Inferno Dragon

Inferno Dragon is a 4-Elixir Legendary flier that doesn't hit hard right away — it locks a beam onto one target and ramps its damage the longer that beam stays connected, climbing from a weak opening tick to over a thousand damage per second within about four seconds. That makes it one of the best single cards in the game for melting high-hitpoint tanks like Golem or Lava Hound, but the ramp resets instantly if the target dies, gets out of range, or the beam is interrupted, so cheap swarms and reset spells are its natural counters. Its 2025 Evolution adds a "Beam Momentum" upgrade that carries the damage ramp across a target switch instead of resetting it, plus a monstrous fourth damage stage for very long beam locks — though a mid-2026 balance change trimmed how long that momentum window lasts, to stop it from snowballing a defensive stand straight into a full counter-push.

• Inferno Dragon is a 4-Elixir Legendary troop that flies, letting it dodge ground-only troops while still being able to target both air and ground units itself. It's a single-unit deployment with 1,295 hitpoints at tournament-standard level 11, moves at Medium speed, deploys in about 1 second, and fires a short beam (3.5-tile range) every 0.4 seconds.

• Its signature mechanic is a damage beam that ramps up the longer it stays locked onto one target: at level 11 it starts at just 35 damage per hit (about 87 damage per second) for the first two seconds, jumps to 120 per hit (300 per second) through roughly the four-second mark, then spikes to 422 per hit (1,055 per second) once the beam has been sustained past four seconds on that same target.

• That ramp is also its biggest weakness: if the target dies, moves out of range, or the beam gets interrupted (stun or freeze effects, or units like Electro Wizard and Zappies that repeatedly reset it), the damage instantly drops back to its weak opening stage. Cheap swarms such as Minion Horde and reset spells like Zap, Lightning, or Freeze are the standard ways to shut it down before it ramps up.

• Because of that ramp, Inferno Dragon is a classic single-target answer to high-hitpoint tanks — Golem, Giant, Lava Hound, and P.E.K.K.A. are all common targets it can melt through in a few seconds if left unanswered, making it a defensive staple in decks built around punishing beatdown pushes.

• Inferno Dragon has been part of Clash Royale since 30 September 2016, one of the longer-tenured members of the current card pool, added about seven months after Legendary rarity itself debuted at the game's 2 March 2016 global launch.

• EvolutionThe Evolved Inferno Dragon has a "Beam Momentum" ability that lets it keep its current damage stage instead of dropping back to the weak opening stage when it switches to a fresh target, as long as it finds that new target within 7 seconds. A June 2026 balance change cut that window down from the original 9 seconds, to stop a fully charged Evolved Inferno Dragon from carrying its damage so easily from defense into a counter-push.

• EvolutionSustained beam contact also unlocks a fourth damage stage for the Evolved version — after roughly 20 seconds of cumulative beam damage (which Beam Momentum can carry across more than one target), it deals 844 damage per hit, or 2,110 damage per second, exactly double its third-stage output, making it one of the hardest-hitting single-target attacks in the game.

• EvolutionEvolving Inferno Dragon costs 2 cycles of the card, so every third copy played (after two normal deploys at 4 Elixir each) comes out as the Evolved version. The Evolution was added on 2 June 2025, nearly nine years after the base card's release.