Those of us who play single-player Quake or multi-player cooperative Quake no doubt realize that many, if not most, of the Quake monsters are quite easy to defeat. The monsters are only challenging if they come in bunches. These monsters camp at their designated areas and when they see us, they immediately begin their attacks. They move, stop, fire, move, stop, fire, move, stop, fire. It becomes a little boring after awhile. The worst part of the overall gaming experience is that there are not many flying monsters. The ones that have been designed (either by ID or by other patch authors) are not very satisfactory. These flying monsters are either slow moving or so large that you can not help but hit them. Thanks to Patrick Martin that is about to change and change in a big way, in a postive way.

My first impression of seeing the dragons in action was a WOW. Unlike the original iD's dragon, these dragons are NOT too large. Yes, these dragons are larger than players but these are not huge. Their smaller size makes them harder to hit especially since players are not accustomed to shooting something flying in the sky. And these monsters can move just as fast as a player running. No more slow moving monsters to kill. If you walk and not run, you die. So when you play against these monsters, you better bring your deathmatch skills with you.

Unlike the original Qtest dragon, Patrick Martin's version comes in five varieties. It is the same model but with different skins and abilities. I will discuss these abilities when I discuss combat but for now, I will just list the varities. The five varieties are red, blue, green, nightshade, and gold. All five dragons have a close-range (melee) attack and long-range projectile attack(s). Except for the nightshade dragon, the intelligence of the dragons can range from stupidity to brilliance. All five varieties have three new spawnflags: pacificist (doesn't attack until injured or triggered), dormant ("sleeps"), and respawn. The dragons have more animation frames for you to look at (69 frames) than ID's dragon (18 frames). Martin's dragon model is also 40% smaller than iD's Qtest dragon. Unlike the original and other people's dragon patches, Martin's dragons "will almost never clip a wall".

Level makers can add dragons in their maps in the same way they add other monsters to their maps. Just make sure that the monster you add is "monster_dragon" if you want dragons. But here is the beauty of it, the level maker can specify certain traits for the dragons. He or she can make some red dragons attack once the dragon sees a player. Other red dragons will "sleep" until you get real close to the dragon or if it is alerted by other monsters or if it is injured or triggerd. Still, other red dragons can RESPAWN after being killed. The level maker can specify the intelligence, the amount of health, whether or not the dragon can regenerate health and if the dragon can regenerate health, the amount of health regenerated and speed can also be set. If the level maker chooses not to specify any of these traits, then the default values will be in effect. These specifications are in addition to specifying the type of dragon to use!

All five dragons have the same melee attack. The dragons will bite you in close range and each bite inflicts a random amount of damage which ranges from 15 points to 45 points of damage. However, there is a 10% chance that the bite will score a critical hit which inflicts 60 points of damage.

The projectile that the dragons shoot is mainly used for targets that is too far for melee attacks. However, these projectile attacks can still be used in close range fighting so be warned.

Red Dragon: The red dragon is your classic dragon. It fires six balls of fire at its target. Each ball of fire inflicts a random amount of damage which ranges from six points to 15 points of damage on a direct hit. In addition, there is a 10% chance that the ball of fire will ignite the target doing roughly 6 to 15 points of damage per second. To quench the fire, the target either has to pick up a megahealth or dive into water or slime. If the balls of fire misses the target, it will explode inflicting a small amount of radius damage which ranges from 5 to 10 points of damage. Like the direct hit, there is a 10% chance that any target within this radius will catch on fire. Your shield against the red dragon is obviously water or slime. The balls of fire can not go into water or slime. The dragon itself avoids water and it is immune to fire.

Blue Dragon: The blue dragon is like the shambler, it will fire a powerful bolt of lightning. Unlike the shambler's, this bolt of lightning can go through its target and strike multiple targets. The bolt lasts about 0.4 "game" seconds and inflicts a random amount of damage which ranges from 5 points to 10 points of damage per 0.1 second. Thus, the total amount of damage per shot ranges from 20 points to 40 points of damage. If the lightning hits water, then you better not be in the water. The lightning bolt will inflict a powerful radius damage worth up to 100 points of damage per 0.1 second. Normally, the blue dragon like the red dragon will avoid water. But if it is on fire, the blue dragon will dive into water to put the flames out.

Green Dragon: The green dragon fires six bursts of toxic green blobs. Each blob inflicts 9 points of damage. Although it is not as powerful as the red dragon's fire balls, these blobs can go into water or slime. Hence, this green dragon will not hesitate to chase a target swimming in water. Like the blue dragon, it will dive into water if it catches on fire.

Gold Dragon: The gold dragon is probably the most powerful of all the dragons. It has three types of projectile attacks. It has the projectile attacks of the blue dragon and red dragon. The third projectile attack is its energy spikes. These spikes can inflict upto 40 points of damage on a direct hit. The explosion caused by the spikes can do more than 100 points of damage. The total amount of damage is CUMULATIVE. This means that the target will not only suffer damage from a direct hit but it will also suffer radius damage from the explosion itself. Do not be surprised if the gold dragon inflicts more than 150 points of damage for each shot. Like the other dragons, it will avoid water and like the red dragon, it is immune to fire. However, do not assume that water or slime is a safe haven against the gold dragon. Remember, it can fire the lightning bolt into the water just like the blue dragon.

Nightshade: The nightshade dragon is probably the most unusual dragon you will ever find in Quake. This dragon is all black which makes it a little difficult to see in the dark areas of the map. This is an undead monster and it is NOT SOLID. Projectiles and bullets can not hurt it. The only thing that can hurt the nightshade is radius effects caused by explosions. The nightshade fires a "fan-spray" of bloody gibs towards its target. Each gib inflicts 10 points of damage. If the gib misses its target, the gib will transform into a zombie which the nightshade itself controls. Luckily, there is a limit to the number of zombies that each nightshade can create. The amount is set by the level maker. If the amount is not set, then the default is six. If you manage to kill a nightshade, then you probably want to run away. The nightshade makes one more big attempt to kill you by imploding then finally exploding inflicting a large amount of damage to anything nearby. If there were zombies in the game when the nightshade died, you still have to kill those zombies.

Red dragon	Blue dragon

Green dragon	Gold dragon

Nightshade dragon

Unlike most monsters you see in Quake, these dragons move while firing. These dragons do not follow the same, tired, old monster combat formula of "move, stop, fire, move, stop, fire". These dragons move while firing. The thing that makes these dragons even more difficult to kill is that they know when to move in for the kill or stay away. For instance, if you have an axe, the dragons will close in for the kill but if you have a rocket launcher or you have the invulnerability, they will stay back. The dragons will try to strafe ("fly strafe", if you will) and avoid any rockets you fire at them. For dragons that are not immune to fire, these dragons will dive into water to put the fire out while in combat. How many monsters do you know will try to save itself while in combat?

Did I forget to mention that the dragon's intelligence can be specified? Smart blue dragons and gold dragons, for instance, will fire into the water to fry you. Smart blue and green dragons will avoid burning entities so it will not catch fire itself. Dumb dragons, on the other hand, will not avoid burning entities. It will not search for water if it is burning and it has a habit of attacking anything that hurts it including other dragons. Dumb dragons will not avoid rockets, either.

If you merge this dragon patch with other monster patches like the Cyberdemon or Snakeman, the dragon already knows how to handle these monsters. The smarter the dragon, the better it is in handling these new monsters. Dumb dragons, for instance, will die quickly against the snakeman but smarter dragons know that it is better to stay away and poke them from a far.

Download this patch today. It is the best monster patch I had ever seen to date. If you are a level maker and you wish to make maps suitable for COOP play, then these monsters are for you. You can customize these monsters in a manner no other monster patches will allow. The source code is included in the package if you wish to add these monsters in a compilation patch. The package also includes a test map. You should try it out on skill 3. On a scale of 0 to 100, I give this dragon package a 97.