Thread: Traits of incredibly enjoyable dreams

Here's an interesting question as an introduction: Which do you find more common, incredibly enjoyable dreams (5/5 rating) or lucid dreams? (for me LD is three times more common)

I analyzed my ~60 5-star dreams and tried to grab some traits out of them.

Occur after productivity/learning in real life. Some examples are The Sixth Sense which influenced the Golden Age, a real life social problem that caused Serendipity, and the day of orientation at VA Tech (my college) where I dreamed Action! Romance! The interesting exception to this are during my cruises in real life, which did not have any five-star dreams, hinting that vacation is not the key to having them.

Companionship Focus. In no 5-star dream have I been completely alone. This is further supported by the fact that in one-star dreams, I am either alone, or those that surround me always give off a negative impression. In fact, companionship is so important that I actually seem to need more than one person most of the time, because more than about 80% of five-star dreams focus or feature on more than two characters.

Gender focus. (Arguable) Out of all my five star dreams, although 14 contain only males as main characters, and 19 contain both female and male (or are merely ambiguous enough to give off that illusion), 23 dreams have females as the main focus of the dream. At 40%, a decent proportion, it is clear females have a significant impact on my dreams.
Fantasy element. While I have had a lot of realistic dreams overall, most of my 5-star dreams are impossible and wacky.

Conflict. Only 15 5-star dreams have no conflict of any type that needs to be resolved. This makes sense: problems must be overcome to feel achievement. In fact, even these 15 exceptions have some type of advancement of relation involved or a fun activity within them.

Light/dark balance. While there are some five star dreams with scenes in the dark, almost none of them are entirely located in such a situation. They always have a bright setting to contrast against this to represent hope and joy. In contrast to this, the vast majority of one-star dreams are in a gloomy or dark location.

Novelty element. There are lots of five-star dreams where new things are introduced. For example, My heroine (the first five-star) had the first suggesting romantic interaction, as well as finally saving me from the flood in my nightmares long ago; Out-witting the robbers had some character lying for the first time; SLEIGHT OF CARDS was highly unpredictable; SOAR was one of the only times flying had succeeded; Action! Romance! had a unique combination of two genres; and most notably OZ&SHIOM has three goals accomplished in one dream, a very rare achievement. 5-star dreams also have very few repetitive or shared traits, with the only element constantly showing up being kissing girls I like.

Vague location. Admittedly, most dreams are not very clear, but even with lucidity assisting in this dream, views seem to be secondary--the interaction and feelings are key to having a five-star dream-- despite photo realism being possible at times (albeit never in a 5-star dream). The times the view is clear, it is most often extremely fantastical. (OZ&SHIOM one of the major exceptions to this theme, with most of the part after being lucid being quite clear in contrast to usual 5-star dreams)

"Softened ending". Only one 5-star dream has ended on a cliffhanger in a conflict, and most have rather wrapped up decently nicely with a touch of emotion (kisses are the most obvious one, but music is key too). Usually, this touch is not the focus of the dream (in other words, it is not the best part). The only exceptions where the ending ended in an emotional climax rather than a touch-up were SOAR; ACTION! ROMANCE!; Space Adventure and SERENDIPITY.

Lucidity Relation to 5-star or vice versa. While the minority of 5-star dreams are lucid (only about 45%, at 25 dreams thus far), this is massive compared to my normal 15% rate of lucidity. It is entirely plausible that lucidity in itself makes a dream good. Even the other way around, 25 five-star dreams out of 83 total lucid dream stands at 30%, almost five times more than the overall rate of only about 6% five-star dreams. The fact that I have had only one lucid nightmare also further asserts the relation of lucidity to dream quality. However, note that five-star and lucid dreams are sparse and as such the statistic may be skewed. As I have more five-star dreams and lucid dreams, the pattern will be much clearer. (I will most likely only truly consider this statistic once I have reached both 100 lucid and five-star dreams)

Feeling of accomplishment. A lot of really annoying dreams are one-star or even two-stars because my power is limited or I cannot complete a task. Some great examples are how in The Fish and the Superheroes I was unable to go across some netting to get to some skyscrapers, while OZ&SHIOM had me directly access said skyscrapers. In another, I failed to declare I was the crowned prince of Darius, while another five-star dream made me the owner of a hotel which was named "Darius".

Importance of conversation. This is arguable as a pattern has yet to clearly appear, but only 9 out of 60 five-star dreams are wordless (no important conversations), while a little more than half of my 13 nightmares are wordless. Information is difficult to convey without clear words, but I believe pain is easier to deliver than joy, explaining this "data".

What traits do your incredibly enjoyable dreams share? Do you notice any trends out of yours?