What Do You Do With Studs?

I'm not asking how you go about using a stud, I want to know what people's playstyles are regarding studs. Some questions I'm curious about: do you have a stud? If so, why? Is it for money, to spread lineage, etc? Do you keep up with current trends or go more casual? If you don't have a stud, why not?

Also, what's your opinion on other people's studs, generally speaking? Do you send stud requests? How often/little?

And lastly: does your pack primarily consist of females that you send stud requests for? How often do you pair bond your wolves?

This is interesting data!

Let's see - when I started, tier IIs were still fairly exciting, and I was going for a specific base. Therefore I made my lead a TII, and my stud a TII, and between them, made them the same color family to give me the most chance out of the bases I wanted. Of course I made him my stud so that it would be a way to gain GC too. I definitely don't keep up with current trends - if anything, he's not super popular because I gave him bold blacks/yellows/unnatural colors - but I personally like that sort of thing.

Other studs: I think there's a huge rush to have "the newest best thing" and so I find studding out that newest best thing for a LOT of money is kinda crazy! But, I understand why it is. The newest trends blow the market in crazy ways, and eventually it simmers down when people move on to new things. I think this will change as the game goes on. 

I send stud requests occasionally, mostly because I'm after specific bases and if my stud can't provide that then I have to look elsewhere. Every player is different and has different goals in mind, however. 

Pair bonds: I set the number of pair bonds that I have equal to the number of pair bonds I can mate per month. I have 42ish wolf slots so I have 5 pair bonds. I always use males that are from my lineage that I love with an NBW female to keep the lines low. 

Am interested to see other people's play styles!

I personally don't have a stud because I'm very indecisive about what my stud should look like -- so many good choices! I'm also trying to weigh the pros and cons that some features have, and whether certain features are worth the effort.

I used to not pay for studs at all, up until about a week or two ago when I started running out of working space (as in, number of space where wolves can get adequate xp gain, which doesn't include Herbalist & Pupsitters). Now, I use stud requests so my pretty wolves I can't find pair bond mates for can still get a chance to carry on their lineage.

I mainly use the pair bonding system. Nearly all of my wolves (not including those in the Retirees den) are in pair bonds. Because of this, I have a good mix of male and female wolves (which is why I'll never buy those all male/female items). I don't actually bond them until the date that I plan for them to breed, so a lot of them are currently listed as without mates. Because 

Yeah! If I know I’m gonna have room for pair bonds I scout a week or two ahead so they will have been in my pack long enough to bond once the female is in heat. It doesn’t always work perfectly but I try my best.

With the pair bond system in place the males have more use now - so I tend to sell my gender pup specific items rather than use them as well. I have been known to sex change wolves I get though, in favor of certain match ups for pair bonds! 

I do try to breed for high stats and/or T3 bases and breed-only markings, with some specific personal projects thrown in.  I don't think those are trends so much as just sort of the obvious things to go for. I don't know if there are any specific trends about what kinds of looks are popular etc...

I use outside studs a lot, to match my female's base group to get the highest chances of good base pups.  And if my female has high stats I'm likely to shell out for one of the really high stat studs.

When I first started playing, it took me over a month to settle on a stud, because I knew it was expensive to replace one and none of my starter wolves were much good.  Then I did settle on one and customized him, and for a while he made me pretty good money, so it was a good investment!  Plus it's just fun to customize a pretty wolf and see other people appreciate him.  I did just replace my first stud this week, since I wanted a T3 one.

In either case, I'm mostly doing it for the fun and money - I do sometimes breed with my own studs but only if the female's base genetics match, so not that often.

My pack is mostly females - some of the wolves that are pretty but not valuable breeders stay male, but all high-stat future scouts and hunters get SCd to female and mostly bred to outside studs. I have a couple of pair bonds that I thought might make nice pups, but I've been ignoring them since T3s came out in favor of breeding with T3 studs.

I set my own stud broadly for personal use, although it's always very flattering if someone else decides to use him. I use my current one less at the moment because I'm now moving away from cool bases. Once he ages out I've got one in the wings to take over who is more in the colour range I'm now breeding.

I've been using outside studs recently to a) try and get a T3 of some description in my pack, and b) for very specific role stats. While mostly trying to avoid the really popular lines, which can make it a little more awkward.

Gender wise I do keep a lot of males in the pack, simply because I'd drown in puppies otherwise.

Regardless I breed what I breed for the simple reason it makes me happy. It's not like I make much money from wolves (either by studding or selling them) so litters of puppies are really only for my own pleasure. Good hunters is part of that because I want to be able to live in the Tundra for aesthetic reasons and I need to be able to survive there first.

I did not have a stud for a long while.  Like Kitty (#34644), I found myself indecisive and did not want to breed a lot before I knew what I wanted or move so quickly I ran out of space/resources (food, mood).  Luckily, the pair bonding update released and I didn't have to worry about that (pack was split up 50/50 sex-wise prior to pair bond update).  I continued not to have a stud and to use the pair bond feature (see: Mud Burst and Shadow Claw!).

I had no problem wanting to use other people's studs!  I tend to avoid lines where I can see the wolves were not leveled up prior to breeding as a personal preference, since I found I wanted high stats: the sense of steady growth over time in wolf abilities, slight as it may be.  However, I do not mind buying pups from non-leveled parents (Rai: 261, even Soot: 300, my first couple wolf purchases).

I do not breed according to current trends, more to my own tastes.  I like monochrome and cool base genetics so I lean toward those when searching for (and eventually setting!) a stud.  I still keep track of albino lineages and T3 or whatever else going on because it's still interesting to watch trends develop.  I select studs when I know my female's last heat is approaching or when I am notified a stud I am interested in is retiring soon (thank you to those who choose to notify people!).

Once I set Bog as my stud, I figured y'know why not make him public in the crazy off chance someone else is interested in him.  He did not have a mate within the pack and I faced some difficulty finding a female meeting my standards even for the reverse studding... so Breeding Male immunity 8 year life let's goooo!!  Whoops, wrote a bit.  Sorry about that. o.o

Oh and I pair bond as often as experience-related roles as possible, like Kitty again. xD If I can avoid having to use a stud without resorting to full wolf customization (for challenge), then I will.  Otherwise, the great stud searches begin!

Let's see...

Yes, I have a stud (it's my second stud since the beginning of the game) and I have one because I think breeding is an important part of WD and I love to have pups whose linage is from my own pack and also because getting requests and see the pups my boy has with other females is interesting. And, of course, it's a way to earn some currency.

I don't keep up with trends as in I don't immediately use the newest applicators on my stud or change him with a better/rarer one. I let my first breeding male die of old age and I will try to do the same with my second (I have the currency to retire him, but it feel like a waste). What I think is important for me in my own stud is his look and his markings. He must look good to me and he must have markings I like to see on my pups, since I use him quite a lot for my girls. I don't put markings/colors on my stud that I don't like, no matter how popular they are.

As for other studs, I like most of them and I stud a lot (always paying in SC since I hoard GC for when they will be more expensive to get). I breed my girls to my stud once, then the next heat to an external stud, then back to mine and so on. That way I have a good balance of lineages and always different looking pups. The only exceptions are paired girls, that I bred once with their bond and once with an external stud (never with my own stud).

As for my pack, I have males in hunting/scouting/herbalist roles and all the others are females. I keep usually 8-10 males and 20ish females. For pair bond, I let a random generator decide if each male can have a mate or not. I set the generator so that pairs are a bit rare (since we have limits on pairs breeding). If at 1yo fate decide they can have a mate, I look for a suitable female between my pups/adols or buy one on TC. Sometimes I decide to create a pair if it fits with my lore.

Yep, I've got a stud - there wasn't any pair bond option when I set him as stud so my main reason was breeding/linage. I choose to set my lead wolf as my breeding male as an instinct from lioden, where your main lion is automatically your stud. I ended up customizing him which was a combination of "keeping up with trends" and personal motives - at the time tier 2 was as good as it got, so he was popular enough to make a solid side income, but for markings I just wanted to like him. In the future I probably won't put much into trends, since I mostly just want a stud that I'll be happy with personally, and so far I haven't really found any trend that I especially LOVE.

For other people, I just find it interesting to see which wolf they chose. Some people clearly put a lot of effort into getting a cool "trendy" wolf for their stud, and other people seem to have more of a personal approach. Personally I enjoy my process of looking for studs, and I tend to use them more often than not, for the sake of diversity. (both in terms of bloodlines and aesthetics) I look for studs that are NIB/no big names, with "decent" stats, but mostly just good looks. 

My pack is mostly females, but lately I've been trying to keep a few decent males around for the possibility of pair bonds. So far the only bond I have made in my pack is between my two starter wolves. Other than that I haven't really considered it because my only males were kept for lore over aesthetic, and I mainly breed for looks. TBH I'm still working on incorporating the possibility of pair bonds into my play-style, so it might be a while before I start fully utilizing the feature. 

When I started I chased most of my males since pair bonds weren't a thing then, and I thought males were fairly useless. I bred to whatever had the highest stats overall because I wasn't really understanding the importance of individual stats, and I didn't care how many generations it was. I did get my first scout on the leaderboard, and bred her to another on the leaderboard.  I did have a breeding male, but it wasn't until he was almost 7 I started realizing at the time he was the highest gen 1 chaser (speed/agility) available out there to stud so I started changing my game a bit. 

Now that pair bonds are a thing I am training up a gen 1 male in every hunting discipline so I have a good clean low gen one to breed my girls to later. Because I chased all my males I find that it's hard to find the high stat males in hunting disciplines to breed with that are gen 1 or 2 and not widely used. For instance my finishers are 424 and 443 strength and are gen 2, but highest male I could find right now is 407. That's the same with all my old girls. So I am now making sure I have at least 1 that will have high stats to breed to later on in each. I also am trying to only keep the ones that born when my girls are at their last heat and level 20. I wasn't doing that before. And now I only breed for specific stats-not overall. 

I also have some just for looks that I keep too -my current breeding male is an NBW that I put Selene base on. I do breed to outside males, but only if gen 1 or 2 at most right now. 

So I'm changing a bit, but my goal is to keep increasing the high stats in individual skills for hunting and keep them low gen. I'll use any outside stud that also meets that criteria, and have bought a couple as outside lines to breed later.