Ashes 101 Ashes of Creation Animal Husbandry

Overview

I’m going to discuss Animal Husbandry on its own page for the time being, only because there is a lot of information that we have about this particular part of the Artisan System, but we don’t have enough information about the other systems to really start crafting out individual pages. Plus, Animal Husbandry is unique in that it doesn’t really follow suit with the standard Gathering > Processing > Crafting process.

After the 25 Feb 2022 livestream there was some confusion about how Animal Husbandry is going to work so I reached out to Steven just to make sure I understood how the breakdown is going to happen.

Taming will be in Gathering and will involve locating, capturing, and taming wild creatures.
Husbandry is in Processing and will involve breeding and training creatures.
Making of gear for pets and mounts as well as some of the processing tools is the Crafting Piece.

This will be a little different from the normal method of Gathering > Processing > Crafting, where you would mine an ore (gathering) then turn it into a useable component (processing) and then make something out of that component (crafting).

Genetic Makeup

For the Husbandry they have done a lot of work in the genetic makeup of the creatures. Creatures will have a multitude of traits that are related to appearance, combat efficiency, speed and endurance, and special abilities that breeders can attempt to bring forward. Creatures will also have weaknesses within their species that will need to be considered when looking for the optimal genetic blend. The goal is to make it so that no two creatures in Verra are exactly the same, so there won’t be a bunch of twins and triplets and everyone has a best-in-slot mount that is identical.

Ashes of Creation Animal Husbandry Samples

Processing Breeding and Training

The processing part of this is not a one shot and you are done model. Instead, you will need to study both the parents and the offspring to make informed decisions on what direction you want to pursue if the features you want have become apparent in the first run of offspring.

Geographic location will also be important. As discussed, Verra has different biomes and the creature stock is determined by the biome. To use a horse for example, there is no place to get the best horse. Instead, you would need to go to the desert for the fastest horses, the tundra for coat and health, and the size traits from the Riverlands. [these are all just notional examples]. Then you would have a stock of horses that you could begin breeding to see if you could progress a single mount with all the traits you want.

For anyone who is wondering, yes it will be possible for master breeders to unlock new species, if they are pushing the limits of breeding.

Also, the husbandry system is more than just combining two parents and getting an offspring, there is an element of training, the mount from birth to adulthood and trained so that it can fulfill its specialization. Part of this training is feeding and cleaning the creatures, taking them for practice rides, and training them to fight monsters. This training period will have the greatest influence on the quality of the genetically determines stats and abilities of the creature. So while you may have bred the appropriate state into the creature, if you don’t properly train the creature, you won’t get the most efficiency out of the stat.

Ashes of Creation Animal Husbandry Samples

Specializations

There will be four specializations for Animal Husbandry: Mounts, Pets, Livestock, and Beasts of Burden

Ashes of Creation Animal Husbandry Samples