Breed Evaluations: an Illustrated Guide

[EclipticEnd]

I've been seeing some questions about breeding new breeds, so I've decided to make an illustrated guide to help answer some of them and clarify the process.

Breeds can be evaluated to match the game's breed standards via a score of zero to five stars. They are most often used as a guideline to create new breeds. This can be done via breed evaluation books which you can buy from the Book Store under the Market tab.

More difficult breeds may have a more expensive book. If I remember correctly, buying all of the books costs $1,000,000-$3,000,000. As such, I suggest that you only buy books that you're going to use often and avoid buying all of the books at once. If you intend to buy all of the books, I suggest doing so on a secondary account rather than your main one. It can be somewhat difficult to locate the single breed that you wish to evaluate out of the over 300 listed within the game if you have all of them at once.

All of the books have an infinite number of uses so you only need to buy one per breed. In other words, books are not single-use items and one can be used as many times as you want. You can sell them from your inventory whenever you wish should you decide to. They do take up inventory space, so keep that in mind before buying a ton of them.

To use an evaluation book you want to go to your chosen horse's page and click on the Eval tab. This will be located beneath the Breed Horse button and between the Gallery and Conformation tabs.

Clicking onto that tab will bring up an area for Breed Evaluations as well as an area for Competition Evaluations. At the current moment the game doesn't have Competition Evaluation books, so you're free to ignore that area. Within the Breed Evaluation box you will be able to select a breed to evaluate, assuming you own an evaluation book. You'll want to click on your desired breed, then click the blue Evaluate button.

On doing this, the boxes will be replaced with an evaluation table like so. Clicking the blue "Try Another Evaluation" button on the left of the table will take you back to the previous setup.

Evaluations are scored from zero to five stars. The higher the score, the better suited they are to the specified evaluation. In this case I'm checking my Dole Gudbrandsdal stallion's evaluation for Latvian Harness Horse, a breed which is made via crossing Doles and North Swedish Horses. As you can see, he has a five star evaluation, meaning he's within the breed standard for Latvians. This doesn't necessarily mean he's well suited to make them. You'll learn why later.

There are four criteria within an evaluation which impact the evaluation's score. These criteria are Height (how tall your horse is), Build (how heavy/light built the horse is, think of the difference between a riding horse and a heavy draft or pony), Body Size (the bulk of your horse), and Type (whether your horse leans towards a horse shape or a pony/draft shape).

If the horse is within the correct range for one criteria, your horse will score two stars. Each additional matching criteria is worth one star. If you horse matches none of the criteria, they will be given a zero score, or N/A / Not Applicable.

Evaluations are important in breeding new breeds. As a new player, you will have access to the Adoption Centre and the beginner breeds. As you gain money, you'll be able to buy new breeds from the market or buy recipe horses to make them yourself. Recipe horses are the horses used to make certain breeds.

Different breeds require mixes of different horses. Latvian Harness Horses, for instance, are made by crossing a Dole Gudbrandsdal with a North Swedish Horse. North Swedish Horses are made by crossing a Dole Gudbrandsdal with a Forest horse. Dole Gudbrandsdals are made by crossing an Arabian + Forest Horse mix and a Friesian + Thoroughbred mix. As you can see, there's a difference in recipes depending on your target breed. This is very important to remember and check when you've set your sights on a new breed.

All of the breeds in the game and their recipes can be found in the Breeds Wiki under the Help tab. Alternatively, you can view Silverine's Quest Breeding Guide (linked).

So... how does the evaluation help when breeding new horse breeds? Well, if your foal's evaluation does not match each of the given criteria, you will not succeed in making a new breed. If you successfully breed a foal of your target breed, it will most likely be a five star evaluation for the breed. To be more clear, if I crossed a Dole Gudbrandsdal and a North Swedish Horse and successfully bred a Latvian Harness Horse, that Latvian would likely have a five star evaluation for the Latvian breed.

A quick addition: I've been notified by BlackOak2 that the foal can also be three or fours stars, but three stars seems to be exceptionally rare and four stars seems to be rather uncommon. It's always worth evaluating your foals to check.

Breeding can be finnicky. Because of this, you're not guaranteed to get your target breed on your first try, nor your second, nor even your tenth. Even if you have two five star evaluating horses, you still might not get your target breed. This is where it's very important to pay attention to your evaluations and how the criteria change during breeding.

Let's start with a more in-depth look into Height. Height is fairly straight forward; two horses of the same height might have a foal of the same height, or perhaps a bit taller or shorter. If you have a 15hh horse and a 20hh horse, you will most likely get a horse between those heights or possibly taller. If you have a 15hh horse and a 9hh horse, you will again most likely get a horse between those heights, or perhaps shorter.

My example horse's height is 15.3hh, as shown. The Latvian's breed standard is between 15.2hh-16.2hh. This means my stallion is on the lower end of the breed standard and would benefit from being bred to a horse at the higher end of the breed standard in order to try to keep a balance within the given range. If I choose to pair him with a shorter mare (15hh or less), I run the risk of repeatedly having foals that're simply too short to be within the Latvian breed standard.

Height, as noted in the subtext of the criteria, is based on the horse's mature height. A horse reaches its mature height at five years of age. After that point the horse will stop growing and remain at that height until retirement. A relatively good guideline for estimating this would be the following: if a foal is born at a height measured in inches, the mature height will likely be below 14hh. If the foal's birth height is measured in hands, it will likely be 14hh or taller. You can also use evaluation books to estimate height; the Belgian book measures from around 16hh-21hh for instance, so you can use it to check if your foal will be exceptionally tall.

Next is build. Build decides the difference in weight between horse types. Build follows the following scale in order: Very Light, Light, Medium Light, Medium, Medium Heavy, Heavy, Very Heavy. As the subtext notes, this is based on the horse's Type and Body Size values. As such, it closely ties into them. Very Light horses tend to look more like racing builds, whereas Very Heavy horses are more to the shape of drafts and ponies.

My example horse's build is Light. The Latvian's breed standard runs from Light to Medium, so Light, Medium Light, and Medium builds. Again, he's on the lower end of the range here, and so he'd benefit well from being paired with a Medium or Medium Light mare. If I were to use a five star mare that happens to be a Light build, I run the risk of having a Very Light foal. That would mean that regardless of the other criteria, the foal would fail not not be a Latvian Harness Horse.

If you breed two Light horses, you have good odds on ending up with a Very Light foal. Likewise, if you mix two Heavy horses, you'll likely get a Very Heavy foal. If you were to mix a Light build and a Heavy build, you might end up with a Medium build. This is relatively easy to balance if you're paying attention to what you're breeding. You can use a Medium Light with a Very Light build to get Light, and likewise you can mix Medium Heavy with Very Heavy to get a Heavy build. These are not guarantees, but moreso guidelines. Sometimes mixing two Mediums will result in a Medium Light or Medium Heavy, and mixing a Medium with Medium Heavy might get either build.

Next is Body Size. Body Size judges the overall bulk of your horse. The higher your horse's Body Size, the more likely it is that your horse is also more Pony Type and/or a Medium-Very Heavy Build. The lower the Body Size, the higher the likelihood of a Very Light-Medium Build and a higher Horse Type. This is a guideline and not a rule, though. You can have a Medium Light, Pony Type horse with a very low Body Size, such as this one that's linked.

My stallion is at 26%, which is within the Latvian standard of 20% to 40%. I would do well to breed him with a mare that's between 20% to 50% Body Size. At that percentage range, the Build should linger within Latvian standards.

I must admit that I have yet to visually narrow down how Body Size impacts a horse's image. However, I can tell you that the behavior of this statistic can be somewhat stubborn and chaotic. It doesn't much like to stick to a percentage and instead tends to decide to either increase or decrease until it reaches a threshold where it likes to linger. For instance, this 26% stud was bred to a 34% mare and produced a 19% foal. It was crossed with a 37% and made a 21%, crossed with an 18% and made a 22%, and crossed with a 19% and made a 25%. In this way it's similar to the Build criteria; a lower percentage will wish to continue to go lower or hover in the lower quarter. A higher percentage will wish to go higher or linger in the higher quarter. A midrange will help balance either out towards 50%, and a midrange can be made via two extremes.

Last criteria: Type. Type dictates whether you have a horse or else a draft/pony. Following the criteria's subtext, this is the measure of leg length to body length. Ponies and drafts share the Pony Type, whereas horses have (surprise) the Horse Type. The higher the Horse Type, the more horse-y the horse looks. The Higher the Pony Type, the chunkier, more draft-y the horse looks. Type follows the following range: 100% Horse Type, 50% Horse Type, 50% Pony Type, 100% Pony Type. As you can see, it's a bit like a switch. On one end you have Horse Type and on the other you have Pony Type. The closer to Pony Type you go, the lower the percentage of Horse Type and vice versa. Think of it this way: at 80% Horse Type you have 20% Pony Type. At 60% Pony Type you have 40% Horse Type. At 50% you'll have either Horse or Pony Type depending on the hidden hundredth of a percent that leans whichever way.

My example horse is 77% Horse Type. The Latvian standard is 85% Horse Type to 50% Pony Type. This is the higher end of Horse Type; I don't want to breed anything higher or I'll risk going too high. Instead, it'd be better for me to use around a 50% to 60% Horse Type.

Type is a bit stubborn. It likes to stay on its side of the spectrum between Horse and Pony Type. If you have a high Horse Type, it'll try to stay there. If you have a high Pony type, you'll experience the same thing. You can get away with using a bit more of an extreme number to balance them out because Type likes to drag it's feet rather than rushing to change its value. And example would be this: if I breed two 60% Pony Types, I'll likely get between a 55% to 65% Pony Type foal. The changes might be much more extreme when using higher percentages, though, so I encourage you to try experimenting with this value.

Now with that out of the way...

I said earlier that even though my stallion is a five star evaluation for Latvian Harness Horse, he might not be well suited to make them. Sometimes this is the case; evaluations can cause extremes when they're in the five star score.

In the case of the Latvian Harness Horse evaluation:

Height: 15.2hh-16.2hh
Build: Light to Medium
Body Size: 20% to 40%
Type: 85% Horse Type to 50% Pony Type

The two extremes are listed. On the left we have the absolute minimum and on the right we have the absolute maximum. 15.2hh, Light, 20%, 85% Horse and 16.2hh, Medium, 40%, 50% Pony.

My stallion is on the lower end of the given ranges at 15.3hh, Light, 26%, 77% Horse. If he were bred to a horse that's at a more extreme minimum than himself (less than 15.3hh, Light, less than 26% Size, more than 77% Horse) then it's very likely that one of the criteria at the least will be too low, and therefore the resulting foals would not be Latvians even though both he and the imaginary mare were both five star evaluations.

The lesson here is to keep in mind your balances when breeding. Don't just consider your evaluation score; consider why your horse has that score and how you can mix and match to make it better. Sometimes you can take two low scoring horses and, if they balance out really well, they'll make your breed faster than two high scoring ones. The evaluation just lets you know that they're within the standard, not necessarily that they're a perfect fit in order to make your desired breed.

If you're having issues with a breed that you have good evaluations for, try double checking to see if there's a criteria statistic that's throwing things off balance; you can often evaluate one of your resulting foals and see what criteria isn't matching, which will give you a hint as to what you might have to improve to have a success.

I hope this guide was informative and not confusing! Here are some additional links to guides and information about breeding in this game for those who are looking for more information. This only covers how the Evaluation part works; there's also Breeding Reports, Conformation, and more to consider when not completing breed quests. If you have any specific links you think would be helpful that aren't already mentioned, let me know!

-Silverine's Quest Breeding Guide
-My Guide for Making New Breeds and Specialized Breeding
-BlackOak2's Pictorial Pregnancy - A Visual Gestation Timeline
-BlackOak2's Fulfillment of the Recipe Quests
-BlackOak2's Quicklinks; a shortcut to a lot of helpful breeding topics

[BlackOak2]

Great!
Very nicely put together with the main problem people face when trying to breed new breeds.

*scrunches over the keyboard and enters it into the quicklinks like a greedy gremlin*

I do have one thing to add though. The resulting new breed can be four star or even three star. We actually had a three-star born once. Although it is extremely rare. And uncommon for those four-stars to pop.

[EclipticEnd]

Great!
Very nicely put together with the main problem people face when trying to breed new breeds.

*scrunches over the keyboard and enters it into the quicklinks like a greedy gremlin*

I do have one thing to add though. The resulting new breed can be four star or even three star. We actually had a three-star born once. Although it is extremely rare. And uncommon for those four-stars to pop.

Good to know; I'll amend that in the post. I've only ever had 5 stars pop out so that's something I should keep an eye out for.