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Breeding is[]
a relatively new part of the game and not a lot of people have tried it or really know what to do with it. My goal for this guide is to explain a few things I have tried and what I think would be the best way of handling breeding. If you think I made a mistake somewhere please tell me ingame or in the comments. This guide is set up from a new player’s point of view since I tried breeding out long before I got to Lanfar.
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Breeding[]
Belongs to the 
Fauna trade and you can acquire it in The large white flock
located at (46,196). Between City of Hawkoria and the lake in the middle of White
Stone Fields. There are of course multiple reasons for why you would want
Breeding.
I will list a few possible reasons below:
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- Some companions only accessible via breeding
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- Easy way to get wool, meat, wax and dead animals. (nice if you are a tanner or sewer)
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- Relatively good way of gaining money when you don’t want to go into dungeons
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- High level sewing materials like Silk and Araknirar fiber
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- Alchemy ingredients like Goldendart, Aracniron Jelly, Silk Jelly
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If you only want the wool then breeding is going to be really easy. The large white flock allows you to breed and process the sheep. If you want more or want to make use of passive gathering then it will be a bit harder. First of all there are four buildings for breeding. This being the Pen, Paddock, Barn and the Bestarium. I’ll describe the role of each building. For more information visit the main breeding page.
Pen: allows for the gathering of animals and only this
Paddock: allows for the training, you cannot gather any animals with this
Barn: allows for the training, processing and gathering of animals. This is the first building that can process so if a bestarium is out of your reach for the time this building is a necessity.
Bestarium: this is the best but also the most expensive building in breeding. It allows for training, processing, gathering and recruiting of animals. It also allows you to Butcher animals, carve bones and tame any animal present in the location it is built in. .
The location of these buildings will determine which animals can be gathered or tamed. You can compress the big list found on the main breeding page to roughly three areas:
Plains of Hawkoria: Allows for the gathering of almost every animal except Silk Worms and Spiders
The Giant Plains: Allows for the gathering of Horses and Spiders
The Den: Allows for the gathering of Spiders and Silkworms
There are a lot of other locations but given the fact that Hawkoria gives all of them except the two that are only found in Giant Plains and Den and the fact that Hawkoria Plains have a difficulty of 1 plains this is just the best place to be.
Okay with the information out of the way let’s start the guide part. First the total beginner part meaning I assume you have limited skills and resources and are still in Hawkoria with only T1 companions, then the more advanced part assuming you have just arrived in Lanfar and you skills and resources are decent, and as a third part a small section for the experienced players who have plenty of skill and resources
Part I: []
First of all if you want more than just wool then you are going to have to build a barn. This is an expensive investment for newer players but it is well worth it in the end once you reach Bees. You can pretty much build the entire Barn out of NPC material except for the 5 fir towers. Those will require either a lot of gold and luck in the market, a high level in carpentry (30+) or a lot of wood, a bit of gold (let’s say 20 to 40) and someone willing to make the towers for you. You’ll also need a fence. This is entirely up to you. The basic NPC fence cost little over 10 silver and is a nice fence.
If you want the alchemy materials then you’d want to invest in a higher level fence. The only disadvantage about the basic fence is that it will give you an 88% change to gather when working with bees and boars and only 68% when working with goats. All other task are a full 100% except for the rarer alchemy materials. I build my barn with the NPC fence and I am still using it. The 88% for bees and boars isn’t that bad and I am not in it for the alchemy or the goats anyway.
If you have your barn set up, I suggest you hire one or two farmers as well, you can get them in Teasan Village. They will allow you to passive gather the animals and this will greatly reduce the time you need to make breeding profitable. Because trust me, breeding takes a lot of time. A decent level pitchfork is also great to have. Just gather a few animals until your farmers have reached a breeding of 10, 15 or 20 depending on what you are aiming for and make sure that you can 10 or 15 breeding without the help of any companion. If you don’t have a bestarium goats will be completely useless so skip them if you can. Money wise at this point cattle would be your best bet. You can sell the milk for quite a bit and the Aurochs produce much more firm leather than Boars which can sell for a decent price as well. From a crafters point of view cattle and sheep are your primary goal since they give the most leather and wool. If you need soft leather you’d want to go for the hares since they are easy and quick to get. (They require a lot of blades though). If you have sufficient skill you can gather and process bees. This isn’t yet possible to passively gather because you need a T2 breeder companion to do so. You can however do it yourself to gather money for the next step. (honey sells for 83 silver each at the Crane Harbor Inn*).
* This has been removed - no easy gold with honey anymore.
Part II:[]
Assuming you have either done part one or have some resources to spare you can do the following. I suggest you skip the barn completely (or break it down) and build the bestarium. Of course if a barn is still sufficient just keep it and don’t build the bestarium.
The Bestarium is a bigger investment than the barn since it needs 20 Fortifications, 20 Towers, 20 Foundations and 20 Stone walls. As well as 4 different machines. Since this is still Plains of Hawkoria you can make everything out of the cheapest materials available. It is advised to get the best possible machinery you can afford. Especially if you plan on using the bestarium as your main building for hunting and taming as well. You might have noticed that I skipped mentioning the horses in part I. this is because just like the goats they don’t have a usage unless you build a bestarium. The different horse companions can give you a nice terrain boost in Lanfar the goats however aren’t the best thing to get. Taming animals like a Bear, Varanus or Beherin is way more efficient than gathering 400 goats and turn them into one mountain goat.
A bestarium also allows for the training of animals using feeds. This will probably be a bit out of reach when you haven’t been in Lanfar yet
After you have reached Lanfar and you want to go beyond Bees and Horses you should go and check out the Giant Plains. This area has a high Plains difficulty so it might take some time before you can do stuff here. If your plains skill is sufficient you can start making a concession and expand it. Since you already have a barn/bestarium in Hawkoria it will be a waste of resources to build one here. Building a Pen and a Hut for your breeder is good enough. Again you would want to invest in the best possible fence because in the contrary to Plains of Hawkoria this area really needs a high level fence. To farm spider at 83% you need a 46 breeding fence. With a basic fence you will only get around 60%. This starts to make a big difference. You can make your breeder gather all the spiders (assuming I has 35 or more breeding) and every once in a while you take the spiders and go back to process them in Hawkoria. This brings us to the next part, The Den.
Part III:[]
If you are an experienced player who has quite a bit of money and resource, you should build the best possible Bestarium in Hawkoria if you haven’t already. Depending on what you want to use breeding for you can expand into the giant plains and den. If you can access the Den already I suggest you skip the giant plains completely since it will give you no real extra advantage. The Den however is a lot harder to build in than other area’s so building everything here will be expansive. It will however give you the ability to farm Silk which is great if you are into Fashioning (or money for that matter). I myself haven’t yet unlocked the Den so I cannot tell anymore about it. I see a lot of people who advise to build a Bestarium in the Den. I don’t know what advantage this can give you over a Hawkoria pen.