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Yet another quest for breeding assistance


rpghost

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Hello, I have been playing ark on and off since Scorched Earth was released, not invested too many hours of my life into it. Creeping up on shy 300, most of which have been spent just faffing about. I recently joined a friend's server and we're planning on making our way through all the maps in order (not counting free expansions)

Sure, I feel I know what I'm doing when playing Ark. The oceans isn't so intimidating any-more (and my favourite biome to be in), I get the mechanics, taming, crafting, building, etc.

There is one thing that have always felt daunting to get into, Breeding. And since I want to be of help to everyone, I want to help with breeding up dinos for boss runs. And while I know how it works, you take two dinos with desirable stats and breed until their offspring have gotten the raised stats from the parents. But... I honestly don't know where to start. I've scouted around on the forum, looked up guides, videos, read up on stuff and there's one question that I've yet gotten an answer for.

What are 'good' dinos to start with? I mean, I saw some threads talking about wild rexes with 10-12k health and 300 - 400% melee damage. Meanwhile I'm sitting here, having knocked out 30 - 40 rexes in the 130 - 150 level range and the highest one I've seen was a male with 7K hp and 230% melee damage. So like, am I counting something wrong? Have I've just had bad luck finding good rexes? Is there something I'm missing somewhere?

Can someone give me examples of what are considered 'good' dinos to begin a breeding line with?

Any general breeding tips would also be appreciated, like, not basics of how it works but more things to just keep in mind. Starter amount of dinos and so on.

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2 hours ago, rpghost said:

What are 'good' dinos to start with? I mean, I saw some threads talking about wild rexes with 10-12k health and 300 - 400% melee damage. Meanwhile I'm sitting here, having knocked out 30 - 40 rexes in the 130 - 150 level range and the highest one I've seen was a male with 7K hp and 230% melee damage. So like, am I counting something wrong? Have I've just had bad luck finding good rexes? Is there something I'm missing somewhere? Can someone give me examples of what are considered 'good' dinos to begin a breeding line with? Any general breeding tips would also be appreciated, like, not basics of how it works but more things to just keep in mind. Starter amount of dinos and so on.

Thats a good base rex, My very first run of mutations was with a 7k health and 180'ish? melee. I was able to get it over 30k health and 900% melee....I kinda screwed up as I got a pretty mutation I wanted to keep, and the next thing I knew, they quit mutating. Apparently I had 39 mutations in the paternal side, and 83 mutations in the maternal side? o.O I don't know how I did it, but I goofed it up.
Still, after imprinting and leveling, I comfortably had super rex's. 75k health, 1400% melee.

Either way, its the mutations that make the secret sauce. Not having god tier wild parents.

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Mutations is also something I am a bit confused about. Because the guide I read talked about first breeding up until you had one pair of males and one pair of females with the stats you wanted and then you breed those with several low level dinos that had basically no stats. ANd you breed until they had pretty much 0 in all but the stats you wanted and then you kept breeding those until they'd stacked mutations in the desired stats.

It seems.. complicated. Or am I over analysing things here?

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Starting with identical breeding stats helps pick out the mutated tames later at a glance. If both parents have identical stats when they breed the random checks will add up to a tame with a identical lv to them. If you get a odd lv it is a baby with a mutation. 

Same start stats  

Mom lv

Dad lv

Offspring lv

Mutation 

No mutation 

5

5

No

Mutation lost

5

6

5

Lost from dad

No mutation 

5

6

6

Identical to dad 

Wrong mutation 

5

6

7

Food stats mut

Next breeder

5

6

7

In the stat

 

Ark has a lv cap so lowering undesirable stats helps keep them from being wiped 

 

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16 hours ago, rpghost said:

Mutations is also something I am a bit confused about. Because the guide I read talked about first breeding up until you had one pair of males and one pair of females with the stats you wanted and then you breed those with several low level dinos that had basically no stats. ANd you breed until they had pretty much 0 in all but the stats you wanted and then you kept breeding those until they'd stacked mutations in the desired stats.

It seems.. complicated. Or am I over analysing things here?

The reason you would set unwanted stats to 0 is because on official servers once a creature reaches over level 450 it gets deleted at the next server restart. In your case I wouldn't recommend bringing those stats to 0 since it looks like you are on an unofficial server which I believe don't have a 450 level cap and bringing a fresh line of dinos to that level takes quite a bit of time.

If you have your perfect pair with identical stats you can just start mutating those, you can always breed out the unwanted stats later as well so you're in no rush to do that.

One thing I would recommend is using the egg incubator (engram from Gen 2 or Lost Island) which lets you see how many points you have into each stat (although if you are playing through the maps in order it'll come a bit late).

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On 1/23/2022 at 3:16 AM, rpghost said:

Mutations is also something I am a bit confused about. Because the guide I read talked about first breeding up until you had one pair of males and one pair of females with the stats you wanted and then you breed those with several low level dinos that had basically no stats. ANd you breed until they had pretty much 0 in all but the stats you wanted and then you kept breeding those until they'd stacked mutations in the desired stats.

It seems.. complicated. Or am I over analysing things here?

There are a few limits that breeding has to deal with.  A dino's overal level is just a combination of 1+(points in health)+(points in stamina)+....+(points in runspeed) = Level x.

Traditial - non R-type , non X-type dinos can only reach level 450.   You can no longer level them over 450 so the game doesn't delete your animals because of it anymore.  Only babies that hatch over 450 would blank with how it works now.  450 limit means you want to end your overall hatch/ birth level at 362.

362+88=450.  You can level up your tames 88 times, this means you don't want to birth over 362.  

 

You have one last big limit and that is no stat can reach over 254 points.  255 and over locks the dino, no leveling that raised baby. or so i'm told.  So 362-254 means you only have 107 points to play with, remember 1+(254+107)= 362.   If you put your hp at 100 points, and then you only have 7 points extra for stamina....through weight.   THis is partly why we zero out stats for breeding for mutations.  Not the only reason.  This reason is only important in the end run of the process.

 

The reason we breed to a set of level 1 females is simple.  IF the stud has 50 points in melee, and he has all zeros in all other stats, all the females have all zeros in all stats:   Babies come out simple - Level 1 , level 51 , level 3 , level 53.   The only babies you even need to look at to see if it is important is the level 53.  This makes the process simple and less time consuming.   Now that incubators are around, it is less necessary to do this now.

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Wow, been getting so many helpful tips here.

Something I'm wondering though. In most guides I've seen, to get mutations. People say that you breed your base pair once until you have a line of females or males and then you breed this second generation with one of the parents until you start getting mutations. And when you have a line up of one mutation with those babies, you start breeding those with one of the original parents. Is this correct?

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On 1/23/2022 at 6:16 AM, rpghost said:

Mutations is also something I am a bit confused about. Because the guide I read talked about first breeding up until you had one pair of males and one pair of females with the stats you wanted and then you breed those with several low level dinos that had basically no stats. ANd you breed until they had pretty much 0 in all but the stats you wanted and then you kept breeding those until they'd stacked mutations in the desired stats.

It seems.. complicated. Or am I over analysing things here?

This is important on official servers with a level cap.....on officials with the level cap on, you can only have a lvl 450? dino. That means the dino's can only have 450 points. To maximize the most out of those dino's you need to breed them with the best stats you can possibly find with nothing but points in health, stamina {maybe}, and melee......no etxtra points in oxygen, or food, or anything other than "just" the stats that help you fight.

Honestly I am not too sure if you would want to worry about that, if your just breeding boss fighters and you don't have to worry about a level cap, then find a high health and melee rex, and start from there.....this way it won't take years. {not even jokeing, unless your breeding rates are violently adjusted, it may actually take a year or two before your done} 

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3 hours ago, wizard03 said:

This is important on official servers with a level cap.....on officials with the level cap on, you can only have a lvl 450? dino. That means the dino's can only have 450 points. To maximize the most out of those dino's you need to breed them with the best stats you can possibly find with nothing but points in health, stamina {maybe}, and melee......no etxtra points in oxygen, or food, or anything other than "just" the stats that help you fight.

Honestly I am not too sure if you would want to worry about that, if your just breeding boss fighters and you don't have to worry about a level cap, then find a high health and melee rex, and start from there.....this way it won't take years. {not even jokeing, unless your breeding rates are violently adjusted, it may actually take a year or two before your done} 

We're playing on a private server hosted on g-portal though so I don't think the 450 max level is something I need to worry about too much.

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5 hours ago, rpghost said:

Wow, been getting so many helpful tips here.

Something I'm wondering though. In most guides I've seen, to get mutations. People say that you breed your base pair once until you have a line of females or males and then you breed this second generation with one of the parents until you start getting mutations. And when you have a line up of one mutation with those babies, you start breeding those with one of the original parents. Is this correct?

That sounds generally correct. Usually in breeding you should have one male breeding with several females of 0/0 mutations (even if the male is over 40 mutations, since the females have 0 there is still a chance to get a mutation on their side) and stacking mutations on males is generally preferred since one male can breed with an unlimited number of females. If both parents get to 20 mutations (i.e. babies will be born with 20+ mutations on both sides of the family tree) then you can no longer get any mutations so make sure to always have one parent with less than 20 total.

How many females you want depends on your settings, on official most dinos will generally have a breeding cooldown of 1-2 days so having more breeders is better, but since you are on unofficial if your breeding cooldown is low enough you can use a lot less (which should also help a bit with lag as you don't have 200 or 300+ breeders just sitting around and you also don't have to worry about feeding them).

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Honestly, if you have an incubator, you can skip the whole combining stats into identical breeders stage (which was done to make spotting mutant babies easy) and just go straight to mutating each stat.

First take your rex with the best melee stat; if male great, if female mate with male until you get male with stat. Then mate that male with a ton of unmutated females; check eggs in incubator, and about half the eggs will have the male's melee stat i.e. if half the eggs say 40 melee, and half random lower values, you know that male has 40 levels in melee. Rename that male to 40 melee levels, to make keeping track of things easy.

Then just keep cycling eggs through the incubator (and making kibble) until you get an egg that says 42 melee levels; raise that one up, name it 42 melee levels; if its male it then have it take the place of breeder male, if female mate with non mutated male until you get male with 42 melee levels. Then keep checking more eggs until you get a 44 melee egg, and so on.

 Do this process for each stat separately (you can use same unmutated females, but have separate lines of males for each stat) until you have enough mutations, then you combine the mutated lines together until you have a male & female with all the good stats combined. 

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9 hours ago, rpghost said:

We're playing on a private server hosted on g-portal though so I don't think the 450 max level is something I need to worry about too much.

If thats the case, then let me tell you what I would do.......Get a rex with good health {you already got one} Next, find an opposite sex with good melee. {Yours is fair, but if you wanna nit pick, I suppose it could be better} Quick breed them for the 40 or so mutations, do the final imprint on the chosen ones,  and then go kill Titanasaurs with them one at a time to pump their levels. Might also hit some explorer notes before hand to get the best bang for the buck.
But if you wanna go the long route, Ill see if I can try to help. 

Once you are ready, breed the starter rexs together until you have a baby with both of the good stats. Breed that one with its opposite sex parent. Try to get the opposite sex of the offspring in the next breed run. If not, try again untill you do. When your done, you will have the very start of your breeding line. Both of the rexs your going to start breeding should have EXACTLY the same stats.
DO NOT IMPRINT, DO NOT LEVEL UP, AND DO NOT ALLOW MUTATIONS OF ANY KIND! you will need to compare the parents stats to the kids stats. {unless you have access to the incubator, then you will mostly use this instead to figure out mutations.}

Now its time for the secret sauce part. You breed them for a half dozen of eggs or so, then hatch all the eggs and check for mutations. {Or just jam them into the incubator and check it there to figure out if an egg has any mutations.} If you find a kid that has a higher level than the parents, thats a mutation! Once you get a mutation, you got to figure out where it is at. Again, incubator is easy to follow and tells you. However if you don't have it, you literally have to go back and forth between the parents and the mutant. 
Of course you will want to keep the babies if they are mutated in health or melee, but the rest is a wasted mutation and thus is not fit to continue to be bred....Its your choice as to weather or not you want to keep it, however if you do the base gets really messy really quick. Crappy rex's here, dead babies there, even the most vigilant of parents will make a mistake or get a bad case of wildcard. =/ So its best to use another dino that you want to level up to kill off the babies......Free exp, free prime meat, so forth so on. However the babies must not be claimed or must be reinstated as "unclaimed" in the options wheel.

Ok, first mutation, easy enough right? sadistic lol.

Now that you have gotten your first mutation, you must breed it into the line so that it is carried on to the next generation of babies. Simply put, replace the same sex parent of the baby after the baby is fully grown. 
But this is where it gets a bit crazy. Honestly I just breed an opposite sex rex to the mutant with the same mutation in order to proceed to the next mutation. Kind of like before with the mix n matched parents. However this will cause excessive mutations in both the maternal line and paternal line. You can do this if you want, but be warned. Your rex's will not be the "ultimate god tier of all the rex's to have ever played ark". Don't get me wrong tho, rex's with 70k health and 1500% will get the job done on almost anything in ark. But as for being the absolute best they can be, eh. It technically not the best.

If you want to do it perfectly, you will have to micro manage the mutations and the sex's of each mutation, ensuring all the paternal mutations are in line with all the males. Same with maternal mutations. In other words, you will want to breed mutations in boys only until they are maxed out, and then females only until it is maxed out. But again, you are looking more at a year or so of baby management with default settings.

The cheesy method is to just breed males with 0 mutations females, but dear lord, we are literally talking about years now. Literal years now. And the big question at that point in time is why? Super rex will be a super rex. And when it comes to extinction and the big bad boss's, the idea is more behind numbers AND power. Not just power.

========================================================================================

Do what you want, honestly I would just breed for mutations until they are all maxed out cause it take less time, but I will warn you, make sure its for stats only. I made the mistake of trying to swing some colors into my line and it skewered my whole line up. x.x
Once your done, you might try for colors then. Not sure if it will work or not, but if you see a pretty color pop out, do not sacrifice the line for that color. Maintain the stats....maintain the stats!

Last but not least is the imprinting. After them mutations have taken hold, imprinting is truly the last bit of polish to make em shine. Sadly the Kangaroo doesn't do rex's, so you gotta do it the old fashioned way, but your rex army will start taking shape with that first rex off the assembly line.

Take it out, nuke a couple bronto's, maybe hit an exploere note.....skies the limit man.

P.s. Also good saddles, but that should go without saying......On solo I can get 350% saddles? My gigs got over 300% I know that.

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I also like to add that if you do screw up and accidentally maxed both Patrilineal and Matrilineal mutations, yet the stats are good, you can always breed it with another rex that doesn't have mutations at all, this will "force" mutations to a single parent inheritance again. 

Not sure it still works, but it saved me in the past. It will set you back a bit as you will need to breed the line with a non-mutated one, but as long as the offspring has all the stats you want, you're ok.

Cheers!

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4 hours ago, Martellus said:

I also like to add that if you do screw up and accidentally maxed both Patrilineal and Matrilineal mutations, yet the stats are good, you can always breed it with another rex that doesn't have mutations at all, this will "force" mutations to a single parent inheritance again. Not sure it still works, but it saved me in the past. It will set you back a bit as you will need to breed the line with a non-mutated one, but as long as the offspring has all the stats you want, you're ok.

Cheers!

Holy crap, I didn't even think of that.....Good lord, no wonder the dev's decided to put level caps in place. Could you imagine making super rex's then redoing them over and over again like this?......levels was limited only by time and if someone stuck it out for years, they would be unstoppable! X.X

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Well, eventually they would run into the 254 level limit per stat (well technically 255, but then you can't do XP upgrades). On official there are already creatures hitting that limit for one stat. Though I suppose eggs hatching at 1,779 with every stat maxed out would be monsters. That much melee, health and O2 would let you run Moedar with rexes, lol. 

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Indeed. What I understand is that which has already been mentioned previously.

For context, there was a spefic situation, which essentially made the devs opt for a hard 450 level cap on creatures. There were some pretty overpowered beasts back in the day as result of that situation and required a hard limit to fix the balance and reduce the impact caused as much as possible.

The 254/255 per stat cap was always a thing, if I understood correctly if you went over that limit it would break/reset the cycle making your animal weaker again. You got to watch out how many points you have in each stat, for reference every "click" you do applies a point, not to mention wild/inherited stats, the sum should not exceed 254/255.

The level enforcement was adjusted I believe to make sure you wouldn't spend points past 450 and accidentally lose a creature. Not sure but I vaguely remember something in that regard. I stopped playing officially for a long time now, so I don't pay much attention to what is going on there anymore.

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17 hours ago, Dreadcthulhu said:

Well, eventually they would run into the 254 level limit per stat (well technically 255, but then you can't do XP upgrades). On official there are already creatures hitting that limit for one stat. Though I suppose eggs hatching at 1,779 with every stat maxed out would be monsters. That much melee, health and O2 would let you run Moedar with rexes, lol. 

sheeet, you can run moedar with dodo's at that point. x.x

17 hours ago, Martellus said:

Indeed. What I understand is that which has already been mentioned previously. For context, there was a spefic situation, which essentially made the devs opt for a hard 450 level cap on creatures. There were some pretty overpowered beasts back in the day as result of that situation and required a hard limit to fix the balance and reduce the impact caused as much as possible. The 254/255 per stat cap was always a thing, if I understood correctly if you went over that limit it would break/reset the cycle making your animal weaker again. You got to watch out how many points you have in each stat, for reference every "click" you do applies a point, not to mention wild/inherited stats, the sum should not exceed 254/255. The level enforcement was adjusted I believe to make sure you wouldn't spend points past 450 and accidentally lose a creature. Not sure but I vaguely remember something in that regard. I stopped playing officially for a long time now, so I don't pay much attention to what is going on there anymore.

In all honesty, they should have went with a "total" mutations cap. Not just paternal or maternal. 40 maximum mutations, period. Don't care which side of the family its on, if a dad has 40 and the mother has zip, then the offspring should only get daddy's mutations and nothing else. After that, you can level as usual and then its done.

At least thats how I would have handled it, Im not wildcard however and Im unsure if there was some issues with the coding in that regard. x.x

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