New Breeder

[KyrieCatteneo]

Hi all. Im just beginning to learn breeding, and as a solo player, I could use a bit of help. The few Ive raised so far arent bad, but Im not getting of the imprinting bonuses.  Also, when selecting them, do I choose based on their stats when they were tamed, or the stats Ive put into them since taming? What about ones Ive raised? lol How do I know what mutations they have? I do know basics, but I hope I can get better outcomes as eventually I gotta fight bosses, which I know I cant do alone..well maybe with the steampunk mod Thanks in advance for any help.

[GrumpyBear]

Only the stats when tamed matter.  The points you add later do not transfer.  If the ones you have raised merge your better stats, then keep merging until you got what you want together.  You only need to imprint the ones you want to ride.  Imprints make them even better. 

You know what mutates , when you know what points your stats are before the mutations.  After that, you look for what doesn't line up with what you had available.  If a stat is 2 more than one of the stats you had available, then that's the one that mutated. 

If all the baby's stats seem like they belong to the pool of possible stats, then you look for an option that had only 2 points difference between the 2 choices.  That would probably indicate that the lower of the 2 mutated, and so you got shafted.

we use a program called arksmartbreeder to keep track of our stats, it makes figuring out what happens much easier.

[Yggdrassil]

Breeding will only use the stats they are born/tamed with, any levels you add or imprint bonus will be ignored so dont bother levelling them up.

You can have a maximum of 20 mutations on the mum and 20 on the dad until the chance of gaining a new mutation is greatly reduced, so with breeding the best thing to do is keep a load of females with no mutation (clean) and use a male with all your mutations to breed with them so you always have a chance to gain a mutation.

Also try to start breeding with a dino that has 40+ points in a stat if you can as this will help you a lot.

[Pipinghot]

18 hours ago, KyrieCatteneo said:

Hi all. Im just beginning to learn breeding, and as a solo player, I could use a bit of help. The few Ive raised so far arent bad, but Im not getting of the imprinting bonuses.  Also, when selecting them, do I choose based on their stats when they were tamed, or the stats Ive put into them since taming? What about ones Ive raised? lol How do I know what mutations they have? I do know basics, but I hope I can get better outcomes as eventually I gotta fight bosses, which I know I cant do alone..well maybe with the steampunk mod Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi Kyrie,

In addition to the information people will give you here on the forums, there are a few good video series on breeding that people have created on youtube. Personally, I learned from the series created by TimmyCarbine, but other people have their own personal favorites.

If you're willing to spend the time watching an hour or two worth of good tutorial videos you'll save yourself a lot of wasted time from breeding mistakes and confusion. Those tutorials saved me a lot of time I would have wasted trying to figure it out on my own, you'll find that almost any question you might have about breeding (even the questions you haven't thought to ask yet) will be answered for you.

[Dreadcthulhu]

I am going to copy paste a breeding guide I found on reddit that covers the basics pretty well.

Basic breeding guide.

So this game gets a lot of questions about how the breeding system works. Many people recommend various videos on how to breed creatures, but a lot of the guides are older, and use methods that made sense when you were hatching eggs with AC units like a caveman, but are now un needed with incubators being a thing.  So I would like to offer my basics to breeding guide. 

First off, all creatures in Ark have 1 initial level, then levels into their stats; these add up to the total level.  For wild creatures, these levels are randomly assigned; a level 150 rex will have 149 levels randomly assigned to its 7 stats. When you tame a creature, the levels from taming effectiveness are also randomly assigned. More levels in a stat make it better, except for movement speed; base levels in movement speed do nothing, and are oft called wasted levels.

The levels into stats a creature has post tame (or hatch/birth) are what can get passed onto the babies. Levels from XP do not.  Because of that random factor, different creatures of the same level can have very different stat allocations. Sometimes somewhat lower level creatures will tame out with more levels in a useful stat than higher levels; i.e. a level 130 rex could tame out with more levels in health than any level 150 you tame. So for the most part, only focus on specific stats when breeding, and ignore the total level. (The exception would be when you run into the level cap issues on official, but that is another post.) 

When you breed creatures, the game picks the stat level count from one parent or the other separately for each stat. So an easy way to make stronger tames is combine the best stats you have gotten from tames; i.e. mate your best health rex with your best melee rex until you have a male & female with both good stats. This may take a few tries.  If both rexes were female, you would mate one of them with a random male to move that stat to a male. 

Next up is mutations; each mutation raises a stat by 2 levels & changes a color region. The best way to get a lot of mutations in desired stats is by "stacking" them. The incubator makes this process really easy, though it can be done without. 

Basically, you want to start with the best of the stats you want to mutate that you have post tame; if they are on males, great, if on a female mate with random male until you have that stat on a male. Then you want to figure out how many levels that male has in its stat; there are a couple ways to do this, but one that works for everyone with an incubator is to mate the male with a bunch females and check the eggs; about half will have the male's higher level. 

Say you are starting with health; if half his eggs say 40 health, name him 40 health.  Then keep mating him & checking eggs; when you see a 42 health egg you have a keeper; if male that becomes the new health breeder, if female, mate with non-mutated male until you have a male 42 health. Then go for 44 health, and so on.  Then you repeat this process for each stat you want to mutate.  Naming males their key stat makes it trivial to see new mutations in the incubator. 

You will end up with a line of mutated males for each stat; always use un mutated females for the breeders, since they can keep generating new mutations even when the male side passes 20/20 on the counter. When you are done mutating, then you combine the lines; i.e. mate your final health male with a female until you have female with health stat, and mate her with final melee male until you have male & female with both final stats.

[Teratus]

If you are willing and able to use mods then I would recommend the Awesome Spyglass mod as it is an invaluable tool for keeping track of what stats your creatures have as well as mutations they get.

Dino Storage V2 is another great and popular mod that helps you track your dino's stats as well as mutations, it will also help you automate to some extent your breeding programs via the terminals it adds which can auto trap baby creatures when their born so they won't starve and die as well change all your dinos to mating or not mating with a single command, negating the need to do every creature manually.

[KyrieCatteneo]

thank you all for the help