Well, folks, I have a new addition to the rules, based on last night. You're all familiar with Mama Hissy's rules... they're in my sig. To save you the trouble of scrolling down, they are:

Save early, save often
Save before, save after

The new rule.... save WHEN!

Why? Well, lemmetellya about last night. 'Twas a good night of running around the desert with the former barlock party... I'll call 'em narlocks now, since there are still three warlocks with a ninja, assassin, and ranger to round it out.

I love the gauntlets... those places like the back-and-forth exit area from Ishad N'ha, or the entry part of Dragonspire. I just seem to get tons of random encounters there, and that always means XP.

Well, another gauntlet is the area between the Lost Sea and the desert. Nice, twisty, back-and-forth... and great monsters, too! Jungle lilies, bloodstone griffins and azmodean rocs, dumdee oleohs... my joy knows no bounds.

Last night, my gourkh assassin smelled something. "Red dragon nearby," she said.

RED DRAGON!?!?! WHERE!!!!

No sooner did I say those words than we spied a couple of salads... jungle lilies. We dispatched those... but no dragon near them.

We went in the other direction... a trio of bark horrors... and some more... and some more... nice. Then there was a sand crawler... off with his head. No dragon.

Back the other way... the griffin / roc combo. Another crawler... but no dragon.

Back again... longtooths... raptors... dragonflies... no dragon.

I've now beaten a dozen kinds of beasties, one after another, in the space of just a few minutes. No traces of that dragon anywhere, and I'm now pretty sure that I've gone far enough away from where he materialized that he's now disappeared. I've lost my chance at a red dragon :(

So... the addition to Mama Hissy's rules... SAVE NOW!

Had I saved *immediately* when the info about the dragon showed up, I could have reloaded and looked around to try to find him. But I didn't, so no such luck :(

Ya don't see dragons very often.... kinda sorry I missed this one. Perhaps another... later...

Whenever a message like that pops up, save ASAP! You never know where you'll need to go...

Awwwwwww!!! And you were so close!!!

Well, you did get a lot of other neat monsters but I know, you wanted to find the Red Dragon! You can never save TOO often!!!

There are other dragons apart from Erasmidor? I thought he is one and only. :D

Just a question, do the different kind of monsters appeared depended on your characters level (ala Wizardry 8) or just randomly spitted out by the game?

Red dragons are a very rare random encounter. I think this is only the second or third I've seen.

The monsters depend on the region of the map. They do not try to match your level.

You can meet red dragons:

(1) Near the Brimloch Roon Gael Serran altar.
(2) On the way from the seashore to the desert with the Pyramid (the "gauntlet" from the Bungleau's post).
I haven't seen red dragons elsewhere. And - prepare trucks of mana points. The dragon is flying and has more than 1000 HP :D

I have met but two red dragons as random encounters. Both in the areas mentioned by Radek. And yes, there are more dragons in the game than Erathsmedor. In Anephas' Shrine there are at least two fixed encounters.

Fixed encounter did you say?

I've played and finished the game several times, somehow I just don't remember meeting other dragons apart from erasmidor. Or maybe the old age has finally catch up with me and my memory is failing. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Hmmm...maybe I should replay the game again.

Red dragons are rare. As far as the fixed encounters mentioned by bsftcs are considered, bsftcs surely means Guardians of Isis. IMO, the guardians aren't dragons even if they use the same animation files [img]smile.gif[/img] For example, they do not fly so that they represent a considerably smaller problem than the dragons.