A question I guess about mutations and where I should go from here.

[DrRockso]

Let me start off by saying that I have a very basic understanding of breeding. A month ago or so a friend gave me a really nice desmodus which has 100 attack, 80+ health and 60+ weight. It also had 0/20 female mutations but 2000/20 male mutations. I have 15-20 tamed females that I’ve been messing with breeding with the good bat that was given to me. I saved a bunch of females that the good stats carried over to but anytime there’s a mutation, the baby becomes 2000/20 and 2000/20. How should I proceed from here if I want to improve on that 100 attack?

[GrumpyBear]

You have to breed the male to females that have less than 20 mutations.  You don't' try using matching females because they are equally useless at producing a mutation as the male is.  Once a dino has 20 or more total mutations (adding both sides of ancestry together), it can no longer produce a mutation.   

I would say your efforts towards bringing those stats up higher will be a very slow process.  By the time you get anywhere, that original breeder will be up closer to 150 points in melee.

Edited November 7, 2022 by GrumpyBear

[Dreadcthulhu]

You will want to breed your uber male with unmutated females.  The level of the females does not matter; you could clone a bunch of really low levels if you wanted.   First, you will want to breed your male with those random females until you get some females with the health, stam, weight levels your uber male has; then you set them aside. 

After that, you go for melee mutations; use the gestation monitor, and when you get a 102 melee baby, keep it, move stat to male if it is female (by mating with clean male), and that male becomes the new melee breeder; then repeat until you get a 104 melee, and so on.  I recommend naming your breeder males after their key stat; it makes it trivial to see new mutation when using incubator/gestation monitor. 

 Once you have gotten your melee stat up to where you wanted, you mate your finale melee male with those health/stam/weight females you set aside earlier until you get a female & male with all your combined stats. 

[Griffin998]

17 hours ago, GrumpyBear said:

Once a dino has 20 or more total mutations (adding both sides of ancestry together), it can no longer produce a mutation.   

Huh. I thought it worked like if you get 20/20, mutations get progressively more difficult, but not impossible. I'm pretty sure it's why Syntac never goes above 20 mutations on one stat.

[Griffin998]

Okay then-time to flex my writing muscles, since I can't find my guide on mutations I did a while ago, so here we go-get ready for an essay (actually, never mind, I found it):

Mutagen (just to sort of add on) is a very, very difficult to get substance, just because it's so rare. In genesis 2, I'm pretty sure you can get mutagel in the space biome when the drops are white (or orange, not sure). You have to craft mutagel into mutagen with 100 or 1000 mutagel. You can then use mutagen to boost your creatures with some amount (depending on both the creature and the level I think). What this does is add 5 stat points into each stat (not sure which ones-check the wiki for that). It also gives the creature 30 levels, but that is null and void for mutations/breeding. Those 5 stat points only really make a difference on the clean original parents, because if you use it on a bred creature, the 5 stat points will not pass down to it's offspring. Clean unbred parents will pass those stats down to their offspring.

Mutation Stacking

Mutation stacking is very simple. Basically just get a bunch of good wild stats-depending on what creature you're mutating, you'll want to look for ~40-50 points (talking about difficulty 5.0-6.0). By the way, for flyers, look for ~50 points-they don't get points into movement speed, so all the other points will be higher. I'll use gigas as an example here. So the only stats that really matter with gigas are health and melee (mainly melee-gigas don't get much health from points into health). You'll want the highest melee stat you can find-with gigas, because they're such amazing fighters, you want to look for 50 points into melee, and 40+ points into health. No other stats matter. Now, get those two stats into at least one perfect female and one perfect male. Also, while taming, look for the highest levels you can find (of course). Also try to find a balance of males and females, since you'll want to breed them. Now, using those two perfect gigas to create a bunch more-create some form of multi-female and single male breeding setup (lucky guy). At this point, just breed and breed and breed (keep the extras-you'll probably want to use those to level your gigas). Now, as you're breeding, look for two level increases. For example, let's say the perfect gigas are level 450 (as an example). Your mutated baby gigas should be lvl 452. That indicates a mutation. Now check the stats. If melee or health is increased, then keep the baby. Also, you'll want multiple different setups for each of your mutations. For example, if you want melee and health, then make one separate stack for melee, and one for health. Now just do that over and over again.Preferably get mutations on male gigas-females do not really matter in terms of mutations. Keep swapping out the single male with a mutated one.Also-about the paternal/maternal thing. You can use either side-it doesn't matter. But, 20 mutations is sort of the soft limit on each side. Once you hit 20, it become considerably harder to get mutations on that side.

Tip: Throw out your babies into their breeding positions as they're babies-they'll grow into each other, and save lots of space (and look really weird as they do it).

Levels:

So, let's talk about the level cap/point cap. There is a cap on points. Once you pass that point, that stat resets. So let's say you've got a super powerful, 100k health mosa. It's at max, and you mutate one more time. And then, disaster strikes-it's health resets to 3600 (base health). That is max stat. I'm pretty sure you can level over that, but you cannot mutate over it.

And that's it! Tell me if I missed anything, but I think that's my full thing on mutations and breeding!

Good luck breeding, and happy ARKing! 

[Griffin998]

To clarify on mutagen: You use it to buff your creatures. This helps with breeding, but only on the clean, unbred parents, which sort of limits it's use. You can also, of course, use it on the final creatures, but that will likely get very expensive, since you require lots of mutagen to buff anything, and mutagen is decidedly not easy to come by.

[GrumpyBear]

5 hours ago, Griffin998 said:

Mutagen ......... It also gives the creature 30 levels......

 

 

Mutagen can be used on both bred and wild caught tames or first born from wild eggs.  Only wild caught tames and babies from wild eggs can get a bonus that is inheritable.

The total bonus is +5 to health, +5 to stamina, +5 to weight, and finally +5 to melee for a grand total of 20.   If you are breeding seriously, then each best stat you want to improve will, most likely, have to be mutagened separately since its doubtful you will find 2 best stats on 1 tame.   To give an example, the best stats I have found often end up taking close to or in excess of 25% of all available points.  This would mean , to find one tame w/ the best hp and melee, they would need to have 48-50% of all points from that wild tame end up in those 2 stats.  This is beyond unlikely, you could play this game for 100 years and never find that combination.  So the point of all that is, if you want to boost your best hp/st/we/md you will end up mutagening 4 different animals before combining or beginning mutation work.

 

You can mutagen well bred tames, but they only give +1 in the 4 stats we are talking about for a grand total of +4 levels.  This bonus is not transferable, the children of the animals here cannot inherit this bonus, they would have to be mutagened the same way as their parents to receive that same bonus.

 

On reaching max stat level, we are talking about hitting 255 points in 1 stat.  You won't be finding any tames like that in the wild, so you don't have to worry about this problem for a long time.   Lets be generous and say you have a 60 point melee to work up.  Once you hit 20 mutations, your melee will now be at 100.  There's still 154 point points you can use up, you can't hit 255 because that's an odd # and mutations come in 2 points at a time therefore 254 is the limit.  This is still over 70 more mutations away.  By the time you get this far, you would be an old pro and won't need our advice. 

 

Mutating is no longer available to any tame who has reached a count of 20 mutations total between paternal and maternal ancestry counts being added together. So a dino with 0/20 and 20/20 is locked from mutating just like a 10/20 and 10/20 count animal would be.   But just because that parent can't supply a mutation doesn't mean it cant keep happening.  Its just the chances are cut in half, or slightly below half(this is because the other parent can still mutate if its count is below 20). 

I'm not sure if we have settled the fact of whether its a 50/50 split on each parents chances to mutate or if its 55/45 yet, but lets just say 50/50 for simplicity's sake.  SO if a dino has a 7% chance normally to get a mutation , it's now 3.5% when one parent has a 20 or more count.   This is for any stat, so its now a chance spread out between 6 to 7 different stats.  Getting the right mutation is an even smaller % because we have to multiply that 3.5% by 1/6 or 1/7.   

The point of all this is, it would take over 550 breeders every breeding session to force the mutation you want to show up in a few days.  This is not an easy process.  There is a way to escape this conundrum though, but it involves lots of extra breeding and its only for the most dedicated and/or those who don't' have kids and spouses or are simply trying to spark a divorce.

Edited November 8, 2022 by GrumpyBear

[DannyTom]

6 hours ago, Griffin998 said:

Tip: Throw out your babies into their breeding positions as they're babies-they'll grow into each other, and save lots of space (and look really weird as they do it).

 

Could you please explain this a little more as I am not understanding the Tip part..

[Pipinghot]

19 minutes ago, DannyTom said:

Could you please explain this a little more as I am not understanding the Tip part..

Baby animals take up less space than adult animals, so if you push them right up against each other when they're babies they will overlap each other as they grow up. You will need to use cryopods to separate them from the cluster once they reach adulthood, but as they're growing they won't take up as much space as they would if you keep them separated.

[Griffin998]

7 hours ago, GrumpyBear said:

Only wild caught tames and babies from wild eggs can get a bonus that is inheritable.

Yeap! That's what I meant. Sorry if my wording was a little confusing.

[CervantesMor]

two possibilities for your specific case (male 2000 mut):

1 - you can use your male without problems but you have to create a group of females without mutations (or with less than 20), you should therefore capture other wild females or have them born from a different male that does not have mutations, if you have the Cloning Chamber you can also clone many very low level females (the lower the level the lower the cloning cost), for you the level / points of the females does not matter because when you mate them with your mutated male you will look for children with the points inherited from male, but more important is to have as many females as possible to have more chances. The only difficulty in using females with different points will be that you will have to check the statistics in all the eggs, while if you are using twin females to the male (equal points and therefore equal level) it becomes more immediate to notice the mutation because the mutation adds 2 points and therefore 2 more levels (from time to time the child would have 2 more levels than the male level), but in your case it is not possible to procreate useful females from your male, I suppose you do not have still possibility to Clone (which however would need a better explanation for this other method), so you are left with two alternatives: many wild females (but all different stats so you will control each child individually) or you could initially use a different male with 0 mut (level and lowest possible points) to mate with one or more 0 mut females until a female identical to that male is born (same statistics and level), from that moment remove the pr ime females and mate the male with the identical female and children will be born with equal points and levels, if sacrificial males are born to you because they are not the ones you are trying to obtain while all the females are born (without mutations, otherwise they would complicate the work that you will do later) add them to mate again to that male until you have an adequate number of females to start mating with the 2000 mut male (if you're wondering what the appropriate number is ... hmm I'm never too many..to begin to understand how it works I recommend at least 10 or 20 females but you will see for yourself that many more would be needed). You are not finished yet if you want the next job to be simplified it is advisable to mate your 2000 mut male with those clean females until a new male is born that will have inherited the useful stats of the 2000 mut male and the useless stats from the female (Health and Damage are useful on a Rex with some Stamina, Oxygen Food Weight Lost / Speed is useless), this will finally be your first complete male with the useful stats taken from the 2000 mut father and the useless ones already lowered in the process you went through and equal to all mating females and will be your perfect 2000 mut male. At that moment what you are interested in is obtaining mutations only on the useful statistics and it will be very easy to identify them because the perfect male will have a level X (for example level 200) and all your females will have a level Y (e.g. level 20), if the son obtains all the useful statistics of the father without further mutations will have the same level as his, if he is of a lower level you will notice that one of those statistics has been inherited from the female and here you do not need it because it is lower, but when the son is born with the useful statistics of the father plus a mutation then gets 2 points on a statistic and therefore also 2 levels more than the father (therefore 202 in the example), at this point you will only have to check that the mutation is on one of the useful statistics because otherwise you need, if that mutation is on the right stat then you can raise it and replace it with the father, repeat with the new father level 202 with the same criteria looking for a level son o 204 with mutation on useful statistics, repeat, 206, repeat, 208, repeat and so on ... remember only on useful statistics (the lower the points remain on the useless statistics, the more mutations you can reach on the useful ones, due to the maximum level allowed of the dinosaurs in the Official Servers). I know this will seem like a complicated process to you but it is caused by the fact that you are starting from a basic male with mutations already over 20 but from which you want to derive the already high useful stats.

2 - there is also an additional method, my advice is to perform both at the same time: the fact that the male already has 2000 mutations can come in handy because you can exploit a small defect (for us immense luck !!) of Ark that makes a mistake of calculation when the mutations reach an extremely high number around one billion and three hundred thousand becomes a negative number (-1300000000) which is therefore a number less than 20 (<20 = possible mutations), if you have a male with mutations with that number in negative it means say that you will no longer have to worry about this problem because before bringing that number back to +20 you should get 750000020 mutations ... how to do it in reality is very simple but with not very short times. Take your 2000 mut male and mate with a 2000 mut female, born male or female with 4000 mut, have him mate with the parent 2000 mut +4000 mut = 6000 mut, pair with parent = 10000 mut, then 16000, and so on .. even if these numbers seem low to you, do not be discouraged because they double exponentially. imagine your same male as now but with the possibility of ifinite mutations (not infinite in reality but long to explain :))

ok the more complete explanation would take hours .. ... but I hope to have summarized in an intuitive way. if it can comfort you, there are those who have worked in an even more complicated way ..;)

Edited November 9, 2022 by CervantesMor

[Thegreedyone7]

On 11/8/2022 at 2:57 AM, Griffin998 said:

Okay then-time to flex my writing muscles, since I can't find my guide on mutations I did a while ago, so here we go-get ready for an essay (actually, never mind, I found it):

Mutagen (just to sort of add on) is a very, very difficult to get substance, just because it's so rare. In genesis 2, I'm pretty sure you can get mutagel in the space biome when the drops are white (or orange, not sure). You have to craft mutagel into mutagen with 100 or 1000 mutagel. You can then use mutagen to boost your creatures with some amount (depending on both the creature and the level I think). What this does is add 5 stat points into each stat (not sure which ones-check the wiki for that). It also gives the creature 30 levels, but that is null and void for mutations/breeding. Those 5 stat points only really make a difference on the clean original parents, because if you use it on a bred creature, the 5 stat points will not pass down to it's offspring. Clean unbred parents will pass those stats down to their offspring.

Mutation Stacking

Mutation stacking is very simple. Basically just get a bunch of good wild stats-depending on what creature you're mutating, you'll want to look for ~40-50 points (talking about difficulty 5.0-6.0). By the way, for flyers, look for ~50 points-they don't get points into movement speed, so all the other points will be higher. I'll use gigas as an example here. So the only stats that really matter with gigas are health and melee (mainly melee-gigas don't get much health from points into health). You'll want the highest melee stat you can find-with gigas, because they're such amazing fighters, you want to look for 50 points into melee, and 40+ points into health. No other stats matter. Now, get those two stats into at least one perfect female and one perfect male. Also, while taming, look for the highest levels you can find (of course). Also try to find a balance of males and females, since you'll want to breed them. Now, using those two perfect gigas to create a bunch more-create some form of multi-female and single male breeding setup (lucky guy). At this point, just breed and breed and breed (keep the extras-you'll probably want to use those to level your gigas). Now, as you're breeding, look for two level increases. For example, let's say the perfect gigas are level 450 (as an example). Your mutated baby gigas should be lvl 452. That indicates a mutation. Now check the stats. If melee or health is increased, then keep the baby. Also, you'll want multiple different setups for each of your mutations. For example, if you want melee and health, then make one separate stack for melee, and one for health. Now just do that over and over again.Preferably get mutations on male gigas-females do not really matter in terms of mutations. Keep swapping out the single male with a mutated one.Also-about the paternal/maternal thing. You can use either side-it doesn't matter. But, 20 mutations is sort of the soft limit on each side. Once you hit 20, it become considerably harder to get mutations on that side.

Tip: Throw out your babies into their breeding positions as they're babies-they'll grow into each other, and save lots of space (and look really weird as they do it).

Levels:

So, let's talk about the level cap/point cap. There is a cap on points. Once you pass that point, that stat resets. So let's say you've got a super powerful, 100k health mosa. It's at max, and you mutate one more time. And then, disaster strikes-it's health resets to 3600 (base health). That is max stat. I'm pretty sure you can level over that, but you cannot mutate over it.

And that's it! Tell me if I missed anything, but I think that's my full thing on mutations and breeding!

Good luck breeding, and happy ARKing! 

Hello. 

My wild creature levels cap is 300. Yesterday i found max level creature, but there's only one. Because you said "Also try to find a balance of males and females, since you'll want to breed them", so it is better not to tame the max level creatures? 

Or did you mean, when successfully breeding the perfect males and females it has the same stats or level? 

Edited April 28, 2023 by Thegreedyone7

[DirkInSA]

4 hours ago, Thegreedyone7 said:

Hello. 

My wild creature levels cap is 300. Yesterday i found max level creature, but there's only one. Because you said "Also try to find a balance of males and females, since you'll want to breed them", so it is better not to tame the max level creatures? 

Or did you mean, when successfully breeding the perfect males and females it has the same stats or level? 

In reality only the male counts. Why - because it is much quicker to mate 1 "good" male animal with a bunch of females, whereas the other way around with one "good" female you are limited to the breeding one baby at a time.

Times past it was recommended to have all the females at kinda the same level (i.e. clones of each other) because that made it easier to see when a mutation occurred in a baby. So if you have a male level 100 mating with a bunch of female level 1, then any baby with a new level of 102 is mutated. And it is easy to see which of the many babies that pop out have this level, with all that don't being "reject". Now with incubators you can see the "new" stats of the baby before it is hatched - so that advice falls away.

The trick is to NOT have any mutations on any of the breeding females, and to replace the "good" breeding male with a male baby that has a mutation in the stat you want.

As mentioned above somewhere, if your desired mutation happens, but it is a female baby, it is possible to mate that female with a "clean - no mutation" male until you get a male baby that carries all of the female stats, and then use that as your breeding male. The mutation count carries down from the direct parents of a baby, so even though your new male comes from a female with a bunch of mutations, any children of this male will show male mutation count - and your clean bunch of females will still give babies 0 mutations on the female line ........ Dunno if I could have said that better? In my experience, I generally carry on with breeding the "good" male and a bunch of females at the same time as trying to "switch" the new good female to a male - often as not a male baby with the desired mutation can come out of the main breeding line before the "switch" works correctly.

To directly answer your question - For SURE catch it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Even if its female - because you can mate that female with ANY wild male until you get a male baby that carries all of the stats from this level 300 that you want.

Just note - it is possible for a (for example) level 200 wild to be a better breeding start than your max level monster that you have found. Your level 300 could have a bunch of "levels" in oxygen, food and stamina and other "useless" stats (sure this depends on what kind of animal you are breeding - in a flyer you would want stamina) with only 20 points in health, whilst a much lower level wild could come out at 50 points in health with much lower food / oxygen & etc.

Edited April 28, 2023 by DirkInSA

[Thegreedyone7]

5 hours ago, DirkInSA said:

In reality only the male counts. Why - because it is much quicker to mate 1 "good" male animal with a bunch of females, whereas the other way around with one "good" female you are limited to the breeding one baby at a time.

Times past it was recommended to have all the females at kinda the same level (i.e. clones of each other) because that made it easier to see when a mutation occurred in a baby. So if you have a male level 100 mating with a bunch of female level 1, then any baby with a new level of 102 is mutated. And it is easy to see which of the many babies that pop out have this level, with all that don't being "reject". Now with incubators you can see the "new" stats of the baby before it is hatched - so that advice falls away.

The trick is to NOT have any mutations on any of the breeding females, and to replace the "good" breeding male with a male baby that has a mutation in the stat you want.

As mentioned above somewhere, if your desired mutation happens, but it is a female baby, it is possible to mate that female with a "clean - no mutation" male until you get a male baby that carries all of the female stats, and then use that as your breeding male. The mutation count carries down from the direct parents of a baby, so even though your new male comes from a female with a bunch of mutations, any children of this male will show male mutation count - and your clean bunch of females will still give babies 0 mutations on the female line ........ Dunno if I could have said that better? In my experience, I generally carry on with breeding the "good" male and a bunch of females at the same time as trying to "switch" the new good female to a male - often as not a male baby with the desired mutation can come out of the main breeding line before the "switch" works correctly.

To directly answer your question - For SURE catch it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Even if its female - because you can mate that female with ANY wild male until you get a male baby that carries all of the stats from this level 300 that you want.

Just note - it is possible for a (for example) level 200 wild to be a better breeding start than your max level monster that you have found. Your level 300 could have a bunch of "levels" in oxygen, food and stamina and other "useless" stats (sure this depends on what kind of animal you are breeding - in a flyer you would want stamina) with only 20 points in health, whilst a much lower level wild could come out at 50 points in health with much lower food / oxygen & etc.

Thank you so much.