Breeding chickens. How to increase 'Pluck'?

[deadbeaver]

Supposedly the average of the parent chickens' 'Pluck' carries over to the next generation. Got two chickens. Fought a bunch of fights with each. Fed each a ton of monster steaks. 'Pluck' only got to 1.

How does one increase 'Pluck'?
Are there any guides on breeding?
Is breeding worthwhile?

Google, in game info, steam, not particularly helpful with this.

Cheers and thanks in advance!

[General Clam]

Good question.

[Segan]

The "easiest" way to increase pluck is to feed chickens rare or legendary steaks.

Rare = +1
Legendary = +3

I think there's also a hidden experience that will allow pluck to slowly rise if the chicken's out while killing champions and higher enemies. But I could be wrong about this.

[gnmad]

i read somewhere that pluck increases health and 'generation' increases damage.(i think it was the chicken man) so yes, breeding should be worth it.

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by deadbeaver:

Google, in game info, steam, not particularly helpful with this.

Eh :)

Talk to the chicken dude, choose the "I have some questions..." dialog option. One of the questions you can ask is "What is Pluck?", and the answer tells you that each point of Pluck gives 1% HP bonus, and that it can be increased by feeding rare steaks, and that they are dropped from Champions.

It doesn't tell you how to recognize the rare steaks in your inventory, but that's easy enough to figure out as soon as you find one: their name is in different color.

Originally posted by deadbeaver:

Are there any guides on breeding?

Not that I know of, but here's my method.

1) For each stat pair (e.g., Melee + Toughness) you want to have, pick two freshly-hatched (Gen 1) chicken.
2) Feed them steaks until they're both 5/5 in the desired stats.
3) Breed them twice to get two Gen 2 chicken.
4) Repeat breeding the two chicken of same stats and generation to get the next one.
5) Once you're out of the breeding pots, pick one of the last pair, feed it steaks with the desired skills, and feed it rare steaks to raise Pluck.
6) You can resume breeding whenever to further increase the generation, though you'll lose some Pluck in the process.

Notes:

* There are no inbreeding penalties.

* After the initial two eggs per breeding line to get started, you don't need any more. Trade them in for more breeding potions.

* I make the process a bit smoother by renaming hatched chicken with their stats and generation number. E.g., an "RS7 NameHere" is a seventh-generation Ranged+Swiftness chicken. It also sorts nicely when choosing the breeding pairs.

* It's probably more efficient to breed just one line, then readjust the stats with steaks when the breeding is done. I keep one breeding line for each stat combo for simplicity.

* I have no idea how skill inheritance works. It's so random it doesn't seem worth the trouble anyway, although separate breeding lines should help a bit.

* You can "sell" steaks and potions to a village store. You get no money for it, but since the store inventory is persistent across deaths, they'll stay in the store until you re-"buy" them (again, at no cost). This way, you can stash steaks and potions for later characters.
(The same "stashing" method works for other items as well, but for moneyed items, you'll lose money in the process. Hint: cost of armor items depends only on the enchantments, so an unenchanted tier 5 armor costs the same pittance as an unenchanted tier 1 armor.)

[Nordak Balrem]

An alternative method is to use the starshrine, it is +2 pluck for each shard used this way.

[deadbeaver]

Originally posted by piccolo255:

Originally posted by deadbeaver:

Google, in game info, steam, not particularly helpful with this.

Eh :)

Talk to the chicken dude, choose the "I have some questions..." dialog option. One of the questions you can ask is "What is Pluck?", and the answer tells you that each point of Pluck gives 1% HP bonus, and that it can be increased by feeding rare steaks, and that they are dropped from Champions.

It doesn't tell you how to recognize the rare steaks in your inventory, but that's easy enough to figure out as soon as you find one: their name is in different color.

Originally posted by deadbeaver:

Are there any guides on breeding?

Not that I know of, but here's my method.

1) For each stat pair (e.g., Melee + Toughness) you want to have, pick two freshly-hatched (Gen 1) chicken.
2) Feed them steaks until they're both 5/5 in the desired stats.
3) Breed them twice to get two Gen 2 chicken.
4) Repeat breeding the two chicken of same stats and generation to get the next one.
5) Once you're out of the breeding pots, pick one of the last pair, feed it steaks with the desired skills, and feed it rare steaks to raise Pluck.
6) You can resume breeding whenever to further increase the generation, though you'll lose some Pluck in the process.

Notes:

* There are no inbreeding penalties.

* After the initial two eggs per breeding line to get started, you don't need any more. Trade them in for more breeding potions.

* I make the process a bit smoother by renaming hatched chicken with their stats and generation number. E.g., an "RS7 NameHere" is a seventh-generation Ranged+Swiftness chicken. It also sorts nicely when choosing the breeding pairs.

* It's probably more efficient to breed just one line, then readjust the stats with steaks when the breeding is done. I keep one breeding line for each stat combo for simplicity.

* I have no idea how skill inheritance works. It's so random it doesn't seem worth the trouble anyway, although separate breeding lines should help a bit.

* You can "sell" steaks and potions to a village store. You get no money for it, but since the store inventory is persistent across deaths, they'll stay in the store until you re-"buy" them (again, at no cost). This way, you can stash steaks and potions for later characters.
(The same "stashing" method works for other items as well, but for moneyed items, you'll lose money in the process. Hint: cost of armor items depends only on the enchantments, so an unenchanted tier 5 armor costs the same pittance as an unenchanted tier 1 armor.)

I'm an idiot! Somehow i overlooked option b) in the very first chicken dude dialogue.

And thx a lot for the additional info!

[General Clam]

Thanks!

[piccolo255]

You're welcome!

Originally posted by deadbeaver:

Somehow i overlooked option b) in the very first chicken dude dialogue.

Thought so :)

It's easy to miss -- most (every?) other NPCs have a "goodbye" dialogue entry in that position, so the brain's autopilot tends to ignore it!

Oh yeah, one more note:

* Only the "wild" eggs can be traded in at the chicken shop, which means that breeding will result in a stockpile of no-longer-needed low-gen eggs. To get rid of the eggs you don't need anymore, right click the egg in the inventory -> destroy item.

[deadbeaver]

Originally posted by piccolo255:

You're welcome!
Oh yeah, one more note:

You're a cornucopia mans!

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by deadbeaver:

You're a cornucopia mans!

Haha, thanks :)

[B.O.B.]

Originally posted by piccolo255:

You're welcome!

Originally posted by deadbeaver:

Somehow i overlooked option b) in the very first chicken dude dialogue.

Thought so :)

It's easy to miss -- most (every?) other NPCs have a "goodbye" dialogue entry in that position, so the brain's autopilot tends to ignore it!

Oh yeah, one more note:

* Only the "wild" eggs can be traded in at the chicken shop, which means that breeding will result in a stockpile of no-longer-needed low-gen eggs. To get rid of the eggs you don't need anymore, right click the egg in the inventory -> destroy item.

You can also sell the unused eggs to a store for 1 cp I believe - if you don't feel like murdering your poor unused chickens that is...

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by B.O.B.:

You can also sell the unused eggs to a store for 1 cp I believe - if you don't feel like murdering your poor unused chickens that is...

Of course, since shops never reset inventory, that will gradually fill them up with eggs...

[Nordak Balrem]

Or trade them for protection potions....

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by Nordak Balrem:

Or trade them for protection potions....

If you're suggesting that as an alternative to destroying-or-selling-for-1cp... no, sadly, you can't do that. The eggs you get from breeding can't be traded in

IMHO, sending them to Birdhalla is currently the best option.