Dragonvale: How to Get Every Dragon (Even Expired Ones and the New Kairos Dragon) For One Gem

UPDATE:  As of November 2012, it appears that this hack has been patched and no longer works.  Backflip has modified the gamerules file so it’s no longer editable (and it looks as though it downloads the relevant file from the server every time you open up the game), so it looks as though there’s no way to get the expired dragons or do fun things like put fire dragons in cold habitats, or increase the number of habitats etc.  You can get gems, cash and food if you’re jail broken – at the moment there’s no jailbreak for iOS 6, only for 5.1.1.  If you managed to do this hack before they changed the file, you’ll still have everything you managed to hack before (ie. expired dragons, 999,999,999 gems, etc.) so don’t worry.   

Ok, I thought I’d break up the monotony of Mass Effect posts with some Dragonvale hacking.  After getting super frustrated at the stupid racetrack wheel never giving me fragments for the Perch of Kairos, I decided to cheat a little.  You can edit the game rules for Dragonvale to get EVERY dragon, including the expired ones, for only 1 gem each – here’s how:

You need:

1.  iFunbox, iExplore, or any other program that lets you view your source files in your app
2.  a simple text editor (ie. Microsoft Word)
3.  your iphone/ipad

You do NOT need:

1.  NO JAILBREAKING REQUIRED
2.  NO GIVING AWAY USERNAME OR PASSWORD (be careful, there are a lot of scams out there!)

Here’s what you need to do:

1.  Connect your ipad/iphone with the Dragonvale app installed to your computer
2.  Open iFunbox and navigate to your Dragonvale app folder
3.  Under Dragonvale/Library/Caches, you should see the document “gamerules.json”
4.  Download “gamerules.json” to your desktop
5.  Open it with a text editor (Microsoft Word is best)
6.  Make the changes you want*
7.  Save the file (ctrl + s) – make sure it’s still in .json format
8.  Upload it back to its original folder, overwriting the old “gamerules.json”

*Ok, so how do you make the changes you want?  There are several things you can do:

Buy Every Fragment for 1 Gem Each and Get the Legendary Kairos Dragon

1.  Search the “gamerules.json” file for “timefragmentX_X” where the X’s represent the number of the fragment.  There are three different evolutions of fragments, seven different pieces for each evolution, so the first X should be a number from 1-3 and the second X should be a number from 1-7.
2.  For example, this is the code snippet you’re looking for for the first fragment (you can search the following code in Word):
“timefragment1_1”: {“price”: [{“gems”: “75”}
3.  Where it says “gems”:”75″, change the “75” to 1.  Don’t make it 0 – it won’t work properly.  You have to pay at least 1 gem.
4.  Do this for all 21 fragments.
5.  After uploading these changes back to on your iphone/ipad, open the Dragonvale app – if you’ve already built the Perch of Kairos, you’ll see that you can click each fragment to purchase it for 1 gem.
6.  After you buy all the pieces, you will be able to summon the Kairos Dragon!

Buy Every Dragon and Decoration Ever Released, Including Expired Ones

1.  Search the “gamerules.json” file for “legacy”: “1”, – don’t forget to delete the comma after it!
2.  Delete all instances of it – there should be 41 (subject to change with new updates)
3.  Open the Dragonvale app on your iphone/ipad after uploading the changes – go to the Marketplace
4.  You should see every dragon ever released is now available, including the Leap Year, Bloom, Clover, Olympus, Emerald, etc. as well as every decoration

Buy Every Dragon Ever Released for 1 Gem Each

1.  After completing all the steps above for deleting “legacy”: “1” search for the dragon that you want to make cost 1 gem – (note: while every dragon goes by its regular name in the code ie. butterfly dragon = “butterflydragon”, the bloom dragon is listed as “easterdragon”)
2.  For example, if I want to change the Clover Dragon’s cost, I will search “cloverdragon” and find this code:
“cloverdragon”: {“babygrowlsound”: “Dragons/dragon_clover_growl_baby”, “modelwidth_Baby”: “0.7”, “price”: [{“gems”: “77”, “viewrequirement”: “7”, “levelrequirement”: “7”}]
3.  Where is says “gems”: “77”, change the 77 to 1.
4.  Do this with every dragon you want to cost 1 gem.
5.  Upload the changes and open the app on your iphone/ipad – when you go to the market, the dragons you changed should be 1 gem each.  Buy the dragon and put it in a habitat!

How to Get 999,999 Gemstones for $1.99

1.  Search the “gamerules.json” file for the following code:
{“currency”: {“gems”: “50”}, “displayname”: “Pile of Gems”
2.  Change the “gems”: “50” from 50 to 999,999 (do NOT include comma – it’s only there for illustration purposes so you can clearly see how many 9’s there are) – you can increase it up to 999,999,999 gems if you want, but no one really needs that many.  Do NOT do more than 9 9’s, it WILL mess up your game!
3.  Upload the changes and open the app on your iphone/ipad – purchase “Pile of Gems” for $1.99 in-app and you will be given 999,999 gems!
4.  You can also do this with Cash or Treats, but be sure to change the line of code corresponding to the level you are currently at – for example, if you want to change Pile of Treats and you are at level 24, search for “Pile of Treats” and you will see “levelvalue” and bunch of different values for each level (ie. {“24”: {“food”: 19480} for the treats corresponding to level 24)

How to Make Gemstone Dragons Breed with Each Other

1.  Search the “gamerules.json” file for the following code:
“breedtypes”: [“”]
2.  Between the empty quotes, put the word gemstone – it should now look like this “breedtypes”: [“gemstone”]
3.  Repeat for all instances of the code (there should be seven, depending on the dragonvale update)
4.  Now you will be able to breed Gemstone dragons of the same type (ie. Emerald x Emerald, Ruby x Ruby, etc.) together – this is the only way you can get their pretty eggs on pedestals for display
5.  You CANNOT breed the Gemstone dragons with other types of dragons no matter how you tweak the code, it just won’t work.

Now that you get the gist of the hack, you can make your own tweaks as well.  Here are things I’ve tried that haven’t worked:  Increasing the max # of habitats, dragons per habitat, max cash per habitat, food grown for each farm item, etc. – any of these changes is purely superficial – it will work initially and show all the changes you’ve made in the game, but once you restart Dragonvale a second time, all the new habitats, new food, etc. you’ve gained will disappear.  If you try to spend the food you’ve generated, it will work for a little bit, then you’ll get an internal error and the game will reboot and it will all disappear again.

To revert back to the original “gamerules.json” file, delete it from the folder then open the Dragonvale app on your iphone/ipad.  The game will generate a new up-to-date “gamerules.json” file on its own.

Hope you found this tutorial helpful!

Let me know if this has helped you get all the dragons you want in the comments!