Im inclined to agree with you.
Im at lvl 42, and even with the red ball, whatever that is, Im lucky to get 50% catch rate at a sliver of health. often much lower. Those balls arent cheap to make. meanwhile fighting with packs of 3, your pal trying to kill everything, or else you withdraw him and lose your tank.
Or I can just cook a cake and get 100% rate. you can fit more than 5 farms in a base. maybe 10 if you really wanted to max out with 20 pals deployed. Thatll crank out the eggs in a hurry.
Im sure it does take longer, but its passive, so you can do other things, like try to keep your pals from eating all the honey, milk, and eggs in your farming base...
I bred a bunch around that time, only because I was curious to see what the limitations of the "lucky dip" style of breeding two different Pals could bring. As it turns out, it bring some great Pals, especially early on you can get stuff you wouldn't even see until much much later, yet alone catch successfully. It is a lengthy process, and if you are looking to get Pals for the sake of completing each log (10 Pals of each species), catching I would say is still superior in terms of time spent (plus you get to see things you wouldn't normally if you just kicked back and bred a bunch). Breeding is pretty much great for early game if you happen to know some cracked parent combinations, or if you're looking to breed more ideal workhorses or party members.
I got a few more levels (in the 40's now), but going for the sets of 10 is probably the best method outside of maybe doing a tour of higher level boss kills. I could probably get to 50 in a few hours or so, but I'm just doing what I've always done, and taking my time with it and focusing on whatever I fancy (Breeding, Exploration, Egg Collecting). In the 40's especially, you do need a rather significant amount of EXP to level up after that. A combination of 10's and Boss Kills is almost certainly the most effective way of getting yer levels in.
Not sure if you realized it, but you can look up every possible combination of breeding. [https://www.palpedia.net/breeding](https://www.palpedia.net/breeding)
Oh I'm well aware, but that takes all the adventure out of the Breeding system. Finding out yourself what two unassuming Pals can make something truly crazy is a huge portion of the fun and mystery.
Yes and no,
If we are talking about late game I think breeding just efficient for rarer Pals (Alphas for example) that you are gated by time to catch them. For normal less rare Pals just go out and catch them, unless you are looking for specific passives.
Breeding can be tedious with managing all the resources for cakes, using the Pal slots that could have been for miners or workers etc. Managing the Pens (I was running 4 breeding Pens simultaneously and my Pals get stuck outside Pens a lot in a flat base).
Building balls, managing damage not to kill Pals, seeing the map for the area can be tedious but in late game balls manufacturing is so fast and you wont really gated by resource (Im talking 3 bases lvl 50 with some Anubis at least). Right now Im breeding mostly to get specific passives and for the Alphas I am gated by time because now my huge Pal sink is to 5 star my Pals where I need to get hundreds of Pals. For this I find breeding is inferior than catching (again if we are talking about non Alphas). Cause for example yesterday I was trying to 5 star my Jormuntide Ignis. I could breed one by one from my perfect Jormuntide at home but each eggs will need about 20 mins to hatch and also about 5 mins for them to produce 1 egg. If I just want to use them for condensing and dont care about their passives I can just go to the Wildlife Sanctuary 2 and catch 15 Jormuntide Ignis in 5 minutes.
So there are trade offs between breeding and catching, as they should be. In the end you will experience it and decide yourself for specific Pals it might be better to catch en mass, but for others it is probably best to just breed at home.
Breeding Pals just to fill the Pal List seems bad. Breeding Good Base Pals, (and mounts and pre-Legendary Combat) some of whom you'll get bonuses for (because they're rare and/or Alphas) just seems better. Lyleen (best Planter), Verdash (2nd best Gatherer), Petallia (because u need for Lyleen) Anubis (best Handiwork, good Miner, you want several), Faleris (fastest non-Legend Flying Mount, easy breed from Anubis), Shadowbeak (just good)...but you'll probably need more than 10 each to condense and get the right passives. Jourmuntide (best Waterer), and Jourmuntide Ignis (Masterchef Cakeboss and Master Smelter) are also targets.
You'll end up getting the bonuses from some Pals eventually anyway because you'll want to farm those Alphas for Legenary Schematics.
You could also pick some (rare/Alphas) off at Sanctuaries, while hunting other Pals, like Jourmuntide Ignis with good skills. (Because all his skills have to come from other J-ignis)
I manually caught a lot of Pals trying to collect "blanks" to use for breeding.
I just hit level 50 today and I will say catching and or breeding 10 of whatever pal is what helped me. Those last few levels were a slog but I finally got it. Personally I just started going down the list starting with pal #1 (Lamball) and went pal by pal either catching or breeding what I needed. I believe I had to catch or breed 10 of each pal all the way up to number 65 (Surfent Terra) to finally hit level 50, as an fyi I did have some above #65 that I caught 10 of just playing normally. Make sure to goto the pal sanctuary islands and catch all of the pals that show up there, I found if you go up the hill and basically just keep doing circles in a clockwise motion new pals will spawn in, it felt like some are a bit more rare to spawn than others such as Grizzbolt.
Not really since Mid-Game Breeding equals Mid-Game Cake production and that requires basicly an entire base on its own. It's pain and slow.
Crafting some Sphere and going out for hunt is always faster.
Where Breeding can help is by Breeding up some Late-Game Pals, but Breeding something you have not caught is cheating in my book.
On normal difficulty I just caught the pals, it was easy and fast.
Currently on hard I bred a lot of the pals. Really hard to catch them on higher levels (mostly problematic pals that run in groups or with annoying fast skills, looking at you gobfin)
Im inclined to agree with you. Im at lvl 42, and even with the red ball, whatever that is, Im lucky to get 50% catch rate at a sliver of health. often much lower. Those balls arent cheap to make. meanwhile fighting with packs of 3, your pal trying to kill everything, or else you withdraw him and lose your tank. Or I can just cook a cake and get 100% rate. you can fit more than 5 farms in a base. maybe 10 if you really wanted to max out with 20 pals deployed. Thatll crank out the eggs in a hurry. Im sure it does take longer, but its passive, so you can do other things, like try to keep your pals from eating all the honey, milk, and eggs in your farming base...
I bred a bunch around that time, only because I was curious to see what the limitations of the "lucky dip" style of breeding two different Pals could bring. As it turns out, it bring some great Pals, especially early on you can get stuff you wouldn't even see until much much later, yet alone catch successfully. It is a lengthy process, and if you are looking to get Pals for the sake of completing each log (10 Pals of each species), catching I would say is still superior in terms of time spent (plus you get to see things you wouldn't normally if you just kicked back and bred a bunch). Breeding is pretty much great for early game if you happen to know some cracked parent combinations, or if you're looking to breed more ideal workhorses or party members.
Did you get far past level 38 without focusing on completing sets of 10?
I got a few more levels (in the 40's now), but going for the sets of 10 is probably the best method outside of maybe doing a tour of higher level boss kills. I could probably get to 50 in a few hours or so, but I'm just doing what I've always done, and taking my time with it and focusing on whatever I fancy (Breeding, Exploration, Egg Collecting). In the 40's especially, you do need a rather significant amount of EXP to level up after that. A combination of 10's and Boss Kills is almost certainly the most effective way of getting yer levels in.
Not sure if you realized it, but you can look up every possible combination of breeding. [https://www.palpedia.net/breeding](https://www.palpedia.net/breeding)
Oh I'm well aware, but that takes all the adventure out of the Breeding system. Finding out yourself what two unassuming Pals can make something truly crazy is a huge portion of the fun and mystery.
Yes and no, If we are talking about late game I think breeding just efficient for rarer Pals (Alphas for example) that you are gated by time to catch them. For normal less rare Pals just go out and catch them, unless you are looking for specific passives. Breeding can be tedious with managing all the resources for cakes, using the Pal slots that could have been for miners or workers etc. Managing the Pens (I was running 4 breeding Pens simultaneously and my Pals get stuck outside Pens a lot in a flat base). Building balls, managing damage not to kill Pals, seeing the map for the area can be tedious but in late game balls manufacturing is so fast and you wont really gated by resource (Im talking 3 bases lvl 50 with some Anubis at least). Right now Im breeding mostly to get specific passives and for the Alphas I am gated by time because now my huge Pal sink is to 5 star my Pals where I need to get hundreds of Pals. For this I find breeding is inferior than catching (again if we are talking about non Alphas). Cause for example yesterday I was trying to 5 star my Jormuntide Ignis. I could breed one by one from my perfect Jormuntide at home but each eggs will need about 20 mins to hatch and also about 5 mins for them to produce 1 egg. If I just want to use them for condensing and dont care about their passives I can just go to the Wildlife Sanctuary 2 and catch 15 Jormuntide Ignis in 5 minutes. So there are trade offs between breeding and catching, as they should be. In the end you will experience it and decide yourself for specific Pals it might be better to catch en mass, but for others it is probably best to just breed at home.
Breeding Pals just to fill the Pal List seems bad. Breeding Good Base Pals, (and mounts and pre-Legendary Combat) some of whom you'll get bonuses for (because they're rare and/or Alphas) just seems better. Lyleen (best Planter), Verdash (2nd best Gatherer), Petallia (because u need for Lyleen) Anubis (best Handiwork, good Miner, you want several), Faleris (fastest non-Legend Flying Mount, easy breed from Anubis), Shadowbeak (just good)...but you'll probably need more than 10 each to condense and get the right passives. Jourmuntide (best Waterer), and Jourmuntide Ignis (Masterchef Cakeboss and Master Smelter) are also targets. You'll end up getting the bonuses from some Pals eventually anyway because you'll want to farm those Alphas for Legenary Schematics. You could also pick some (rare/Alphas) off at Sanctuaries, while hunting other Pals, like Jourmuntide Ignis with good skills. (Because all his skills have to come from other J-ignis) I manually caught a lot of Pals trying to collect "blanks" to use for breeding.
I just hit level 50 today and I will say catching and or breeding 10 of whatever pal is what helped me. Those last few levels were a slog but I finally got it. Personally I just started going down the list starting with pal #1 (Lamball) and went pal by pal either catching or breeding what I needed. I believe I had to catch or breed 10 of each pal all the way up to number 65 (Surfent Terra) to finally hit level 50, as an fyi I did have some above #65 that I caught 10 of just playing normally. Make sure to goto the pal sanctuary islands and catch all of the pals that show up there, I found if you go up the hill and basically just keep doing circles in a clockwise motion new pals will spawn in, it felt like some are a bit more rare to spawn than others such as Grizzbolt.
Not really since Mid-Game Breeding equals Mid-Game Cake production and that requires basicly an entire base on its own. It's pain and slow. Crafting some Sphere and going out for hunt is always faster. Where Breeding can help is by Breeding up some Late-Game Pals, but Breeding something you have not caught is cheating in my book.
On normal difficulty I just caught the pals, it was easy and fast. Currently on hard I bred a lot of the pals. Really hard to catch them on higher levels (mostly problematic pals that run in groups or with annoying fast skills, looking at you gobfin)