Wyvern Info and Crashout (Admins and CT PLEASE read)

Okay so I will start by saying that I absolutely LOVE wyverns, it's been some of the most fun I've had playing the game since 2013, but I have serious issues with the way they've been implemented and I'm not the only one
I genuinely hope that CT and Admins take the time to look through this (things may come across as emotional and blunt) and there will be a lot of information to take in and look over, so I appreciate everyone reading through it

I've been feeding and breeding wyverns on multiple ranked accounts, which is context needed to explain how I've gathered various bits of information as fast as I have

First off, why do players with either no rank or VIP rank have only TWO slots in the feeder? Genuinely, who thought that more than HALF of the content should be paywalled????? It's actually even worse because if you buy VIP, meaning you have supported the server in some manner, you STILL don't have access to more slots????? I understand the server is expensive to run, and I could not imagine myself running any server of the sort, but you may as well bring back a vip town with 500 Potential wyverns for 2le at this point. If you're going to blatantly put a MASSIVE advantage into the game behind a paywall, and the numbers below will explain how massive this is, only able to slide past the Minecraft EULA because "oh every player still has access to the full content" it's so disingenuous.

The following information is gathered after spending over 46 stacks of le buying wyverns from the merchant (7,800 wyverns)

Breakdown of Type Rarities:
Common: Azure, Ebony, Infernal, Golden
Rare: Bronze, Cerulean, Hollow
Very Rare: Fledge, Jade (~5-8%)
Ultra Rare: Mystic (~1.5%)

Breakdown of Horn Rarities:
Common: Horn, Tusk, Cinder, Kander
Rare: Ivory, Rose, Quartz
Very Rare: Onyx, Shell (~5-8%)
Ultra Rare: Sapphire (~2.5%)

BREEDING !!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!PLEASE READ CT!!:
If you have two parents, let's say you have a Fledge-Onyx and a Hollow-Quartz
You seem to have equal odds for the following traits on the offspring:
Fledge-Onyx, Fledge-Quartz, Hollow-Onyx, Hollow-Quarttz

Now, there is a chance for a random mutation on top of this (In my testing this only has had an effect on one of the two stats at a time) but I'm not certain if it just chooses a slight mutation for the mount itself, or if it chooses a mutation for each trait (meaning, I'm unsure if it's possible for both traits to be different from the parent or not)
In my testing, I've only had a couple, it's about 1 in every 20 breeds will have a mutation (low)
However, I will explain why this is the absolute WORST mechanic to have in the game, and to whoever decided that it should be implemented, why??? Did you run numbers at all??? I would genuinely love an answer, and if this isn't to be changed, I'd love to know why.

So, for 99.9% of players, they will not be target breeding for a specific type of mount. Meaning, mutations don't affect them at all. Cool, fine. If this is the case, why the hell are they even in the game?
NOW, for players who are going for a specific mount. I, for example, am going for a Mystic-Sapphire, the rarest combination in the game
I'm saving every Sapphire horn and every Mystic type
If I breed a Golden-Sapphire with a Mystic-Tusk, ~25% of the time, I will have a Mystic-Sapphire. ~50% of the time, I will have a mount with either Sapphire horns or Mystic typing, meaning I can still use it to breed for Mystic-Sapphire. However, ~25% of the time, I will have a Golden-Tusk which is !!COMPLETELY USELESS!! for a target breed of Mystic-Sapphire. This means that whoever implemented a chance of mutation SAW THIS, that ~25% of your breeds were !!ALREADY USELESS!!, and decided "Hey, let's still add a random chance that your mount is just useless, because that would be funny!"

Why this is problematic:
Each generation 1 Sapphire costs about 16le to obtain.
Each generation 1 Mystic costs about 24le to obtain.
Each generation 2 requires about 40le on average if breeding a two wyverns with one target trait and one non-target trait (most effective, see below).
You need four generation 1s to get a generation 3, eight for a generation 4, sixteen for a generation 5, thirty two for a generation 6, and so on.
Think of them like old horse tiers, Brown is generation 1, Black is generation 2, Chestnut is generation 3, White is generation 4.

You can be breeding two generation 7 Mystic-Sapphires into a generation 8 Mystic-Sapphire (ALREADY ~25% (slightly lower to account for any Mystic-Sapphire wyverns you've bred with other wyverns) of your breeds leading up to this have been duds, !!COMPLETELY USELESS!!) AND NOW THERE'S DEADASS A CHANCE THAT YOU'LL HIT A MUTATION AND WASTE 40 STACKS OF LE BECAUSE SOMEBODY DECIDED TO ADD THIS INTO THE GAME???
Now, you could be thinking "okay, so only one trait mutated and you have a Mystic-Ivory"
UNFORTUNATELY, I CANNOT JUST BREED IT WITH ANOTHER RANDOM SAPPHIRE BECAUSE THE LEVELS WILL GO DOWN IF I BREED WITH A LOWER LEVEL MOUNT (not a bad feature btw) SO I HAVE TO BREED ANOTHER TWO WYVERNS WITH THE MISSING TRAIT (IDEALLY MYSTIC-SAPPHIRES FOR BEST ODDS) ALL THE WAY UP TO GENERATION 7 JUST TO TRY FOR A GENERATION 8 AGAIN?? WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL????? GENUINELY???? ????????????????????????????????
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The tldr is that I have a 1/20 (roughly) chance of losing 40 stacks of le for nothing!
With the old system you could maybe lose 48le if your chestnuts downgraded to a black upon breeding.
AND this doesn't imply that generation 8 is the maximum of any kind, it just implies that you can breed up that far (which you can) and get shafted. Not to mention, that this continues into all the later generations, so if you're at generation 10, you have the chance to just lose 320 STACKS!! YAYYYYY SMILEY FACE.
WHAT KIND FEATURE IS THIS????
HELLO????

I think the ~25% chance for you to get the two traits you do not want, when breeding two wyverns (both with one trait that you're looking for) is at least a fine feature. It's controllable, to an extent. But a random ass mutation? You can be doing everything correct and still get completely shafted for no reason.
Now, you might be thinking "hey, why don't you just buy a bunch of wyverns and only breed the Mystic-Sapphires together? First off, the chance for a mutation still exists, thus, you still have a chance to waste all of your money! And secondly! To get a Mystic-Sapphire, I had to spend 13.5 STACKS of le, and I didn't get my second one until 38 STACKS of le. THAT is INSANE. So, unfortunately, you are not really able to do this unless you're going for like a very common variety, like Azure-Tusk

Crashout aside, I would genuinely love some transparency from the team regarding this. I would love for myself and the community to be filled in as to why this exists, or having it be looked into getting removed. It serves zero purpose other than to really just make someone's day so much worse, and this is the sort of thing that causes people to quit the game. Please read all of the numbers above before responding.

Breeding (Less emotional and more informational)
As of current, we have no idea what the max limits for wyverns are (if there is even a max at all) and I think the community deserves transparency regarding this, and I'll explain why below

Currently, you need a wyvern's limits to be an average of 20 before they're able to breed. The fastest you can do this is in 6 feeds, if leveling along the way to make use of higher level materials, I believe. I've been using 7 feeds of level 1 materials (because leveling this many mounts even to 10 would take an absurd amount of time)
My recipe has been: 2x Meat, 1x Grains, 1x Paper, 1x Planks, 1x Gems, 1x Oil.
This gets a mount's limits to the following:
Speed: 1/24/30
Acceleration: 1/24/30
Altitude: 1/24/30
Energy: 1/28/30
Handling: 1/16/30
Toughness: 1/14/30
Boost: 1/14/30
Training: 1/20/30

This focuses on the first five stats (most important for use, in my opinion) and a little bonus to Training as a side product.
I then take this and breed it with an identical mount, which brings my mount to about 400 potential, give or take ~40
The average limits increase to about 30, and the max limits increase to about 50.
From here, I take these wyverns and immediately put them back into the breeder.
Every generation past this gains about 10 average limit and about 10 average max limit

What I would like is transparency regarding how this works. In the game it says to use a mount with higher limits to increase stats (and the stats do increase) however, they seem to be increasing at a pretty fixed rate for every generation, not much fluctuation. This confuses me because for a generation 5, I'm breeding two wyverns that have an average limit of about 52. However, this still gives the same bonus of +~10 average limit and +~10 max limits to the offspring as breeding two wyverns with an average limit of 30 together does

It was confirmed also by Crunkle in a dm that limits and maxes are the only stats that have an effect on the offspring's limits and maxes

Spoiler: Image of Message

Because the game does not clarify, is this working as intended? Are the stats your offspring gains based on your limits COMPARED to your max limits? Because that is not clarified, if so, as the game just states "limits" as shown in this image here:

Spoiler: Image of Wyvern during the breeding process

Currently, if you feed until your limits hit the max limits in between each breed, you get to cut out about every other generation compared to doing it the way I am. Meaning that you save a lot of LE, but spend a LOT of time feeding (as all wyverns at this point have 6h feed times)
My complaint with this is that the way I am doing it gets REALLY expensive, however the game allows you to do it in this manner freely without any sort of idea as to how long it will go on for

If the max is 1200 potential, for example, then at the current rate of ~10 averages per breed, it will take me 65,536 generation 1 wyverns to reach that.
If someone is maxing out between breeds, they'll only need about 128 generation 1 wyverns.
This is a MASSIVE difference ???? If it is such a big number, the game should not let you breed at an average of 20 limits, or below your max limits. I feel as though these numbers were maybe looked at from the standpoint of maxing a wyvern to 30/30/30 before breeding it, rather than simply getting them to the limit required to breed at about 1/20/30.

These numbers are also why it is so messed up that unranked players have just TWO slots to work with. Even if you're being as slot efficient as possible and leveling between breeds, you still have to spend well over a year to get one mount to a decent level, not to mention that if you want to use a different mount, maybe something with a higher max than those that you're leveling or breeding, you're limited to ONE SLOT for breeding and feeding. ONE...
That is outrageous, I'm not going to sugar coat it, it's bullshit. Period.

Again, insight on this would be much appreciated. Whether this is intentional (only going up by +10 each generation, regardless of the current average limits) and whether or not there is a max potential, and what that max is. I understand wanting players to figure it out on their own, but with numbers this astronomical and varying this much, I really do feel that some transparency is necessary.


Below will just be bits of random suggestions, as well as things I really appreciate

1) f it could happen, being able to see max limits while a mount is in your inventory would be an amazing change. If you have a flute for a wyvern you can see this, but if it's not in your feeder, it only shows the current level and the current limit.

2) Another interface annoyance is that the color of a mount doesn't show up in trade market unless you actually click on the listing. This just makes it difficult to browse through to find the color you want, but isn't the end of the world.

3) I don't have a big issue with feed times aside from what was mentioned above for non-ranked players. This said, The breed times are a bit awkward for anyone who has school for 8h a day, work for 8h a day, or has to sleep for 8h a day (definitely biased here). You might be able to have a second wyvern in the feed slot to breed automatically once the first is finished, it would at least save the breed timer, but with needing one of around the same potential to breed with, it's awkward to actually make use of unless you already have a higher tier mount. I'm not sure how you would change this, as making the times longer makes things worse, and making the times shorter doesn't change the outcome really.
Maybe if each feeder slot was on a constant visible countdown of 6 hours until something was to be bred, whether there are mounts in them or not, that way if you breed something while you're gone for 8 hours at hour 6, you could come back, put something new in, and it'd only be 4 hours until the next breed. I'm not sure if that's feasible, but could be nice.

4) While feed times are fine as they are, I do think the system could benefit from giving reduced feed times to offspring, similar to mounts with low average limits. Keep in mind, it still takes about 12h to feed 7 materials to a mount with low average limits. This would allow for more effective leveling the limits to the max between breeding, without interfering much with the way the system works as a "login once a day" model. This is especially the case if the numbers above are intended, and you're meant to be maxing limits before breeding. When it's currently more efficient to breed for higher limits, time wise, it doesn't really make sense.

5) I really love the fact that you only need one mount, and that you can make a flute on all of your classes. It feels more enjoyable to be able to focus everything into one specific mount you like rather than needing them for multiple classes.

6) Teleport scrolls and the bank was definitely a good choice for the breeding locations, good job team!

7) The general aesthetics of the mount enclosures is really nice, I kind of wish it was instanced like a housing island that you could decorate how you like (could be cool) but overall no issues with it.

8) Something a little unintuitive is the location of the wyvern quarters. Thematically, it's wonderful. However, every player who gets their first wyvern and tries to fly it outside of Bantisu immediately drops down due to altitude and the canyons being so far below. It's just a little awkward and maybe puts more people off flying initially than they should be (just from reading messages through guild chat and ghost chat, etc.)

I genuinely appreciate everyone for reading this, whether you're a player just looking for more information on mounts, or a team member reading through my thoughts on it all.
I really do mean everything I say here, even if some may come across a bit harsh. My goal is not to point fingers and throw insults at anyone. I care about this game and I want it to be in the best state it can be in, and right now, it's just not meeting expectations, in my opinion. As someone who has played and moderated the game for quite some time, it's just unfortunate to see a lack of transparency and detailed thought put into certain parts of this system.

 

valid crashout lmfao

 

I fully agree with this post. Between the feeding time, and the random mutation while breeding ruining picking out colors, I have zero motivation to breed wyverns at all. I personally just won't be interacting with the system until things get changed, IF they do at all. Breeding should be a fun mechanic, that can be actively done if you enjoy the idea of it! It gives you something else to do! But it's been relegated to a background task that's barely worth doing whatsoever, all for a mount that is only about as good as spamming movement spells...

Please CT listen to this post. This system is not fun, and needs changed if it wants to be relevant.

 

i think this mount update was amazing and much needed. I do like wyverns and they're incredibly fun to fly, and it's great that all of the mounts are actually speedy.

that being said, I agree with you above that the majority of the mechanics of this update were thought out poorly.

Combining is ridiculous. when I saw I had 2 slots, it didn't even register in my head that i would have to combine 50+ mounts to upgrade them. IMO the feed times are crummy as well - I think the amount of time should scale with the level of the ingredient.

my maxed chestnut horse turned into a 1.1k potential horse. that's great, but I could NOT imagine in a million years combining up to that.

honestly, they could just ditch the idea of mounts breeding with each other and instead make it so after it reaches its max values, it needs some super special upgrade stone (gotten through, idk, miniquests, chests, or LE?) to increase its cap. and then breeding could be delegated to getting some special colors or something, and it wouldn't affect horse stats.

like, this is absurdly slow. i've been passively leveling since fruma came out and i only have around 1.5 wyverns in which the limit is near the max (30). this is especially annoying because leveling is now an active activity that demands attention, having to circle around to collection powerups, rather than a passive activity where you can just ride your horse.

I personally don't care that much about colors, but the fact I need to dump dozens of hours of active gameplay into just getting a mount to a decent level is ridiculous.

 

I agree with the Majority of this post and truly hope the CT revisits the mounts at some point.

 

Where is the teleport scroll + bank? I'm at the adasaur place in Aldwell and I'm not seeing it. Granted, the other places might have it.

 

The Aldwell scroll and bank is just the scroll/bank in Aldwell (If you use Wynntills they messed up and the scroll merchant is where the emerald merchant is on the map) but the bank and scroll for the Air Temple is through the West entrance to the breeding enclosure, follow the path and turn right into the first building. Bank is straight ahead and merchant is to the right.

 

I bred two Mystic together and got an Azure. Did I hit the 1/20 mutation on my first time breeding? Spent 1.5stx just getting the two. Also, if you breed a gen2 and gen1 together, does it lower the limits, the max, or both? If the max goes up, I don't think I'd mind too much.

 

I've gotten started on a personal project to breed 32 fledge colored wyverns together.
Now that I know about the random mutation it is just scaring me away from breeding at all until it gets removed entirely.
It makes selective breeding a complete joke since both parents get deleted, which totally ruins the mechanic being useful in the first place as you can't just start the breeding proces over when it fails to give the color you want.

 

Funny thing is that I did the math and to get a 10k potential Wyvern it will take 940 MILLION YEARS meanwhile 1k potential wyvern - 10 days. And that 940 million is a generously lowered since I rounded down some of the breeding times XD

 

The drop off is pretty steep from what I've heard of, though. Isn't a 1.2k wyvern only marginally better than an 800 one?

 

Just for clarification, CT didn't have any hand in the development of mounts. Developers are the ones who create the in house plugins and such. We can't make changes manually, but we can advocate for them.

To elaborate a bit more, CT use the tools that Developers create to make the game. A CT makes quests, but not the quest system, a CT makes music, but not the mechanism in which the music is played in game, a CT makes models, but doesn't cast the black magic spell that lets those models work on the server.
For Mounts, there isn't really anything for us, the CT, to make with it. The tool effectively is the final product, as opposed to something we're meant to use to create the product. Whatever decisions were made weren't done by the larger CT body.

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Also I genuinely didn't know that the slots were restricted. The staff servers and the beta automatically give you a high rank, and in game I'm a champion, so I just assumed it was 2 slots locked behind silverbull. If I did I definitely would've said something before release because - qualms one might have with monetization aside - all something like that serves to do is prevent the player from actually interacting with that system.

 

This reads like an old serial killers confession where they only use news article clippings for the texts, absolutely valid tho and I hope mounts fundamentally change to be better.

 

One more fun thing (which tbf affects like 3 people) is that on ironman you cannot take out the materials out of the feeder again, even if you put them in on the same ironman class.
Instead you get this error message: Your character is Ironman and unable to pickup this item.

I understand that they want to prevent materials being transferred from normal classes to ironman (which is good that that was thought of!) but before I understood how feeding works I filled all slots with the same material and then ended up waiting 30h because I couldn't take them out on ironman anymore.

The other problem (imo, but others might see this as a feature) is that there are no restrictions for taking out items on other classes so now we have a way to transfer materials from ironman to normal classes.

So I'd love to see both of those points be fixed but probably shouldn't get my hopes up for something that is probably deemed to be low priority

 

Honestly I'd love it if they at the very least allowed us to get an item that prevents mutations when breeding. Kinda like the items we can use during item identification, but for mounts.

 

The four percent you mention somewhat lines up to what I've experienced, as it's only happened a small handful of times and has been about once every 20 breeds (close enough to 4%)
This said, I have experienced skin mutations, yes. I bred a Mystic-Tusk with an Infernal-Sapphire and ended up with a Jade-Sapphire. I've also been holding onto all of my Fledge-Sapphires and Jade-Sapphires bought from the merchant as 240 potential mounts, as they are extremely rare and not worth putting into breeding at that low of a level, in my opinion

While I can't be certain with how genuine the claims of another are, I seem to not be the only player to experience this

My main question is that if the chance is so small to begin with, what purpose does it serve to be in the game? Especially after understanding that nearly 25% of your breeds will become absolutely useless when target breeding, as stated above

 

I would also like to share some more information:
All three of these wyverns started as breeds between mounts with the following stats:
1/24/30
1/24/30
1/24/30
1/28/30
1/16/30
1/14/30
1/14/30
1/20/30

Spoiler: Generation 5 Wyverns

This is the fifth generation. Look at how different these stats are... None have been trained at all either through use or feeding since before the first breed. This stat range is absolutely crazy

With the fact that these took a collective ~20 stacks of le to obtain via target breeding (unfortunate that Mystic did not actually make it this far still)
The result of breeding the best two (which I can't really avoid unless I want to spend another few stacks and days of time to maybe get another one closer to 700 is this:

Spoiler: Generation 6 Wyvern

Which I combined both the 718 and the 660 for (even though none had Mystic type, I did it to see what the stats might look like)
The fact that there is this much randomness within the stats for mounts of the same generation to be over 100 potential apart is crazy to me. Especially when things start costing this much

Again, for a player not target breeding, this cost is only about 18le worth of wyverns. But if you're going to add a rare type into the game, it should at least be somewhat obtainable. For a generation 7, it will cost me 40 stacks total on average, still targeting that mystic-sapphire. For a chance that my new generation 6 is like 100 less potential than this one is, thus barely increasing the stats beyond what they are currently
Why is the increase to averages so linear and why is the cost so expensive? 40 stacks of le for a mount that isn't even maxed out (if there is a mount) is crazy to me. If the cost is exponential, then the stat increases should also be exponential, no?

I understand people don't have to target breed, but if it's a possibility in the game, then why is it this inaccessible?

 

this thread is incredibly valid and i dont have much to add onto it on what's already discussed within it but i Do want to take this as an opportunity to complain about another feature on the wyverns: their secondary color. it determines their keratin (horns, spikes, etc) but somehow doesn't determine their... wing claw tips? for some reason? so if you don't use a wyvern with horn (horn isnt really an exact match either as the claw tips are notably darker/ever so slightly pinkish but i could be losing my mind) it looks Incredibly tacky. whats the point of having these secondary variations when it doesnt apply equally. why are we doing this. it's like bootleg toys with paint errors. how did anyone look at this and think it was all solid and fine to publish. if i try breeding an ebony-onyx dragon itd just have these ugly yellow claws that do not match any other part of the body. save us