The Balanced Pup Project

The Balanced Pup Project

Hi all! My name is Embers and this is my current breeding project / investigation

Pup stat inheritance is the cornerstone of a stat player's experience. For a long time we've trained up our wolves their whole lives and then bred them at the last moment, all to get the strongest pups we can for the next generation of breeding. Lines are trained specifically for hunting roles, and wolves become juggernauts in speed/agility, wisdom/smarts, and finishing depending on their role.

However while the individual stats have slowly increased, the total number of stats gas been even slower. Recently we're started seeing the first pups being born over the 1k stat threshold, but it's taken nearly 3 years to get there. When they were born, they made us realize something - unusually, the individual stats mattered more than the total when breeding for high total pups. Wolves who's parents specialized in different stats had pups with higher stat totals, even if the stats for their specific roles were lower.

With this project I am going to explore the possibility of intentionally breeding for balanced stat pups. I will be trying two different methods over 3 generations and recording the steps & outcome here. This project is expected to take just under a year for the 3rd generation to be born, with the end date being early August 2024.

The Three Methods

I will be testing two different methods for breeding balanced pups. The first method is to balance the parents stats by swapping them between different roles over time, and the second method is to specialize the parents and breed them to wolves specialized in other roles. I will be running both methods at the same time to compare.

When it comes to breeding, all of the wolves will be bred to wolves of the same generation and similar stat total to the wolf trying to breed.

Method 1 - Balanced Parents

Overview

With this method I will be training 4 wolves with the goal of having each of their stats be roughly equal at the time of breeding. To do this I will be swapping them between different hunting roles so their daily bonus stats even out their stats.

Mechanics

I will be calling the time spent in each role as a "term". For each term spent doing Finishing, the wolf must do two terms in Stalking and Chasing. This is because they will only gain strength while being a finisher, so they need twice as many days to gain stats for agility/speed or wisdom/smarts while chasing and stalking respectively. Because of this wolves will need to spend 5 terms to be balanced - this works out to roughly 29 ROs per term across 1-7 years.

The 4 wolves will need to be spread out across two different hunting teams so they all get a chance at Stalking. There is a slight bottleneck there since all wolves will need 2 terms, but only one wolf can be a stalker at a time.

I will be trying to keep the level up stats equal by manually setting them. I have made a note of what I need to set each level to make sure they are equal, and this will be tracked in their Bios.

Generations

When the first round of pups are born I will keep one from each pair. They will be trained the same way and paired together at the end of their lives to make the G3 pups.

Method 2 - Specialized but Opposing Parents

Overview

This method will see 2 wolves trained as normal, specializing in one role, but when they breed they will be bred to outside studs focusing on a different role.

Mechanics

This is effectively the same as the normal method of training up until the wolves are bred. There is the additional variable here where they could focus on one or two stats, and because of this I will be testing this with one Finisher and one Chaser (Finisher to test 1 stat, Chaser because the Stalker role will be mostly taken up by method 1). These wolves will be in these roles until it is time to breed.

Generations

When the method 2 wolves are ready to breed, they will both be bred to two Stalkers. If the stats between the litters are quite different I will keep two pups from each litter to test the next step with.

The next step will be to train one pup in the 3rd role (ex, the Finisher x Stalker pup would train as a chaser), and the other would continue with method 1. This is something I'll likely have to decide closer to the time as there are too many different ways it could go at the start of the 2nd generation.

Normal Method - Entirely Specialized

This method is the common training method of training in one role and breeding to another wolf trained in that role. This will be a "control" wolf to see how these new methods compare to the normal method. This way if there are any changes to pup inheritance in the next year I can still use them to compare. This wolf will be a chaser and will be bred to chaser studs.

Balanced Level Up

Wolves gain a total of 418 stats by level up. The method 1 wolves will need to have their level up points split evenly between all 5 stats. This is a list showing what points I will need to put into each stat to (almost) evenly distribute them:

16/09/23 - Starting the Project

Today is the day! I've officially set up this thread and I'll soon be buying some wolves to hunt with. I've done a fair amount of work today getting everything prepped. I've planned out the teams, how often I'll need to swap about their roles, and I've got my code in order so it's easy to make pretty new posts here!

Part of the reason I'm doing this project is because I'm starting to get bored with Wolvden and I want to give myself something fun to do. The last time I did that was when I set myself my 3-generation hunter project. I only started that right around the time the multi-hunting update happened, and now nearly a year and a half later all the wolves are 7y 2m. Since I'm due to have some open slots in my hunting teams I wanted to start another project that might actually be useful for some players (but is really just a fun project for me hehe)

So I've still got some things to do:

1. Get the wolves
The wolves all need to be yearling NBWs with roughly the same stats. Ideally chaseds would be best for this, but if I'm struggling to find enough within the same stat range I may just go with NBWs. I need 4 wolves for method 1, 2 for method 2, and 1 for the control for a total of 7 wolves.

2. Post the hunting team plan
I've worked out the first generation's team plan. I'll need to wait until the second generation is born before I plan the next generations team, but for now having some sort of table on here to use would be really helpful. I can even add the suggested dates for the terms!

3. Maybe move to the Taiga?
I have a lot of lore about living in the Glacier, but with the end of my 3-generation project it's kind of reached an end point. I can continue the lore, but I think to make it easier to feed my pack when I'm using subpar stalkers I'll need to move further south. I lived in the Taiga a couple years ago and I know wolves can make it to lv 20 easily there while still getting a lot of food. If I want to keep my lore, I can just say the move is non-cannon and they're still at the Glacier 😛

Anyway I'm excited to start this project! Hopefully I can stick to it haha

Hunting Team Plan (Generation 1)

With 7 wolves in this project, I needed to plan out the hunting teams a little more carefully than normal. I have figured out where they need to be and when they need to change, as well as accounted for my current 3 chasers. These tables can be used as a reference when assigning teams and checking dates.

16/09/23 (2) - Wolves Bought

I've bought the wolves for the project! I've already set them up on a team and run two hunts so they gain enough proficiency to be stuck into their current roles (I'm really going to have to watch out for that in the future).

In the end the stats had to be ignored so I could get a group of 7. They're all chaseds with at least one neat mark which was my criteria (Not bothered about how the pups are but it makes it interesting). Below are the three groups!

Balanced:
Parity
Harmony
Equate
Scale

Specialized:
Prosper
Thrive

Control:
Rule

Since everything is now set up this will likely be the only post for a short while. I will update when the term ends on the 16th of October!