The contest only began on Monday but here are some screenshots of the tanks of a couple of our most valued members: Shadowfish and Ginny.
I found myself far more excited about this game when I reached Level 10 and unlocked the Elixir game, a sort of mini-game that gives players Elixirs in special colours as well as the Magic Elixirs tht produce a colour-change effect. Unfortunately, there is no Black or White Magic Elixir because I think that would be a dramatic flashing effect, but the Black and the White Elixirs are found only by playing the Elixir Game.
You have to use your own basic Elixirs to be able to play the game. Usually, you are required to 'bet' two of the Red or Green Elixirs but only one of the Blue or Yellow Elixirs to have a chance to obtain either a special Elixir or a rare Magic Elixir. The 'board' consists of three shelves with Elixirs in Bottles. The Magic Elixirs ordinarily occupy only the first two slots on the top shelf. The fairly uncommon colours are contained in white bottles and are White, Purple, Pink and Black occupy a random number of positions on the bottom shelf and sometimes one or two on the middle shelf. The rest of the slots are taken by colours that include Orange, Brown, Dark Green, Dark Blue and Lime. It is a pity that one cannot use these colours to make bets as it is more likely that one will 'win' one of these than one of the Elixirs in the white bottles or a rare Magic Elixir.
The primary basic Elixirs are Red, Green, Yellow and Blue. Fish that are sold in the Market sometimes will be sold in primary colours, but often the varieties that are bought with Premium Cash in the form of Seastars will be rare colours, either in combinations or as solids. The primary purpose of the game really is to breed different colours of fish.
Our Group, named Harvest Moon after one of my favourite series of games, runs contests periodically to encourage players to try different colour combinations. Contests promote visits to neighbours and group members to see what they have accomplished as well as promoting conversations between group members. Finally, it is fun to see how creative other players can be in decorating a tank for a contest or the types of fish they choose to include in that tank.
As previously indicated, we currently are using a black and white theme for our contest. It is a challenging and difficult theme in a way because the Black and White Elixirs are rare and beyond that, it often is difficult to superimpose black or white on a fish of a different colour. Even in cases where you can purchase a white or black fish, it can be difficult to create a combination of black and white.
How does one accomplish this? Well, you can breed a solid black fish with a solid white fish and hope to obtain an egg that is both black and white. More often, however, a player will use a Black or White Elixir to add one of those colours to a breeding combination. Some solid colours are more tenacious than others, I have found and particularly where certain species are concerned. You can buy both a solid white and a solid black Goldfish in the Market for example, but when more often than not, I would obtain a solid black or white Goldfish egg by breeding the two. Even when I added a Black or White Elixir to the breeding pair, I did not receive a result that combined black with white.
One of our group members discovered one of the secrets of the game early. Shadow declared that it is far easier to obtain a new colour combination using the offspring of the original purchased fish than it is to obtain a new result from the fish you bought in the Market. In other words, if one purchases both the Black Goldfish and the White Goldfish and breeds them together, the most likely result witll be a solid White or a solid Black Goldfish. The next time round, though, do not breed the two original fish. Instead, use the offspring once the fish reaches breeding age or adulthood. You are more likely to receive a mixed colour combination from a fish that has parents of BOTH colours than if you use the original solid fish. This is even more likely with the next generation.
If you want fish that are identical to the parent fish, use the original fish purchased in the Market but when breeding for new combinations, always try to use the offspring. The further down the family tree you go, the more likely you are to obtain an interesting new result.
The interesting discovery I made, though, was that I had wasted my Black and White Elixirs basically on inexpensive, fast-breeding fish like the Goldfish and the Bettas. I had as much chance of obtaining a mix of black and white when I simply bred a black fish with a white fish as I did when I added a Black and White Elixir. I daresay this is not true in terms of actual probabilities but the advantage of using an Elixir in such a case is not worth the price. If, however, you are adding a NEW colour, then you do need an Elixir. But in terms of two fish that are solid and have the colours you want, breeding an egg that has both colours does not appear to be more successful an effort when you use a White or Black Elixir.
Your White or Black Elixirs, therefore, should be used initially to ADD Black or White to a breeding effort where the two parent fish do not have those colours. If the Elixir you use is a Magic Elixir, the result will be an egg that is the colour of the Elixir. The two colours of the parent fish will not be displayed, but the fish with the colour change will still have the genes of the parents and those colours are not lost. When you breed the Magic colour-change fish with another fish, one of the original parent colours may reappear as a partial result. The Magic Elixirs are dominant, however, and it is more likely that even in breeding it in the next generation, the result will be another colour-change Fish. To me, that is the best possible result. It is difficult to obtain the Magic Elixirs and if they did not carry through to the next generation at all, it would be quite sad!
What is really beautiful to me is the result where an egg has partial colour-change but has one or more other colours as well. I have seen something else with respect to the Yellow Magic Elixir. Often, you will see one of the colours of the parent fish flashing inside the Yellow Magic colour, or on the borders of the fish. It is quite a lovely effect. I initially was not that fond of the Yellow Magic, finding the Blue and Purple more beautiful. Now, however, if I breed a fish that has more than a couple different colour spots on it, Yellow Magic can produce some fabulous results.
You see, every type of fish has a set number of places on its body that can display different colours. Usually the maximum number of colours any fish can display is five and they always are in the same locations on that fish. Even when the fish is a solid colour, those colour locations still are active and may produce a different colour in the next generation.
For example, the Goldfish can have different colours in the following location: top fin, lower fin pair, upper body, lower body, tail. The Black Goldfish that you buy int he market may be solidly black but if bred with a goldfish of another colour may produce a result that shows the other colour in one of those locations. Goldfish are fun to breed because they breed quickly and because the colour combinations are almost endless.
Fish Adventure Seasons has a list of Goals that sometimes can give valuable rewards. One of the Goals usually is to breed a specific number of fish (unspecified types) and another is to sell a specific number of fish. Breeding and selling Goldfish can be the quickest way to achieve these Goals, although they do not have a high XP value, so your level will not increase as quickly if you only breed Goldfish as it will when you breed more valuable fish.
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