Guide: Pet care: Lifecycle

There are many species of pets available in the world of Dopcom, but every species has a lifecycle that is the same in the broad strokes. Every pet needs a room to live in. Newly-created accounts start with two pet rooms, and additional rooms can be constructed using Astral Bricks and Essence of Heart, although the cost of building additional rooms scales based on the number of rooms already built.

Eggs

Once an egg is incubated, it will take a few days to hatch. (However, this can be shortened to one day by placing an Egg Timer in the room.) The pet cannot be interacted with in any way during this time. Some types of eggs may have multiple forms that they can hatch into, although most eggs have only one possible form. Once the egg has hatched, the resulting pet will grow through several stages before being full-grown.

Power and affinity

Every pet has a power cap, which determines how much affinity to the various aspects the pet can gain. This cap increases a little bit every time a pet grows to a new form, but the main way to increase power cap is by feeding the pet every day. Higher-quality food will increase the pet's power cap more. The power cap is equal to the sum of all the pet's affinities, plus the amount of unused (available) power the pet has left over.

The main way to increase your pet's affinity is to equip your pet with charms. Charms can be crafted from various materials and are permanently attached to the pet once equipped. Most charms will give a fixed amount of affinity to the pet every day. Many foods also boost specific affinities, and there are various hidden factors that can slightly increase affinity to certain aspects.

There is a meter on the pet's page showing a rough estimate of what aspects the pet is aligned to. If you hover your mouse over the meter, you can see additional information. Blank space in the affinity meter represents unused power that is ready to be filled with affinity, and colorful "static" represents quantities of affinity to multiple aspects that are too small to display on the meter individually. Note that the meter does not show the pet's power cap, just the affinities, so if a pet's power cap increases the affinity will appear to shrink. But this is a good thing, because it means that the pet has room to gain more affinity!

Growth

Each species of pet has a set growth threshold that is necessary to reach the next stage, and a set amount of growth that it will gain each day. This means that some species will grow faster than others. This also means that food will have more of an effect on the growth of some pets than others: a pet with a high growth requirement and a high daily growth may take the same amount of time to mature as a pet with a low growth requirement and a low daily growth when both are fed low-quality food, but the additional growth given by higher quality food will be more noticeable for the pet with low growth requirements and low daily growth.

The number of stages that a pet needs to attain before being full-grown varies by species, and can even vary within a species; for example, all Green Egg creatures will go through a hatchling stage and a second stage, but one of the options for the second stage then has a third stage to grow into. Each species of pet has a daily growth rate that determines how many days it will spend in each form. Additionally, the quality of food that a pet eats will affect its growth, with higher-quality food usually making it grow faster.

Whenever a pet grows to a new stage, there is usually a choice of multiple forms to grow into. These forms are determined by a wide variety of factors. Some forms are obtained purely at random, some forms require a pet to have affinity to one or more specific aspects, and some forms may have other requirements based on the pet's total power or other criteria. Each time the pet grows to a new form, it will produce an amount of prima materia proportional to its total power, and it may produce other items as well, dependent on the form.

Fully-grown pets

Once a pet has attained its final form, it will still need to grow for a little longer before it is ready to release into the wild. Full-grown pets cannot increase their power cap any further, but you don't have to release them immediately. Instead, you can continue giving them affinities until their total affinity reaches their power cap, or you can keep them around for items they may produce from grooming or socialization. Because a pet's total power cannot increase once the pet is fully grown, you may sometimes want to use foods that give a pet less growth, in order to have more time to develop the pet's total power.

Fully-grown pets can be released into the wild in order to receive a large amount of essence. You will receive Prima Materia proportional to the pet's total power, and you will receive essence of each aspect proportional to the pet's affinity to that aspect. Aspects that the pet's form is aligned with will have a higher scaling factor, so you will receive proportionally more of those essences.

Your Scrapbook lets you view all of the pets that you have released in their respective natural habitats. The scrapbook also tracks completion of each species, so that you can see how many forms you have found. Some sort of reward for raising and releasing every form of a species is planned in the future, although it has not been added to the site yet.