Mutation breeding

[GrumpyBear]

1 hour ago, BetaWolf said:

Would there be tribes that would use multiple servers to get the needed amount of females (and transfer their male breeder to mate)?

People would use every idea imaginable.  Multiple servers, clones , get females and raise while breeding again to try for a male.  Whatever you can do to keep full pressure.  

 

To get an idea how well they do things today, aberrant anky took over 2 years to reach max melee and they are one of the most popular animals, everyone needed... everyone wanted the highest melee regardless of net gain per effort spent.   Deinos took about 6 months to reach max melee , and shortly after that they got nerfed in boss fights to 600% cap on melee.

Shadowmanes reached max melee in about 4-5months after gen2 released.   At this point, its assembly line for people who are pushing to be first one to reach the finish line.

 

Rock drakes were only breedable as of the end of last year.  They have already gone past 200 points in melee up from 54 to start.  People had 49 point stats for hp / melee waiting for breeding and mutagen long before they were breedable.

Sinos alreayd capped, Desmodus already over 72 points in melee as of this moment.

 

Methods we used pre incubators - 

Hatch in place method

 

Set up circles of breeders on multiple levels around a stud - remove the floors and leave stud on an elevator to raise and lower for new studs. Eggs fall to the ground, if set up correctly no eggs get stuck in the air. also must clear eggs or be really clever when picking them up. easy to undo all this work by not maintaining daily. Interact w/ floating dinos will have them fall.  Eggs allowed to crowd above end up ruining the setup.  I had 2 separate sections like this w/ 137 breeders each, that could be reached by the stud. 2 days on a 4 day raise animal (over 500 eggs)was pretty easy to maintain speed.  You have 4days for a male to show up while raising the first female with mutaiton.  Clone her a dozen times if a male never shows.  You will have a male soon as their cd ends.

 

 

Before incubators

You can spot the mutations by the level of the babies.  You have all matching breeders which match every stat on stud except melee, or HP , whatever it may be.  The levels would tell you right away if you have a mutation, color would not always tell you when you hit the lottery.

[BetaWolf]

11 hours ago, Joebl0w13 said:

Like @GrumpyBear said, at this point in the game there's really no reason to start hardcore breeding. It's already been done long before and at a level you won't match before Ark 2 rolls around. 

Best to just trade sundries to the breeders for dinos.

I'm playing unofficial small-tribes ORP. Cluster is a quite a few years younger than official servers.

 

And Ark also brings new creatures out quite frequently.

[Joebl0w13]

1 minute ago, BetaWolf said:

I'm playing unofficial small-tribes ORP. Cluster is a quite a few years younger.

Ah, that does change things a bit.

[BetaWolf]

It's also something to be proud of if you breed dino's yourself instead of just buying lines.

[GrumpyBear]

15 minutes ago, BetaWolf said:

It's also something to be proud of if you breed dino's yourself instead of just buying lines.

It so very much is.  Its a slippery slope, the whole trading for better than what you have already tamed.  Where do you stop?  and if u just buy everything - you have little to no idea what the animals can really do.

[BetaWolf]

On 7/17/2022 at 5:46 AM, GrumpyBear said:

also, there is a way to ignore the 20/20 limit imposed.   Its a separate project of breeding done simultaneously mating brother/sister groups merging stat counts together repeatedly generation after generation until you create a mutation count too large to store, this causes the mutation counter to reset to a negative #. Since a negative # is less than 0, it's also less than 20, hence - unlocked mutation potential.

This requires tons of patience, too much time on your hands, a bit of obsessive compulsive disorder, and no real life to speak of.

 

 

That's how breeders get around the too many dinos to breed with problem after hitting 20/20.

Would  you know how long the maturation process needs to be, for negative mutation breeding to become useless?

 

Say you want 210 more points in 1 specific base stat.

[GrumpyBear]

Without negatives, 21/20 melee mutation on blood wyverns took me over 1800 eggs.  22/20 mutation on melee -> 2400 eggs.  1-20/20 never more than 700 each.  Time becomes the commodity, and the enemy is how much this process consumes after 20/20.

PVP will give you way more options.  On pve before incubators, we hatched 200 eggs at a time, the 2nd baby you claim has the mutation.  You have 205 more babies waiting.... don't claim them, 4 fps while at your base for the next several hours or days..... or, for a couple hours, go and claim them and kill them all....

 

I don't think there's a limit on what animals it is useful based on their maturation times.  It takes no effort to raise these alongside of things you are already raising.  Its just waiting for them to finish to make it useful that will delay your mutating maybe a month(2 day raise assumption here) - if you were working non-stop on mutating that entire time.  But that 1 month delay would be insanely worth not having to waste your extra time going through thousands of bunk eggs.  You can even combine the older generation counts so that you can create a positive # to mate back to your first negative generation.  If you do that at the same time, it only takes one or two new generations to wipe the -2 billion # you get down to -1.

 

Like, 2 day raise - 10day raise, the process to reach the negatives is about 42 generations.   If you do this non-stop, you will probably get 30 done before you reach 20 mutations.   Because there's no stopping except when you are short on the # of females to make the next generation.    Another factor is, you can start the count roll before you even find that winning melee to start working with.   I don't' know many people who find the 54 point melee on day 1. Someone always does though, its just odds are good its not going to be you.  You could be 5 generations in before you even find that melee you want to mutate.  Its best to start this right away if you are serious about it.

 

Say you got 44 points to start with.  You want it to be 254.  The first 20 mutations gets u 40 points.  Now you are at 88.  So you would want the negative mutations for the next 65 mutations.   After that, it could go to zero again since you need only another 20 mutations.

 

To put it into some perspective, I think it took Bert over a year to reach the end of the line on the traditional rexes.  x-rexes took about 6 months(though the negatives existed before anyone actually tried to hit 254 with them - regular rexes were already done).  People got better and better at managing the workflow. *official pve server history here*

PVE official is running out of animals to min/max,  I think the arthro and the 2 pachy's are all that's left to hit 254...jk...but seriously...

 

If you want a crazy idea for them.  Move that -1 over to a level 1 female.  Clone your 300 breeders of that.  Then take the highest stat you paused with, turn that into a zero count.   Now, every mutation you get, resets the new potential stud to zero again,  the -1 mutates to zero.  And you mate back to the -1 females, get a mutation -= back to zero....

Now you have a loop that gets you all the way to the end with no more thinking.  You did a lot to get there, but don't have to think again about it after that.

 

One caveat, I think you can't merge -20 + 20 to get zero.  I'm not 100% sure as I haven't actually done that or tried.  But others have told me you have to mutate from -1 to hit 0 again.  This is hearsay, since I can't confirm this as fact.   I got too bored trying to reach the -1 mark with aberrant spinos and rock drakes.  I was too lazy to prep that last set of positives to wipe out the -2billion in 1 shot... Solo breeders should avoid mutating for max.... its a team effort.

[Redhawk]

On 7/22/2022 at 12:57 AM, BetaWolf said:

Would there be tribes that would use multiple servers to get the needed amount of females (and transfer their male breeder to mate)?

A common practice is to have tribemates form alt tribes using alt accounts, then lining up 100 females per alt tribe, effectively loopholing the tame limit in one area.