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CistaCista

New mysteries of animal breeding

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The animal husbandry patch is there and communication seems to have dried up. Time to speculate!

 

There are things we wish we knew and it seems we won't be told just yet... So let's discuss the sparse knowledge amongst the players.

Here's a couple of examples.

 

1) Traits don't add up.

EDIT: I posted elsewhere, that certain traits add more points than what they should.

That is true but I was wrong about the traits.

 

Thanks to Delone, we are now pretty much sure that the 2 (old) draft traits each give 5 points more to a horse than what they say they do.

 

SPEED - Fleeter:  10

SPEED - Very strong leg muscles: 15

SPEED - Lightning:  20

 

DRAFT - Strong body: (10) ACTUALLY 15

DRAFT - Carry more: (15) ACTUALLY 20

DRAFT - Strong legs:  ??

 

EDIT again: it is now confirmed by dev that the HIGH numbers are the correct ones: https://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/184286-patch-notes-26may2021/&do=findComment&comment=1854705

If the math of these two categories is balanced, then the number for the new Strong Legs draft trait can be only 10. Is it more than 10 then draft horses are really really costly.

To breed a balanced 3+3 horse, you will need 90+ AH skill. 

 

2) The new shallow water trait

Is it even a positive trait? Is it bugged? Do horses with this trait throw their riders off constantly?

 

3) Rare traits

This is pure speculation. How rare are they? How difficult are they to pass to the next generation? Do they cost points? NO they don't cost points.

 

4) Elimination of minority categories

I wonder how strong this force will be, when the majority category (e.g. 3 speed traits) means traits from another category (e.g. draft traits) will not be so easily passed.

Speculation: I have my own theory that it doesn't matter which traits the horses already had besides the majority - every other trait will just be a random draw. 

This would mean that "allround horses" (many speed and draft traits in the same horses) will be almost impossible to breed. What do you think?

 

Are there any other lingering questions you would like to discuss, just post it here!

 

Edited by CistaCista

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It has been barely more than a day, so I think communication "drying up" is a bit much to say. The official information about traits will be coming soon. And yes, devs are aware that trait points don't add up. And, even the patch notes say that yes, our previous "5 speeds" will be very hard to breed.

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Well so far of the dozens of foals ive bred ive not had one keeper. If you dont allow genesis to hots after this we will be better off riding generic horses than bred ones and being slaughtered for it on the battle field

Before any pve heros comment you can breed foals in an hour on defiance so yes we are fully using the new system and no there cant be any fo priests in this kingdom to barter with.

Edited by SmeJack
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3 hours ago, SmeJack said:

Well so far of the dozens of foals ive bred ive not had one keeper. If you dont allow genesis to hots after this we will be better off riding generic horses than bred ones and being slaughtered for it on the battle field

Before any pve heros comment you can breed foals in an hour on defiance so yes we are fully using the new system and no there cant be any fo priests in this kingdom to barter with.

 

simple fix allow all gods to be in all templates in some shape, who cares about lore at this point its more about utility and the inability for devs to balance things and the lackluster speed at which anything is actually done about problems. still remember the days of no hots strongwallers where you had to fire your guards and bring a mag WL alt onto deed for stuff, so dumb

 

or wait maybe just have player gods and that might fix the issu... oh wait nevermind. we had it but now its gone. 

+1 fix genesis for bl

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I wish that we could get a swap, path of love gets genesis on a relatively short cooldown (maybe an hour?), and Fo gets the enchant tile as a spell with a fairly lengthy cooldown.

 

Fo would stay very useful for breeders, and have a skill that would be desirable for trade.

 

Blacklight kingdom would have access to genesis and not be gimped in that regard

 

And, having a fo priest would no longer be practically mandatory for breeding, as long as people were willing to go path of love. 

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8 hours ago, DemonaNightshade said:

It has been barely more than a day, so I think communication "drying up" is a bit much to say. The official information about traits will be coming soon. And yes, devs are aware that trait points don't add up.

With all due respect... this bugs me :D

You (as a team) hype up a big patch. The day arrives, patch is live. Great!

... but with what seems to be nothing more than minimal quality testing, if any at all, because first hotfix took less than 1 hour to arrive.

Really, some of those bugs (numbers not adding up, basic math 1st grade) - how was it not noticed during development?

Also, other bugs like placing items not working correctly (works now, after another patch) - I don't know why this happened, but obviously something broke it. When a dev touches parts of code, they should at least make some basic click-a-thing testing.

 

You can't just come in a day later, casually saying "we're aware" after players did the testing for you.

Also, when you say "official information coming soon", it kind of sounds to me "let's first see how it works and adjust documentation accordingly. No bugs, just features!" 🤷‍♂️

It's like you should get an Early Access label on Steam 😛

 

Anyway, still here and enjoying the game. Carry on!

 

Also, thanks! No sarcasm.

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50 minutes ago, Arronicus said:

I wish that we could get a swap, path of love gets genesis on a relatively short cooldown (maybe an hour?), and Fo gets the enchant tile as a spell with a fairly lengthy cooldown.

 

Fo would stay very useful for breeders, and have a skill that would be desirable for trade.

 

Blacklight kingdom would have access to genesis and not be gimped in that regard

 

And, having a fo priest would no longer be practically mandatory for breeding, as long as people were willing to go path of love. 

No thanks, we've been violently nerfed enough over the years.

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I agree that Libila needs Genesis or some kind of "dark" equivalent. Being a top notch breeder should still require a priest. Tbh I think we're getting to the point where a second BL God may be justified, so that BL can get access to certain spells without Libila having everything. Making is so that BL can't just have armies of Lib priests that can do everything would help to counter-balance the change.

Edited by Ols
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here's an idea that may or may not be interesting to the BL side; what about possibly an electrum rune that does genesis? electrum only has the rune that reduces age atm

sorry, brainstorming here lol

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Has anybody tested if horseshoes still affect horses dragging carts/wagons? Mainly wondering if the bonus that Bisons get towards that stuff is actually relevant or not, and thus if there's any point to breeding draft Bisons.

Edited by Ecrir
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1 hour ago, Ecrir said:

Has anybody tested if horseshoes still affect horses dragging carts/wagons? Mainly wondering if the bonus that Bisons get towards that stuff is actually relevant or not, and thus if there's any point to breeding draft Bisons.

 

Shoes on my hell horses still affect the speed of my cart. How that relates to bison yet and if it will mean that they are not worth having since they cannot have shoes remains to be seen still.

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I'm really torn and thought I'd offer this up for discussion..

 

Do you think it would be better to:

1.  Breed our current 5sps hoping to get speed and draft traits to separate by luck?

2.  Inbreed our current 5 sps hoping for bad traits so either speed or draft traits will fall off, then go from there?

3.  Start over with wild horses with no traits and start from scratch?

4.  Breed current 5 sp with wild no trait horses?

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2 hours ago, Mitzie said:

2.  Inbreed our current 5 sps hoping for bad traits so either speed or draft traits will fall off, then go from there?

 

Inbreeding does not result in bad traits anymore. It results in 50 % FEWER traits, that is the new system.

Nothing has been said about inbreeding directing specific traits, so that's what I am going with.

 

You can breed your existing horses and with luck and patience get them closer to new types of horses if that is what you want. 

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I don't get it, nearly 70Ah (69.3) at the time of breeding: wild donkey and mare.

 

Resulting offspring had 40 points. Apparently you CAN GET UP TO your points?

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1 hour ago, ChampagneDragon said:

 

Resulting offspring had 40 points. Apparently you CAN GET UP TO your points?

 


That has been my result too. It is either broken *gasp* or an "UP TO" situation. I had varying results from 5 trait points total to 60 trait points total. 65 would be my current cap, but I didnt breed anything that high.

P.S. I am also experiencing a hitherto unseen amount of negative traits.

Edited by Josso

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This is what I experienced so far:

 

Horses will be either speed or draft. So far I have had no new foals with both speed and draft traits.

The speed horses will show the new speed form if they have at least 3 speed traits. I assume the draft form will show when a horse has at least 3 draft traits.

 

If I breed with the old 5 speeds, they will always result in speed traits (and ofc, negatives and misc traits). This is imo because the 3 speed traits are dominant over the only 2 draft ones.

 

If you want to breed drafting horses, you will have to use wild horses, or horses with more draft traits than speed traits. This is based on very little experience, since I have gotten only one foal so far that has only one draft trait (strong legs). This foal has a wild horse and a zero trait horse as parents. I will have more info about this in a week or 2 with the next generation.

 

Speed traits: Fleeter, Lightening, very strong legs and accustomed to water (total 55 AH)

 

Draft traits: strong body, carry more, strong legs, ...

 

After reading Eletari's post, It seems it's possible to get mixed speed-draft traits. I wonder if the draft traits do anything for speed now. If so, we now need 80 AH to breed the same horses we used to breed with 50 AH.

How is this an improvement?

 

I feel bad about the fact that the original horse form will have no use anymore. Even our old 5 speeds are transformed into the new speed model. I miss my old horses and I wish the new model would only show when they have at least 4 speed traits, so we could still keep our original 5-speeds that we cared for for so long, and the new speed model would be more special.

 

I find that having HIGH AH still makes it harder to breed, despite the fact they said it wouldn't. It just makes more room for negative traits and other random traits you don't want.

 

Having to breed again with wild horses is also a HUGE problem on Harmony (and maybe the other northern servers as well). I have only seen one wild horse since last summer, and that was  a mission spawn. (It died soon after for no obvious reason)

 

SO PLEASE FINALLY FIX THE HORSE SPAWN THERE.

 

I have had no rare trait so far. This after about 100-150 foals.

Edited by Amaluna

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30 minutes ago, Amaluna said:

Having to breed again with wild horses is also a HUGE problem on Harmony (and maybe the other northern servers as well). I have only seen one wild horse since last summer, and that was  a mission spawn. (It died soon after for no obvious reason)

 

I've had a recently strange experience similar to yours. It was on Desertion yesterday.

 

I checked the two huge steppes on the map where usually you could easily find 100-200 wild horses at any given time.

 

I found zero. Nada. Explored both steppes around the corners and in their center areas. They only had bisons and hell horses plus a few assorted random mobs. I did see about 100 water horses near the northern shores of the map, but that doesn't explain why the central steppe, far away from any ocean is totally devoid of any wild horses. I even cleared the steppe from mobs thinking it might favor new spawns. No luck.

 

I perfectly recall steppes favored the spawn of wild horses so something definitely changed in the code at one point or another. I think wild horse spawns might be broken.

 

As for breeding, I've tested on Epic breeding so far with 93 effective AH, and my god the number of negative traits on new foals is astounding. All from pre-update breeding pairs, 5 speeder traits, most of them are 2 draft traits, 2 speed traits, 1 combat trait.

Edited by elentari

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I get that comparing wurm to reality is silly. But i am silly and i am intending to be silly. 

Imagine in reality that you, a master of animal husbandry are breeding your prized stud and mare, two horses with perfect amazing race horse qualities and finding that every single time without fail they always produce a child with 3 legs. This is how the new update feels. The combination of two olympic gold medalists of the equine world should not consistently produce a child who'd get a participation medal in the special olympics.

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On 5/28/2021 at 10:01 PM, Lisabet said:

here's an idea that may or may not be interesting to the BL side; what about possibly an electrum rune that does genesis? electrum only has the rune that reduces age atm

sorry, brainstorming here lol

 

I think that should be a thing regardless. I don't think its a long term solution though.

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Actually I fail to grab the philosophy of this change. All previously efficient either "5sp" or "8good traits" horses  receive a speed nerf of 15-30% when hitched to wagons/carts, and on top of it a 70-80% speed nerf when a cart is even moderately loaded. In addition, mounts get another drastic speed nerf when carrying a few kg of weight (which make it pathetic to have them carrying a now minimum 12.8kg hay bale).

 

In addition, it seems impossible to breed any horse of distantly the abilities of the old "5sp", much less "8good traits" horses, and if at all, only skill 90+ breeders seem able to achieve any acceptable result, prolly after a meat grinder of 1000+ killed "unworthy" foals, great immersion for those who hated killing foals at all, AH goodbye for them.

 

The whole thing should be rethought from scratch, as such a radical disenfranchisement and discouragement of  90+% of all animal breeders, riders, and drivers can hardly be a defensible objective. 

 

In my opinion, any speed nerf on existing horses and hitches compared to the situation before the nerf is a move into the wrong direction. Rather, new attributes and properties should add on top of these values. It is certainly acceptable that it might need either 70+AH and some luck, or 50+AH and much luck to breed horses or other animals with qualities as before, but it should not be completely unattainable for <50 skill andn very much luck, and not end up in total crap for beginners. And it must not take 1000 foal murders to breed a decent horse. 

Edited by Ekcin
typo
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It feels a lot like the fishing update did, cool it's more in depth and fleshed out. But you took something and made it more complex and difficult to do for everyone and nerfed the existing system. There needs to be a balance of some stuff being made easier otherwise all you're doing is upsetting people.

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3 hours ago, Nadroj said:

It feels a lot like the fishing update did, cool it's more in depth and fleshed out. But you took something and made it more complex and difficult to do for everyone and nerfed the existing system. There needs to be a balance of some stuff being made easier otherwise all you're doing is upsetting people.

THIS!!!

 

I was JUST ranting in alliance chat that it IS another fishing update, despite what we were assured wouldn't happen.

 

I am now left with a totally useless bison herd. Completely. It's taken me five years to build the perfect herd. 12 "thruples" (two females/one male breeding set). All had the same traits so maintaining herd was easy. Now those beautiful 5sp + fight bison are worthless because they produce  4 SPEED bison babies. Not one draft trait. Ten babies born.. not ONE draft trait. I can't saddle a bison, they go on carts and wagons. So now I am left with a choice.. cull the entire herd and start over or just live with speed bison. 

 

All AH needed was some love. so those of us over 60 AH didn't have worthless traits. So we were actually rewarded for breeding 5+ traited creatures. We didn't deserve to be left with 36+ worthless animals. 

 

All fishing needed was a few more rod and reel combos for different types of fishing. We didn't need 20 different baits, 10 different floats (ok, i'm not really sure on the numbers, since I have fished ONCE since the update, just to fill journal, and yes, I complained the entire time). We didn't need a chart to figure out which bait and float to use at what time of day, then change it an hour later because they were no longer good at that time in Wurm, just some variety. Now it feels like a science project.

 

After seeing the results of my first bison breeding  (at 65 AH) I'm even more disgusted with this animal update. Yes, there were some good things, but even they lack. Troughs, should be great.. but if your enclosure is of any size they're worthless. Seriously, we don't need troughs in our normal pens, we need them in larger enclosures, yet they don't work for those. Pet bowls... nice aesthetics, but they don't prevent decay (meat two days old in dogs bowl is moldy) so it's just extra work to open the bowl and fill it vs dropping it on the ground. Make them have a purpose.

 

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what purpose donkeys and mules serve, besides giving new players something almost as equally slow as a cow to ride. An aged fat cow (wild) just gave me 6.7-7.2k/hr across a flat farm field. An equal donkey gave me 7.7-8.62. I walk at 11.02/k hour on same track. 

 

Now mules: I've had four born. They're young, so I can't tell speed, but a with three speed traits seems to be equal to an aged donkey, but are they ridable by newer players?

 

Points. Points don't add up. We've been told more than once "we're aware". Fine, we're all aware, yet NOTHING has been done to address this. We're simply told "we're aware". Great. Now what? What's the plan to fix it? While you're at it, can someone explain why 70AH is giving results with as low as 10 point offspring? Is it a range? I've yet to have one born that used my full 70 points, even with parents (bison) who were over my "allocated" points. Is this another RNG FU?

 

/end rant (for now) while I go back to grinding AH (seriously my grooming brush was coc104 is now c100, was 19ql, is now 6. AH affinity food and sleep bonus has taken me from 69.5Ah to 73.2. I *really don't like* whoever came up with this update)

Edited by ChampagneDragon
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No. I can hardly say what I hated more in Wurm than the old fishing system, especially as it was fraudulently or erroneously advertised as a newbies' way to get food. I had to travel 600 tiles ca. through mob infested forest to the next shore so I felt mocked. Fishing was a pastime when nailed to a moored boat when nights were that damn dark back then as many cheer, no fun,  the rotten fish thrown away afterwards. The new fishing gave me the chance to complete the 900 fish goal by net fishing within a few hours, Tich may be blessed for forever. Yes much was not well hammered out, but fishing was announced, and to my knowledge even open on the test server for some time. I understand that those who afk grinded their fishing quite high loved the old ways and feel and felt disenfrenchised, but what did they lose? A way to get certain food, so what. There is tons of other food, meat, vegs, whatever, and fish still there.

 

No comparison to the horse and bison nerf. Personally I never used bisons for transportation, but for those who did the nerf is detrimental. And for horses, I and others described already. And while there are and were loads of alternatives to fish even for those who refuse the new system, there is no alternative to mounts, carts, or wagons.

Edited by Ekcin
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14 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

o. I can hardly say what I hated more in Wurm than the old fishing system, especially as it was fraudulently or erroneously advertised as a newbies' way to get food. I had to travel 600 tiles ca. through mob infested forest to the next shore so I felt mocked. Fishing was a pastime when nailed to a moored boat when nights were that damn dark back then as many cheer, no fun,  the rotten fish thrown away afterwards. The new fishing gave me the chance to complete the 900 fish goal by net fishing within a few hours, Tich may be blessed for forever. Yes much was not well hammered out, but fishing was announced, and to my knowledge even open on the test server for some time. I understand that those who afk grinded their fishing quite high loved the old ways and feel and felt disenfrenchised, but what did they lose? A way to get certain food, so what. There is tons of other food, meat, vegs, whatever, and fish still there.

Yes, and that's why I said a few new rods and reels. Nets and spears would be in this category. 

 

You won't catch a "large" or "huge" fish with this method though. That requires the bobbers, bait, specific line, reel, and rod combo.

Edited by ChampagneDragon

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I played Wurm on and off for years.  I love much of the decorations but most of all, my horses.  Despite these being pixels, I keep logging in every now and again to check on them and to see how the bisons and unicorns are.  I suspect many people are similar in their playing habits, especially when things in real life get hectic.

 

Every time new horse colours were added, many people played for hours and added more tiles to their deeds (or more deeds to their collections) to accommodate the new horses.  I was excited to read that AH would be improved, and thought perhaps people with higher AH would have more choice/control over which traits the babies got, or perhaps which name combinations to pick, etc.  I did not anticipate that people will now get fleets of useless horses and bisons, and people who like exploring and bringing ore/logs home would be far worse off than ever before.  Adding yet more pretty much useless traits to the mix amplified the useless offspring rates by ten.  Please remember that most people actually play the game to have fun, not to get frustrated and discouraged.

 

Long story short:  If these changes are permanent and not just something being trialed to be changed to something user friendly, with proper vehicle speeds, why would people bother? Can a dev please respond and tell us if these changes are set in stone or going to be addressed (and a timeframe if so.)  This include request for response about the offspring trait selection as well as the speeds of carts/wagons after the changes.

 

Thanks.

 

Edited by Fairyshine
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