In order to truly understand how the breeding process works, you first have to understand what each Axie consists of. Just like humans, Axies also have dominant and recessive genes. One key difference is that Axies do not have a gender. There are no males or females, no moms or dads. Any axie can be either the mom or the dad, they don’t discriminate!
Topics Covered In This Article:
- The genes of an Axie
- An example of an Axie’s genes
- A breeding example
- Axie classes in breeding
- How are the colors and patterns determined?
- Types of body patterns
- How much does it cost to breed?
- The different stages of a new Axie
- Origins & MEOs are exceptions
- Breeding a specific combo
- Viewing recessive genes on the Axie website
- Tools & resources for breeding
The genes of an Axie
Every Axie has 6 parts (Eyes, Ears, Mouth, Horn, Back, Tail) and each of these parts has 3 sets of genes (Dominant, Recessive 1, and Recessive 2)
- Dominant (D) – The dominant trait is the strongest and has the greatest chance to be passed to children. This is the trait you see on each axie and it represents the cards that you get to play.
- Recessive 1 (R1) – This is the second strongest gene
- Recessive 2 (R2) – This is the weakest gene and has the least chance to get passed to children.
This is going to be confusing at first but luckily there are tools to make this easier!
An example of an Axie’s genes
When looking at Axies in the marketplace and your inventory, you will see the 6 body parts. These are their dominant genes.
Lets look at Axie #142137 – We will call her Tina.
If you plug the Axie ID into one of the tools available you can see all the genes that make up this Axie. If you use the Breeding Calculator and enter only 1 axie into either the Dad or Mom box you can the see the genes of that Axie: https://freakitties.github.io/axie/calc.html
Note: even though the calculator references them as Mom and Dad…it makes not difference when you breed, you get the same results.
In the example above we can see that this Axie has Bookworm for the dominant eyes, Papi for the R1, and Lucas for the R2.
If we look at it’s back genes we can see Red Ear is the Dominant gene AND the Recessive 1. This means that if you use this Axie to breed, it had an even greater chance to pass on Red Ear than if it was only Dominant. Still confused? Lets jump into the numbers
How much does each gene contribute when breeding?
A dominant gene has a 37.5% chance of being passed on.An R1 gene has a 9.375% chance of being passed on.An R2 gene has a 3.125% chance of being passed on.
If you add up each of these numbers: 37.5 + 9.375 + 3.125 = 50%
Where does the other 50% come from? The other parent. You put two Axies together and that gives you all of the possibilities for the child Axie
A breeding example
Let’s stick with our Axie example above. What if we want to breed it with another Axie? Let’s look into Axie #144418…we will call him Bob – Here are Bob’s genes:
If we look at the back genes again we can see that Bidens is the Dominant gene (D), Goldfish is R1, and Anemone is R2. Now we just put these numbers together with our Mom Tina:
Axie #142137 (Tina)
- D – Red Ear 37.5%
- R1 – Red Ear 9.375%
- R2 – Pumpkin 3.125%
Axie #144418 (Bob)
- D – Bidens 37.5 %
- R1 – Goldfish 9.375%
- R2 – 3.125%
So if we were to breed Tina and Bob together, the child would have these odds at getting their back body part:
- Red Ear – 46.875% (37.5 + 9.375)
- Bidens – 37.5%
- Goldfish – 9.375%
- Anemone – 3.125%
- Pumpkin – 3.125%
You can use the handy calculator to see these odds with a simple click:
Here is the link to calculator of these two Axies if you want to play with the numbers yourself: https://freakitties.github.io/axie/calc.html?sireId=144418&matronId=142137
Once the child is morphed each body part will randomly be assigned one of parts based on the percentages determined by the genes. For example, the eyes might be randomly be given Bookworm…this will be the dominant gene and will be the eyes that you see. Then it will be randomly given another eyes gene to be R1, then again for R2. This will continue for each of the 6 body parts on an Axie.
So if you want to breed a tank with high defensive parts, you want to try to ensure you are breeding two Axies with a high % of tank parts. You can see how having strong genes can make a big difference.
Axie classes in breeding
When two Axies are bred together, the baby will inherit one of the classes of the parents.
If you breed an aqua & a plant together there’s a 50% chance the baby will be an aqua and a 50% chance it will be a plant.
If you breed two axies of the same class together, then there’s 100% chance that the baby will be that class.
Breed a reptile with a reptile and you’re guaranteed to get a reptile. It’s as easy as that!
How are the colors and pattern of the Axie determined?
The color of an Axie and the body type are very similar, each Axie has a set of genes that help determine what color and body shape their children will get. You can also see these traits at the bottom of the calculator:
The genes carry the same weight as body parts. 37.5% for D, 9.375% for R1, and 3.125% for R2
Types of body patterns
There are many different patterns that an Axie can have. Many have the same shape but different designs on the side of their body. Some examples:
Normal Body Patterns
You can see that each Axie has a unique color and a different design on the side of their body. If you put one of their IDs into the calculator you can see their recessive colors and patterns as well
Next, there are Axies that have the same size as normal patterns but they are hairier and fluffier:
Lastly, are”special” body patterns that usually make them a little more valuable. These are “Wet Dogs”, “Sumos”, and “Big Yaks”:
These 3 special body types can be be bred by passing the genes from the parents. There is also special “recipes” that can be used to breed these:
How much does it cost to breed?
Each Axie has an SLP cost that is determined by the number of breeds it has used already. Every Axie can breed 7 times in its life, and each breed gets more expensive.
Here is the love potion cost based on the breed count of an Axie:
- 0/7 – 100 SLP
- 1/7 – 200 SLP
- 2/7 – 300 SLP
- 3/7 – 500 SLP
- 4/7 – 800 SLP
- 5/7 – 1,300 SLP
- 6/7 – 2,100 SLP
- 7/7 – Can’t Breed (Sterile)
An example:
Tina has a breed count of 2/7 (300 SLP) + Bob has a breed count of 1/7 (200 SLP) = 500 SLP to breed them together and produce 1 Axie child.
After this breed it would cost 800 SLP for the next breed, since Tina now had a breed count of 3/7 (500 SLP) and Bob has a breed count of 2/7 (300 SLP)
The different stages of a new Axie
Eggs
New Axie babies start out as an Egg. They remain in this stage for 24 hours.
At this point in the Axie’s life you have no idea what genes they will inherit, you can only watch them float in their incubator. The color of the egg has nothing to do with what class it will become. The egg color is based off the parents:
Larva
After the first 24 hours the egg will automatically turn into a larva. You still are not able to determine what genes it will inherit or what class it will be but you can watch it jump around every so often!
The axies are in the larva state for 48 hours.
Petites
Finally, after 3 days you get to see what your new Axie becomes! At this point you have to manually morph your Axie into a petite. Up in the top right of the Axie page will be a Morph to Petite option once it’s ready
You have to pay a small fee plus the ETH gas transaction fee to morph it. Once the transaction has completed (give the website a few minutes to update after the TX goes through) you will be able to see the class and the traits!
Your petite will stay in this final stage for 48 more hours then it’s finally ready to become an Adult. After the 48 hours you need to pay 1 more small fee to morph the petite into an adult. You access it from the same page:
At any point during the Egg to Adult stages you can check the times left. From the Axie page there is a timeline that shows each stage. If you mouse over it you can see the times which are local to your computer.
Origins & MEOs are exceptions
There’s a couple types of Axies that do not have a breeding cost associated with them. These are Origins and MEOs. If you are new to Axie, I wouldn’t recommend purchasing these until you are more familiar with everything.
Regardless of their breed count, every Origin and MEO Axie costs 0 SLP per breed.
Origins
Origin Axies were the original Axies sold during the pre- sale. These are the Axies that were used to breed all of the axies that exist today. The only way to acquire an Origin is to buy it from another player on the marketplace
MEO
MEO Axies were sold some time after the pre-sale and they were a way for the team to introduce new parts and classes to the Axie ecosystem. The first set of MEOs are known as MEO I and later on another set was sold that is known as MEO II.
Breeding a specific combo
As you get more Axies it becomes harder to remember which genes you have available in your inventory. Thankfully, Freak has created a fantastic tool that can help you breed a specific combination.
Go to https://freakitties.github.io/axie/jeans.html and let it load your list of Axies. Then you can search for specific combinations you might want to breed.
Let’s say we want to breed the infamous Ronin + Rimp (RIMP) combo. Click Part Breeding, and load those two parts then click Find pairs.
The tool will go through all of the genes in your account and give you the two Axies with the highest % for those parts.
Note: You can add more than two parts. The only restriction is that you can only add 1 part per body part.
In our example, if I was to breed the top pair, I would have a 76% chance for the baby to get BOTH Ronin & Imp.
You can also see the number of breeds used by each Axie. Disregard the numbers next to the breed count. Thats from the old battle and breeding system.
If you have any Axies that have too many breeds or that you simply don’t want to use to breed you can click the eye symbol and they will be ignored.
The last tip with this tool is that you can click the % on the left hand side and it will automatically open the breeding calculator for you so that you can see all of the odds.
Viewing recessive genes on the Axie website
While you’re browsing the marketplace (or your inventory of Axies) it can be very helpful to see the recessive genes of any Axie. Of course, Freak saves the day again.
He created a Chrome (works in Brave too) extension that allows you to see them. Along with other stats at a glance, such breeds, HP, speed, etc.
Download the extension here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/freaks-axie-extension/copjnifcecdedocejpaapepagaodgpbh?hl=en
Once you install the plugin you will immediately (reload the site if its not showing) see new information from the Marketplace screen
Here’s what each of the new metrics mean:
- Eggplant emoji – Number ofbBreeds used
- H – HP (Health)
- S – Speed
- M – Morale
- P – Purity (The % of the genes that are the same class as the Axie)
If you mouse over the stat bar you can see all of the genes:
You can also see all of the recessive genes on an individual Axie’s page by mousing over the word Stats
Tools & Resources for Breeding
Freak’s Breeding Calculator – https://freakitties.github.io/axie/calc.html
This calculator is used to show the gene % if two parents are bred together.
Freak’s Jeans Tool – https://freakitties.github.io/axie/jeans.html
This will load every Axie in your account and show the genes associated with them. You can also use this to find your best pairs for a specific breeding combo.
Freak’s Chrome Extension – https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/freaks-axie-extension/copjnifcecdedocejpaapepagaodgpbh?hl=en
Used to view recessive genes on the Axie website.
Freak’s Purity Calculator – https://freakitties.github.io/axie/breedAssist.html
Use this tool to determine which Axies are the best to breed high purity class Axies
