Outline
1. Introduction
2. Speed Nurturing vs using Advanced Search (pros and cons of each)
3. Strategy Outline
4. How to find non-fabled egglings to nurture


Introduction

Maimah already has an excellent guide on nurturing, (what this guide calls speed nurturing). If you wanna just nurture, and you don't mind what species you nurture, I recommend using Maimah's guide.

Sole-Species nurturing is different than speed nurturing. In Sole-Species nurturing, instead of nurturing your own, your friends, and other people who nurtured your pets today, you are nurturing every hatchling and/or eggling that you possibly can through advanced search. This method is useful for contests (such as the Spring 2015 Nurturing Contests) and to get essences of a particular species.

To Sole-Species Nurture, I use chrome. This is helpful for some keyboard shortcuts. I also use an extension called linkclump, which allows me to open several pages at a time by holding down the right mouse button and dragging through the links I want to open.


Nurturing Solutions
Egglings
If the Eggling is Cool - Warm the Egg
If the Eggling is Warm - Cool the Egg
If the Eggling is Dull - Polish the Egg
If the Eggling is Restless - Turn the Egg
Hatchlings
If the Hatchling is Weak - Work Out With it
If the Hatchling is Derpy - Read it a book
If the Hatchling is Hungry - Offer it Food
If the Hatchling is Slow - Race with it
If the Hatchling is Restless - Play with it.

Speed Nurturing Versus Using Advanced Search

Speed Nurturing Pros

~ Much Faster than Sole-Species Nurturing

~ You can do it on smart phones (check, please, someone, as I do not actually have a smart phone)

~ You get to nurture all your pets, your friends pets, and anyone whose nurtured your pet today.

~ You don't have to write down the last time you nurtured, since the app only shows pets that are eligible for you to nurture

~ If using a computer, it is very easy to multitask or watch tv while speed nurturing.

~ You may end up getting an essence that you really, really wanted.

~ It is way easier to find nonfabled egglings to nurture

Speed Nurturing Cons

~ You don't get to choose what species you are nurturing, so you may nurture a bunch of a species that you aren't looking to nurture. You could be using this time to nurture species you want.

~ The list may go on and on, and you have no idea how many more eggs/hatchlings there are left to nurture.

~ If you are nurturing for a contest like on the Spring 2015 leaderboards, you may miss some of that species, and fall out of place in the leaderboard.

~ Other than that, no real cons that I can think of about speed nurturing!

Sole-Species Nurturing Pros

~ You are only nurturing species you want to nurture

~ You can get specific essences from nurturing 1 species. Like, if you need Griffi Essences for a project, nurture just Griffi hatchlings and egglings, and you will eventually get a Griffi Essence.

~ The advanced search tells you how many hatchlings / egglings are in that species, so you have an idea of how many scales you will earn, and an estimated time frame of how long it will take you to nurture.

~ If you are nurturing for a specific species in a contest, you can nurture all of the hatchlings / egglings that day. If you are already first, this will help keep you at first place. It will also help keep you from getting kicked off the leaderboard.

Sole-Species Nurturing Cons

~ Its slower than Speed Nurturing

~ Its harder on your computer, so you may not be able to have other programs running while doing this.

~ You need to write down (or at least remember) the time you nurtured that group of pets if you want to nurture them again the next day.

~ You will most likely open pet pages that you can't nurture at that time


If anyone can think of any other pros/cons for either, let me know and I'll put them up!

Strategy Outline

First thing you need to do is to decide what species you want to nurture. For my examples in this guide, I will nurture Griffis. Then you need to click on Advanced Search, Search Pets.

To start, nurture the Egglings. To do this, you only need to change 3 choices:
Maturity - Egglings, Species - Griffi, and Pet ID - Descending. (If you search for egglings in Pet ID-Ascending, the first eggs you see are ones that are waiting to be hatched).



As you can see from what I highlighted on the bottom, there were 274 egglings. A few pages at the end are egglings that are ready to hatch, so we will be unable to nurture them.



To click on their profile, I use an Extension on Google Chrome that lets me open several profiles at once by holding down the right mouse clicking and dragging over the egg pictures, like this:


Link clump is not required, it just takes off a few seconds and is less tedious than opening each profile individually.

Since I am pretty impatient, I usually do 10 pages on advanced search at a time. That is 50 pets. That's a lot!

I press Ctrl+Tab while on the advanced search to go to the first pet's profile. Then, I nurture the first pet, and instead clicking the X to close the tab with the mouse, I wait for the profile to load again after I nurture, and then I press CTRL+W on the keyboard. This closes the tab, so I don't have to move my mouse (saving a little bit of time).

Depending on how much your computer can handle, I would recommend doing 1-2 pages to start at a time. Then, gradually increase the amount of pages you nurture.

One way to look at it is by nurturing a "Set of 50 Pets". Then each time you nurture a Set of 50 pets, that is a repetition of that set. The're no benefit to looking at it like this other than by looking at a set than at each individual pet, you get more pets nurtured rather than nurturing 50 pets individually. I don't know why it helps me to think of it like this, but it does and hopefully it helps others also.

To nurture hatchlings, I usually separate them into 2 groups. First I'll do the male griffi hatchlings, then I'll do the females. When there is a TON of hatchlings of that species, you can nurture all the male griffi hatchlings at one time in the day, and then the female griffi hatchlings at another time in the day.

To nurture the male griffi hatchlings, you only need to change 3 things. Change gender - Male, Maturity - Hatchling, and Species - Griffi. You don't need to change the order of when they appear, I recommend keeping it at Pet ID - Ascending, though.


At the time of writing this guide, there were about 280 male griffi hatchlings, 300 female female griffi hatchlings, and about 250-270 griffi egglings.

If you want to nurture the griffi hatchling females, all you need to do is change from searching for griffi hatchling boys to girls.

How to Find Non-Fabled Egglings to Nurture

Okay this method is slow and tedious, and not for the faint of heart. It CAN, however, make all the difference in contests, if you are determined. I would not use this method to find egglings to nurture other than for contests, though.

I will nurture Qitaris for this example, but it goes for any nonfabled eggling.

Usually, if you search for nonfabled egglings in advanced search (by clicking Species - Qitari, Maturity - Eggling, you either get just the tagged ones or a message that says "There were no results found".

However, Nonfabled pets have a 3-day Recovery Period. So you can search for the adult females that are in recovery. To do this, Search for: Gender - Female, Maturity - Adult, Species - Qitari, Recovering - YES. This will show the moms who have egglings out there somewhere.


Usually, you get lucky and their egglings are from the same user. So, you bring up another tab, and search the egglings of that user. To narrow it down a bit, Change these options: Fabled - NO, Maturity - Eggling, Themed - NO.

Now, this is where it can get tedious, if that player has a load of different nonfabled egglings. First, look at the recovery date on the Mom's profile. You can look when that adult female is off recovery, to get an idea when the egg was born and where it is in that player's hatchery. If the recovery date is the same day you are nurturing, that means the eggling will have its eye poking out. If it is the next day, that means the eggling is a day old and the egg will be cracked a bit. If the hatchery time is 3 days from now, that means the eggling is pretty new, and will most likely not be dented.

You can also compare these dates with other egglings you find of that user's, to get an idea of whether or not you are getting closer or farther away from your goal.

After you find an eggling, if it is less than 2 days old, bookmark it or write down the Pet ID number! The next day, you can nurture that eggling again without having to go through the process of finding it.

LIke I said, this method is tedious, and should only be used for contests. Otherwise, you can just nurture the hatchlings of that species and/or speed nurture egglings.

Breed, Nurture, Release

During contests, there is a thing people can do called "Breed, Nurture, Release". This happens when there are not very many hatchlings or egglings to nurture, and there is a very small gap in the numbers on the leaderboard. You breed the pets, nurture the egg, then release the egg immediately.

However, I recommend doing this when the other person is not online or nurturing! Because that player can just stalk the advanced search for new egglings if they realize what's happening. Then, each time one player makes an egg to nurture and release, the other player can nurture that egg also before they get a chance to release it, so it evens out the score.

Or, you can breed a large amount of a species so you can nurture quickly from speed nurturing, and then release them when they turn adolescent. This can be helpful for contests and if you are looking for essences of that species.

Nice guide, Shevampire! *thumbs up*
I don't know there is an addon that lets you to open several tabs at once. :O
I usually just click Ctrl+left click on the pets' profile to open their profile pages one by one.
I don't nurture pets often but I often open a lot of tabs at once to hatch my egglings so I guess I can share you my tips. Instead of clicking "Ctrl+W" for each tabs, it's much faster if you drag the advanced search window out of egglings window (after you open 50 tabs) and just close the window (so you don't have to click Ctrl+W 50 times) after you've finished nurturing them. Don't forget to zoom out before you start nurturing so you don't have to scroll every time you nurture and Ctrl+tab to switch page to minimalize mouse work. Rinse and repeat. =D

I can confirm speed nurturing works on smartphones!

Gonna try sole-species right now though, it sounds interesting(and i've been waiting for the guide omg)

question though, how long is 'eventually' as far as finding an essence, on average in your experience?

I have no idea about the average. One day during the festival, I found 3 essences in 1 day (about 5000-6000 scales). Most days, I do not find any essences, and I try for about 1000-2000 scales.

O_O

And i thought getting to 500 scales was a lot! When you say time consuming, you mean it! Though i suppose it's definitely worth it, plus you get a ton of scales in the process!