Anyone else play like I do?

So I've noticed that I play Wolvden in a much slower way than a lot of the other people around me. Basically, I plan to act as if the wolf economy doesn't exist & avoid purchasing puppies (unless they have a common base, 3 or less markings that are not rare, and sell for very cheap, ie basically just an NBW). I also have zero plans of studding to any other males, and I am purposefully studding a lame male of mine so that I can continue the bloodline of my first two wolves over the months & slowly make the breeding male prettier and prettier over generations.

I honestly thought that this way of playing would be the default when I signed up, but then I saw GORGEOUS wolves right off the bat! I felt bad at first for having such basic wolves for some reason, until I realized that the wolves I was seeing were all for the most part customized using IRL money. This method seems like the vast majority of players.

So I want to know—is there anyone out there like me? My alpha pair's first litter from the tutorial is about to finally age into adults, and I'm going to be able to set my first potato-looking two marking breeding male with low stats :) I'm super excited lol!

Nice, that sounds super rewarding :D If you’re having a good time then don’t let FOMO get ya down; what’s popular now won’t necessarily stay big, anyway, and if you’re happy with your wolves then (it’s cheesy but still) That’s What Matters:TM:!

I can’t quiiite say I’m on the same boat, since I’ve been messing with studs just for fun, but I am pretty much just here for lore drama & to see how things unfold! My whole pack right now is non-chased/-special NBWs (besides the starter duo of course), and I have no plans to replace them until they naturally die, because I’m attached to all of them. I’m not taking fancy purchases off the table, necessarily, but it’s not a priority. When I have space again (limiting that intentionally too) it is over for my befriending impulse.

Anyway, your leads’ pups are cute! The simplicity is neat :> Making pups prettier down the generations sounds tricky without studs or inbreeding (if that’s something you’re concerned about), but I’d imagine that’ll make it all the more satisfying when you do start getting pretty pups. Have fun!

That's definitely my mindset! I'm not super interested in selling wolves in general when I can easily get 10 GC in about 2 days by selling other items like carcasses, herbs, lucky feet, etc. 10 GC is all I would really see myself needing, just in case I need to tweak one thing on an otherwise nice wolf (such as a base). The only reason I wish I had pretty wolves right now is because I'm trying to save up for the pup stages though haha, the price is pretty steep for those without selling puppies... But hey, I'm managing. :')

And that sounds like a fun way to play! I thought about studding, but I have no way to tell which wolves are customized and which aren't... I guess I just don't want to "cheat the system" by breeding to a wolf that had IRL money sunk into it, if that makes sense. Just a weird thing for me. But dear god do I share your befriending impulse, lmao!! I really need to stop doing that.

And yeah, I've been worried about inbreeding for sure. I hope desperately that males will be able to breed within the pack eventually, because as I level up, I'll be able to find rarer NBWs and chased wolves which I can use to breed together, and then breed those pups to the breeding male in order to get his alpha blood into them. Otherwise I'll have to refresh my females all the time or something, which would suck—but I can do it if I have to! Thanks for the kind words btw! :))

True on the GC! Theoretically if you can make 10GC every couple days, that’s only 20 days of sales for those shiny pup stages. Which more expensive than a 10-mark customized wolf, go figure (20GC base +2 for each marking) :P On that note, it would be cool if there was a way to see if a wolf’s been customized, yeah; with the decked-out all-slot-filled gen1s it’s pretty obvious, but ya never know if the others were made from scratch or revamped NBWs. I would guess you might be able to tell by comparing all a player’s wolves, but that’s way too much time and I can’t say I’ve looked myself 🤔

But 🤝 constantly befriending new wolves (if space allows).... The site art is just so pretty I’m still not quiiite in the “no markings = meh” stage; I see anything vaguely nice, I slam befriend. Have you had to swap out any “keeper” NBWs yet? There’ve been a couple that I was on the fence about keeping, but then someone prettier came along and first one went yeet. It was like a mini hunger games/NBW roulette before the pack settled in, LOL

And yeah, male inter-pack breeding would be great. I guess for now you just gotta hope those nicer NBWs are female or splurge on sex changes or something. I like the idea of keeping alpha blood in the new generations through a breeding male, regardless! Helps solidify a legacy, especially if one of those pups becomes lead next >:3 And np~

Yeah! It's a lot of work, but I feel like sinking in the effort will be so much more rewarding than tossing money at the site. And yeah, you can probably tell just by looking at the wolves, but it would be nice to have a little paintbrush or something in the customized wolf's desc. And it would be cool if that paintbrush would carry to the puppies, so you knew which ones were absolutely untouched by GC, too. I feel like that would actually be pretty beneficial and encouraging to players like me, since the time and work that goes into puppies bred from absolute scratch is a lot!

Thankfully I've managed to get past the zero marking fever (I do have a direction I'm now forcing myself to go in—muted, cool, or monochrome dark wolves), so my NBWs are hopefully going to be less random! As for swapping, that's 100% a current goal. Any time I get a NBW that I plan to breed (male or female, since I'm desperately hoping for the males to be able to breed too), I'll swap it with a wolf I cannot breed at all, like an orange/yellow/etc wolf. Black and brown are the colors I'm mainly looking for.

And hey I forgot about sex changes! I could totally invest in those too if the males being able to breed are never a thing. And yesss I definitely want my alpha's blood to remain as the most powerful wolf. I'm thinking I'll make the prettiest wolf the breeder, and the second prettiest the lead... And then the lead can take any wolf as his/her mate for life, and that wolf is no longer able to be bred for the rest of its life since they would be in Love (like how Rye and Magpie are rn). :3c

Ooh, a paintbrush icon or the like would be cool :O Although I’m not sure how I’d feel about it being built in to the site, as opposed to the “bragging rights only” thing we have; special icons would make it a Status Symbol and proooably invite more complaints about difficulty and “pay-to-win” rarities and what have you. Pretty pets are either a time or money investment (or both, if you earn premium currency 100% through regular gameplay), some people can’t or don’t want to do either method, and imo both are valid ways to play!

Tangent aside, having aesthetic constraints sounds like a good idea on taming befriending fever, especially if you’re picky about markings. From what I’ve seen, brown(ish) wolves are fairly common, blacks a tad less so, and I have no idea what the chased wolf pool looks like (sounds like it’ll be mainly common NBWs anyway) but those could make for lucky swaps too. And who knows, maybe there’s a market for leveled NBWs even if they’re plain/ugly? That’d be another nice source of income, if so.

Man, on male breeding—I don’t want to turn this into a suggestion topic, but considering every topic about the mechanic blows up, I’d hope there’s some sort of change down the road? maybe?? It’ll be interesting to see if it happens within the lifespan of a public access player’s first generation or so. Until then, guess you can just slap some “they’re related in lore” on it and call it a fatherhood…!

And nice, so alpha blood runs through the breeding male and actual future alphas >:3c Actually, speaking of that, how do you handle the breeding male thing in lore? I can’t seem to make it Work without getting into some weird implications about reproductive gender norms, or at least implying the lead and breeding male are, uh, like that. (Shoutout to trans Rye, though!) Like, even in a monarchy, why wouldn’t the other males be able to have pups? Are they all just coincidentally celibate?? Maybe I’m overthinking wolf sociology, but it just doesn’t seem like it’d hold up over the generations....

I was planning on playing like you when I signed up, but then I couldn't resist the pretty customized wolves, oops... I wish I could have a second account to try out the slower playstyle.

Totally valid points. I think it's just safer for me to avoid most wolves! I might eventually stud in the future and hopefully I'd be able to have some bragging rights by the time I can get a pretty stud xD

I actually got a tier II chase yesterday, but I don't really need him since he's not muted or monochrome dark (he's warm medium)! And he'd have to be sex changed to even be able to sell him... Which again, back to this problem, lmfao. I hope so badly that we can eventually breed males..... Please devs pleaaaase...

And yep! I really want everyone to be linked to Rye and Magpie since they can't breed themselves. The way I'm doing it right now is that Magpie was supposed to be the breeding male (the mate of the alpha is always meant to be the breeder in my lore), but since Rye is trans he doesn't really find it comfortable to nurse puppies, and he decided to make it a law that a mated pair give everything to each other rather than breeding a million pups. I really want to sex change him, but I can't because of the restrictions on sex changing :/ so oh well I guess. As for the other males, they don't have the same respect and power as the alpha pair, so if they want to breed they have to leave the pack to create their own! That's my plan for any potato males in the future.

Welcome to the thread Nika! No harm in playing the way you like, haha. All of my friends play the same way, so I feel like I'm the odd one out sometimes xD a second account would be awesome tbh

I'm doing this! I want to try to get good stats and better markings on my wolves by breeding what I can get, but I'm not sure how it will go. I have only been playing for like two weeks or maybe three? and I don't understand the wolf economy lol. But it seems fun to just try to get better/more markings on my own? Though I also don't know how that works, really. If two wolves with three markings each have a litter, will the pups each only have three markings at most? I dunno. I'm still learning lol

Markings are inherited by slot.

• If neither of the parents has a marking in a given slot, the pups won't either
• If one of the parents has a marking, the pups have a 50% chance of inheriting it
• if both parents have the same marking, the pups have a 75% chance of inheriting it (not 100%! so pups usually have fewer markings than the parents)
• if both parents have a marking but it's different, it seems to be around 30-35% chance of inheriting either marking, with again a chance of not getting either

So if two parents have three markings but in different slots, you could get a pup with 6 markings, but you could also get one with 0. If they have three markings in the same slots, the pups will have 3 markings at most and still have the same chance of having 0.

The Grouse House Genetics guide is great for this sort of thing! https://www.wolvden.com/chatter/topic/9