For breeding, there are 2 separate rolls,

• Inheritance Roll - chance of inheriting traits from parents
  
• Mutation Roll - chance of getting new traits

The way it works is, inheritance roll is done first, and then mutation rolls, provided there's available trait slots left.


If both parents have >4 unique skills combined, the game will pick 1-4 inherited skills out of all possible combinations equally. For example, if you have 6 total unique skills, the probability of getting the 4 skills that you want is 1/15.

This means getting rid of bad traits is way harder than getting new traits that you want and it's better to keep the pool traits small.

The common misconception is that 2+2 have a higher chance than 3+1, 4+0, 4+4, or any other combinations. This is simply not true.


If there are already 4 inherited traits, this roll is skipped. Essentially, this means the chance of no mutation happening is 40%.

Some traits are only inherited and can't be mutated. Here are the list,

• Lucky
  
• Legend
  
• Ice/Earth/Celestial/Spirit Emperor
  
• Lord of the Sea/Lightning/Underworld
  
• Divine Dragon

Inidividual Value (or IV), is a hidden stat in the game that adds random variation to the base stats of a pal. There are 3 types,

• HP
  
• Attack
  
• Defense

The game store this value from a value of between 0 - 100, with 0 being a 0% stat boost, and 100 being a 30% stat boost. This value affects the stat your pal have since level 1, and the stat they gain per level, making it quite significant at max level.

It's inheritable with the following probability

This means the odds of

• inheriting all three IVs from either parent is (60%)³ = 21.6%.
  
• inheriting all three IVs from 1 parent is 2.7%

From my observation, the value of the mutation is completely random and not based on any of the parents' IVs.

Currently, IV values are not available directly in the game.

You can use an IV calculator, like https://www.palpedia.net/builder.

Alternatively, use mods like Pal IVs[www.nexusmods.com].

I've bred a few perfect pals and this is what I usually do,

1. Get a pair of pals with all 4 perfect traits combined. The number of traits doesn't really matter as long as they both combined have the traits. This means it can be a 2+2, 3+1, or 4+1. More traits means more flexibility later on.
   
2. Start IV breeding. The goal here is to find a child that ONLY has good traits with a better IV that can replace their parents. This is where having a 4+4 starting pair can be beneficial.
   
   Suppose you start with a pair of Male that has ABCD traits and Female with AB traits 50 attack IV. If you get a M child with 100 attack IV but only trait A. Now, you can't use that child with the original Female, since it will let you get trait AB but not CD. Whereas, if both parents have ABCD traits at the start, you can use any child with any good traits as long as it has better IV and no bad traits, thus offering you more flexibility.
   
3. Keep repeating this process, slowly replacing each gen with parents that have better IV and/or more traits.

For all work suitability, higher level = better. However this is not the case with transport. Higher level transport just means that the pal can take more items from a stack.

Drops from nodes/trees are considered 1 item each stack, so high level transport doesn't do anything. Each section below outlines the different consideration in choosing the correct transport pal.


Each pal has a different transport speed, and movement speed =/= transport speed.

You can look in https://www.palpedia.net/ the value for each pal. Flying transport pal also seem to get stuck more often so here's my personal recommendation,

A pal only needs to touch the source/destination item to pickup/drop the item.

This means, pal with bigger hitbox like Wumpo can be beneficial if the distance from source/destination is short enough that it's covered by its big hitbox.

Here are a few presets I used in my games that I think are optimal. As this guide are aimed more towards mid/end-game, with the assumption that better foods like Salad / Pizza is used, I consider Sanity (SAN) related traits to be useless.

Work speed only affects breeding animation, so I aim for hunger and move speed traits to keep as much ranch uptime as possible.

• Diet Lover -15% Hunger
  
• Dainty Eater -10% Hunger
  
• Swift +30% Movement Speed
  
• Runner +20% Movement Speed

• Artisan +50% Work Speed
  
• Work Slave +30% Work Speed, -30% Attack
  
• Serious +20% Work Speed
  
• Lucky +15% Work Speed, +15% Attack
  
• Conceited +10% Work Speed, -10% Defense (take Conceited, only if lucky is not available or hard to get (e.g Frostallion, J. Ignis))

Currently, work speed only affects Digtoise since it uses his skill to mine instead of attack.

I believe this to be bugged, so I still go with the worker setup regardless, otherwise, I would go with the farm setup.

• Swift +30% Movement Speed
  
• Runner +20% Movement Speed
  
• Legend +20% Attack, +20% Defense, +15% Movement Speed
  
• Nimble +10% Movement Speed

While work speed itself is not useful for transporting, it scales from food and/or pal souls, making this the best bang for your buck.

• Artisan +50% Work Speed
  
• Work Slave +30% Work Speed, -30% Attack
  
• Swift +30% Movement Speed
  
• Runner +20% Movement Speed

• /u/mgxts for Passive skill inheritance mechanics in breeding explored
  
• /u/Strill for Definitive Datamined guide to Breeding for both IVs and Passives
  
• Valerix for A Guide to Passive Skills

1.0.0 - 13 February 2024 - Initial Draft