Mutations

Mutating

So you’ve got a pair of creatures with identical stats. Now what? Now, you breed them. You breed them a lot. You need good, clean breeding stock. So you need females. A lot of them. Most breeders on Æsir will use between 20-40, or more, clean females. However, if you’re not using a mutator, you may need a lot more if you want to get mutations faster.

But first things first. Look at your creature’s ancestry here.

This is their family tree, and it keeps track of all previous generations, all the way back to that first wild tame. We have two sides: Matrilineal and Patrilineal, mother and father respectively. On each side, we have the mutation counter. When a dino is clean with no mutations, it will say 0/20 on both sides. Once you start mutating, you’ll see that counter rise on the side the mutation came from, either the mother’s or the father’s.

If the breeding is done the right way, you will never see those exorbitant mutation counters that climb into the millions.

But, once you get a side over 20/20, the counter can be ‘broken’.

The mutation rate on servers is really low. The probability to get at least one mutation on one baby is 7.3140625%. To get two mutations, it’s 0.184375%, and for three, it is 0.0015625%. However, that 7% chance for a +2, will be a 1% chance since it could land on any of the 7 stats, including Movement Speed.

Each mutation will give +2 on a single stat. Which stat gets that +2 is totally random and decided when either gestation starts, or when an egg is spawned.

So now you have a bunch of females and a male, it’s time to start mutating. The more females you have the higher the odds of getting a mutation in the stat you want. Once you have that mutated creature, you need it to be MALE.

If you are not using a mutator to swap the gender, and you did not get a male with a mutation in the stat you want, you’ll need to try again with the same creatures.

*It’s important to note that you do not switch out the females. Those must remain clean. Only the males with mutations should be switched out.

But wait. Why only have the mutations on the male? Good question. We saw that there is a limit of 20 mutations that can be on either the mother’s or the father’s side. If both parents have counters under 20, the chance of getting a new mutation is 7.3%, or if you are using a mutator, 100%. However, once only one of the parents hits 20/20, that chance for a new mutation goes down to 3.6%, and 50% with a mutator.

But I have a female with 1 or 2 mutations, that’s okay to use right? Unless you can make it a male with a mutator, no. Since we know that the chances of getting a new mutation is reduced by half once the counter on one side hits 20/20. Having females that are not clean will add to that mutation counter really fast.

Let’s look at an example.

A female with 2 mutations, and a male with 2 mutations. The offspring will have 4 mutations, with an added 1 in case it mutates again. If it’s a male and you use that to breed back into the stock, you’ll then get a baby with 7 mutations, +1 if that one mutates too. So now we’re at 8. When using clean females, instead of 8, we would only be at 4, thus being able to get more mutations in before hitting that 20/20 limit.

Can you go over the 20/20 limit? As mentioned before, the counter can be broken, so yes. That count can show 44/20, or higher depending on how many times it was mutated and bred into other mutations to merge mutations. Once you hit 20/20 on both sides, no new mutations can be attained. Which is why it is important to keep your breeding females clean, this way you can ‘break’ the male’s counter and keep mutating.

Cool. Only use males then. But what if I get a male with a Matrilineal mutation? Is that okay? Yes. This is fine since that mutation will transfer to the Patrilineal side after breeding. This is also fine if you get a female like this, assuming you have a mutator to switch the gender to male.

Using The Mutator

We’ve mentioned the mutator a fair bit, and if you haven’t googled it already, we’ll tell you what it is. Structures Plus, Nominal Structures and any other mod based off S+ has what is called a Mutator. It gives you a 100% chance for a mutation. But not only that.

Each mutation pulse will give you +2 stats, like normal, but you can stack the effect twice. So instead of two added stat values, you’ll get 4 when using two mutators. The mutator doesn’t come without a cost though. It costs 50 element per pulse, so with two mutators that’s 100 element per breeding.*

*The mutator cost is adjustable depending on server settings. The default cost per pulse is 10 element. This is higher on Æsir servers to maintain balance and overall server health.

The cool part? That +4 with two mutation pulses will only count as 1 mutation on the counter. Which will help keep those numbers low for as long as possible.

It’s important that you start the mutation pulse before the mating starts. Otherwise you will either get no mutations, or very few. Usually, it’s best to start the pulses, then use a Dino Storage terminal to enable mating on everything in it’s range. Dino Storage terminals can also be used to pick up babies* so long as there are soul balls in the terminal. It will also pick up and incubate fertilized eggs, however the Hatchery will incubate them faster.

It’s important that you make sure your dinos are all within breeding range of each other before you start the mutation pulses. You will have several minutes for all the dinos to breed before the buff runs out.

*Depending on server settings, the DS terminal can be used to pick up babies without the need for soul balls in the terminal. On Æsir though, soul balls are needed for this feature.

Is there a limit on mutating? Sadly, yes. The limit on stacking mutations is 255 on every stat. If you go above 255, the stat will rollover and start back at 0. It’s common practice to stop at 253, or 254 so you have a cushion to not go over 255. Also, once you reach 255 on any stat, you can’t put any tamed levels into that stat. Stopping mutations at 253 or 254 allows you to add levels.

Be warned, that on some servers, there is a level limit for creatures. Once an animal passes this limit, it will vanish on the next server restart. Make sure you know your servers level limits.

Æsir does not currently have a level limit.

Merging Maxed Stats

This is very similar to merging stats on clean dinos, but in can be a bit involved. To help illustrate, Yambu, on the Æsir discord, made a very handy infographic with their process on merging their maxed stats onto one super-dino.

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