May 22, 2017 January 18, 2019
Introducing the Pet Talent Calculator
Welcome to the Pet Talent Calculator! Thanks to our very own Termagant who worked hard behind the scenes with the folks from Project O we can now use this amazing feature to help calculate pet talents, both main and derby.
A little history…
When the advanced pet system came to Wizard101 in 2010, pet talents and stats seemed mysterious and random but, through training and hatching, some patterns and rules started emerging:
- Pets have 10 potential talents, and 10 potential derby abilities. One of each is unlocked at each level of development, up to 5 of each at mega.
- All first generation (dropped or bought) pets’ potential talents and abilities are the same for a given species.
- All hatched pets’ potential talents and abilities are inherited from their parents’ pools.
- Talents and abilities have a specific display order on every pet, and an assigned rarity. For example Spell-Proof is always an epic talent, and will always appear above Spell Defy and below Pain Giver, regardless of pet species, and any other talents which may be above, below, or in between those.
Armed with these simple rules, players set out to create a list of all the talents in the game, and their order. This was called the “Talent / Derby Ability Order Project“, aka “Project O”.
Using test hatching and records from hatches of pets with known pools, a master list has been created and maintained. It is not complete, but largely accurate, and constantly revised as fresh pets and new talents appear. Each talent is scored with a position or range of positions, which enables the relationship of an unknown slot to be compared to known talents.
Why do this?
Firstly, the immediate benefit is being able to tell if a desired talent passed in a hatch. Suppose you wanted a pet with Proof, Defy, Fairy, Ice and Balance Wards. You have a base pet that has Proof, Defy, and Fairy right in a row. Then, you hatch with a friend who has wards galore. You get an egg with lots of lovely ultra-rare slots. But are they the wards you’re looking for? You see your familiar pattern of Epic, Rare, Uncommon – Proof, Defy, Fairy, right in the middle where it was on your parent. Should you train to adult? Epic? Or trash it and hatch again?
Prior to talent order, you’d have no way of knowing. Now you do! As it turns out, your newly hatched pet is a bust. Since Balance and Ice wards always appear between Proof and Defy, the ultra rare slots on your pet must be something else. Knowing this before you train saves time and snacks. This is just one example of course.
Understanding talent order lets you create custom pools such as all-good; aka “clean”, or pets with only boosts for your specific school. This can greatly reduce the pain of “fails”. You can often avoid training bad hatches, and can usually train pets you are developing only to adult until you know that ALL your desired talents have been acquired.
How does our pet talent calculator work?
Firstly, simply fill in as much information about your pet as you can. Fill in the talent numbers right after hatching to help determine which talents might have transferred from the parents. Values are:
- 0 (Common)
- 1 (Uncommon)
- 2 (Rare)
- 3 (Ultra-Rare)
- 4 (Epic)
- or ‘-‘ for Any / All.
As you train up your pet and more talents manifest, the other un-manifested talents become more determined.
Additionally, you can save different pets to the Pet stable (you must be signed in to get your own private stable). If you hatch with someone and wish to share your pet’s data with them, just tell them your pet’s ID so they can make a copy of your pet in their stable. The database is currently using version 5.5 of the Project O order lists which may possibly change in the future.
To switch between derby and talents, just click on this button and the interface will switch.
After that it’s pretty standard. You need to select the ‘Breed’, enter the name and any notes you’d like to add. Then start inputting any data you know about the pet and hit ‘Save’. In addition, next to the calculator you will find a reference table containing all the talents available in game, which can be sorted by rarity. Needless to say, the same goes for derby talents.
Feel free to post any questions you have about the calculator in the comment section below the calculator.
