Suggestion: Item to "spay" Wolves

@Zeneka - You can't sex change a wolf that's been bred in the past, so that's not an option. Most of my females have had at least 1 litter. So I'm stuck dealing with their heat cycles.

And most of my pack is female out of circumstance, not lore. I just wound up with mostly females, and now am slowly trying to phase girls out so the gender ratio can be more even. So it would be nice to be able to get rid of heat cycles for females I put time into and want to keep, but no longer want to breed.

Mm. M'kay, not something I would personally ever use, but I was intrigued as to why anyone would want this when I saw the thread title. I can see the value in it for other players and I would like to make a suggestion on the suggestion, if you will: I don't think this needs to be an item - a 'toggle heat' option in a female's settings should be enough. If you toggle it off, you don't see the heat symbol and she doesn't pop up as available to breed.

It would essentially just hide her from any breeding options without costing you a dime and be easily reversible - again, without spending anything. I don't think you should have to pay for something like this - no real benefit to you other than preventing an accident, similar to the private and public trade option now requiring you to pick one before posting to avoid accidentally setting a private trade public, which is also free - so a toggle seems more reasonable than an item. It also wouldn't require new art nor the other things that come with adding a new item, just some coding, which I'm sure the staff would appreciate.

I like this option a ton, Volinolona!

Personally, I would much much prefer this as a toggle if I wanna breed the female then sure if I don't but wanna keep her then I can just toggle it Volino made a really good suggestion 

Agreed, AngryFrog, the suggestion  Volinolona made is awesome!!!

STRONGLY support the toggle switch! i have 30+ wolves, most female. ive accidentally studded to someone twice and bred a wolf to my own stud. 

I am confused as to what the problem is with the heat? Just don't breed them. It doesn't affect energy or health or anything like that, they just have a fire symbol. If you don't want to breed them, then just... don't. If you're worried about accidentally breeding them, then name them so as not to breed them. You see their name and their picture when you go to breed so I really don't see how accidentally breeding happens unless maybe you're on phone?

@cornix

They can still be bred on accident, since they still show down in the dropdown options.

Which is the problem that people would like to prevent.

Simply renaming them is not enough as there is still the risk of someone doing a mistap on their phone or a misclick and realizing it too late.

Some way to remove the possibility of the mistake entirely is a fair request.

There is also the problem that if you accidentally breed a female, whether to a wrong stud or when you weren't planning on breeding her at all, you then have some consequences to deal with.

If you retract the request, you get your currency and all is well - unless the player decides to block you for cancelling a stud request. :/ (I haven't seen it here yet, but I do know this happens a lot on other sites, so it's not far fetched to think it happens here - or will eventually.)

If you don't retract the request, you lost your currency and now have to decide whether or not you nest the female. If you don't nest her, she can lose the pups and you'll be out ten amusement usages. If you do nest her, that costs you the nesting material and her ability to do anything while nested if you panic and nest early - waiting could mean risking not being able to nest her and her still losing the pups. Either way, you also have four days where she eats three uses of food instead of two.

All those consequences for a miss-click that could be entirely avoided if you could just turn the heat/breeding mechanic off for that particular female.

Can you do this by lowering a wolf's fertility with juniper berries? If not then I would like to see something like that added. Maybe an item that doesn't change fertility, but prevents the wolf from going into heat until another item (maybe an easily crafted medicine?) is given.

I think permanent spaying is a bad idea. Based on what I've seen in other games it can cause a lot of chaos and drama. Some some headache-inducing scenarios based on things I've seen:

• Player keeps control over the market by spaying wolves with high breeding value before selling them.
• Player spays a wolf that they were borrowing/housing for whatever reason.
• Someone buys a wolf without realizing that it can never be bred due to misleading, but not outright false, advertising.

So, support as long as it's reversible and can't be exploited by trolls.