Saturday, May 29, 2010

Advanced Pets Tips: "What Do Those Number(s) Mean?"


To my surprise, it turns out that the answer behind the numbers above our pets is still a mystery to many people, but to be fair, not everyone has spent a lot of time on the Test Realm or with the little critters.  Heck, I remember the rupturing flood that exploded in my mind, gushing out questions upon questions about the purpose and symbolism behind the digits, so I imagine the confusion might have flung some Wizards into the fog when it hit Live Realm.  Let's lift the lid off this wonder, shall we?  I'm going to open up my Pet Page here; please ignore the Paint Shop markings for now:


Today, Bubba will be helping out in Advanced Pets Tips.  As you can see, he has a Pedigree Number of 54 (11).  How did KingsIsle get those numbers??

I want to introduce something I call "Rarity Points" (RP).  These are the tiny circles next to each Talent's or Derby Skill's picture icon.  For example, [TIRELESS] has 3 RP.  The unlocked [ULTRA-RARE] Talent above that also has 3 RP.  These Rarity Points tell us how rare a skill is, with 1 being Uncommon, and 4 being Epic.  Therefore, we can say [HURRY] and [MUTE] are Rare, and [SPELL-PROOF] is Epic, just by looking at the tiny circles.

So...where does "54" come from?  And what is (11)?  The left number (in this case, 54) represents the total Rarity Points your pet has between locked and unlocked skills.  In other words, if you count up the number of tiny circles on all Talents and Derby Skills, whether they're maroon or yellow, you will come to that number.

The "11" represents the total Rarity Points on Talents and Derby Skills that have been manifested, or "unlocked."  Notice that the orange boxes surround Bubba's manifested skills.  Add those RPs up, and you will get 11.

How does this knowledge and the overall Pedigree # help players??  Unfortunately, at this time, I cannot say for sure what the point behind showing us both numbers is, other than raw "surface" comparison about which pets have higher rarity averages.  If we see a pet sporting "80 (32)," we can confidently say that that critter is at Epic level and has only Epic Talents and Derby Skills, for all unlocked or locked abilities; in contrast, a "20 (8)" pet will be one that is also Epic, but has all Uncommon traits for both columns.

Other than that, the mathematics I've looked at, so far, behind our hybrids or offspring all point towards what Miguel Wildthorn has found:  the traits that pass on to the young have random correlation.  By that, I mean that having more Epic skills on one pet does not mean the next generation will have more Epic skills; the only sure thing is that the second generation has a higher chance of getting them.

I do have faith that once we map out a large enough sample of Petnomes in the Petnome Project, we can explore further into whether or not there are formulas behind inheritance of traits.  It's a long, long way to go before this happens, but with the immense and passionate community we have, and with some luck, we'll find these answers soon.  Nevertheless, I hope your stop here has helped extinguish another personal conundrum!

Thanks for your time, and Happy Hunting!

2 comments:

  1. If you mate those two pets in the example, you should end up with a Pedigree-50 pet. It should have 10 Epic traits and 10 Uncommon traits.
    The exact mix among Talents and Derby Skills will be random.

    What actually manifests in the child will also be random - with a bit of weight given to traits that had already manifested in the parents at the time of the match in the Hatchery.

    One way the pedigree # helps is in determining players with pets you might like to match with in the Hatchery. If I have an Imp that I would like to have Ultra-Rare or Epic Death Talents -to reflect both of my schools- I would look for wizards who run with a high-pedigree Death pet to see if their pet had manifested Talents I would like my hybrid Imp to manifest.

    ReplyDelete
  2. While random is the operative word here, I am not sure that manifested traits is the actual happening. I had a mix between a hydra and a hydra that has yet to develop the power pip boost even at adult.

    Here is the ugly thing that users are not realizing with this pet update. 5 traits from each parent could result in all 10 being selfish talents.

    ReplyDelete

Let that thought out here: