A way to combine the mutations I collected?

[WungTung]

Hi, I'm quite new to the breeding thing in ark. 

I've seen a few videos and read some articles about it but there is something I don't understand. 

Most of them say you should start with breeding the best stats of your tamed creatures together and that's exactly what I did. I tamed two good creatures and tried to combine the best stats of them in one baby. I tamed a lot more high level creatures of the same species to get the best possible stats and every time I got something better I continued the cycle of making the perfect male and female. 

Now my questions:

While breeding my argis together to get the perfect pair I collected a lot of mutations. I kept them all and now I have a army of around 60 argis with all sorts of mutations. Now I tried to breed one of my first mutations together with my perfect male. But the mutation does not carry over to the offspring. Is it because the level difference between the two is to high? My perfect M is level 256 and has no mutations, the female is level 213 and has a 14,9% damage mutation. I have breed them for days and I always get a level 256 at best with the same stats of the male but no damage mutation on him. 

In all the guides I have seen they started mutating them when they had the perfect pair. So does that mean that all the "low level" argis with mutations I got are useless and I can't get there mutations on my perfect creatures? 

Also if I find a wild creature with better stats is it still possible to get those stats in to my mutate line if I keep track of there original stats? Or do I have to start all over again? 

 

Thank you for any responses and help already 

[GrumpyBear]

welcome to the world of breeding.  What you are seeing is quite common.  You only have a 55% chance to inherit the better of 2 stats in a stat category.  THe problem with having better stats on the females is you can only breed it 1x every day or 2.  And each time you try, you have just a slight bit over 50/50 chance of getting the stat you want.   If the higher stat is on the male, you can breed that male to many females and have more chances until you run out of females.  But when its on a female, the only way to cheat the system is to make 5 to 10+ clones of that female to increase your chances every attempt. 

The cloner tool isn't that available to newer players who haven't beaten the bosses for the engrams to use the tek cloner.  As well as have the element stash to do this is hard on every map except for genesis 1 and 2.  Merging all stats is a tedious process.  Usually reserved for when you are making a final dino for riding purposes.  A single melee mutation isn't going to wreck anything more than the original.  Its when you get that mutation repeated 5 to 10x that it adds up to a significant change.   Simply breeding and imprinting gives you a 20% boost to your original melee that is far more powerful than just 1 single melee mutation.   When I say 20% , I mean if it was 400% melee damage - the 100% imprint will make that melee 480%.  That is more impactful than just the 14.5% that brings the 400 up to 414.5%.   

Its this reason that when we get females with mutations, we immediately work to move that mutation over to a male so that we can do it again in a controlled manner.  Then we try to repeat that mutation on the same stat and we trash anything else that comes up, or we keep that and use that as a rider while we keep trying to improve melee.  We do this immediately because of the cooldown timer between breeding is a roadblock that can last quite awhile , sometimes it even works out that we just trash it until we get a male.  It all depends on how many females you work with for a harem.  I go with 250 breeders personally , but others go even larger.  Anything smaller makes it a longer process in the end.

[Griffin998]

Like GrumpyBear said-have a mutated male, and keep swapping him out for further mutated males while keeping your female setup. Ideally, you should throw out your perfect fs as they're babies, and so they grow into each other and minimize space loss. Pick up the male when you get a mutation, and replace him with your new preferable mutated male. Also, work on one stat at a time. Say you have 10 females around a male. That male should be only mutated in, say, melee. Make a different setup for your health stacks, stamina stacks, etc. This makes it a lot easier to keep track of your mutations. Also, save your extra babies (nonmutated or non-preferable stat babies). Use them to level up the final product by, well, killing them. Especially for boss armies, this is useful. Or snag an explorer note on your character and/or one of your preferred dinos and just murderize them. Lots and lots of levels, especially with mass breeding things like gigas or carchars.

[Mackiecool]

6 hours ago, WungTung said:

Hi, I'm quite new to the breeding thing in ark. 

I've seen a few videos and read some articles about it but there is something I don't understand. 

Most of them say you should start with breeding the best stats of your tamed creatures together and that's exactly what I did. I tamed two good creatures and tried to combine the best stats of them in one baby. I tamed a lot more high level creatures of the same species to get the best possible stats and every time I got something better I continued the cycle of making the perfect male and female. 

Now my questions:

While breeding my argis together to get the perfect pair I collected a lot of mutations. I kept them all and now I have a army of around 60 argis with all sorts of mutations. Now I tried to breed one of my first mutations together with my perfect male. But the mutation does not carry over to the offspring. Is it because the level difference between the two is to high? My perfect M is level 256 and has no mutations, the female is level 213 and has a 14,9% damage mutation. I have breed them for days and I always get a level 256 at best with the same stats of the male but no damage mutation on him. 

In all the guides I have seen they started mutating them when they had the perfect pair. So does that mean that all the "low level" argis with mutations I got are useless and I can't get there mutations on my perfect creatures? 

Also if I find a wild creature with better stats is it still possible to get those stats in to my mutate line if I keep track of there original stats? Or do I have to start all over again? 

 

Thank you for any responses and help already 

It’s like the iPhone 12 and 13 they put them together to get the 14 so yeah what griffin said.

[Griffin998]

Also check out syntac's video on the topic-he does a great job at explaining it.

[Griffin998]

6 hours ago, WungTung said:

Also if I find a wild creature with better stats is it still possible to get those stats in to my mutate line if I keep track of there original stats? Or do I have to start all over again? 

 

You can do that, but it may mess up your colors if you have any. If you didn't know, all mutations come with a color change. It can also mess up your other stats, but you can iron all that out with enough breeding. It'll take a hot second, but you can definitely do it.

[CervantesMor]

8 hours ago, WungTung said:

Hi, I'm quite new to the breeding thing in ark. 

I've seen a few videos and read some articles about it but there is something I don't understand. 

Most of them say you should start with breeding the best stats of your tamed creatures together and that's exactly what I did. I tamed two good creatures and tried to combine the best stats of them in one baby. I tamed a lot more high level creatures of the same species to get the best possible stats and every time I got something better I continued the cycle of making the perfect male and female. 

Now my questions:

While breeding my argis together to get the perfect pair I collected a lot of mutations. I kept them all and now I have a army of around 60 argis with all sorts of mutations. Now I tried to breed one of my first mutations together with my perfect male. But the mutation does not carry over to the offspring. Is it because the level difference between the two is to high? My perfect M is level 256 and has no mutations, the female is level 213 and has a 14,9% damage mutation. I have breed them for days and I always get a level 256 at best with the same stats of the male but no damage mutation on him. 

In all the guides I have seen they started mutating them when they had the perfect pair. So does that mean that all the "low level" argis with mutations I got are useless and I can't get there mutations on my perfect creatures? 

Also if I find a wild creature with better stats is it still possible to get those stats in to my mutate line if I keep track of there original stats? Or do I have to start all over again? 

 

Thank you for any responses and help already 

hi, I think your question has not been understood in the right way, I will try to be as brief as possible:

1 - no, the level difference doesn't affect it, you can pair a level 10 with a 200 and get all the right stats and also get new mutations, but...

2 - when a statistic is inherited, the matched mutation already received is included; i.e. if in your case the child takes the damage from the mother, then he will receive the same points as the mother including mutation, if he takes the damage from the clean father he will get that damage with no mutation. the mutation itself is not separate from the statistic on which it occurred and is transmitted only if the inherited statistic is that of the parent who obtained it. But (what got you confused is..)

3 - the motherlinear/fatherlinear mutation counter is added each time, even when the actually mutated statistic is not inherited.

 

so, in your case: if you mate the 213 lv female that has the damage mutation with the clean 256 male, the damage stat can be inherited in two options (in the meantime we don't take into account another new mutation), first option you get the stat of the father without mutation (for example 400% damage) or from the mutated female (for example 200%+14.9%=214.9%) but it cannot happen that the damage of the male added to the mutation of the female is inherited, therefore the their child will be level 256 with father's damage but without the 14.9% added, and the mutation counter at the top will count "motherline 1 / parentline 0" but in fact you haven't actually received the mutation. so to your question, whether or not it is convenient to move your mutations from the females that you have already mutated: yes only if the final stat of that female is higher than the stat you see in your clean male (if for example you have a female level 200 but with damage 450% and your male has 400% then yes) otherwise you would inherit the mutated statistic from the mother but it would be lower than that of the father and would still increase the general mutation counter (see answer n3)

4 - yes you can enter as many females as you want avoiding those with mutations in their counter (at least until the male is below 20 mutations) because that counter would add up to that of the male from time to time making him reach 20 mut faster. adding even low-level clean females is the way to have more eggs and therefore more possibilities, bearing in mind that you will still try to get all the statistics of the father with mutation on his statistics, regardless of which female is the mother. the only precaution to take into account is that (as mentioned above by Griffin) by adding new females, children with colors inherited from those females could be born, many of us wanted to obtain very specific colors (for pure aesthetics) and created lines of 'mating with only those colors and therefore they will not want to add new females for not mixing colors, others on the contrary like to vary with the colors and often add new females just to have new colors (I myself do both things on different animals)

[wizard03]

13 hours ago, WungTung said:

Hi, I'm quite new to the breeding thing in ark. 
I've seen a few videos and read some articles about it but there is something I don't understand. 
Most of them say you should start with breeding the best stats of your tamed creatures together and that's exactly what I did. I tamed two good creatures and tried to combine the best stats of them in one baby. I tamed a lot more high level creatures of the same species to get the best possible stats and every time I got something better I continued the cycle of making the perfect male and female. 

Now my questions:
While breeding my argis together to get the perfect pair I collected a lot of mutations. I kept them all and now I have a army of around 60 argis with all sorts of mutations. Now I tried to breed one of my first mutations together with my perfect male. But the mutation does not carry over to the offspring. Is it because the level difference between the two is to high? My perfect M is level 256 and has no mutations, the female is level 213 and has a 14,9% damage mutation. I have breed them for days and I always get a level 256 at best with the same stats of the male but no damage mutation on him. 

In all the guides I have seen they started mutating them when they had the perfect pair. So does that mean that all the "low level" argis with mutations I got are useless and I can't get there mutations on my perfect creatures? 

Also if I find a wild creature with better stats is it still possible to get those stats in to my mutate line if I keep track of there original stats? Or do I have to start all over again? 

 

Thank you for any responses and help already 

Yeah, sadly those mutations are junk, you need to clean out the old argies and just start with that "perfect pair". The ones with the highest stats of all of them, BUT!!!! only if they do not have any mutations themselves. When going for mutations, you gotta start with 0/20 paternal, and 0/20 maternal. Its easier to track mutations this way. Check "ancestors" at the bottom of the argies inventory page to see if they are clear of mutations.
Once done, and everything is good, start breeding, keep an eye out for color changes and level ups that indicate mutations, and consult with the parents to see where the mutation is. DO NOT IMPRINT!!!
If you want quick soft mutations, just keep replaceing the parents wiht any mutated children that you want to keep untill they are maxed out and the game will not let you mutate that line anymore.
If you want to go with max mutations, only keep mutated males with the mutations your looking for. Only mate them with zero mutation females. Takes longer {weeks, even with super crazy breeding and growth rates} and is very tediouse, but I think you can mutate a dino up to 362 where it can level up to its max of lvl 450

And sadly if you do find a better wild argy, yes. You gotta start from scratch if you want. However how good do you want an argy? I typically kill alpha rex's with a simple imprint of super high level argies, so.....why?

[DirkInSA]

14 hours ago, WungTung said:

While breeding my argis together to get the perfect pair I collected a lot of mutations. I kept them all and now I have a army of around 60 argis with all sorts of mutations. Now I tried to breed one of my first mutations together with my perfect male. But the mutation does not carry over to the offspring. Is it because the level difference between the two is to high? My perfect M is level 256 and has no mutations, the female is level 213 and has a 14,9% damage mutation. I have breed them for days and I always get a level 256 at best with the same stats of the male but no damage mutation on him. 

To maybe answer a bit differently to the (good) answers above.

If your "perfect male" has a bigger count of points in melee than your mutated female, then the female is useless to breed with. When bred there is a (as above) roughly 50% chance of the baby getting its stats from the male or the female. So in your example if the female has 130% melee (with a mutation), but the male has 139% melee (no mutation), the BEST you can get is the 139%. With the downside that the baby will reflect that it's parent had a mutation, never mind that this mutation DID anything.

So no one cannot "inherit" the benefit of a mutation, but apply that mutation to the better stats of the other parent.

[WungTung]

Thanks for all the great answers! Now I understand 👍. I always taught that the mutations were independent of the creatures stats and you could breed them in. The mutation counter makes definitely more sense now because you have to be careful with the parents lines.

My friends will be happy to her that, now I can start to get rid of the countless creatures I have collected the past 5 months 😂. 

Thanks for the help I really appreciate it.