Animal husbandry is quite unique but still follows the rules of the artisan system. Here’s a continuation of the taming video, focusing now on animal husbandry processing skill, how taming affects it and discussing similar mechanics in current popular MMOs and how they can translate into Ashes of Creation.
What is Animal Husbandry in Ashes of Creation?
Animal husbandry is the breeding and training of tamed creatures. This also applies to combat pets and livestock, not just mounts. The way this is done is likely going to be very unique to Ashes of Creation as their mounts function in a much more traditional MMO way instead of the more persistent way that mounts exist in the world of Black Desert Online (BDO). In BDO, mounts have levels, health bars, stamina bars, gear and abilities. Your mount is very much an extension of your character and it persists out in the world until it’s killed. Meaning, if you leave it in an unsafe place it will be attacked and need to be revived at stables.
The difference between a base level one horse and a top tier max level horse is basically like comparing a rank one arena player to a lead game designer who is also a clicker. In Ashes, mounts will be more of a blend of Guild Wars 2’s mounts with their abilities and World of Warcraft with their existence as an item within your bags. Animal husbandry will require a freehold blueprint or a building present in your local node called the stable. Everything Animal Husbandry related will be performed here.
TAMING and ANIMAL HUSBANDRY
Taming will work closely with Animal Husbandry similarly to how mining would work well with blacksmithing. To start yourself off, you’ll want to go out and grab yourself a bunch of low tier creatures to start your breeding process. Once you’ve got a few to start with, won’t taming become pointless? No actually because breeding a creature multiple times will likely not be a thing. This is just speculation on my part but in BDO, horses have a certain number of chances that they can breed before they become sterile. Male horses have two breed chances and females have one. Provided Intrepid don’t add anything similar to the breeding resets that BDO has which is highly unlikely as this is considered one of BDO’s main pay to win features. That means taming will always remain relevant as new creatures will need to be tamed for a fresh reset of breeding chances. Additionally one of the main mechanics of taming will be as you tame a normal creature out in the world, there’s a chance you may discover a rare breed one with a unique ability. It would be fantastic if these rare breeds were hidden behind a normal tameable horse until you actually successfully tame it. Revealing its rarity and its unique skin tone to us in a special animation before going into our bags. These unique abilities will be the reason players will want to progress their taming alongside animal husbandry as discovering them may have a level requirement on top of them being a low chance to discover.
BREEDING MECHANICS
The breeding mechanics in Ashes of Creation are kind of complicated. Tamed and bred mounts have four main stats- speed, health, armor and energy. The breeding parameters for mounts will be completely unknown to the player base until they go out and discover it themselves. Meaning that guides for this won’t be in the first few weeks. BDO’s breeding mechanics are quite similar to Ashes of Creation. And it took a few fair months for guides to start appearing for them.
The Animal Husbandry skill will have a compendium of information which fills itself out as you discover new combinations of creatures. There will be odd combinations but also limits to what is possible. In addition to your mad experiments with breeding, quests will also be able to fill our certain information too. And these will likely be the kinds of combinations that lead to very exotic mounts later in the Animal Husbandry line. Even if you end up filling your compendium as a Master Artisan of the Animal Husbandry tree, there’s still going to be an element of RNG related to the breeding of creatures. This is something that very much exists in BDO’s horse breeding. And pretty much the defining factor to the progression of the whole breeding process. To increase the chances of higher tier horses in BDO, you’re required to level them up first and once certain thresholds are met, the chances of success change accordingly. In Ashes of Creation, Animal Husbandry level will affect your breed chances significantly and in turn increase the chances that your parent creature will pass on their abilities to their offspring. One final note before moving on is that while your creatures are within their youngling stage, there may be quests available for you to do which add cosmetic effects to your creatures as they grow. This is a cool idea but could easily add much more significant things like Master Artisans having a quest to bypass some of the RNG related stuff later down the breeding process for certain abilities. For example a Master Artisan quest could be that you give a super rare ability right from when it’s born and it passes along all the way through its breeding process. Hopefully these youngling quests end up being a little less disappointing than a simple bow tie on your raptor.
MOUNT AESTHETICS
Mount collection and aesthetics is a very popular motivator for MMO players as a lot of players really enjoy the chase and collection aspect of mounts in MMOs. The mounts you can breed in Ashes of Creation go from hippogryphs to gryphons to even far out ones like the butterflyger and giraffe loop filling out the compendium of these mount combinations is going to be a lot of fun.
Guild Wars 2 has some really beautiful mounts too, unfortunately they are all locked behind a paywall so one cares at this point. Monetization of their mounts was an absolute nightmare. World of Warcraft on the other hand, has a massive collection of mounts available in game with many achievements related to them. Some achievements even reward special rare mounts for some epic prestige. WOW has a very small collection of mounts that are available in their store but even those are shunned by the community. Community has also spoken about the store as some sort of stain in their game. Unfortunately, Ashes of Creation is taking the cosmetic store approach to mounts which is a real downer for Animal Husbandry players. They can have better stats and abilities on their mounts than the average player but no one cares about mounts abilities outside of flying and sprinting so it all comes down to aesthetics.
It is not all bad, Intrepid are adding a limited and modified version of the character customization just for your mounts and combat pets. That is a nice feature and hopefully one that completely outshines the garbage cosmetics. Adding special accessories through the youngling quests could be doable in this customizer and cool changes like color palettes and patterns could also be added.
STABLES IN THE UNDERREALM
Your stable is going to be the place you hangout most of the time while tending to your Animal Husbandry needs. However, an interesting interaction similar to the farming is that certain creatures may only be breedable within the underrealm. Meaning you will need to commit to either placing your freehold down in the underrealm, which means becoming a citizen of an underrealm node. Or making a trip down into the underground to breed these rare underdwelling creatures. This is something nice as these creatures are probably going to have abilities that assist you while you are down there, such as climbing or hovering. Which will be unique and cool to see in the overworld as creatures down in the dark have really elaborate aesthetics. Following the bright and dangerous flora that threaten them, chilling in the overworld and seeing a beautiful hovering underrealm looking insectoid mount pass you by, would make you stop immediately to get a better look.
00:00 Intro
01:02 What is Animal Husbandry?
02:33 How Taming affects Animal Husbandry
04:07 Breeding Mechanics
06:39 Mount Aesthetics
08:38 The Underrealm
09:52 Subscribe for a new Video Every 2 to 3 Days!