All breeds and genes are divided into different rarity tiers. When paired together, lower rarity tiers will be inherited more often, while higher rarity tiers will be inherited less often. Breeds and genes on the same tier will be inherited equally.
The Breeding Rarity Comparisons guide is your bread and butter to a functioning project. It tells you which breeds and genes are in which tiers, and the odds for each tier versus each other.
Why is this important? If you do not want to buy any gene or breed scrolls, then using this knowledge is mandatory. If you are okay with buying breed or gene scrolls, then this rule can be broken.
Let's look at an example: I want... a female Imperial. Obviously, I cannot change a dragon's breed to Imperial, so I
must hatch one. I found a male Imperial, and I have several options for his partners: A Fae, a Spiral, a Skydancer, a Nocturne, and a Wildclaw.
If I paired him with the Fae, a plentiful breed, the lowest tier, then on average, I would only get 1 Imperial among every 33 dragons:
That's pretty terrible. What about the Spiral, a common breed, the next lowest tier? It's an improvement, but still not great, with just 1 Imperial among every 10 dragons, on average:
Let's try the Skydancer, an uncommon breed, just under the Imperial in tiers. 1 in 7 (rounded) odds sounds pretty nice:
That alone wouldn't be too difficult to breed, however, breeding projects rarely only have one single factor we're trying for, so can we do better? Absolutely, here's the Nocturne, equal in tiers with the Imperial:
1 in 2, 50% chance, is excellent odds, and sometimes, may be the best you can get, if your goal is the highest tier, rare. Speaking of which, what if I paired my Imperial to the Wildclaw, a member of the rare tier?
Now that's more like it! 97%, or 32 out of 33, babies, on average, will be Imperials in this pairing. This works massively in my favour, and the boost from 50% to 97% is well worth the extra 5 days waiting on the Wildclaw's cooldown.
Calculating Odds of Breeding Pairs
Now that we've figured out how to get our best odds for the breed from the pairing by choosing the highest available tier, the Wildclaw, to pair with our Imperial, how do we combine those odds with the odds of other traits, in order to calculate the chance of a hatchling being exactly what we want? After all, I specifically want a
female Imperial.
This requires some basic math. If math is
really not your thing, there are a number of tools available to do the math for you, and they will be linked in the
Extras post.
I promise, however, that the math isn't too difficult. For my example, I have a male Imperial and a female Wildclaw, and I want a female Imperial. If I breed them together, what is the chance of getting a female Imperial?
There are two ways to visualize the odds: As percentages, and as fractions. It's up to you which one you prefer, but I will show both. First, the breed, to get an Imperial from a pairing between an Imperial and a Wildclaw:
Second, the sex, it is an even split for males and females:
To get the combined odds, we multiply these two numbers together:
If you want your fraction to be read as "1 in __", simply divide the top number and the bottom number in the fraction by the top number:
To add more traits into the equation, each fraction or percentage is multiplied, just like we did with the sex of the dragons. If the Imperial has Bar (uncommon) and the Wildclaw has Tiger (common), and we want Tiger, we would multiply the fraction by 3/4, and the percentage by 75%. If their primary colour range is Sable to Tarnish (5 colours in this range), and we want Umber, then we multiply the fraction by 1/5, and the percentage by 20%, and so on.
The Smirch Trick
Now that you know how to manipulate the odds in your favour to inherit the right genes and breed you want, by pairing them against genes of equal or higher tiers for the best odds, your options for potential pairs for your project may have just shrunk, as you eliminate lower tier genes and breeds from your searches.
Enter Smirch. Smirch is in the limited tier, so it can be paired with all tiers but rare, the only tier higher than it, to have reasonable odds to inherit other genes. It's also dirt cheap. Let's say you want a dragon with Lace (uncommon), you have a potential parent with it, but you're struggling to find good partners with tertiary genes of equal or higher rarity. Instead you've found an excellent dragon in all other aspects... but it has Underbelly (common).
Slap a Smirch on that dragon, which will bump up the rarity to limited, and laugh your way to a Lace-filled world.
This same technique can be used for other genes as well: Morph is cheap, and can be used for projects needing the uncommon tier or less for the secondary gene, and the coliseum genes for Gaolers (Phantom, Spirit, Weathered) and Banescales (Candycane, Sugarplum, Skeletal) are all in the limited tier, and very cheap as well.