there's been a couple of threads about this lately, are y'all looking for @
xianvar's (ping because i imagine they'd want to see this thread)
breeding helper?
remember that this sheet is only looking at numbers, and it doesn't actually understand what you want.
it's still very useful, but absolutely
do not blindly breed together whatever pairs it suggests.
remember that the pair finder will ONLY suggest pairs according to their chance of producing either your goal (if yes) or a near-miss (if no). also consider that sometimes the odds of producing a near-miss are higher than the odds of producing a goal, so a no pair might be ranked higher than a yes pair.
always look at the colours! sometimes the sheet will tell you to pair two antique dragons together because they have great odds! they have literally the same primary! of course that's great odds! it's still useless if you want white.
if you're at all familiar with google sheets, the instructions tab should contain everything you need, especially now it's a lot more predictable and most of the oddities have been beaten out of it. that said, i don't think there's any harm in my explaining how i use this (because blindly following this sheet's recommendations can result in a lot of wasted time):
enter all my dragons in as gen0. i actually use a helper sheet to format dragon info properly and then paste it all in at once, because xia's sheet tries to process what i type as i'm typing and that slows things down.
leave the sheet unattended for a while as it calculates potential matches.
go to "pair finder" (near the end of the list of tabs) and assess what it considers to be the best pairs.
case study of my current breeding project, which is also looking for two genes as well as colours. this requires more careful use of the sheet:
if i haven't already checked whether my dragons are related, i put every pair the sheet suggests into "assay bloodlines". if they're related, there's a column in the sheet for marking relatives so it doesn't try to pair them up. this is important: put the female's name in the male's "relatives" column. it does not work the other way around. (you can also put the male's name in the female's column if you want to be able to tell who's related at a glance. but the sheet isn't looking there)
the top suggested pair are great for getting the colours i want! they have...one goal gene on the male and the other on the female. not awful.
i go to "pairs0". this tab can give me more specific information about a pair. i put the names of the best-colours pair in the top-most pair calculator. all i do is start typing their names into the name box, the sheet does the rest. it even autofills their names for me.
i'm after a white / [avocado-radioactive] / [heather-nightshade] dragon with shimmer and glimmer. this gives me some room in the secondary and tertiary colours, which is nice, because those are the ones i need to get genes on.
i input the details of my desired outcome: shimmer and glimmer, 1 primary colour, (i count how many of the possible secondary outcomes are acceptable to me) 7 secondary colours, (i count how many of the possible tertiary outcomes are acceptable to me), 1 tertiary colour.
the pair has.....laughably low odds.
lol. lmao, even.
(there's hidden info visible here because i was troubleshooting some odd behaviour. forgot to re-hide it. ignore that)
i mark the pair as related so the pair finder doesn't try that nonsense again, and look at the next-best pair. same male, different female...ah, now the female has shimmer and glimmer, so this might be better. yeah, yeah, it thinks they have bad odds for colours. but look:
trust me, once your egg odds don't start with 0. anymore you're doing well.
even though they have a slightly narrower range of acceptable sec colours (6 instead of 7), they have better odds overall of producing any acceptable offspring.
i didn't even go with this pair. i cntrl+f'd the female's name and compared egg odds against every male she was suggested with until i found a mate for her that has a 4.32% chance of producing an acceptable offspring.
tedious, but worth it considering i'm breeding for two gem genes.
this is how i paired up all my dragons. i mark pairs i consider bad as related so the sheet won't waste time telling me to breed them, compare possible mates to a decent dragon, until i feel like i can't really gain anything (in terms of hatchling%) by going on any more.
if i'm just breeding for colours it's a lot simpler, but i still check it's not pairing two dragons whose best outcome is a clone of the parents.
