Steal an Egg Volcano: Lava Dragon or Phoenix, and what the 700,000 Speed gate buys

Over any long period the Lava Dragon pays more, but it takes nearly eight hours to prove it. Plant both at the same moment. Phoenix hatches at 4h 30m and pays $8.5b, then earns $85M/s for the 30 minutes until the Dragon hatches. That is $153b on top, so Phoenix stands at $161.5b when the Dragon arrives with its $10b reward. The remaining $151.5b gap closes at $15M/s, which takes 2h 48m 20s. So the Dragon draws level 7h 48m 20s after planting. If you hold the pet longer than that, the Dragon was the better egg by $15M/s from then on.

Now add how often you get the chance. The wiki's Drop Rates page, which says its figures came from the game files, lists Phoenix at 0.222224 and Lava Dragon at 0.177779, which makes Phoenix 1.25 times as common, about one egg in 450 against one in 563. Weight income by value and Phoenix comes out 6.25% ahead per spawn: its extra frequency more than pays for its lower income. Read as independent draws, 100 Volcano spawns give about a 20% chance of at least one Phoenix and 16% of at least one Lava Dragon, or 33% for either. So the Eternal question is less which to pick than whether one has appeared at all.

Then come size and mutation, which can each overturn the result in Steal an Egg Volcano. A Silver roll (×1.2, roll weight 6 out of 100 on the wiki's Mutations page) makes a Phoenix $102M/s, more than a plain Dragon. A Phoenix also matches a plain base-weight Dragon at about 1.3 times its own base weight, using the Mutations page's size formula, (actual weight ÷ base weight)^(37/60). Golden keeps the usual order, at $212.5M/s for a Golden Phoenix and $250M/s for a Golden Dragon, but every multiplier on that page is ×1.2 or higher, so any mutated Steal an Egg Volcano Eternal out-earns a plain Lava Dragon. The Eggs page says eggs of various sizes appear in each area and that a larger egg carries a higher multiplier and is heavier, so judge the egg in front of you rather than the name on it.

One naming point for people searching 'eternal lava dragon egg': Eternal is the rarity, and the egg's name is simply Lava Dragon Egg. The site's 265-pet table has no pet called Eternal Lava Dragon. Two nearby names are easy to confuse with it: Eternal Lunar Dragon ($250M/s) sits in the Cosmic zone and Ice Dragon ($65M/s) in Snow. The wider ranking is on /steal-an-egg-best-pets.

Dividing income by grow time puts the eight Steal an Egg Volcano eggs in a clean ladder with one exception. Each row answers a simple question: for every hour this egg sits growing, how much income per second do you end up with? Lava Dragon and Phoenix lead at about $20M/s and $19M/s, and Cerberus is well behind them at $4M/s. Then there is a steep drop to the five ordinary eggs. Chillin Chilli, at $471K/s per grow hour, is far ahead of anything else that hatches in minutes.

The exception is the Legendary pair. Flaming Bull returns more per grow hour than Lava Iguana, $190K/s against $165K/s, even though the Iguana lists the higher income. Started together, the Bull leads until 8m 40s, then the Iguana passes it, so the difference is small either way. The Iguana's other edge is +36k Speed against +30k. Against that, the Bull is more common, at 18.03 against 15.03 on the Drop Rates page.

The source has a quirk worth noting here. Chillin Chilli, a Mythic, is listed at 17.030999, higher than Lava Iguana, a Legendary at 15.027352, so a higher rarity tier is the more common egg. Its Speed reward, +33k, also sits below the Iguana's +36k. The Volcano zone page lists the same pets in the same order, and every rarity, income and reward on it matches the infoboxes; it carries no grow times. List order is not rarity order, then, and in this zone the Chilli is a better find than its tier suggests: the best income you can expect from an egg you will see often. Every cash reward in this zone is 100 times income, so the $5.5m Chilli reward equals 100 seconds of its income.

These sums assume the pet earns from the moment it hatches and not before, and that the listed reward is paid at that moment. That is how we read the wiki, which labels the field only "Reward" and does not state either point outright. They also rank one pen at a time. The wiki does not say how many pens you will have by this stage, and more pens mean less pressure to choose. If you do have a spare pen, a short egg beside a long one is the obvious use of it.

About 97% of it. The chart's log scale makes the bars look like a gentle staircase, but weight each income by its value on the wiki's Drop Rates page and the average Volcano egg is worth $429,225/s, of which Phoenix supplies 44%, Lava Dragon 41% and Cerberus 12%. Those three eggs together are 1.02 of every 100 spawns. The five ordinary eggs, which are the other 99 spawns, supply about 3%.

That has a practical consequence. A plan built on the average would be misleading, because the average is carried by eggs that make up about 1 in every 100 spawns. A plan built on what you will actually hold starts with Chillin Chilli and Flaming Bull. The rare eggs are something to grab, not something to camp for.

Cerberus deserves a word of its own, since it is both the zone's guardian, on the Biomes page, and a Secret pet with its own egg. At 0.61984 on the Drop Rates page it appears about one egg in 161, roughly three times as often as either Eternal. Its $8M/s is small beside them, but look at what a long egg does against a short one. Start a Cerberus and a Chillin Chilli together: by the two-hour mark the Chilli has made $378.4m, and the Cerberus then hatches and pays $800m at once. The hatch reward alone is more than two hours of Chilli income, so a long egg in this zone is not a slow payer. It pays late and all at once. See /steal-an-egg-secret-pets for how Cerberus compares with the other Secrets.

Yes, as soon as you can return with an egg, and the first reason is Speed rather than money. Lava Gecko gives +24k in one minute, so 24,000 Speed per grow-minute, a better rate than any egg in the five zones before it. The closest are Desert's Jerboa at 21,600 and Snow's Penguin at about 17,000 (+12.8k in 45 seconds). Getting from Snow's 170K gate to 700,000 on Penguins alone is 42 hatches, about 31.5 minutes of grow time, ignoring the treadmill.

The next gap is much bigger, and it shows why the long eggs are poor Speed sources. Abyss Ocean's 2.5M gate is 1.8M past this one. The list below shows the same 1.8M covered by four different eggs, in hatches and in total grow time. Lava Gecko does it in 75 minutes and Lava Dragon in 150 hours, a 120-fold difference, so while you are short of Speed the worst egg in the zone by income is the best one to grow. The treadmill adds Speed too; the numbers are on /steal-an-egg-treadmills, and the wider picture on /steal-an-egg-speed.

Keep the warning from the Biomes page in mind: bigger eggs slow you down and require more than the listed Speed, and enough Speed to enter does not necessarily mean enough to return safely with a large egg. Neither the Biomes page nor the Eggs page puts a number on how much more, so treat 700,000 as the entry fee and not the working figure.

Is it worth moving on from here? Not in a hurry. Abyss Ocean's ordinary eggs pay far better than Volcano's: on the same weighted sum they contribute $60,995/s per spawn against $12,969/s here. But Volcano has the higher average overall, $429,225/s against $300,519/s, thanks to its two Eternals. So Abyss Ocean is the better place for steady income, and Volcano the better place for a lucky Eternal.

Flaming Bull is the workhorse. At $9.5K/s, a three-minute grow and a value of 18.032822 on the wiki's Drop Rates page, you will see it about once in every five or six eggs, and it pays $950k and +30k Speed on hatching. Over a full day its base income comes to $820.8M, which is what makes it worth holding until something better replaces it. Below it, Lava Frog and Lava Gecko are for Speed. Above it, only Lava Iguana and Chillin Chilli are realistic everyday upgrades, and Chillin Chilli is the one to look for at nearly six times the income.

Bull also has a use outside your pens. The wiki's Rift Event page (rev 1703) lists it in the Medium tier of both the Riftborn and Riftbeasts banners, alongside Lava Iguana and Chillin Chilli, with Lava Gecko and Lava Frog in Easy. Cerberus, Phoenix and Lava Dragon are not on those requirement lists. Volcano eggs are in two of the three banner pools, and the banner rotates roughly every 3 hours, so a spare Bull may be useful as sacrifice material; the page does not say what a higher tier gets you. More on /steal-an-egg-rift-event.

Two smaller reasons to come here have nothing to do with eggs. The Dr. Scramble Event page (rev 1792) places Lost Part #1 of the Stolen Experiment Vault inside Volcano, one of the five parts needed for the limited Scrambler bat, though the page gives no date for the quest and no spot within the zone. See /steal-an-egg-dr-scramble. The wiki's Weapons page (rev 2729, written by one editor) lists a Volcano Bat at Power ×1.61 and Extra reach 9.38, about 10.3% more Power than the Snow Bat's ×1.46. It does not explain how you get the bat within the zone.

For a mutation on any of these, use /steal-an-egg-mutation-calculator, and for what comes either side of this zone start at /steal-an-egg-zones, or follow the breadcrumb back to the homepage.