How do you spend your gems resources?

Well the craziest thing I ever did was spend about 4000 gems trying to breed the Briar dragon. ...... Briar....... the enchantment breedable...... ALWAYS AT ANYTIME BREEDABLE. COMPLETELY INSANE. But it was interesting to see how far it could go without getting him. I actually gave up and swore I would never breed him but decided to give him another shot a couple of days later. Bred him on the first attempt.

Gospel truth.

And Adam I want those D*MN gems back. Good luck in the last four days of the Ancient event everyone.

Someone should start a thread about some insane gem incidents they wouldn't want other players to know about. I've gone about a thousand twice on dragons of the week. 16000 is probably close over the last five years.

@Airbender1505, I get what you meant by not spending on food or gold. I won't spend on gold for sure, but food? I may consider it because my teams are still fairly mid-level. The highest is at 42, 4*. The bites get pretty expensive as the level goes up and I don't want to level a few dragons only but a whole team of 12 dragons together. So even with my current stock of 1.14B stockpile, I don't think that will get me far. I may added that I don't necessarily want to level them up at one shot but gradually because the gameplay is such that the opponents get levelled up correspondently. 

Okay so considering what you just said, you are missing out on a LOT! 
the best and fastest way of stockpiling food is to complete the map and then hit those blue map fights everytime. IDK why you want a whole flock of 12 dragons from the get go, but that's certainly the worst thing you can do. 
Yes the opponent gradually increase in level, but you can cover up all the thing with just TWO dragons. 
But since you have over a Billion food stocked, you should select three Nice dragons (preferably two divines and 1 ancient) and max them out, complete your maps, and then hoard food, you'll get infinitely more food by doing this, that hoarding them by purchasing through gems. 

I said no to food, because like gold, it's a waste of gems. I would like to know what dragons you have and what are you currently using. 
Also, Don't dream about raising a flock of 12 dragons at once, that will cost you a LOT of gems with your method, coz not only you have to spend those gems to get good dragon, but you also have to spend them BUYING food... which is always a big NO NO... 
You can just finish map  rn using those gems and grind infinitely more food. 1.14 B is barely enough for 3 dragons (you won't make it to even three dragons, you have to upgrade temples as well and each dragon eats some 335M food to get to level 100). 

So what you are aiming for, is certainly not a wise choice at all.
If you need any help with level up calculation of food etc, head over to Dmlplanner or wiki, they have the numbers, and are very useful sight for team planning and resource management in general. 
You can ask  for help here if you are still confused (altho you seem like someone who know what they are doing, which is certainly not something I see in most dml players these days )

Okay so considering what you just said, you are missing out on a LOT! 
the best and fastest way of stockpiling food is to complete the map and then hit those blue map fights everytime. IDK why you want a whole flock of 12 dragons from the get go, but that's certainly the worst thing you can do. 
Yes the opponent gradually increase in level, but you can cover up all the thing with just TWO dragons. 
But since you have over a Billion food stocked, you should select three Nice dragons (preferably two divines and 1 ancient) and max them out, complete your maps, and then hoard food, you'll get infinitely more food by doing this, that hoarding them by purchasing through gems. 
 

That`s exactly what I was about to answer. One more thing: Even if you really want to feed a whole team of 12 at once, you have enough food to take 12 dragons from level 42 to level 70. If you have divines with rare wonder/acceptance sigils, this will allow you to complete the normal campaign map and it will take you very far on the heroic map. Doing side quests will then be your main food source. You will get more food than you could ever buy using gems.

@ viking99, yes it is quite a lot in comparative. Only because I didn't spent them much.  I didn't purchase all of them except for a couple of times, one on piggy bank and another on clam offer of 800. The rest? All faithfully collected from the petting, daily habitat's offer, Otto's wheel, and later, from the dungeon, for the last 3 years. It was slow going at first but started building up fairly fast at one time when the ads offered extra gems when you participated in their interactive ads. I know a lot of people don't find Otto's wheel fanciful, but this has been a constant source of daily steady collection for me.

As for spending them, I couldn't find anything that I felt like spending on, even on events like Ancient. Except for last Ancient which I dropped 1,500 gems to get the tickets for the Soft. I am thinking of dropping some more on this event because I like the designs of the collection and I want to have a void in my team. The only one other event I do spent on is the gem-spending event if it offers good dragons.

Seems like we've similar sources of gem except piggy, I never bought that. I prefer clam xD. Last ancient event was very easy for me as I got x500pcs of valkov and double trouble was very supportive . This time I've 3000 gem ready if in case of need. I never spent gem for food and gold. In fact I realize that I didn't spent gem for anything else than dungeon steps in last year 
Edit: I also spend for 3rd element of L.A.D dragons.

You can just finish map  rn using those gems and grind infinitely more food. 1.14 B is barely enough for 3 dragons (you won't make it to even three dragons, you have to upgrade temples as well and each dragon eats some 335M food to get to level 100). 



 

That is absolutely right. If you stay on top of those scrolls every day, you get much more food than you can reasonably buy with gems. Now if you mortgage a big mansion to buy food in this game of course you can always get more with real $$$.
Otherwise I can say that since I dropped out of clan and went into an inactive clan I really feel the diference.
When I was in the clan I always kept those scrolls for clan quests and I now realize how much food I missed. But to be fair now I'm missing around 60-70 gems for each Clan Siege event.

So side quests and planting that expensive every day makes a big difference and builds up really fast your food pile.
But if you wish you can try, you will be surprised to discover how little food you can buy with that amount of gems.

And to be honest I did not even finished the last island on both maps. I guess it is even more scrolls when you cleared them all.

Great to see different approaches and some polite, healthy debate.

Personally, I'm with Zitaliam on the team approach.  I have no desire to boost two or three dragons way higher than my larger team.  Sure, it will take me longer to complete the two maps and, therefore my rewards from side quests battles will be lower, but I never have a problem with events due to lacking strong dragons with particular elements.  I'm happy to take the tortoise approach and let the hares streak by me!  Similarly, I'm not rushing to increase their enchantment stars until I can do the whole team at the same time.  I don't use sigils on any of my dragons.  The first two weeks of sigil campaigns were enough for me to decide that I simply can't be bothered with it and I rarely have time (or energy) to tackle the despised dungeon.  Maybe much, much later.

As for what to spend gems on.  First and foremost is the portal.  This means that you have enough energy to be able to hire dragons that will see you right across both maps until you reach the islands that don't allow hiring.  Definitely important to do this as the rewards from those side quests increase the further that you go.  If your VIP status is active, remember to use your instant wins (I keep forgetting - d'oh!) and use them on the heroic map (the one with mauve sea!) if you've reached the point where the rewards there are better than those from the campaign map.  Remember that it only uses 1 instant win ticket per battle, rather than 2 portal energy on the heroic mapl.

I have just one Boss Dragon. I have three on my Windows account, which was already a year old when I started to play on Android.  By then, I'd realised that they were pretty pointless.

I also concentrated on triple element dragons right from the get go.  This meant that my three free enchanted dragons were triple element.  In fact I managed to hold out long enough so that they were also light and shadow dragons .

I have upgraded my legendary habitats so as to get more space for my dragons.

I've also upgraded my nest.  For a long time, it was at three and then four.  Only quite recently did I have enough expendable gems to get the fifth nest and now I'm not sure how I coped without it.  That said, unless you're going to buy the second den, you really won't need so many nests.

I very rarely spend gems on the whale mart.  I'm not a gambler, so I'm not even tempted by things like the ancient tickets.  And I certainly don't want sigils.

I only awaken the elements of Legendary, Divine and Ancient dragons if I think they are going to join my team.

I've upgraded my dens in order to be able to breed extra dragons, although many of them I can't yet breed because I haven't enchanted the parents.

Nearly forgot - I also upgraded the Fruit Tree (with my solo Boss dragon) to level 5 (so far).

Other than that, I save my gems for rainy days - ie something like completing the necessary doubles to fight the battles for the Ox.  Currently, I'm holding out, still hoping for some more lucky throws!

Great to see different approaches and some polite, healthy debate.

Personally, I'm with Zitaliam on the team approach.  I have no desire to boost two or three dragons way higher than my larger team.  Sure, it will take me longer to complete the two maps and, therefore my rewards from side quests battles will be lower, but I never have a problem with events due to lacking strong dragons with particular elements.  I'm happy to take the tortoise approach and let the hares streak by me!  Similarly, I'm not rushing to increase their enchantment stars until I can do the whole team at the same time.  I don't use sigils on any of my dragons.  The first two weeks of sigil campaigns were enough for me to decide that I simply can't be bothered with it and I rarely have time (or energy) to tackle the despised dungeon.  Maybe much, much later.
 

I really agree with you on that one. I was lucky enough to start the game when there were only few events like gather/spend gold, gather/spend food and hatch dragons. So going for a Lead Dragon  (basically having your three highest dragons differentiated by 10levels between them) did not mess up anything else in the game except the Arena.
By the time they came with the 1st castle event (where you need specific elements) I was prety much  at 80-70-60 with my team and of course I did not get Castle Dragon on that event. But I was already having some food stored and with the first feed event I pretty much leveled a team of 6 quite equally so for the next castle I was able to compete.
Nowadays if you gow with only 3 dragons at a high level you are kind of screwed in so many events but it all depends on which dragons you choose.
To have best chances you pretty much have to choose a team that will represent all elements only once. It is hard to do but considering there are only 13elements in the game it is really possible if you choose some epics and try with 5 dragons instead 4.
You will even have 2 elements that you can have doubled.