How to play in the Mesozoic Valley?

[pas]

How long should I grow dinosaurs in the Mesozoic valley before I crash an asteroid into them and kill them all?

I have 3 dinosaurs, the first one is earning inconsequential fossils every second. I bred 100 of them expecting something cool to happen....

My trait says "0/2 copies until promotion"....but I see no explanation of how to gain extra copies (and copies of what anyway?).

What does promotion mean? Promotion for the player, or promotion for the dinosaur? "Congratulations Sergeant...no, CAPTAIN Stegosaurus!"

I got a text bubble saying spend my mutagen to buy traits...but there is nothing on the screen to click where I can spend the mutagen....

Wiki talks about doing missions, finding geodes...I see no missions nor geodes...

Advice/walkthrough would be appreciated!

[Daniel]

You crash the asteroid whenever there are no more missions to complete, or earlier if it takes too long on zero prestiege. You upgrade the traits with cards from the geodes, which you gain from missions or an additional one every 4 hours. So if there are no more missions it's kinda pointless to remain on the current level.
Be careful though, upgrading the first 10 or so dinos' traits beyond level 1 will hurt you in the long run.

[kingcarrot]

Why will it hurt in the long run?
I have seen no downside to upgrading...Some hidden trait or similar?

[Dinger]

cost goes up by log..

[DiMono]

Upgrading costs mutagen. The more you spend on lower-level dinosaurs, the less you have available for higher-level dinos. Though this can be mitigated by simply being diligent about collecting your free geode every 4 hours, and pushing dino counts to milestone numbers before asteroiding.

[baggywhacker]

After the most recent update I only had 4 dinos, so I crashed an asteroid because I figured I'd start again with the fresh update to see what was different.

Since then, I haven't received a single geode! I have 3 dinos, the first has automated but not the other 2, and I haven't been given any missions to complete in over a week so it doesn't look like they ever will. I'm assuming this isn't normal?

[baggywhacker]

EDIT - OK, I really can't seem to get the dinos working properly...

I've started 3 times now. The first time I got 4 dinos (up to Ankylosaurus) but then the quests stopped coming. I ran it for weeks but never got the option to open up a 5th dino. Only the first 2 had automated. Since I wasn't making any progress, I crashed the asteroid.

Second time around was like in the post above, I only got to 3 dinos before the quests stopped.

So now I'm on my 3rd try and it's stopped at 4 dinos again - no more quests, only 2 have automated. Plus, I see people talking about the tech tree - I don't have one for my dinos!! I have 2 in my main sim but none for the dinos - unless you're talking about Traits?

So, TLDR: there are supposed to be more than 4 dinos, right?

[Niksem]

You should CLICK on dinos to get some profit before getting an 'Automate' upgrade.

[baggywhacker]

Heh well I just tried another asteroid: within a minute of restarting I'd already got 5 dinos, including triceratops (that I'd never unlocked after weeks of earlier play), and within 5 minutes my Stego and Anky had automated for the first time ever! Something definitely screwy was going on, but maybe this time round it'll work properly

[DiMono]

Originally posted by baggywhacker:

Heh well I just tried another asteroid: within a minute of restarting I'd already got 5 dinos, including triceratops (that I'd never unlocked after weeks of earlier play), and within 5 minutes my Stego and Anky had automated for the first time ever! Something definitely screwy was going on, but maybe this time round it'll work properly :lunar2020thinkingtiger:

It's been working properly the whole time. You're supposed to crash the asteroid after quests stop showing up. That's how you advance.

[baggywhacker]

Alright, so how come on my first run it all stopped after 4 dinos, then on my second run it stopped after 3 dinos (3 being less than 4), then on my third run it stopped after 4 dinos again (the same as the first run), and it was only on my fourth run that it advanced beyond where it had stopped in my first run? That's "working properly"? What was the point of runs 2 and 3?

[DiMono]

Originally posted by baggywhacker:

Alright, so how come on my first run it all stopped after 4 dinos, then on my second run it stopped after 3 dinos (3 being less than 4), then on my third run it stopped after 4 dinos again (the same as the first run), and it was only on my fourth run that it advanced beyond where it had stopped in my first run? That's "working properly"? What was the point of runs 2 and 3?

I'm pretty sure you miscounted on run 1. The first two times through you get Archosaur, Ornithischia, and Stegosaurus, and 3 objectives. Then new dinos start showing up on run 3, and the number of objectives starts going up shortly thereafter. Most of this and more is outlined in detail here[cell-to-singularity-evolution.fandom.com]. The more times you asteroid, the harder it gets, and every time you reset your main sim gets 2% faster.

[baggywhacker]

Hmm, thinking back, I'm not 100% sure of the timing, but I seem to recall that there was a game update around the time of my first asteroid - I may well have asteroided just because there was a new version so I wanted a reset. So yeah, maybe my first run was under the old version, and what I'm calling my "second" run was actually a first run under the new version. If that makes sense!

Anyway, long story short - once you run out of quests, it's time to wipe and start over, right?

[Niksem]

Originally posted by baggywhacker:

Anyway, long story short - once you run out of quests, it's time to wipe and start over, right?

Yes, exactly.

[DiMono]

Originally posted by baggywhacker:

Anyway, long story short - once you run out of quests, it's time to wipe and start over, right?

Yep. And as the number of quests goes up, there will even come a time when you don't need to finish all of them in order to drop the asteroid.