You guys like incest, right?
We purchase a taming runestone, strength scroll, and two crossbreed potions. We then get to work braiding this family tree and hopefully reintroducing fire skin to the lineage.
August of the Third Year
Another Herb's Market, but this time we have enough to purchase something.
The slave caravan should be around the corner, so we don't want to spend
too much, but an incremental upgrade is entirely reasonable.
September of the Third Year
Our little nobles have been born!
We will unfortunately not be able to see their detailed stats until maturity, but we can see stat gains other than abomination illness.
As you might have noticed, there are sliders which can affect the strength of a treatment. Naturally, the only real reason to do so is reduced abomination illness. We'll try going full force on the strength scroll, but leave the taming rune on the lowest setting (likely with a final burst at the end for those extra few points). Taming above 100% doesn't do anything as far as I'm aware, so it's just increasing abomination illness at that point.
Another important note: It may not be obvious, but the payouts from fights have been steadily increasing as we gain reputation. Another benefit to fighting in the arenas!
November of the Third Year
We may have been going a little too hard with the magic treatments.
On the other hand, minor illness is only a minor problem, surely?
Abomination illness is visible as red sores (which makes it hard to see on hellhounds). We'll need those Oracular Crystals to see it in more detail on a juvenile, but it'll also become visible once they mature fully.
Of course, by then it'll be too late to adjust anything, so hopefully this doesn't go too far.
In other news, fresh slaves have arrived.
And what a slave it is! 100 intelligence, young, and already a skilled mage! We must have him!
On that note, one very common arena fight is a "classic" combat: One of each human class, plus three monsters. When our whelps mature and with the purchase of this slave, we'll be able to partake in such fights without any hired help at all.
Glorious, isn't he? Slightly, ah... slightly squished, but that's fine! Sometimes wizards are squished!
We also purchase the one with good two-handed skill. We don't currently have a slave for that, so it'd be good to get one.
We let the other one slide. None of his stats are amazing, and we've already got two shield-slaves.
I fire our hired two-handed goon and give his sword to our slave, as well as splurging on something nice for our prized sorcerer. It's a meaningless gesture; sorcerers don't do any real damage with their staves, no matter how nice they are. But even the cheap staves are 1800, and this will mark him as one of our most valuable possessions.
January of the Fourth Year
Two of our three whelps have matured.
As you can see, the abomination illness is entirely manageable... but we probably can't afford to do that more than once or twice before they become infertile cancer balls. Ideally we'll be able to afford proper management options at the coming guild fair.
The other thing you might notice is the green eye in the upper stat row. This indicates that they are fully tame and may be taken into conditions requiring fine control, such as nonlethal arena battles.
Speaking of which!
Their wizard hangs back and casts Invoke Fear on people, which reduces action points but doesn't last very long. One shieldslave and monster gnaws on each of their frontrunners, while our archer harasses their second wave.
Their sorcerer runs out of mana after two spells and proceeds to hit his own two-hander in the back as he struggles with a panther and a warrior. Fortunate for him that he doesn't deal much damage!
This is what I meant when I said sorcerers weren't terribly effective, at least early on. They've got some definite potential, but really need to be used conveniently or nothing much happens.
Related, ranged attacks have a chance to miss their original target and aim at a different one, which makes using them potentially tricky.
The one upside for their team is that our left warrior is completely out of breath.
The one downside is that they're all beaten unconscious.
Cleanup doesn't take long.
Losing repeatedly is a perfectly valid strategy for making money, but winning is literally twice as effective. More than twice, actually, since upkeep is the same either way.
February of the Fourth Year
Our third hybrid is mature. As you can see, his extra month of adolescence gave him about an extra 4% abomination illness.
Comparing their stats reveals a few interesting details.
One, some stats are incredibly standardized; tameness (eye, which is their starting value of tame) wobbles by 2 points and that's it, while endurance (blue flex with a gear in the chest) is a straight 54 across the board. Others fluctuate wildly, such as the 4-16% crit chance of the parents yielding 6-14% crit chance among their offspring. Part of breeding stronger monsters involves selecting for important stats.
The other thing to note is their strength- it varies a fair bit, but is universally higher than their progenitors. This is to be expected, as we were running a max-strength scroll for just that purpose over 4-5 months. But with that level of improvement
per generation, you can see how monsters can become very powerful indeed.
Of course, that brings us to one final point of interest: Resilience. The green plus icon just below the skull-and-bones of abomination illness, resilience indicates how well a monster withstands treatment- or in other words, how little abomination illness it gains. As mentioned before, carnivoras have very low resilience, while insectoids have very high. This means our growth will be limited by how well we can reduce or endure abomination illness, or how well we can find and breed in a higher resilience value.
Oh, it's also the Arms's Fair this month, but unless we want to pimp our our warriors we have little use for it.
The Guild's Fair will be soon, however, so we'll need to decide what our strategy is going to be moving forward. Specifically, which traits or stats we want to try to magically enhance, breed into, or select for within our current stock.
Related, buying a fire runestone to increase the inheritance of fire-related abilities is an option, but remember that we can only run one runestone (taming, purity, or other) at a time. Until we upgrade the hatchling's cabin twice, that is.
Similarly, mutation potions exist, if you want to try to add unexpected abilities while keeping the bloodline pure.
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Topic: Let's Breed Monsters! [November of the Fifth Year to January of the Sixth Year] (Read 15400 times)