Can't think of a better title. I'm going around looking for a new breeding game, and I'm mostly wondering if the breeding is fun, even for a new or free to play player.

Can I breed pets that look better than their parents, or am I looking forward to sad, faded mudballs unless I pay 30$ for a breeding pair of matching gen1 customs? I'm so tired of "either you play Flight Rising, or it's that".

I think this game is worth playing, yes. =P

There is a lot of content for players to go through, especially in the realm of breeding projects, if that is what you are mostly interested in. We also have a lot of content in our exploration system if you enjoy battling and the RPG aspect of things as well.

We have a lot of players who have played for many years and do not spend IRL money, or spend very little. You definitely do not have to spend IRL money to achieve things in Sylestia. There are for sure some shortcuts available, but plenty of players are able to get by without. You also can purchase Diamonds (our premium currency) from the Currency Exchange with Gold (our basic game currency). There are quite a few players with very decked out accounts who have never spent, or spent very little, in their time by utilizing the Currency Exchange.

I imagine some players will chime in with their input as well.

Welcome to Sylestia and I hope you find what you're looking for. =)

The battling stuff is definitely trippy, I've been having fun.

i definitely feel like this is the best breeding game i've come by as a browser title.
i've played games like Flight Rising, Lioden, Lucky Lapine, Wajas, etc--This one is my favorite.

(i'm not sure how familiar you are with the breeding system)
the breeding system for traits works on the premise of punnett squares, which i think is pretty neat because it makes sense to me given how genetics really work. the colors for your pet are also very interesting because they are not set colors like in games like Flight Rising or Lioden, you can make your own color combinations with hex codes.

as for pretty pets, lots of people make projects with the tagged themes you can get in the game--They largely come from festivals or events (the next event is starting on March 15th!) but you can find them in the last zone currently available as a rare encounter.

that being said, you can breed good looking pets that aren't tagged themes. lots of people like to come up with their own designs in The Generator which does not cost anything to use. if you, by chance, do end up making something you want to create--it is entirely possible to do without spending any real world money.

you could buy cheap pets off of the Advanced Search with the traits you are looking for and breed them (very time consuming) or you could trade/buy/grind Essences which you can use to generate a pet, similarly to how you made your starter pet.

this is also not the only option for making good looking pets. "Dishwater" pets are those which are not tagged/themed that are also not part of a project. while most people don't like them because they generally have greyish colors or are not particularly vibrant, you can still breed some pretty good looking ones.

for example, this is one of my favorite Kelpari pairings i own:

and these are some of their kids:


like with all games, it takes time to have a good sized account to have the ability to do projects and to get the "prettier" looking pets, but there are plenty of people around who will help you get the things you want. ^^

Dishwater!! That's a fun name for mudballs. and you're right, because of the way the color system works, they're not too bad so long as they have lots of genes.

Big question now- how the heck to I get better pet traps? I saw a couple rare kirins in one of those timed wave attack things, but couldn't catch them. They don't seem to be in user shops.

you'd have to get further in the map in order to buy blue traps, theyre available in the Market of the Sanctuary of Saerielle for 2.5k gold. you can buy better ones in the next part of the map, Astyr's Vale, in Ethernia (where you get purple traps).

during festivals there is also a special vendor at the spawn point of the map that sells all 3 rarities for their usual gold price, as you will need either blue or purple traps to catch themed pets.

there is also the option of purchasing a Master Trap (red) from the diamond shop, but i would personally not use them on anything that isn't mythical or legendary (red/orange stars) unless it is a super rare theme (typically a nephini). the red traps automatically catch anything, though. ^^

Colour breeding in the game is a bit interesting since the way it works is that it takes the R, G and B values from each of the parents colour slots and picks from between them (same as for stats). This can sometimes lead to rather unexpected results
eg. (taking from our guide here which covers an assortment of things such as stats, how philters work, pet aging, where species are found etc. though it's not very tidy and not completely up-to-date, I really need to clean it up at some point)
A pair that is C1 HEX 3FCAC3 crossed with C1 HEX FB9D16
3FCAC3 = R 63 G 202 B 195
FB9D16 = R 251 G 157 B 22

Thus offspring will have an R between 63 and 251, a G between 157 and 202, and a B between 22 and 195
Possible outcomes from these colours include:
79C852 121 / 200 / 82
F6BEC1 246 / 190 / 193
D8C5A7 216 / 197 / 167
CDCAA0 205 / 202 / 160


I definitely recommend checking out the Player Guides forum!

You can also check out the theme codex! Each festival has new themes to collect, and if you don't want to risk dishwaters, taking a theme and doing a purebreed breeding project with it is a good place to start.

On my end, I don't breed much, but of the few sites I'm on that have breeding this is the only one where I've actually done any projects. Sylestia has multiple facets (colour, traits, stats), so you can focus on just one, or two, or all of them, or just go random with it

Fascinating, I remember of all the games I played, Khymeros had a different algorythm for color mixing that wasn't just roughly averaging the parents, and gave interesting and less muddy results.

sory i dshold just be quiet

It sucks that you've gone through that much trouble, there does really seem to be a lot to learn. I try to avoid paying money on service games ESPECIALLY to avoid the feeling of being forced to keep playing because I paid.