This announcement might be slightly overdue, but here we are. =)

So, this project has been a lot of things in the making over the past year+ and at this point, it's probably a solid ~300+ hours of total work. There's a lot of pieces to it and the feature as a whole is something I've been wanting to experiment with for a really long time. So I am really excited that we are finally super close to releasing this into the wild and seeing how everything goes. I think it's a neat concept that can really add a new dynamic to Tamed Pet hunting and collecting.

This update is going to be a few stages all put together - probably two or three stages in total. Stage 1 will release this upcoming Wednesday, July 22nd, at 12 PM. I'll break down the stages below. There will also be an accompanying Diamond Sale, Double XP Bonus, and Boosted Themed Pet Encounter Bonus from Wednesday through Sunday.


Stage 1
The first and foremost stage is just simply going to be the release of the actual Traits (most of them at least) into the Lost Grove. There isn't really anything too significant with this Stage outside of the following:

-At this time, these Traits will only be obtainable via Wild Pets within The Lost Grove.

-All of these Traits will be Restricted Traits with a new twist (covered in later Stages).

-Not all species will receive Traits at the start. Unfortunately, the Sylvorpa was never fully finished and so we are going to move ahead without them for now. They will eventually get their set though. Additionally, none of the Fabled will have any to begin with other than the Ferrikki.

-The Traits will have the same chance of being encountered as any other Traits for a given species. There will be no special mechanics behind whether or not an encountered pet will have these new Traits other than it has to be within The Lost Grove.


Stage 2
So, once the Traits are released, I'll be gearing up for the second part of this feature to be released. There will basically be a new page (probably accessible via the Pet Profile Page), that will be a brand new, kind of like, Pet 'Customization' page. For now, this page will only serve one function, but I highly anticipate it will grow with more functions transferred over/added as time goes on. Pet Profile pages are really difficult for me to work with, so this new page will give me a lot more capability for managing certain aspects of Pet ownership while also letting me de-clutter the Pet Profile page a bit.

So, what exactly will this page do? Basically, part of this whole new feature is that we will be adding an ability for players to extract Traits, specifically, these Restricted Wild Traits (their tentative name for now). Let's say you collect a Tamed Pet from The Lost Grove with one of the new Restricted Wild Traits. You then head over to this new page and use a set of extraction tools on it to remove the Trait and then basically have a 'copy' of the Trait.

Once you have a 'copy' of the Trait, you'll be able to use it as basically its own Mutator/Disruptor allowing you to 'transfer' it to another pet of your choice that otherwise couldn't have this Restricted Wild Trait. More information on the restrictions and specifics of this whole process will be announced prior to this feature's release.

I don't have a specific date of when Stage 2 will be released, but it should be ready pretty shortly. When it is ready, I will announce more specific details of how everything will work. So just keep that in mind if you have any specific questions regarding Stage 2. In the meantime though, I can try and answer any general questions as best as I can.


Stage 3
The final tie-in for this feature is taking Stage 2 one step further. In addition to using extracted Traits as their own Mutators/Disruptors, we are also going to let you insert them into the Generator for you to Generate new Pets with the extracted Traits. This Stage is going to be a bit more tedious to finalize as the Generator isn't very coder-friendly and it's going to be kind of a pain to squeeze in the interface for this new feature into a place that is not at all built for such a feature. So I don't really have a solid ETA at all of how long this will take until I'm actually in there fiddling with the interface.


So, that's the plan for now with this new feature. We're really excited to see how everything goes. I think it's a really cool step forward in regards to Tamed Pets and Trait collection that goes a bit beyond traditional breeding. However, it doesn't really take away from anything that wasn't already viable. It basically just let's players further control and customize their pets and projects in ways not currently possible.

It will also add a new economy to the game for Trait buying/selling, which I think is really cool. As time goes on, we could add Traits that may be very exclusive and hard to obtain (example, maybe the final boss of a tough Dungeon has a chance to drop a pet with exclusive Restricted Wild Traits) and then those Traits become a really high commodity. And collectors have to gauge whether to keep the original pet as is, extract the Trait and give it to another beloved pet, extract the Trait and generate a brand new pet completely customized, or sell the Trait for lots of goodies. It really opens up a lot of new content for the game I think.

I hope everyone is excited as I am about this new feature and I can't wait to get it started on Wednesday!

Super excited! Thanks for the update on the progress of this new feature.

Thanks, Krin!!!

This sounds awesome O: wow Im so hyped!! Will we be able to only use the extract mutator on tamed pets, or can we use them on bred pets also? Will they swap out vis traits like original RTDs or must that trait slot be empty? And I am entirely so so excited for the pet profile page update <3

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=91213&page=1#4 Author: Watercolors Time Posted: 7/20/2020 at 11:43 AM This sounds awesome O: wow Im so hyped!! Will we be able to only use the extract mutator on tamed pets, or can we use them on bred pets also? Will they swap out vis traits like original RTDs or must that trait slot be empty? And I am entirely so so excited for the pet profile page update <3

All the details regarding the restrictions of applying these extracted Traits will have to wait for the Stage 2 announcement. They're still being finalized.

Got it! Thank you, will be waiting in suspense :) *gasp* I wonder if the new nytes have these traits waiting for their new lines o.O

Will there be any way for us to tell when we've encountered a pet with a restricted trait (like the Rare Enemy thing for themes)?

So we're getting a license to be mad scientists and gene splices now?

Sounds cool, thanks krin for all your hard work on this stuff :)

Sounds like a very exciting new feature, can't wait to see it in action!