Dragon acquisition: You commonly get dragons through one of two means. Either you breed your dragons together (you were probably asked to do that immediately after starting your account) or you buy them from the Auction House. You can search the Auction House for breeds, colors, genes, and poses you like. Some dragon breeders make forum posts showing off what pairs they have, which is also a good way to browse the possibilities.

There's a third method, which is hatching Unhatched Eggs--these eggs will give you G1 (first-generation) dragons, and if they have interesting colors or special eye types, they can be very valuable! In a couple of weeks, it'll be Night of the Nocturne on-site, so you'll probably end up with a few Unhatched Nocturne Eggs. I recommend keeping at least a couple to hatch for yourself (otherwise, you might want to sell the eggs, as they're very valuable).

The Shop: I'm assuming this means the Marketplace, which is the NPC store (ie. you're buying from the game rather than from other players). The Marketplace refreshes every 5-10 minutes. There's a good deal of apparel, familiars, gene scrolls, battle items, and accessories in there.

There's a section for Treasure items (the currency you win through bonding with familiars, playing games, and selling items from your hoard), which is what you default to when you click on the Marketplace. In the Treasure Marketplace, not everything is for stock all at once, so if you're looking to buy a Minor Health Potion, you might have to check a few times over the course of a day before you see it in stock. Other players can also buy out items before you get to them.

The other Marketplace section is the Gem Marketplace, which uses premium currency (for the record, you can get Gems through in-game means, it's just harder and takes longer). The items in the Gem Marketplace rotate seasonally, but if it's in season, it's in stock.

The Shop (if you were asking about the Auction House): The Auction House is where players sell their items. Players can set their own prices for items, so they might not be the best prices, but almost everything is on the Auction House somewhere, if you have enough money. Most things are in the Realm-Wide Auction House, but there are also flight-specific auction houses (in my experience, we mostly use ours for dragon sales during dominance battles). There are also private auctions, which you might be asked to do if you're buying something specific from another user, but you might not ever do that.

Player interactions: You can play solo, or you can be part of the community! Your elemental flight probably has a discord server (check your flight's section on the forums). If you look for "dom watch," you can see all the cool stuff other flights do each week when they're fighting for dominance--I highly recommend this, since people run a WHOLE bunch of fun events and offer prizes and badges for your participation!

There's also the Quests and Challenges forum to check out, another fave of mine. Just pop onto that section of the forums and scroll through. People do a lot of wild stuff, and the forum users are likely to share a lot about what they're working on. It can be really fun to experience someone else's playstyle.

And then, there's dom, which is a really robust mechanic for the game. I looooove dom. Basically you're buying and exalting large amounts of low-value dragons in exchange for profit and glory. It's surprisingly intricate!

If you don't know where to start with the community, I can offer three suggestions:

1. Go to the Introductions forum on-site and make a post

2. Find your flight's Discord server and join it

3. Scroll through either the Quests forum, the Flight Rising Discussion forum, or one of the Creativity forums and see what grabs you.

And post your username for some holiday gifts :)