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Breeding Help Please


Dylan1602

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I am the biggest of all noobs and I have never done breeding before. From what I have researched the way it works is the mating, incubation then the 3 phases of growing. The 3 growth stages is what I am completely ignorant about. I know roughly about imprinting as well so I'm not factoring that in for the growing stages. 

 

Am I correct in thinking that for the baby phase you must be there to make sure it always has food. Or does it just need to be filled up with food then you can leave until the food is all used up in which case I'd have to refill? 

Also for the juvenile stage I read that it will start eating from a feeding trough so surely all I'd need to do is fill up the feeding trough right?

Finally the adolescent stage is basically like the juvenile stage just requiring the feeding trough to be filled? 

 

From what I have read imprinting is a completely different thing where you must be there every 3-4 hours for the entire growth cycle to either cuddle, walk or give kibble right? If I'm wrong about this let me know as well.

I have no idea about any of this so if someone could enlighten me and correct me where I am wrong so I don't feel like too much of a noob that would be glorious.

Thank you in advance.

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Make lots of fridges, and have them full of meat before you start,  this way you won't have to go meat collecting while your raising the baby,  use more than one feeding trough,  maybe one for each baby, and have one full with cooked meat just incase,  this way you can leave them alone most of juvenile and adolescent stage. 

The more weight a baby has the more food it will hold quicker,  so say an argy will hold a lot of meat and you can leave it alone sooner than say a ptera that has low weight so will hold less meat. 

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Some tips;

After claiming don't waste time naming the baby. Just hit cancel and put food in it's inventory. You can name it later if desired. 

Have nothing but the food you are going to use in your inventory that way you can hit transfer all from your inventory to its inventory at the beginning. 

Time the consumption rate of a piece of meat/berry for that particular dino. That way you can get an idea of how long you can leave them per stack, per row, etc. 

During juvenile stage they will eat out of a trough but they still eat fairly a lot and spoil time needs to be factored in to know when to fill the trough. I also like to leave a buffer of food in the dino's inventory in case the trough runs out due to being dc'd and then server gets full or any number of reason's. 

Check spoilage time as well as how much food is credited for a particular food. Raw meat gives more food than cooked meat but also spoils faster. Vegetables give more food than berries but also spoil faster. 

For carnivores have cooked meat jerky. It is a great emergency food and lasts a long time. The buffer I use with them is one row cooked meat and then two stacks of jerky we also have an entire trough filled with jerky. 

Hatch a bunch of dino's at once. you are already going to be investing the time into one, may as well knock a bunch of them out. In a two person tribe we would hatch 3 or 4 Giga's and 10 Quetzal's at a shot. They are all long tames. we were well prepared though. We'd spend our week breeding for the eggs, incubating them, and gathering the meat as well as making the jerky we were going to need for that first baby stage (18 hours for quetzal, 28 for giga). 

If they die don't get discouraged. Just try again. My very first hatches were twin rex's. I did them on normal rates after work one evening when I knew I had off the next day. I sat with them for 8 hours as a baby (they have 9 hour baby timer) and then fell asleep with control in hand. They died right before i woke up as I woke to find inventory bags (with spoiled meat) at 14 minute decomposition timers.  if i would have filled the troughs before I passed out they would have been alive so just preparation is key. 

good luck. 

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Couple tips:

-Penguins can act as AC units to help with the incubation process.
-A couple stacks of dodo or penguin kibble can hold your raise over if you decide you'd like to go to sleep or work.
-I like to collect several eggs before I raise so I have several options to choose from.
-Also like to "pre-cook" eggs (picking them up right before hatch at an earlier date so when it's time to hatch I can just drop and start)
-you're going to have a lot of spoiled meat. Good time to make narcotics or of you have access to vultures, raise a few of them along with whatever else you're taking.
-try to have the potential kibble options for imprinting premade and ready. Save yourself quite a bit of headache.

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One thing about egg hatching.  If the temperature is outside of the preferred range the egg will lose health and eventually die before hatching.

Air conditioners are the most effective way to combat this.  Our breeding hut has a horseshoe of about 14 AC units no more than 2 foundations away from each other.  You don't "need" that many for most eggs but I don't like to take chances.

As mentioned previously, penguins help incubation and their eggs are plentiful and useful kibble to act as insurance for sleep/work time.

You can also use some variations of campfires, torches, etc, but quite frankly I wouldn't try raising anything until you've progressed to the point where you have access to refrigerators and AC units.

One last thing, the Dododex app (which I assume everyone who plays ark has, but in case you don't, stop everything and download it immediately) has quite a bit of breeding info that will let you know how long each phase.of breeding will last as well as the ideal egg incubation temperature.

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Thank you everyone! So as a summary,

Don't take any risks especially during the baby phase.

Always have enough of the desired food on hand and ready to be used. (I have rex's and a bronto for meat and berries)

Precook the egg so I can hatch it almost instantly instead of waiting for hours for it to be ready. (So I can do the maturing during the day like in the morning through to the evening) 

Do some calculations to find out how long a period I can leave the dino in juvenile and adolescent phases with whatever amount of food it can hold. (Possibly set alarms to return 15 minutes beforehand to be safe?)

Then it's just waiting the growth out really isn't it? 

 

Three more questions,

1. Would it be worth having a daeodon using passive healing as soon as the baby is born as an extra safety net? Meat isn't an issue for me so would this be a good idea or not worth it?

2. As I work full time I would get the baby stage done before going to bed. However, during the juvenile stage would I be okay to fill everything with food and go to sleep and refill everything in the morning before going to work? Or would it be too late and require me waking up during the night (Really don't wanna do that)

3. Will Dino's eat the cooked meat over raw meat? Or will I be safe only putting cooked meat in to take advantage of the extended spoil timer

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1) if you were hatching many at the same time it could give you enough time to get everything sorted out but really shouldn't be needed

2) You should be fine to leave them overnight and while at work just make sure to give them more food than you think they will need. Cooked is great for this as you are going to lose more to spoilage than the feeding of the baby while away for long periods.

3) Dinos will prefer to eat raw as it gives them the most food per bite. If there is only cooked however they will have no issue eating that. What I like to do is give them a few stacks of raw to burn through first and fill the rest of the available troughs with cooked. You get less feeding per piece of meat with cooked but the higher stack size and longer spoilage timer makes up for it on long stretches.

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50 minutes ago, Dylan1602 said:

2. As I work full time I would get the baby stage done before going to bed. However, during the juvenile stage would I be okay to fill everything with food and go to sleep and refill everything in the morning before going to work? Or would it be too late and require me waking up during the night (Really don't wanna do that)

I also work full time and this is how I do it however I have the ability to come home at lunch and refill the troughs (I work 12 hour shifts). I do that as an added safety measure but I have gone the entire day without being home (5:30 AM to 6:30 PM) and the dino's have been fine. Lots of troughs, lots of cooked meat and jerky for those long away days. 

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Thank you everyone for your help on this! I learnt pretty quickly that the % of maturation corresponds with the % maximum weight the dino can hold. So it gets easier and easier as time goes on! I haven't moved on to the big carnivores yet but I will learn for sure! Thank you everyone for the help, you've been amazing!

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