Breeding mechanics

[SHEagle]

Farm animals are breeded for food, I suppose.
But what about mounts? Mating two parents with Vigor at 5 resulted in an offspring with Vigor at 1.
If the offspring don't inherit the parents' stats, what are the advantages of breeding them versus capturing a new one?

[Eventide]

Ouch, the RNG gods did not smile on you. I don't think its meant to be perfect inheritance, but hopefully there's some bias toward inheriting higher numbers that would appear over multiple attempts. I haven't done enough of it yet, to know. Some of the genetics talents will tilt the scales.

[SHEagle]

And about the bloodline, let me see if I understand correctly... For example, for Alpha. I have to breed a wild pair, at least one of which must be Alpha, until I get a new male and female, both Alpha "level 2"(Whose level is not indicated anywhere). Breed them together until I get a male and female Alpha "level 3," then again for Alpha "level 4", and once more for Alpha "level 5"?. With the risk that those Alpha level 5s will have Physical level 1 -_-
It's a 40 minute gestation period, and then you have to wait for the offspring to mature; being generous, you'll need 2.5 offspring per level, so that's more than 15 hours of breeding to get that Alpha upgrade?

[william_es]

The RNG can be pretty brutal. But if you put talent points into the genetics tree, you can start to see much higher numbers then the wild caught tames will have.

I had a bunch of moas in storage, so I pulled them down and did the reveal genetics to see what they had.

The best pair I found was the following:

The stats start with vigor, then go clockwise. Vigor, fitness, physique, reflex, toughness, adaption, instinct.

Male 5 4 4 4 5 6 6 Wild
Fem 3 5 2 3 4 6 3 Hardy

They've popped out 5 babies, with the following stats

M 3 3 3 6 5 5 5 Wild
M 6 6 3 3 4 6 5 Wild
M 4 3 1 5 4 6 7 Hardy
F 3 3 4 3 5 7 5 Wild
M 4 6 8 2 3 9 1 Savage

The last one was a bloodline mutation, first I've seen. Savage is hilarious, it's +1% health leech from damage done per level (so I guess it maxes at +50%), but it has -50% health regen. Oof, but hey... I can use potions if necessary.

None of them have "rare" colors.

So I guess at this stage we'd try to crossbreed them, hoping to roll up the super high stats on to one baby to replace the one high stat male I started with.

All of these moas were tamed before mendel update dropped.

I've only caught and tamed 2 new moas after mendel... and so far, I'm not impressed with the stats.

F 4 4 6 4 5 2 4 Wild
F 7 6 4 3 3 3 5 Wild

I guess the only super big advantage is that wild caught tames seem to be (so far in RNG) skewing towards female. The ones I bred seem to skew towards male. But that's a ridiculously small sample pool.

So far the mendel update is giving me flashbacks to breeding in ark. That's not a compliment. I had tames in ark that I had bred on mutation stacks to 4 different stats. An insane amount of time and energy to do that.

[Nerevar]

according to the dev who commented on this you cannot really "target" certain stats. instead you breed to raise the TOTAL statpoints. the maximum is 65 points spread accross the 7 stats. so you breed a parent pair which has 30/30 stats each total. and the wait for 2 offsprings male and female which have 35-40 points etc etc. it takes A REALLY long time to get there.

bloodline has no levels. its a passive bonus. if both parents have the same bloodline the chance is 90% for the offspring to have that bloodline aswell. not all bloodlines are useful for every tamed creature.

toughness 10 is insane. on a moa you can reach 99% melee and projectile resistences which makes the moa pretty much nearly unkillable. it takes like 10 dmg from a kinetic rifle shot. while haveing nearly 2k hp at level 50. gravity and elemental dmg are the only dangers left then.

reflex 10 is a must aswell. the speed boost is big.

the other stats pale in comparison to these 2 currently.

get the right bloodline and then keep breeding the pairs till you get higher stat offsprings.

you can counter the rng for stats with enough time spend but it takes ages.

the color rng is beyond help. the odds are so stupid low i wouldnt even try. you essentially need both parents with the right color. youll reach 65 stat total before you ever see all colors. black moa is like a 1 in 100 chance off the available colors with the baseline chance for color beeing 10%. which is stupid low odds.

but color is just cosmetic thankfully.

[Eventide]

I feel like you reached into my computer, and stole my new naming scheme. "[name]-[sex]-[7 digits]" - lol.

[Metal Izanagi]

What I really wanna know is if we'll ever get NPC settlers that we can breed to get better stats for them lol

[william_es]

Originally posted by Eventide:

I feel like you reached into my computer, and stole my new naming scheme. "[name]-[sex]-[7 digits]" - lol.

It a variation of how I named creatures in ark. and since it shows the parents names on the purple bar below their stats, it means I don't have to really write anything down. I can see what combination of stats from both parents resulted in the stats of the baby.

So far I see no real pattern. It seems to be a massive amount of RNG. In ark, it was either the dad's stat, or the mom's stat, or one of theirs with a mutation. It was a lot more deliberate. Deterministic. I'm running out of words.

[SHEagle]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

according to the dev who commented on this you cannot really "target" certain stats. instead you breed to raise the TOTAL statpoints. the maximum is 65 points spread accross the 7 stats. so you breed a parent pair which has 30/30 stats each total. and the wait for 2 offsprings male and female which have 35-40 points etc etc. it takes A REALLY long time to get there.

bloodline has no levels. its a passive bonus. if both parents have the same bloodline the chance is 90% for the offspring to have that bloodline aswell. not all bloodlines are useful for every tamed creature.

toughness 10 is insane. on a moa you can reach 99% melee and projectile resistences which makes the moa pretty much nearly unkillable. it takes like 10 dmg from a kinetic rifle shot. while haveing nearly 2k hp at level 50. gravity and elemental dmg are the only dangers left then.

reflex 10 is a must aswell. the speed boost is big.

the other stats pale in comparison to these 2 currently.

get the right bloodline and then keep breeding the pairs till you get higher stat offsprings.

you can counter the rng for stats with enough time spend but it takes ages.

the color rng is beyond help. the odds are so stupid low i wouldnt even try. you essentially need both parents with the right color. youll reach 65 stat total before you ever see all colors. black moa is like a 1 in 100 chance off the available colors with the baseline chance for color beeing 10%. which is stupid low odds.

but color is just cosmetic thankfully.

Thanks, your advice worked well for me. My chickens, sheeps and pigs now have 60 genetic points (Yes, many many hours breeding this week :)), but I can't get them to go any higher. Can you confirm if the maximum is 60 or 65, and if it's 65, what do I need to do to get those extra 5 points? I've tried breeding them with Unstable animals, but that hasn't worked either.

(By the way, the VIGOR of pigs and sheep, even with 60 points, is always 0 or 1. Do you know if this is a bug?)

[Evolvei]

If both parents are fully leveled does it create better results than not being fully leveled?

[william_es]

Originally posted by Evolvei:

If both parents are fully leveled does it create better results than not being fully leveled?

I don't think it makes any difference, with the exception of "unstable" bloodline.

Unstable has +1% chance of a genotype mutation per 2 levels (max 25%), and +1% chance of phenotype mutation (colors) per 2 levels (max 25%).

But I'm seriously not going to waste the time on leveling them. I can breed baby after baby in the meantime and get higher stats each generation.

[Eventide]

Both parents with high totals seem more likely to produce high totals. I see good results in 3rd generation but haven't taken the time to go further, yet.

From what I've been reading on Discord, 60 seems to be the current limit players are reaching - "60-65" was mention by a developer during early testing, but they may have settled on 60. I haven't noticed a follow up statement / confirmation yet. Enjoy what you have - they're overpowered enough with 60 points :)

[william_es]

Originally posted by Eventide:

Both parents with high totals seem more likely to produce high totals.

Yeah, I started totaling up all 7 stats and adding that the names of them. I when I look at them that way, I see a constant increase in the total. One has 40, another has 43, the next generation was 46, and the last generation was 49.

[Eventide]

I started with buffalo b/c I had a bad run of RNG with Moa. The two I had from Before Times, were both male. So I collected 3 juveniles, and waited for them to grow up.... 3 more males ;)

I broke the chain today, on a different world with another three juvenile captures. Out of the 8 total: none had a rare skin. Rare is rare, and I'm fine with that :)

[william_es]

Originally posted by Eventide:

Out of the 8 total: none had a rare skin. Rare is rare, and I'm fine with that :)

I feel the same. Know that I know it IS possible, I'm fine with waiting. I have the one light green moa. I kind of wish there was a list of possible colors. I'm hoping for cobalt blue, like the snow stalkers. I would do backflips.

[Eventide]

From the Discord sleuths: Hidden for players who'd like to remain surprised by what they could get (be sure also to not look at screenshots, lol)
Moa:
1 - Brown (standard)
2 - Blue
3 - Green #1
4 - Red
5 - Green #2
6 - Green #3
7 - Black

Blue and Red are less intense than the concept art in the Mendel update patch notes.
From a distance the greens look similar, but up close... they have slight patterns.
From reports: good luck finding the black one in a dark cave, without a light: all you might see are some beady eyes floating around ;)

Originally posted by Discord chatter:

amaoto: Can you actually get a phenotype mutation by breeding parents without any phenotypes?
Wind: apparently people have. but the odds are STUPID low.
Wind: even getting the color to CHANGE with a pheno on BOTH parents is SILLY rare. i had it happen ONCE in 100s of breeds.
Wind: and this with all talents for it maxed.
Wind: the unstable bloodline at level 50 might help with the odds but if the baseline value is as bad as i assume it is it just doesnt matter