Pet dragon experience
 

What's up with the ever changing pet dragon experience?

At one point, it gets 21 experience for digging up a chest, then the next moment just 1. Same for the rest of the skills.

It is proportional to the remaining enemy's aggregate leadership.

The weaker the enemy is, the less XP you get. The reverse is true as well. The stronger the enemy is, the more XP you get.

Alright, fairy nuff. Thanks.

I mostly don't get any XP at all for digging up chests or placing the egg... I figured that's because only damage-dealing abilities yield XP. That's too bad it works this way, as I usually use the chest digging ability late in battle when I have incapacitated the last enemies...

The attack abilities gives more XP than the other abilities but they also depend on the enemy leadership and have different amounts of XP which you can win (using the dragon mod you can see it).

Example: The dragon basic attack gives 1-40 XP depending on the current enemy leadership while others (dig, egg and lighting orb) give a fixed amount (not variable in battle)

So the ball of lightning is no longer the most lucrative pet dragon skill, experience-wise?

Doesn't seem to make sense that the ball has a fixed amount of xp when it's a damaging ability just like any other...

It is. I can get up to 110 xp with it at times, but it takes two rounds (due to one turn for rest), so I just cast awaken and re-cast it again.

Experience for all skills depends on strength of enemies, but exact experience is based on enemy leadership to your leadership ratio (this is only one part of algorithm). If enemy is strong, very strong, then you can get the same amount of experience when you use Lightning Ball second time, for example. But if enemy is stronger only in the beginning of battle, then you'll get smaller amount using the same ability second time (assuming you've killed some of the bastards by that time). Experience gained depends on some other things, like level of dragon or specific arena of battle, so it's not always easy to know which would be the best skill. Also on some arenas you'll get the same experience if you use the Ball of Lightning for the first time in the beginning or near end, when most enemies are dead, I think this is doing of exp rounding function. But Ball of lightning seem to be one of the best for me (actually, the best, but I don't use Lava or Phantoms).

Actually, Dragon Dive gave me around 200 xp, and since I never buffed it past one rest round, I can get around 200 xp each turn.

My mages are usually terrible with raising my dragon's levels. I am level 53, and it is level 44. :(

Just to specify, if you buff dragon dive to 2 round rest, you'll also get the chance to select a buff for -1 rest, so it's a gain-gain there anyway...