Bone Dragon and Ghost Dragon

Necropolis creatures
Level 1
Skeleton
Skeleton Warrior
Level 2
Walking Dead
Zombie
Level 3
Wight
Wraith
Level 4
Vampire
Vampire Lord
Level 5
Lich
Power Lich
Level 6
Black Knight
Dread Knight
Level 7
Bone Dragon
Ghost Dragon
Towns

Bone and ghost dragons are level 7 necropolis creatures. They are recruited from the dragon vault.

"Bone and ghost dragons are raised from dragon corpses. Both of these creatures have a ferocious biting attack and lower the morale of enemy units by one when they appear on the battlefield. Ghost dragon attacks have a 20% chance of aging their targets. Aged troops have the hit points of all their members halved." ^{RoE manual}

Placing hydras, as well as sea serpents and haspids , or any living dragons into the skeleton transformer will produce bone dragons instead of regular skeletons. Bone and ghost dragons themselves will be turned into skeletons.

Aging special ability

Ghost dragons have the special ability aging, which has a 20% chance to occur after they have attacked a creature stack and before the stack has a chance to retaliate. It lowers the maximum health of every creature in the target stack down to 50% (rounded up). The effect lasts for 3 combat rounds, and can only be removed with cure or dispel. Additionally, non-living creatures are immune to aging.

When ghost dragons successfully age a stack, any health lost before being aged remains lost. However, the aging cannot reduce health to 0. For example, a ghost dragon attacks one angel and deals 60 points melee damage before the aging occurs. The angel will have 40 health left, which is the result of the calculation

200÷2-60 = 40

If the ghost dragon had dealt 130 damage, the angel would have had 1 health left, which would have been the result of two calculations:

First: 200-130 = 70

Second: Max(70- (200- 100),1) = 1

200 is the previous maximum health and 100 is the maximum health after aging. 70 health remains after the first calculation (the usual damage calculation).

If cure with a power to heal of 30 is used, the angel would have had 131 health left. The following calculation shows the ensuing result:

First: 1+30 = 31

Second: Min(200,31 + (200- 100)) = 131

200 is the previous maximum health and 100 is the maximum health after being aged. Also, 31 health remains after the first calculation (the usual damage calculation).

Aging has a multiplicative effect with the wyvern monarchs' poisonous ability. This means that a creature's health could potentially be reduced to a fourth of its maximum.

Creatures immune to aging:

•  Black Dragons

Elementals:	Undead:	Gargoyles:
Air and Storm Elementals   Water and Ice Elementals   Fire and Energy Elementals   Earth and Magma Elementals   Psychic and Magic Elementals	Skeletons and Skeleton Warriors   Walking Dead and Zombies   Wights and Wraiths   Vampires and Vampire Lords   Liches and Power Liches   Black and Dread Knights   Bone and Ghost Dragons  Mummies	Stone and Obsidian Gargoyles Golems   Stone and Iron Golems  Gold Golems  Diamond Golems  Steel Golems
Mechanicals   Automatons and Sentinel Automatons    Juggernauts and Dreadnoughts

User commentary

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Bone Dragons are the only type of dragon that doesn't require any magical resources to recruit. Bone Dragons and Ghost Dragons are often considered to be among the weakest level 7 creatures. They are not as powerful as regular dragons, and do not share most of their features, like breath attack. While Aging can effectively cripple an enemy stack, it is quite unreliable. They are relatively fast, even for 7th level creatures, and have slightly above average attack stat as well, but the lowest defense of a level 7 unit. Use them defensively to clean up Troop stacks in the first few rounds of combat and try to keep them from being overwhelmed as they will falter when they get teamed up on. They also bear the lowest minimal damage for a tier 7 unit, sharing this stat with the Hydras and Chaos Hydras. They are also one of the three flying Necropolis units, the others being the Vampires and Wights/Wraiths, making them good for sieges, especially since the Wights and Wraiths have low stats.

See also:

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• List of creatures
• List of creatures (HotA)
• Comparison of Level 7 Creatures