Abandon

Abandoning is an action available to unfrozen hatchlings and eggs. This can be used if you no longer want the dragon in question- you can abandon it, and it will go to the Abandoned Page (AP). Another user can then pick it up for themselves. In the past, eggs or hatchlings that were abandoned were given an additional day added to their timer (but never exceeding the 7 day marker); since May 21st, 2016, this feature has been removed as part of a range of updates to the site on DC's 10th birthday.

Upon successfully abandoning a Cave Born egg, the following message is given:

"You leave the egg where you found it and walk away." Upon successfully abandoning a bred egg, the following message is given:

"You set the egg down outside a familiar-looking cave and walk away." Upon successfully abandoning an egg taken from the Abandoned Page, the following message is given:

"You set the egg down outside the cave where you found it and walk away." Upon successfully abandoning a hatchling, one of the following messages is given: "You lead the hatchling to a nearby cave and leave it there." "You leash the hatchling to a tree trunk outside a nearby cave and walk away."

"You abandon the hatchling while it is sleeping, hoping it will find its way back to its mother."

Whilst attempting to abandon a hatchling, the action may fail, with one of the following messages given:

"You lead the hatchling to a nearby cave and try to walk away, but it follows you." "You try to leash the hatchling to a tree trunk outside a nearby cave, but it chews through the rope and begins to follow you." "You leave it while it's sleeping, but it wakes up and begins to follow you."

If this happens and you want to try abandoning the hatchling again, you must wait a day.

Eggs from Holiday multi-clutches or new CB holidays (if you have reached your scroll limit) will be auto-abandoned in an hour of obtaining them. If you pick one during a multi-clutch breeding, all eggs except the one that was chosen will be automatically abandoned in that moment. In the past, this similar system was implemented for scroll limited dragons during holiday releases- Valentines Day and Christmas dragons have a limit of 2 Caveborns per scroll. In the past, if more were picked up, these extra ones would be auto-abandoned within an hour (this system malfunctioned during Valentines Day of 2010 which resulted in the gifting of Alt Sweetlings to those affected). Today, users are simply unable to pick up extra eggs, with the following message given: "You are already at the limit (2) for this breed of dragon. Please note that the limit includes eggs, hatchlings, and adult dragons."

If you accidentally click an egg from the main cave which you do not want, you can abandon it after a five hour wait period (also known as "on cooldown" or "on CD"). This is to prevent people from taking unwanted commons in the main cave and simply abandoning them into the AP, but be a more desirable option than taking and Killing the eggs, which will take up a slot on your scroll limit for 24 hours. There is no such restriction for eggs picked up from the AP or bred eggs.

In the past, if the AP exceeded four lines, it used to "block" the cave, meaning that no eggs from the main cave could be picked up until it went down to four lines. This would be accompanied by the description:

"Near the entrance to the cave, there is a huge pile of abandoned eggs. If you don't want the dragons inside to die, you can take one of those instead." After Habitats were added to the cave, the cave block description turned into:

"As you set off toward the (habitat you are travelling to), you see a massive pile of eggs. You decide that there are plenty of eggs there, and travelling is unnecessary." The cave block was lifted during the Christmas event in 2014 and hasn't been reimplemented since.