(SPOILERS). So, on the 2nd floor of the Feeding Grounds, every time I try to go talk to the dragon, it instantly attacks me, ending the game. When I first saw its tail, I attacked it (to see what would happen), but I could've sworn I reloaded before doing that, you know, just in case that was a bad move... Sadly I saved over the save before entering the level, so I don't have a way of going back other than restarting the game... Any ideas? Or am I pretty much screwed?

There's 5 degrees of agitation for the dragon.
0 = Asleep
1-2 = Awake but not angry
3-4 = Awake and angry
5 = You're toast

There's an in-game timer for the Dragon. I can't remember the exact specifics but I think for every 30 minutes of in-game time the degree of agitation for the dragon goes down by 1.
So let Drake and party sit for 1-2 hours in game and then try Vermitrex again.

Thank you for replying! I couldn't find anything useful on the net about this. I shall have to experiment.

Hot Dog, I didn't know about this. Thanks for the heads up. I been playing the game since the 90's and this would have been a helpful trick.