Breeding Guide

You can breed all of the new magical horses just like normal horses, and they can interbreed freely to make magical horses that have traits from both of their parents. For instance, you can create an alicorn (a pegasus with a unicorn horn) by breeding a pegasus and a unicorn. Traits are represented by DNA. Some traits are dominant over other traits (making other recessive).

Breeding magical horses works just like breeding normal horses, except the magical horses in the Ultimate Unicorn mod actually pass on their traits with simulated DNA. Each horse possesses 2 genes for each important attribute. Important attributes are listed below, preceded by a letter that represents them.

• U = Unicorn Horn
• A = Aura
• Wings (B = big wings and T = tiny wings)
• F = Flaming Hooves
• D = The Destrier Body Type, which is overly large
• Hide (skin) type (u = Unicorn, p = Pegasus, n = Nightmare, d = Destrier)

Some genes are dominant over others, meaning that if two different types of gene are present, the magical horse expresses the dominant one. In other words, if a horse has a dominant gene, you can see the gene's trait on the horse's body. Genes that are not dominant are called recessive. If a horse has one recessive gene and one dominant one, the recessive one doesn't show up on the magical horse, but can still be passed on to its children. Only if a horse has two of the same recessive gene does that gene get expressed (show up on the horse's body).

For simple genes, like the Horn gene with 2 possible values, the "on" value is dominant ("H" in this case, for "Horn"), and the "off" (or "No horn") value is recessive ("off" is always represented by 0). If your horse has one or two H genes, he will have a horn. If he has only one H gene, it's possible he could have a baby with no horn, depending on the genes of the mom, because the baby could be unlucky and get no H genes from either parent.

DNA Format

DNA is formatted as follows, going from right to left:

Positions 1 and 2: Horn. Values 0 or H.

Positions 3 and 4: Wings. Values 0, T, or B.
Positions 5 and 6: Aura. Values 0 or A.
Positions 7 and 8: Destrier Body. Values 0 or D.
Positions 9 and 10: Flaming Hooves. Values 0 or F.
Positions 11 and 12: Hide/Skin genes. Values u, p, n, d, h, etc.

(And some new genes, since the introduction of the Hippocamp and Kirin)

Positions 13 and 14: Water Breathing genes. Values 0 or G.

Positions 15 and 16: Hippocamp Fish Tail genes. Values 0 or F.

Positions 17 and 18: Long Tail genes. Values 0 or T.

Positions 19 and 20: Antler genes. Values 0 or N.
Positions 21 and 22: Alternate Body Type. Values 0 or O (or a variety of other characters if you use cheat codes) - right now everything not 0 makes the Kirin body type.
Positions 23 and 24: Magic Powers. Values - 0 or O (or a variety of other characters if you use cheat codes) - right now everything not 0 makes Kirin powers (walk on water, breathe fire).

A typical DNA string for a unicorn: 000000000000 uu0000AA00HH. A typical unicorn has unicorn hide, an aura, and a horn.

A typical DNA string for a pegasus: 000000000000 pp000000BB00. A typical pegasus has pegasus hide and big wings.

A typical DNA string for a hippocamp:  00000000FFGG hh0000AA0000. A typical hippocamp has water breathing ability, a fish tail, hippocamp hide and an aura.

A typical DNA string for a kirin: OOOONNTT0000 kk0000000000. A typical kirin has magic powers, the kirin alternate body type, antlers, a long tail, and kirin hide.

Using the DNA Tester

To use the DNA Tester, simply equip it as a weapon and hit a magical horse with it. The title of the DNA Tester will change, showing you the DNA of the horse you hit. You can see it easily by hovering your mouse over the DNA Tester in your inventory.

DNA Tester results for a hippocamp

How DNA Combines from Parents to Make a Baby Magical Horse

When you breed two horse together, their DNA mixes to make the baby's DNA. Each parent has 2 of every kind of gene (2 for unicorn horn, 2 for flaming hooves, etc.), and gives one at random to the baby. Since the baby gets one gene from each parent, the baby ends up with two. There's luck involved here, so you might need multiple tries to get the kind of baby you want.

A typical DNA string for a baby of a unicorn and a pegasus looks like this: up0000A00B0H. The pegasus hide is dominant over the unicorn hide, so the baby will have pegasus hide. It also has one Aura gene, one Big Wing gene, and one Horn gene. Since these are all dominant over 0s (0 indicates "doesn't have trait" remember), the baby will have an aura, big wings and a unicorn horn! That baby has a chance to pass on those 0s (as well as the good genes) to its children, though.

Breeding Techniques

I usually try to fence in the horses I want to keep breeding, and sometimes just kill off the ones who don't have good enough genes. If you can get a horse with two copies of any one gene, it makes a good parent. Magical horses recharge their mating ability in half the time of regular horses, so you don't have to wait as long!

Don't get too many horses crowded together. They are hard to manage that way, they tend to kick each other (which can lead to some flying out of their pen or dying), and you can accidentally mate the wrong ones.

Nightmares are a challenge to breed. Gentling Horseshoes help a lot! Also, Nightmares will calm their flaming hooves when they are in love, so you can still mate them without too much trouble if you are careful. Other options are to stick them in a pool of water, or make sure it's raining when you deal with them. These last two are especially helpful, because babies can inherit the flaming hooves and start things on fire, too (including a non-nightmare parent).

Keep trying! Persistence is key to getting a horse with all the traits you want! There are some secrets hidden in the gene pool, including weird mutations, that can happen while breeding your horses, so keep a keen eye out, and try to get different combinations of DNA!

Ultimate Unicorn Mutant Breeds!

If you are an expert breeder, you can breed one of mutant breeds, which are called Ultimate Unicorns.  See this post to find out how.

Cheating

If breeding horses properly is too slow for you, or you are having a hard time getting the kind of magical horse you want, cheating is always an option.  Check out the Cheats page for more info.

Back to Overview