Hatching 102

So now you know how to hatch a pet. Easy right? So now you can take it to the next level and start building a pet with stats on it that you want.

First, you have to pick a pet. This may sound easy, but I find it's more difficult than it seems. Do you want a cute pet? How about a pet that gives you a myth blade card? Or do you really want a pet that will give you a healing card like Satyr? You have to pick one. Just one. Pick some pet that you reaaaaaaally like, because you'll be working with it for a while. For me it was a Red Gobbler pet. They are so adorable. A little fidgety ball of goodness. Tip: most crowns shop pets have a hatching timer of only 5 minutes, which means you can start training right away. Other pets have hatching timers of 18 hours or longer! Choose your pet wisely!

Second, stats: there are many different stats (you can find the biggest catalogue here at Petnome), one pet can only manifest 4 out of 10 talents.  So you have to decide which 4 talents you would like in the perfect world, best case scenario. That is what you will shoot for. Let me give you a couple of examples:

This is my friend Jeremy's pet. It's what's commonly called a "SPUD" pet. It has general resistance (this version has 15%) and two healing moves that will randomly heal you in a fight. I call this pet of win. 

Here's another example. This pet belongs to some dude I kept seeing in the hatchery a while back. This is a completely different kind of pet than a SPUD pet. It's much more specific, because to be able to get the full benefit you'd have to be a storm wizard, and it has no healing or other "may cast" abilities. I call this pet of owwwwwww.

If you're now drowning in all the possible awesome pet combinations, and have no idea what to pick, fear not. I recommend taking a look at what other people like in their pets. If you're an ice wizard, and you want a really wicked ice pet, take a look at what other high level wizards have on their pets. Good pet viewing places are the Arena lobby, and the Hatchery. I recommend looking at epic pets, because generally they have the stats the person was looking for. Take a picture if you have trouble remembering like me. 

If you still have no idea what you want, or now you have too many ideas, go for a SPUD pet. They are a good middle ground pet. 

Decided on something? Good. Now we can get into the mechanics of how to get that. My friend used the metaphor of "mixing paint" when he explained it to me, and I think that captures the process pretty well.

Okay here is a simplified example:

You love your Stray Piggle (I said it was an example!). You really want to have spritely on your Piggle. Your friend's Mander pet has spritely. I know what you're thinking. Mander pets are lame huh? Well what if the mander looked like THIS! 

Ahem. So you hatch these two pets together.

What pet you get from this hatch will matter.

If you get a mander, you'll be getting a mander with slightly more "meh" talents.

Like this:

 Or this:

 And we're building a super pet! We're not going to settle for "meh"! Besides, you like piggles. You want a piggle. 

So if you get a Mander you're going to toss it, and rehatch as many times as it takes to get a piggle.

Okay now you've got a piggle that has more mander-like talents. This is what you want. So you'll raise this piggle up to adult. Chances are this piggle is not going to get spritely. The odds are too low. This 2nd generation piggle still has too many "meh" talents and not enough awesome mander talents. (If you're pet does get spritely on the first go around, be happy in the thought that you are blessed with more luck than a leprechaun sitting on a horseshoe, holding a rabbit's foot that is clutching a four-leaf clover.)

Okay, so if you're normal like the rest of us, and you didn't get spritely on your first try, take your failed piggle and hatch again with your friend's mander. This keeps introducing the mander's awesome talents into your piggle, thereby increasing the chances that you'll actually manifest spritely. Simply, every piggle you get, you hatch to back to the original mander. This concentrates things; if you threw in a random Firecat you don't know what talents are being pushed aside to make room for the firecat's talents, the spritely that you're trying to get might be lost!

Essentially that is hatching. You repeat the process until you get spritely to appear and then dance around in little circles for joy.  

To be continued...

Hatching 101

Today is a red letter day. I finally got a working SPUD (Spritely, spell Proof, may cast Unicorn, spell Defying) pet.
So today it seems appropriate to explain a how hatching works, and how to make it work for you.
But before you can go running off looking to create a super pet, you've got to know how to hatch. This may seem like a "duh" thing to say, but hey! if you don't know, you just don't know!
So, hatching. Before you can hatch a pet with anyone, you need to have an adult pet. You can get your pet to adult by playing minigames in the pet pavilion.

Once you get your pet to adult, you can go over to the pet hatchery, and hatch a pet! You'll need to find another adult pet to hatch with, this can be one of your own pets, or it could be a friend's.
To hatch you can just step on a sigil, to enter the hatching screen.

This is the hatching selection screen

 You can hatch with any two pets, adult or older. The hatcher will automatically pick the pet you have equipped first, and you can cycle through the other adult pets you have in your backpack using the arrows above your pet. When you decide which pets you want to hatch, just click the hatch button and you'll create and egg!

If you don't have enough gold to hatch a pet the hatcher will tell you. It will also tell you how much you will need for any particular combination of pets (circled in red). Prices vary, and depend on the pets' pedigree (circled in blue). The higher the number, the more it costs.

Once you have enough gold and make your selection, you will get an egg. All eggs have a countdown timer. After the timer expires, the egg will hatch into a pet which you can equip and use. 

Now you have a new pet ready to equip and follow you in all your adventures and you're on the way to building your own custom super pet. 

To be continued...

Hey, Where's Heather?

I can imagine walking down the streets of the spiral and bumping into one of my old friends. They say to me "Heather! Where have you been all this time?" And would say "well..." and probably break into some Phineas and Ferb style musical backstory review.
Well I decided not to try my hand at writing, directing, and animating a clip for you so I'll just tell you. I've been right here. Under the surface. It's like I've been in the conductive zone of the sun, just wandering around bouncing from one thing to another while slowly building up enough energy to write.
And I have decided it's good to write. Not just in 140 characters on twitter, or in long private conversations with friends, but on ye olde blog.
So, back to the story. Well mostly I have been leveling, I mentioned Heather got to level 80 right? Well she did that. And then I got her through the rest of Avalon. Then my friends helped me get One-In-A-Million, which I missed because my internet went down the instant I cast the spell. Apparently I made it because I have the badge. Yup.

Ooh she looks so tough.

Then I took my storm wizard, Kestrel, all the way through Avalon. So she's level 80 and all powerful.

Kestrel's new giant paper weight.

Then I kind of kicked around, without any particular motivation. All of my wizards were stuck in annoying areas (take my death, Lenora, for example. She gets to pick between Grizzlehiem and Celestia. Bleh!). So I turned to Star Trek Online (STO). I like STO but I kind of have no idea how anything works, so I push all of the buttons I can and hope I get shiny stuff. That's about it.

Me bossing around my Science officer Zog.

Me looking like I actually have control of this ship.

Hopefully I'm back into the swing of things. Hopefully my new strange beast will get spritely at epic and be Heather's first SPUD pet. Hopefully I won't blow up my starship. Again.

Hopefully,

~Heather

Creativity

Player versus Player. Ah those three little words that happen to cause so much grief and controversy. I used to be one of those "Why the heckhound would I ever do PvP" kind of people. But I have gotten more and more involved as most of you know. I play on a PvP team and I also am a Commander in 1v1 (although I must admit to being mostly motivated by the shiny robe). And when I'm playing with my friends or I'm playing against someone who is really good at the game and keeps me on my toes in an engaging battle, I really have a good time.

And then there is the other 80% of the time. It's full of name calling, and taunting, and uncreative strategies like blade stacking or spamming. It gets so frustrating that I find myself yelling insults at the screen that I wouldn't use if that person was playing me at chess or some other strategy based game. I also felt really so down after being beaten by blade stackers a few times in a row that I considered going out and grabbing a bunch of treasure card blades or only playing on my Myth wizard with a TON of earthquakes. But then I thought to myself, "No". Because that's not how I want to play the game. What I enjoy isn't just winning, it's playing a good match.

I also enjoy good sportsmanship. Which unfortunately is why I tend to keep my mouth closed most of the time. I also don't say "GG" every game, because often it isn't true. If you're calling me a noob or you're spamming me or blade stacking, or just being really obnoxious it wasn't a good game. I understand that saying "good game" is a polite gesture, but a polite gesture becomes an empty gesture when it has no meaning.

I encourage everyone to try PvP and to try new strategies. Find some friends to do it with you. Go to someone's house. Get a theme (but holidays are already taken, so sorry ^_~). Play with a odd assortment of schools. Say "this couldn't possibly work!" then go ahead and try anyways. Go for the original, not just the sure fire, because then you'll appreciate the true satisfaction of playing and winning. 

Good luck, and may the force be with you.

~Heather

Street Style: Week 9 -- "We're with the Band"