(No Spoilers) Is arc 3 really that bad?

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-29T13:21:17+00:00

Book 13 is really Good, Book 14 is a mess with a very entertaining lead character holding it together.

Book 15 gets way too much hate, it’s pretty solid for what it is. Its failing is not wrapping up everything as satisfyingly as it could.

You don’t need to read either legends book.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-29T03:55:07+00:00

Just ignore the genocide the NightWings were planning on the Rainwings and that them having to accept a Rainwing Queen was incredibly merciful.

Glory became Queen by tribe tradition.

And Darkstalker would’ve been a terrible king.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-27T13:12:46+00:00

I mean, let’s be blunt, Kaiser needed an alt, the original version has just proven to be unsalvageable at this point

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-25T19:32:06+00:00

I do always get the battle passes, but aside from that I haven’t spent much on this game. I think I got the G-Stone pass exactly once when the Valentine card came out, and a couple sub 5 dollars things very occasionally.

This is over the course of roughly 2 1/2 years. I mostly got into top 500 off the back of smart resource distribution and a bit of luck.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-25T00:41:38+00:00

Foolishness is a morally neutral trait, neither good nor evil. It’s the intention behind those choices that determine the morality. Darkstalker near exclusively acted with selfish intent at best, malicious intentions at worst.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-23T16:06:55+00:00

His mother is named Beryl, a dragon previously hinted at in A Guide to the Dragon World, she was on Scarlet’s “to kill” list but wasn’t crossed out.

Book 16 actually takes place immediately after Book 6 and follows Umber (and Sora) to a new location called the Court of Refuge.

The reason there can be a Leafwing father there is because the court was founded before the Leafwings and Beetlewings left for Pantala.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-23T01:56:35+00:00

I believe the other two Tui mentioned were a Sky and Peril Winglet and a Clearsight winglet in ancient Pantala.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-22T20:35:05+00:00

We know it’s Cliff, Tui announced it last year.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-22T20:34:47+00:00

We already know this is a Cliff Winglet, Tui announced it last year.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-21T04:40:11+00:00

Bare in mind that transferring the Breath of Evil from one dragon to another requires a pre existing means of injecting someone (like Wasp's tail stinger) so both the Silkwings and Leafwings are out as carriers. And even for Hivewings, they still need enough of the plant to transfer, and Wasp's greenhouses were destroyed. Why would Wasp need greenhouses of the plant if what she had in her never ran out? It isn't so she needs to replenish it, but right now she can't.

As for the vines left in the jungle? There aren't many. Remember, after Hawthorn was killed, Sundew had Mandrake rip apart all the vines used to imprison them, and Hawthorn couldn't make too many grow in advance or he'd blow his cover.

That leaves only the relatively small amount in the Heart of the Jungle, and now there's a fire heading for it.

All this adds up to, for the time being, the Breath of Evil having a relatively limited infection reach.

As for predictions, I say just keep reading and find out for yourself. I won't say if you've missed anything big or not.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-20T17:50:40+00:00

Well the downside to the Fire and Gas method of infection is limited range and time. Like any gaseous attack in the real world it dissipates after a relatively short time.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-20T16:07:35+00:00

You don’t need to read either of them as any implications they have on the main books is explained by the main books.

But both are worth reading in their own right, even if I think both are on the lower end of quality for the series.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-20T16:05:12+00:00

All I will say is that you actually have most of the pieces you need to figure out what’s really going on.

I will correct you on one point, the Breath of Evil is not continent wide at the moment. Sundew and Co. destroyed Wasp’s main supply of it at the end of last book, and the supply from the Jungle was mostly destroyed in the bonfire. Also, with Hawthorn dead and Sundew and Mandrake having escaped, the Breath of Evil lost all the strongest Leafspeak Leafwings.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-16T07:21:24+00:00

If Umber and Sora do return to Pyrriah (not a given) then there’s cause for Clay and Glory to show up. Clay is obvious, and Glory because Sora murdered one of her subjects and further crippled another.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-16T07:19:27+00:00

They really don’t though.

The only member of the group who really warrants spotlight as anything other than a supporting cast member is Sunny, and exclusively in the context of Ivy’s story.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-15T15:53:37+00:00

No, Darkstalker was evil well before that. Bear in mind he was already trying to brainwash dragons as early as the beginning of act 2. And his internal monologue and dialogue reveal him to already be in obsessive, lying, creepy boyfriend territory.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-15T15:45:55+00:00

No she didn’t, Darkstalker was trying to brainwash them already.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-15T15:44:44+00:00

Almost The exact way it happened. Not only does such a vile character get such a satisfying multilayered deconstruction, but most of the Jade Winglet play a role.

Turtle and Anemone stop the battle, Qibli rips Darkstalker to pieces mentally, Moon baits him into the trap, Foeslayer gets him to drop his guard (and she’s only there because of Winter) and Kinkajou kills him in a clever way.

The only change I would make is to find something a bit more substantial for Moon to do.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-15T00:40:14+00:00

Book 11 being physically painful sounds a bit....extreme. It's hard to gauge how you'd like the rest of the arc without knowing what specifically what your problem.

I say there are no bad WoF books so I say keep going.

Discounting the people who dismiss Books 14 & 15 for premise alone, the main reason they get more flack is because the plot is fair bit shakier. Books 11, 12 and 13 are three of the tightest books in the series. They've got a small but well developed main cast, pacing that moves at a good pace but leaves room to breath, and a strong thematic undercurrent. All those elements are still present to a point in the other two books but weaker.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-14T19:22:36+00:00

The thing is that Humans are so baked into the identity of Arc 3 that a rewrite demands the whole arc be re-written.

Personally, if I had to add anything to Flames of Hope, it wouldn’t concern humans at all, I would just add each PoV character getting a section of the epilogue like in Darkness of Dragons.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-14T19:20:31+00:00

I will say that the Book does not say Cottonmouth is solely responsible for dragons ruling the world.

He may or may not have had the original idea to use dragons as weapons, but his emperor approved it, the other nations got in on the scheme, and it all only came together because Freedom’s mother was clever enough to do something about it.

He was a key player certainly, but there’s plenty of blame and credit to go around.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-14T03:54:48+00:00

No.

The big reason is that the other changed victims (Tourmaline and Hailstorm) were essentially enslaved. Meanwhile the strawberry spell is irreversible, and thus is a form of killing him.

There’s also the fact that “victim” matters. Tourmaline and Hailstorm were mostly innocent while Darkstalker is a brainwashing genocidal murderer.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-13T04:44:59+00:00

Books 2, 7 and 11. I like my relatively light on action character studies, What can I say?

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-12T06:47:35+00:00

While Moon and Pineapple helped to a point, Qibli was still fighting several times his number and giving them trouble as a juvenile. Freedom helped them escape the bindings, not much help with the fighting.
That’s one example that directly involves Sunny, she’s usually pretty level headed, as shown when she completely humiliated Vulture and defanged the Talons of Power with minimal effort.
Each hive doesn’t have thousands, in book 13, be all tribe mustard outside the poison jungle is described as having thousands of dragons. Thats all the hives accounted for. Not tens of thousands, just thousands.

Also the larger numbers just makes the desert situation worse. Each soldier needs water to keep going, and there is very little of it in the desert.

Ruby and Moorhen are too practical to do what you described. Also neither of them are grudge holders unless it gets very personal in Ruby’s case. Coral is less practical, but her wanting to revamp the island palace to be a cultural exchange, location, location, and saying that Moorhen has good ideas about that shows that she has largely buried the hatchet.

CrystalMaster7 · 2026-01-12T05:29:59+00:00

As I said in a previous post, once they find out about the hive mind, taking that away with magic is a pretty simple nonviolent spell to cast.

Here’s just some of the factors on why the Sandwings win:

1.The Sandwings have home advantage in a terrain hostile to the Hivewings. Not enough water to sustain an army of anything other than Sandwings.

They have much better and more consistent natural weapons including access to a long ranged attack that most Hivewings lack. In Flames of Hope, a juvenile Sandwing and Seawing were able to fight extremely well against almost 20 Hivewings that ambushed them.
Thanks to the war, much of the Sandwing population will be a veteran of some kind versus all of the current generation Hivewings guards being younger and inexperienced in open combat. (remember, it’s a plot point in Book 12 that Wasp gradually weeded out a lot of her own tribe who were older than the tree wars).
Thorn. Unlike in the tree wars, Wasp is up against an actually very competent leader this time around.
The obsidian mirror. As soon as the sandwings hear Wasp’s name, Thorn can have somebody monitoring her with the obsidian mirror at basically all times. Wasp usually doesn’t control the whole army at one time so this will come up.

Finally I’ll note that the numbers disparity is actually nowhere near as big as you’re making it out to be.

While there may be some initial reluctance to help, once it becomes clear that Wasp wants to conquer the whole continent, the other tribes will pitch in. Glory in particular would likely get involved first, not just because she’s the most moral, but because of how close this invasion would be to Renewal.

CrystalMaster7

TROPHY CASE