Breeding question

[PrinnyAntta]

So yeah I'm new to breeding. With that out of the way was starting a line and my male came out with perfect stats but when I checked he had one mutation. I heard any was  bad when starting. Does that mean he's useless now?

[GrumpyBear]

Well , if he came out w/ the expected stats you were looking for - one of 2 things could have happened.

 

1 - run speed mutated.  That would give 2 extra points to overall level, but all the other stats you were looking at, would be what you were expecting.

2 - one of the stats you were merging had a 2 point difference from mother and father.  this stat mutated from the lower stat parent and came out looking like the higher stat parents stat.

 

Either way, it would now be a lost mutation in your count to 20.  It would not be an ideal starting point.  

 

If the color change that came with the mutation was favorable, it would still have value for that reason.  If you were just trying to get something good to ride for now, then it's not a big deal either.   

If you are getting serious to mutate stats, then focusing on merging all your best stats early on isn't necessary and slows you down.  We tend to keep separate studs for each stat, and only keep mutations that stack the same mutation as the fathers key stat.   This allows 20 mutations to just melee, but takes longer obviously since we will trash all other mutations that come up....

[PrinnyAntta]

Thanks.

His colors arn't anything impressive but I do like how he straight up looks like half of both parents instead of just a smaller copy of  ether.

 

Did hear that getting two stats you were looking for in a baby was the best way to start so that's what I've been trying. If I'm wrong then feel free to correct me.  I didn't expect him to have such good stats and mutation.  So stats first then mutation. So if I'm looking for damage I'd just keep breeding for it. When I'd get good damage I'd do the same with health. Then I'd breed  a dino with both stats?

[GrumpyBear]

Most all your damage output dinos benefit from more HP/damage.   Some animals, stamina could be another necessary stat - managrmr, snow owl...  Others it could be health/food - think daeodon.   Most animals you can get away with focusing on just the hp/melee.  If you go for a max melee stat of 253-254 - you only have so many points left to use towards other stats.  It matters your play style a little bit and the utility of a dino if you are going to sacrifice points towards stats other than HP/damage.

 

If you find a super high hp stat, then that's what you should use to mutate health.    If you get a really high melee stat, you should mutate up from taht. 

 

IF you put them together, you want to use it like that.  If you want to mutate, as soon as you get your +1 of either, they will diverge from there, you'd only merge them back when you decide, that's what i'm going to use right now.

 

There is a way to ignore them being separated, but it takes inbreeding for about 40-42 generations until you can use that work.  Usually, we do that process at the same time as mutating, separately, for later on after 20 mutations are done on melee.

 

Having all matching stats was one way to breed in the past.  Incubators have made that method semi-pointless.  The reason to have all matching at start was , if you males and females are all lvl 300 when you start, with all matching stats.  Then when you get mutations, you can tell right away when babies hatch.  BUt now that we can see what happens before hatching w/ incubators, there's no real need to do this anymore.

[PrinnyAntta]

Ok. Thanks for the info. Think I understand breeding a lot better now.  

[HenryManson]

to all that was said, i would add some things:
first of all, if both parents that made this kid have 0 mutations, continue to make babys from them until you have all stats on a baby with 0 muts! (getting an all stats kid with unwanted mut always kinda suxx, specially when you start out)

colors always have a random chance to land on the offspring

the higher stat of a parent has a higher chance to be transferred to the child (like 70% or something)

if you want a mutation you need to have atleast one parent under 20 muts, or you will never get one!

parents mutations always add up on the baby! so if you inbreed to make more with the same stats and you start with 1 mut, it will add up QUICK & mess up your chance for mutations!

when you breed alot on the other hand you want to reach over 2,147,483,647 muts, so the numbers turn negative & that counts as 0 muts again!

best way to reliably breed is to have ALOT of clean girls with 0 muts (and with most stats on 0 exept maybe a baseline, like stamina & weight so all offspring definetly have these and you are free to purely go for stats you want like hp/dmg)

 

other then that its patience & many many dead babys =/

speaking from breeding bears on official for years with like 150 girls wich reliably give me like 8-15ish muts or something per round, helpful or not! ^^

 

 

hope that helps

peace

mho

[wizard03]

10 hours ago, PrinnyAntta said:

So yeah I'm new to breeding. With that out of the way was starting a line and my male came out with perfect stats but when I checked he had one mutation. I heard any was  bad when starting. Does that mean he's useless now?

It depends.....if your trying to do a quick run, maybe you can keep him. But if your in it for the long haul, for the MOST mutations possible. Probably not. Gotta start with good stats and no mutations.

But if your in it for the quick run, make sure the mutation is in a useful stat, make sure it is actually a good useful mutation that actually improved what you want, and try your absolute best to get a female with said perfect stats as well. 

Honestly I accidentally did the same thing with my rex army. Nothing lost as I got a perfect stat and zero mutation female, so it was like I skipped a step. Just make sure its an actual improvement and not just a bad rex with a mutation to make it look good.

[PrinnyAntta]

22 hours ago, HenryManson said:

to all that was said, i would add some things:
first of all, if both parents that made this kid have 0 mutations, continue to make babys from them until you have all stats on a baby with 0 muts! (getting an all stats kid with unwanted mut always kinda suxx, specially when you start out)

colors always have a random chance to land on the offspring

the higher stat of a parent has a higher chance to be transferred to the child (like 70% or something)

if you want a mutation you need to have atleast one parent under 20 muts, or you will never get one!

parents mutations always add up on the baby! so if you inbreed to make more with the same stats and you start with 1 mut, it will add up QUICK & mess up your chance for mutations!

when you breed alot on the other hand you want to reach over 2,147,483,647 muts, so the numbers turn negative & that counts as 0 muts again!

best way to reliably breed is to have ALOT of clean girls with 0 muts (and with most stats on 0 exept maybe a baseline, like stamina & weight so all offspring definetly have these and you are free to purely go for stats you want like hp/dmg)

 

other then that its patience & many many dead babys =/

speaking from breeding bears on official for years with like 150 girls wich reliably give me like 8-15ish muts or something per round, helpful or not! ^^

 

 

hope that helps

peace

mho

Thanks. So different stats individually like health ,stam ,damage, etc. In stats I'd like for example.

 

Didn't know about stat transfer %. Just figured it was a hit or miss.

 

With inbreeding what would you say the chances of getting a mutation if you've got 30 mutations? 

 

 

 

 

19 hours ago, wizard03 said:

It depends.....if your trying to do a quick run, maybe you can keep him. But if your in it for the long haul, for the MOST mutations possible. Probably not. Gotta start with good stats and no mutations.

But if your in it for the quick run, make sure the mutation is in a useful stat, make sure it is actually a good useful mutation that actually improved what you want, and try your absolute best to get a female with said perfect stats as well. 

Honestly I accidentally did the same thing with my rex army. Nothing lost as I got a perfect stat and zero mutation female, so it was like I skipped a step. Just make sure its an actual improvement and not just a bad rex with a mutation to make it look good.

Thanks.  Dang. Glad I podded him for a bit.

Not sure which is higher but for the stats I was looking for they were pretty good.

Stinks about it happening but at least it worked for you. Guess I'll be raising his siblings.

[HenryManson]

27 minutes ago, PrinnyAntta said:

With inbreeding what would you say the chances of getting a mutation if you've got 30 mutations? 

if my math is right, then 30 is more then 20 & that parent wont really be willing to mutate (just with a low single digit % chance)

if you want the details (as always) check the wiki!
https://ark.fandom.com/wiki/Breeding
https://ark.fandom.com/wiki/Mutations

[GrumpyBear]

1 hour ago, PrinnyAntta said:

Didn't know about stat transfer %. Just figured it was a hit or miss.

 

With inbreeding what would you say the chances of getting a mutation if you've got 30 mutations? 

THe higher stat has a 55% chance of moving over and the lower stat from the other parent will be a 45% chance to transfer.

https://ark.fandom.com/wiki/Mutations

 

That page has all the details that explain most of it pretty well.

 

If both parents have less than 20 mutation counts, it's at most a 7.31% chance of a  mutation.  If the parent with the better melee is over 20 count on mutation, that % goes down to around ~3.6%(approximately I think, it's less than half the 7.31% from what I recall).

Put into perspective, With about 200 blood crystal wyverns, I could get a melee mutation almost every breeding.  Not always males, but almost always the mutation I was looking for.   As soon as I hit the 20 count, I could breed 1000 eggs and not get a melee mutation.  

.....I gave up breeding for melee mutation #22 on rock drakes after 800 eggs and no luck.....no point in trying until that counter is broken.

 

Counter project is simple 1+1=2 , 2+2=4, 4+4=8.....  Keep going 41x or so.  You will see what happens once you get past that point.  It takes a long time on any dino that takes more than 2days to raise.  On 2day or less dinos, you could do this pretty darn fast.

 

If you think you are going to try and mutate 1 stat 80x or more, then you will probably want to breed a counter project on the side at the same time starting now.   Of course, it will be a kick in the teeth if WC goes and changes how the counter works once you get to 500,000,000.   Murphy's Law states that is a distinct possibility.

 

Tribes use 500-1000 breeder dinos to force mutations without the counter going negative.  I wish WC would clean up this part of the game just like they did with incubators, cryopods, maewings.  This is the last part of breeding that hasn't been fixed.

 

[HenryManson]

they should just get rid of the mutation counter overall,
20 muts is too low to archive anything meaningful &  ppl who really breed all do it with negative counters anyways!