next stage. This magic time has shifted in the past. It used to be 3.5 days, then it was a random point between 3 and 4 days, individual for every dragon. Currently the magic time for all eggs and hatchlings is below 4 days left.

A dragon that has enough views to do so will hatch/grow up when its counter reaches "3 days 23 hours".

However, if your dragon has reached its "time" but has not yet reached a high enough views/unique views/clicks count, it will not hatch or mature until it does reach said count. If the dragon does not meet the required number of views by the time it reaches 0 days, it will die. This is why eggs and hatchlings with fewer than 3 or 4 days (depending on personal opinion) remaining are considered emergency dragons.