New item suggestion ~ Stat Swapper!

New Grove item: "Acorn of Aptitude" 

A single-use item to switch a wolf's highest stat into a different slot.

For example my lead scout's highest stat is 111 Agility, but he can't explore Glacier since he needs 101 Wisdom. If he ate an Acorn of Aptitude, he could swap Agi and Wis to become Wise enough!

Support! This would be a very useful feature, especially for scouts and lead wolves. ❤️

my only worry for this is just how easy it would be for some players to dominate the stat game. i think if the second stat in the equation was randomised instead of picked by the player it would help mitigate that.

you pick the stat you want to switch, but where it gets switched with is not predetermined. you can use multiples of the item until you succeed perhaps

To clarify you wouldn't gain any new stat points at all. Just move the highest one into a different slot.

Example: You have Agi 111 and Wis 77. You swap them, so now you have Agi 77 and Wis 111.

I think a problem with this could be that it would eliminate stat niches. What I mean by that, is instead of seeking out different studs with talents in certain stats to breed good hunters, you could just go to a high stat stud that uses this item to rearrange his stats in any way and dominate.  Which is what I think woete meant.

edit: I’d be more in favour if you’re limited to using it only once in a wolf’s lifetime, but i still think it might make things too easy cause it takes away a strategic element to stat breeding

Agree that it would be too overpowered. As an example, finishers have all of their +2 role stat gains go into strength, so on average their strength stat is nearly twice as high as a hunter whose role stats are across two, such as chaser or stalker. If you took a finisher such as my Imaivana, whose strength is 475, and switched that str with her wisdom, she would instantly become the best stalker in the game by over 200 stat points because her smarts stat is also high. This completely eliminates the difficulty and reward of breeding and training for good stalkers / chasers etc, because you could just train up a load of strength focused wolves and then stat swap them to whatever niche fits their second best stat.

To make this idea viable, you would need the item to randomise the target stat, or possibly only reallocate some of the stat rather than all, or something along those lines. And I also agree that it would need to be heavily restricted, i.e. once in a lifetime perhaps.

Lol reviving a dead thread-

I agree it should be limited use. It would def be too OP if you could just do this whenever you wanted. And the finisher thing is a good point, maybe cap the amount that can be moved from one stat to another.

But given those limitations I don't think this would hurt stat breeding at all. In fact it would help stat breeders. Most I have talked to want some way to correct favored stats. Right now it's extremely common for a wolf to have their favored stats go haywire on levelups. You end up with what seemed like a great chaser pup who decides to be a smartass ;P and get a speed/smarts heavy wolf instead, for example. And it takes until like level 8 for this problem to reveal itself. You can then spend a ton of time in scout therapy to try to rectify it, or give up a pick a new hunter, throwing off the age range of your hunting party.

Even if there were an item that locked in the favored stats so they don't become so wonky, that would help a lot. Some way to correct currently useless stat distributions is needed, whether via an item or another game mechanic.

Either that, or some way to utilize those currently pointless distributions, like a new pack role, so the wonky hunter you've invested so much breeding planning and training in can at least go do something else. Edit: actually gonna go make a different suggestion thread for this bit bc it's come up a few times now

A possible solution would be limiting its use to once per wolf, and only before, for example, level 10. So you can redirect wonky training efforts but can’t game the end result.

I’ve been trying to fix some mel carriers to be proper chasers, and they’re around level 12 now and still don’t have both speed/agility as their best two stats. It’s really difficult to correct, but letting you swap one stat, once, before level 10 would make it achievable within a generation, but still with a bit of effort.