Saturday, May 22, 2010

The Big Picture with the Hatchery (Thanks Miguel)

Ok, if you haven't read Miguel's Wildthorn's comments in the last post, check this out. I've stitched together three of his more pertinent replies:
I think you're missing some key points about how the Hatchery works.

The Hatchery mixes slots such that the 20 slots of the child are a combo of both parents. Only 4/10 Talent slots will manifest. It's very likely that the first child might only manifest Talents of its like-parent. It's still a hybrid petnome; it's just that the cross-school slots were not the ones that manifested.

Subsequent children have a better chance of manifesting a Talent from a parent from a different school.

So, match the child with the parent from the other school and you will have a good chance of the next gen child manifesting the Talents you want.

Ok, going to stop there for now.

WOW!

So, in the end, according to this, I really *feel* I should only be breeding epic pets with epic pets, so I know what has manifested in the parents since there is a *greater* chance of those skills manifesting in the offspring. What I have got in the first generation offspring is this:

good chance at 4 revealed talents from the parent
good chance at 4 revealed talents from the other parent
1 unrevealed talent from each parent? (unsure at this point)


from these 10 talents, my offspring will randomly manifest 4 talents. If I'm EXTREMELY lucky, my pet will manifest the best of both parents (or at least what I want from both parents); however, the odds are very against me with that happening; THEREFORE, I must breed and breed again until I get exactly what I want in exactly the pet skin that I want.

*ahem*

Continue, Miguel . . .
The Hatchery is actually a great learning tool about basic breeding.

Darn tootin'. But to this extent in Wizard101? Is it too much? Is it too complicated? Is it too much of a time and money sink? I digress.

Continue Miguel . . .
If you end up with a pet with Talents that aren't in your school, you can usually equip an amulet with a card that will benefit from the bonus.

meh . . . I'm not impressed with that to be honest. Casting outside of my class can be very inefficient at Grandmaster, but that's ok, 'cause I see where you're going with this (it would make it less inefficient [probably not by much though]).

Continue Miguel . . .
Also, because it's the slots that transfer, it's possible that some children will have a lower or higher pedigree than either parent.

If more Rare slots happen to transfer from both parents, the child's pedigree will drop a bit. If more ultra-rare slots happen to transfer, the pedigree may be a bit higher.

But, what's important is that you get the specific Talents or Powers you want.
That's why it's more important to match with a pet that has already manifested Talents or Powers you like than it is to focus on the Pedigree number.

In the end, a pet with more ultra-rare slots that did not manifest is of lesser value to me than a pet that manifests the Talents I want.

Lights go off in head. Ok, thanks for that. Seriously. I actually think I get that little number off to the side of the pet now.

Continue Miguel . . .
The primary way pets aid us in battle is by boosting our stats for damage, resistance, accuracy, health and mana.

Those are the combat Talents that most commonly manifest. If your pets manifest these Talents, the bonuses will increase as you increase the stats of your pets via training.

Other Talents allow pets to cast spells, like Ice Ward, during combat.
The tool-tips for these Talents don't indicate whether the chance for the pet to cast is increased with training (increasing stats).

Ok, as I see it, at the end of the game here, I want to have three pets . . . 1) a pet that is the look that matches me most for racing that is a killer derby machine. 2) a pet that is the look that matches me most for questing that is a battle spell casting genius with all spell casting abilities for its four talents. 3) a pet that is also matches me most for questing that has all the death damage raising traits I can possibly get.

oh . . . and 4) a mini-thomas Lionblood pet that the people at KI now have to put in the game because it would just be awesome. Listen to me people at KI. LISTEN!

Oh yeah, and 5) for people that pvp, they're going to want a killer pvp pet.

Meh, at the end of the day, probably most people will just get as close as they can and go, yay. done.

Continue Miguel . . .
I still need to test that.
And I anxiously await this testing because what I've seen so far over on your Facebook profile has been astounding! You guys have to check out Miguel's petnome mapping pictures here . . . (if you can get to them). Seriously awesome. I can't say enough about these tonight!

Continue Miguel . . .
The only way to choose the spells the pet can cast is to try to match your pet in the Hatchery with a pet that has already manifested the Talent/spell you want and hope and/or wait for that Talent to manifest in the next generations.

Matching high-pedigree pets is very expensive.

It's probably best to start by purchasing several low pedigree pets from the schools you like, training them til the adults have the Talents and Powers you like. And then matching those adults in the Hatchery.

That's the quickest and cheapest strategy, I think.

Once you have a low-pedigree pet with Talents you like, you can match them with the high-pedigree pets.

One thing to remember is that the Talents and Powers that have already manifested in the parents have a greater chance to manifest in the children.

There is some risk, yes.

But, it's not too difficult to plan for the traits you want once you understand how it all works. And know what to expect.

Ok, very interesting strategy. To be honest I have yet to see what all the possible talents are! I want to see what those epic talents are SO BADLY.

For me I am predicting thousands upon thousands upon tens of thousands of gold and hours upon hours upon tens of hours to actually get what I want for pets. That's just . . . a . . . lot . . . of . . . work. Not to mention that *finding* the perfect pet to breed with might be a near impossibility without some kind of fansite built specifically for making matches. Central is going to have to make a new forum just for this kind of stuff! POST YOUR EPIC PETS HERE! I can see people trading forum gold for matching with your uber pet (if you got one). You know? This thing could totally explode!

How is the community going to overcome that? Or is it just me exploding this thing again? Am I going crazy?

Well, I think I probably lost it a long time ago, so . . . yeah

Thanks for the interesting thoughts tonight, Miguel. I think you've really opened my eyes here tonight on the hatchery.

Happy Dueling!

18 comments:

John Lifeglen said...

Wow excellent stuff! This certainly clears up a lot of questions.

Kevin BattleBlood said...

RE: Lights go off in head. Ok, thanks for that. Seriously. I actually think I get that little number off to the side of the pet now.


Just to clarify on this...

PEDIGREE # = Total "Rarity points" possible
Manifestation # = Total "Rarity points" acquired.

"Rarity points" (RP) are the number of yellow blips next to your pet's Talents/Derby skills. Uncommon has 1, Rare has 2, Ultra-Rare has 3, and Epic has 4.

The number above our pets are in this format:

PEDIGREE # (Manifestation #)

So, the most godly Baby possible (To say if such a creature is tangible in this game, it would have to take more research in Miguel's findings) would display "80 (0)"; if all its inherited Talents and Derby skills are Epic (4 RP), and there are 10 Talents and 10 Derby Skills, its Pedigree # = 80, with 0 manifested.

So, a "Chuck Norris-esque" pet would sport "80 (32)". In contrast, a "weak" pet will sport "20 (8)." The descriptions "Chuck Norris-esque" and "weak" are in quotes because, as Miguel found, Pedigree and Manifestation #'s are irrelevant when your pet has Epic spells you don't desire for the next generation. To reiterate Miguel, we can't dismiss the "20 (8)" pet from breeding if one of its Uncommon traits happen to be useful.

Peter Venuti said...

Just sent this to KI, what do you think?:

Hey there Kingsisle,

So, I wanted to share my concerns with you about the test realm. First I'd like to say I was happy about most of your changes. The parts I didn't like and think you need to improve on will be listed. I hope you continue to hear us out and make this game shaped more by the players then by a company! :D And personally, I don't mind waiting longer on this to go live, because I'd rather it be fun then sloppy and boring. So, here I go:

1. Hybrid Mixing- This was a big success and a big problem. I love how we can now mix our pets into entirely new pets! Amazing job! However, I do have to problems with this:

a. I think you need to lower the gold and higher the success rate of cross breeding pets. If I have to pay 100,000 gold for ANOTHER Helephant, I believe I just wasted my money there. In the Test Realm, as of right now, I have breed my pets eight times and have only gotten a hybrid ONCE. That's 1/8! I want something cool and stylish. I think we should also have a choice in specifically what "class" persay, our pet goes into. For example, if I'm breeding for a PvP pet,when I breed two pets, a bar should pop up with a "class list" on it. So, if I'm breeding for PvP, I'd chose the PvP class. Then the "Gene Pool" would pick the best of it's PvP traits from both parents. Do you see where I'm getting at? I think that one of these "classes" should be "Hybrid", where the main idea is just to get a hybrid of the two parents. Say I have a Stormzilla and a Helephant, and I want to cross breed. I click the "Hybrid" bar, and it will (randomly) pick the appearance from one pet and the school patterns/colors/etc. from the other. You should also lower the gold cost, because why would you buy a housing item for 100,000 gold when you can buy a huge house for around 80,000 gold. Also, this high price is stunting the testing of breeding. Another thing: Breeding times. I think 12 hours would be a more reasonable time. Otherwise, I think this is really awesome and you should keep up the good work.

b. The Artwork of the Pets- For most, (and remember, I'm specifically talking about the class pet from level 48) are amazing. However, there are a few of them, such as the mixes of the Satyr with Stormzilla and a Hydra, as well as the Hydra with Colossus, Helephant, and Stormzilla, that I was very disappointed with. I do like the blueish satyr thing, but maybe for the Hydra with Satyr you can do something like a seraph that kinda looks like a lady judgement. And for the Hydra, I like how the storm one is all purple, but shouldn't the fire and Ice one be all red and light blue too? And shouldn't they have patterns or something? Also with the Fallen Angel, shouldn't you get that from mixing Life and Death, not Death and Storm? Besides my few suggestions, I really like the artwork, so awesome job!

2. Pet Exp- I think we need more experience during our mini games or less exp should be needed to level up your pet. It takes way too much gold and time for some players. Some players would rather quest then spend a month just getting one pet to epic.

3. Other Notes- I really like your work KI. You've done an awesome job with this. However, like any game, there's always room for improvement. I hope you read this and take my thoughts into consideration!

Drdemon411

Paige MoonShade said...

Interesting.Thanks for the read.

Heather Raven said...

Whoa, that was really dense. Convinced me that I will NOT be hatching when things go live. Unless I have a SUREFIRE bet that I will get a cool pet. (e.i. Danger Hound + Danger Hound = Ghost hound.) For gosh sake this is a kid's game right?

SorceressMiklai said...

I can totally see Friendly running around with a mini-me type pet. Good for his fans because it will make it so much easier to spot him!

Thx also to Kevin for clearing up some of that confusion as well.

Alric Ravensinger said...

Wow that was one of the best articles you've had on the site friendly very cool now I feel sort of better about my Minotaur Otis whose pedigree is 57 he was hatched from a Minotaur(54)Mine and a Death Ninja Pig(54) Theirs.

A lot of Ultra rare talents did pass over too.

blaze duskblade said...

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Miguel Wildthorn said...

RE:
good chance at 4 revealed talents from the parent
good chance at 4 revealed talents from the other parent
1 unrevealed talent from each parent

KI talks about Talents and Powers.
Since there is a column titled Talents in the Pet UI in the Spellbook, I refer to the "talents" in the Derby column as Powers.

An egg should inherit 4 revealed slots and 6 unrevealed slots from each Epic parent. Which slots will actually manifest as the egg ages from Baby to Epic is still mostly random, I think.

I don't know if the Talent column will have an even split of slots from each parent: 2 "revealed" and 3 "unrevealed"? Seems likely.
4 "revealed" and 1 "unrevealed"?
Probably not. I think we would be seeing more pets with cross-school talents in the 1st generation.

I focused my Hatching tests on trying to get cross-school combat Talents to manifest.

If you have Epic pets available to match, it's best to match with an Epic that has manifested the Talents or Powers you like.

New and low-level people will be starting with eggs.
The best strategy in that circumstance is to start by training several eggs to Adult until you have a pet that has either two combat Talents or two Derby Powers you like. And match that Adult in the Hatchery.

It's too costly and time-consuming to train a pet from Baby to Epic and discover the pet has only manifested 1 combat Talent. Especially if that 1 turns out to be Mana-Gift.

Training to Adult several times until you have a pet that manifests
Mana-Gift Death-Giver (damage) is better than training an Epic that only manifests Mana-Gift.
And there's a good chance you would end up with one Adult out of several that manifests Death-Giver and Death-Shot (accuracy) before you finish training one pet all the way to Epic.

Low-Pedigree matches cost about 12,000 gold. So, you can go through several of those relatively easily in contrast to 100,000 gold for high-Pedigree matches.

Seems better to match a low-Pedigree Adult that has manifested Death-Giver and Death-Shot with a pet that has manifested Ice-Proof and Snow Aura (may cast Ice ward).
That should result in a pet that manifests Talents from both schools for 1/2 the price to risk it with a high-Pedigree and/or Epic pet and not have any of the cross-school combat Talents manifest.

Odds will be very much against you if you are trying to max the very best of the Talents and Powers from both parents. (And it will likely be quite costly! Time and money.)
Especially if you are hoping to produce a Hybrid appearance as well.

Casting outside of my class can be very inefficient at Grandmaster
Well, that's in response to people saying the pet is useless because the person doesn't cast from that school.
1 - I haven't reached grandmaster. At lower levels, that other-school card can come in handy when fighting a couple bosses outside of your schools.

2 - Life-Proof and Unbalancer (xx% resistance) can be nice bonuses even if you aren't casting from those schools.

3 - It's still a hybrid even if it doesn't look like one. You could train it to adult and use it for a 2nd gen Match. Those "unrevealed" cross-school slots will still be helpful for that.

-----------------------------

Ok, as I see it, at the end of the game here, I want to have three pets...
I mostly think of it as two pets:
1: Has the appearance I want and 3 or 4 combat Talents with at least 1 from both of my primary and secondary schools.

2: Possibly a killer Derby pet.
Does the Derby pet really need to have the great appearance? I think not, but...

Seems like getting that first questing pet will be challenging enough.

Trying to create truly uber pets will probably cause some heads to explode. :-)

Miguel Wildthorn said...

@Luke GoldHorn
RE: If I have to pay 100,000 gold for ANOTHER Helephant, I believe I just wasted my money there. In the Test Realm, as of right now, I have breed my pets eight times and have only gotten a hybrid ONCE. That's 1/8!
If all 8 were Helephants with, say, a Unicorn --and you actually raised them to Epic-- you would see quite the spread of Life traits in some of the pets. Even if all 8 look exactly like the Helephant.
You might even have a couple Helephants out of 7 or 8 that only manifest Life Talents.

If we mapped the petnomes and could highlight the slots from each parent, you would see that all eggs from the Hatchery are hybrids.

Typically the child will look exactly like one of the parents, and will have a mix of trait slots from both.
The level-48 pets have the possibility to produce Hybrids that combine the appearances of the parents - maybe some unique traits as well.

Miguel Wildthorn said...

Also, the Bloodbat at the Pet Shoppe IDs as Balance school but only has Myth Talents in its petnome.

You can't just look at the blank template of a newly Hatched Baby (from the Hatchery) and assume it is worthless to you because it has the appearance and school ID of one the parents.

Miguel Wildthorn said...

@Heather Raven
Hoping for a Ghost Hound is really coming from the extreme end of the feature.

Kids will likely start from the other end - with cheap pets bought at the Pet Shoppe or pets from Boss drops.

The idea is to get a pet that manifests Health Gift and/or Life-Giver (damage bonus) and train the stats as you level from novice to grandmaster.

Trying to create an uber, grandmaster Epic pet is something that will keep hard-core grandmasters occupied for months.
Yes.

Anonymous said...

How did Miguel get his pet to have every derby power and talent slots filled in his pictures? I thought you only get 4 derby powers and 4 talents.
I'm confused!

cactusflinthead said...

It is going to take a while to soak up all the intricacies of hatching exactly the pet you want. I note in previous comments that I was recommended to avoid? hatching lvl 48 pets. Isn't that the point of this? To hatch things with our present pets to get other ones? If I stand at best a 1 in 5 chance and considering how unfrequently the more desirable drops occur I would venture that the odds of getting a desirable hybrid of two strong pets are slim. I can see the value of running the tests on lower level pets, obviously it is the cheapest option. But, at some point players are going to want to work with the strong ones and the repeated generations necessary or repeated attempts necessary to yield the desired results will prevent many players from ever pursuing it. In light of the difficulty and cost of getting the results desired I would submit that this is a good time kill for bored grandmasters. You can sink untold amounts of money, real and imaginary, into getting what you want out of a pet. I do not think many players are going to be willing to go through the process completely. Granted, there are already numerous hybrids out and about. The genetic longshots that have paid off for a few players will keep the enticement out there for the vast majority that do not get the pet they wanted.

Peter Venuti said...

@ Miguel: Yeah, I know that the traits are mixed. But I really want to see appearance change. I'm not really a PvPer or A Derby guy. I just like mixing two pets and sayign, "Wow, look at the cool Jade Orthrus!". Call me shadow, but that's what I want to see.

Miguel Wildthorn said...

@Anonymous
The petnome maps are cut-and-pasted composites of 6-10 Epic pets of the same Pedigree and type with fixed base templates.

A pet from a shop or dropped by a boss will have a fixed petnome.
All of the Imps from the Pet Shoppe have the same base template. The 20 slots are all locked in the same place on the template. It's just a matter of which ones will manifest as the pets age.

The petnomes were basically just a way to get an idea of the types of Talents and Powers we might see.

Eggs from the Hatchery will have jumbled slots if the parents are different pedigrees or types.

Miguel Wildthorn said...

onees@cactusflinthead
I note in previous comments that I was recommended to avoid hatching lvl 48 pets.
Well, on that note, I'm really suggesting that people not focus on lvl 48 to try to learn how the system works. Especially, if you want a pet with specific Talents.
It's too expensive all the way round. Risk vs reward probably won't be worth it unless you are willing to invest several months and multiple expensive Hatches.

But, also, if you are working with lvl 48 pets - it's still best to raise a 1st generation egg to Adult and try the Hatch again with a parent of the type you prefer.
Don't just assume that it's a complete clone of a "non-useful" pet. And, don't waste the time, effort and money training it all the way to epic.

Isn't that the point of this? To hatch things with our present pets to get other ones?
Not really.
I think the system is primarily designed for us to raise eggs from novice through grandmaster/level cap.

The secondary design is to try to breed uber grandmaster pets at endgame.
But, it's fairly clear by the frequency of the results that these unique Hybrids created by the lvl 48 is not the intended norm and should not be our base expectation.

The base expectation is that you have a pet that aids in combat by providing bonuses to our stats and sometimes by casting spells or giving cards.
And that developing that pet will take several weeks or months.

If I stand at best a 1 in 5 chance and considering how unfrequently the more desirable drops occur I would venture that the odds of getting a desirable hybrid of two strong pets are slim.
Sure. If you have an expectation of quickly and easily getting an uber Hybrid pet that is unique rather than settling for a hybrid that has the same appearance as one of the parents but has a combo of slots from both parents.

A Hybrid with a unique appearance is great, but it's a fairly rare occurrence. I'd rather start by spending less money and effort making a pet that will manifest the specific combat Talents I like.
But, you know, preferences will be different with each individual.

I can see the value of running the tests on lower level pets, obviously it is the cheapest option. But, at some point players are going to want to work with the strong ones
Yes. But, it's better to start low and work your way up because that way you are reinforcing the manifested Talents and Powers you want in that uber Epic pet in subsequent generations.

Do the unique Hybrids only appear from matching TWO lvl 48 pets?

I do not think many players are going to be willing to go through the process completely.
True. Mostly hardcore grandmaster breeders will do so.
The average person will settle for the more typical hybrids that look like one of the parents but manifest desirable Talents and Powers.

The genetic longshots that have paid off for a few players will keep the enticement out there for the vast majority that do not get the pet they wanted.
I think it will be too costly and time consuming for most people to try more than a couple of Hatches with lvl 48 pets.

Miguel Wildthorn said...

@Luke GoldHorn
LOL
I don't think it's shallow to just want to see the appearance Hybrids, but, given the vast numbers of pets and possible combos - reality dictates that that's going to be fairly rare.
At least for now.