Alacrity Good-to-Know: Breeder Edition
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Breeding! Probably my favorite thing about Alacrity and the reason why I still play today. You can breed for a variety of reasons, whether it's for coats or TP. I'm definitely a TP breeder, so that's the advice you'll be getting here.
This thread will mainly be covering tools and optimization. Basic breeding answers (how much energy, mood, etc) is available on the main Alacrity faqs.
[BREEDER Tools]
In a Nutshell
1. Breeder Perk
2. Rhino Plush
3. Useful Items
4. Breeding Companions
5. Breeding Formulas
6. Checking for Clean Lines?
#1 Essential: Breeder Perk x2
You'll need two of these if you want to really get some high-TP offspring in as few generations as possible. (This is good, because it means you need fewer dogs in general and fewer dogs you need to train).
One perk for your main account, and a second perk on the account of your breeding partner, or if you don't have one, then your side account.
This means you can send one parent off to your side and keep one on your main and breed them from there using leasing/studding feature. It'll give you a 20% TP boost to your puppies.
Non-Essential: Rhino Plush
They're usually quite affordable! It's an accessory that you can equip to your dog to boost mood to 100% instantly (but only while it's equipped). This saves a lot of time feeding and grooming parents to prep them into breeding.
I listed this separately because it's easy to underestimate how much time this saves if you're starting a brand new line that uses lots and lots of dogs. It saves money on grooming items as well.
Useful Items
The Heat Cookie accessory is incredibly useful. It can bring a breeding-age female into heat upon next rollover when equipped. This means you don't have to wait several months for your female to go into heat, or worry about her going out of it either! As long as you leave it equipped to her, she'll stay in heat. Great if you're waiting for your breeding partner to get online to accept stud requests.
Can't afford a Heat Cookie? Try a Chocolate Bunny instead. It's a one-use food item, but it brings the female instantly into heat. Just be careful, because she'll also go out of heat next rollover. I still find the Heat Cookie to be the better investment if you're going to be a serious TP breeder.
Anchor Cookies are the best food item if you're in a pinch and want to boost health after the mother has given birth (or if you need to raise it to breed). It gives +20 health and you can usually buy it from the user shop relatively cheaply.
Breeding Companions
Chance is the only breeding companion you'll ever need once you get a hold of one. It gives a 15% TP boost to offspring and can be equipped to both parents during breeding for a 30% total! It also stacks with Breeder's Perk to gain an additional bonus. It's one of the most sought after companions on the site as well. Sadly, there hasn't been a recent re-release of them, so the only way to get one is buying or borrowing from other users.
The Fox Cub is the runner-up item next to Chance. It doesn't specialize in TP, but it lets you re-breed a female immediately without waiting for them to age. The only criteria is that they must be in heat! Very useful for getting the puppies that you want if the first few tries failed.
There are several aesthetic/gender breeding companions such as Toucans (eyes), Kangaroos (gender) or Wolves (coat markings) that help to guarantee certain aspects being passed down to offspring, but the codes were not working last I saw. Worth catching up with the issue hub if these companions interest you.
Mother Nile Crocodile makes sure that puppies are 100% health when they're born, but it's not a very useful companion in my opinion since the puppies will never die after birth.
Breeding Formulas
Your typical breeding formula looks like this:
(Mom's TP) + (Dad's TP) divided by 2, then add 90 if maxed.
Breeding formula with Breeder's Perk:
(Mom's TP) + (Dad's TP) divided by 2, then add 90. After that, multiply the sum by 1.2 (if each parent is on different accounts with Breeder's Perks).
Or multiply by 1.1 if only one account has Breeder's perk/you are breeding both parents on the same account with Breeder's Perk.
Breeding Formula with Chances:
(Mom's TP) + (Dad's TP) divided by 2, then add 90. Multiply the sum by 1.15 if one parent has a Chance equipped, or 1.3 if both parents have Chances.
Breeding Formula with two Chances AND two Breeder's Perk:
(Mom's TP) + (Dad's TP) divided by 2, then add 90. Multiply the sum by 1.2, then multiply again by 1.3.
Also, it's worth noting that the puppies always inherit an average of both mom and dad's Speed and Drive. So just add (Mom's Drive/Speed) + (Dad's Drive/Speed) divide by 2 and that's what you get.
Drive and Speed do not really do anything at the moment. Speed can slightly influence how your dog does at the The Flying Disc game, but not enough to make a serious difference in my opinion.
Personality traits don't really matter and won't factor into anything in terms of trialing. It's more of a personal thing if you want to perfect that, but it has no bearing on game play except the way it passes down to offspring.
Checking for Clean Lines
This is the trickiest thing if you don't know how to look. The dog's lineage page doesn't actually display their whole lineage, so it's very easy to accidentally inbreed or line breed, resulting in not getting a clean line.
The easiest way around this (and there is no easy way) is to click through all the dogs on the right-hand most side, which will lead you to their page. We'll try this with my current example. Their great-great-great grandmother, [2F8] Shade. Unfortunately it looks like she's retired! How do I find out her lineage now?
By adding this link "&action=viewlineage" at the end of her dog page. Now I can see her parents too and compare across the line. You'll eventually find that with some dogs, you'll need a spreadsheet and to write the whole family tree in order to trace it because there's so many dogs in the line.
The more dogs there are, the less likely that the line will be clean. I prefer working with foundation dogs, because I know that they have no parents! The coats won't turn out as nice, so that's the drawback. You can work with customs instead to achieve the same results.
Good luck and happy breeding, everyone.