talent not in either parent pool

[esmee stormweaver]

OK I didn't think this was possible. Have things changed?
In the attached image the parents are on left and baby egg on right.
notice the rare talent at the bottom of the list.
How is that even possible given the parents?

[albak11]

I'm sure @Milt would have a better explanation of this based on his many pet projects, but I always called it a bleed through talent. Meaning, it came from the gene pool of the parents, possibly the grandparents. Kind of like dominant and recessive genes in people.

[richardDkht]

I am not familiar with "trained" talents, but I head that Trained and untrained versions take different spots. Maybe the frozen kraken became "untrained" and moved down?

Never heard about it, but who knows.

Also, it has always been assumed that talents are in a sort of "priority list" to appear in a given order, but that was never really confirmed officially.

So this might either be the demonstration that it is not exactly so, or said list may have been changed with the arrival or willcast pets, and so the rare talent that is on the first pet (I assume a pre-update) just above fairy friend may actually have fallen at the bottom of the offspring pool due to that (if pet inherited FF from second parent).

[ValdusWildheart]

I am not familiar with "trained" talents, but I head that Trained and untrained versions take different spots. Maybe the frozen kraken became "untrained" and moved down?

Never heard about it, but who knows.

Also, it has always been assumed that talents are in a sort of "priority list" to appear in a given order, but that was never really confirmed officially.

So this might either be the demonstration that it is not exactly so, or said list may have been changed with the arrival or willcast pets, and so the rare talent that is on the first pet (I assume a pre-update) just above fairy friend may actually have fallen at the bottom of the offspring pool due to that (if pet inherited FF from second parent).

Talents definitely have an order, regardless of what KI may have officially confirmed. My first guess is one of the talents on the parent pets was renumbered. Tossing a random willcast into the mix? Could be, but that would seem more like a bug than an intent. Either case is disturbing.
@esmee stormweaver If that talent manifests when you train, please post back! This is definitely weird.

[albak11]

I am not familiar with "trained" talents, but I head that Trained and untrained versions take different spots. Maybe the frozen kraken became "untrained" and moved down?
Never heard about it, but who knows.
Also, it has always been assumed that talents are in a sort of "priority list" to appear in a given order, but that was never really confirmed officially.
So this might either be the demonstration that it is not exactly so, or said list may have been changed with the arrival or willcast pets, and so the rare talent that is on the first pet (I assume a pre-update) just above fairy friend may actually have fallen at the bottom of the offspring pool due to that (if pet inherited FF from second parent).

You're right - I didn't think of the trained talent possibility - the list does shift when the trained talent is unlocked.

[Milt]

Also, it has always been assumed that talents are in a sort of "priority list" to appear in a given order, but that was never really confirmed officially.

So this might either be the demonstration that it is not exactly so, or said list may have been changed with the arrival or willcast pets, and so the rare talent that is on the first pet (I assume a pre-update) just above fairy friend may actually have fallen at the bottom of the offspring pool due to that (if pet inherited FF from second parent).

For the record, a KingsIsle employee has indeed come out and acknowledged the existence of the priority mechanic before, at least for Pirate101. And because Pirate101's pet system is closely related to Wizard101's, it stands to reason that the priority mechanic also exists in Wizard101, as nearly a decade of documented empirical evidence also shows.

Getting back on topic. I'm just as baffled by this weird oddity. Nervous even. I hope it's just a bug with Frozen Kraken Trained.

EDIT: Could the unlocked version of Frozen Kraken Trained be as uninheritable as Pip Boost or Get Sunbird? It's only a hypothesis, but it's the most logical one I could muster up with the info at hand.

EDIT 2: Hmm! @esmee stormweaver , did you unlock Frozen Kraken Trained yourself? Just curious.

[richardDkht]

For the record, a KingsIsle employee has indeed come out and acknowledged the existence of the priority mechanic before, at least for Pirate101. And because Pirate101's pet system is closely related to Wizard101's, it stands to reason that the priority mechanic also exists in Wizard101, as nearly a decade of documented empirical evidence also shows.

Getting back on topic. I'm just as baffled by this weird oddity. Nervous even. I hope it's just a bug with Frozen Kraken Trained.

EDIT: Could the unlocked version of Frozen Kraken Trained be as uninheritable as Pip Boost or Get Sunbird? It's only a hypothesis, but it's the most logical one I could muster up with the info at hand.

EDIT 2: Hmm! @esmee stormweaver , did you unlock Frozen Kraken Trained yourself? Just curious.

Due to the difficulty of Deckathalon, a lot of people trained their pets with frozen kraken, and I think it was said somewhere else that they indeed inherited the unlocked version. @Caspeen may tell more about this.

So it's either a shroeder's cat, or not the reason here.

About the priority mechanics, there are sure a lot of hints that it should generally be at work. I just want to point out that this specific case seem to show an exception, and as Sherlock holmes said "when you exclude the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth".

So, *IF* that talent is not a frozen kraken thing, *THEN* it could also be that inherited talents were like this: (X is left parent, X.1 is right one)

guardian wall OR 1.1
2 OR 2.1, 2.2 or 2.3
plaguebringer OR 4
frozen kraken OR spritely
fairy friend (from 5.1)
sprite queen OR 7.1
energizing battery (from 8.1)
9.1
10.1
and finally 6.

This theory follows the rule that you can't go back on each list, but you can inherit randomly from either without relative positions. So you could inherit 1, 2 , 3, and then 1.1, but not 1, 3, 1.1 and then 2.

And it also would explains those "bleed through" exceptions that @albak11 was talking about (meaning it already happened to him - and that doesn't really make sense, since if pets had "hidden" talents, then their pool would either be expandable, or first gen would have empty hidden pools, which is a nonsense in computer programming).

To be perfectly honest, I also have often noticed that the priority seems to match 99,99% of time.

But these unexplained exceptions apparently appear every now and then to account for the 0.01% remaining, and that needs a reason too. I never recorded one myself, but already heard people talking about them.

Of course, a much easier explanation could be that the priority list got shifted for some talents. Already registered pets didn't see their talents shuffled, but new pets would (same as it happened for the uninheritable talents a few years ago). And the exceptions may be just misreading from players.

Guess it needs some more data to get a clear conclusion..

[davidbattleblade]

The new pet would look like that if you were hatching with someone that had frozen kraken and you had not unlocked the talent yet. It appears in the bottom slot when locked then when it's unlocked it moves up based on what other talents the pet has. I think there might be a problem with the frozen kraken though because i had 2 pets with it locked and when i unlocked the talent it didn't unlock the first pet i had only the second. Maybe this is what happened to you if you had frozen kraken unlocked already and both of them were your pets. They have stated that once you unlock a talent it will be unlocked for all your hatches if it manifests but if you transfer the pet to another wiz it will be locked and have to be unlocked again but will remain unlocked for the wiz who unlocked it. I think the spring update notes explain that better than i have.

[KestrelDawn]

I HATE that KI has done this but that 10th slot talent with two pips (rare) is the locked FrozenKrakenTrained. I've been working on pets with this talent for a bit, and this is the place it shows up.

Annoying and frustrating that the untrained version shows in a different position from the trained version. And then the gall of certain people at KI to state that the talents have never been a specific order that was consistent.

[Patrick FairyStalker]

It's Frozen Kraken Trained. This threw me for a spin a couple weeks ago too.

Here's proof that a "locked" and "unlocked" talent has a different position. They both have Fairy Friend manifested, but one is above and the other is below.