Hello all! I thought I'd go ahead and finally start working on and helping out those who plan on training their lions on stats. I just wanted to get some basic info out and maybe give a sort of timeline on when its best to start working on your gigastat lion and what would be needed! So let's start with some basic info and a couple of questions.

Can any lion be a statter?

well short answer is yes! of course, It would be way harder working on a heritage less lion since its stats wouldn't be as high as say, a second gen or third but its definitely possible. When working on a lion, most of the time goes into getting items for it and potentially training the heir you plan on using. You could also work on either a clean or dirty one, tho of course its easier to do it with a very high stat lion that may be dirty than a clean lion with a small heritage

what items are required for statting your lion/what's the easiest way to do it?

Now the main items you'll be looking for when working on your lion are any items that give exp, like Drones (both types), Giant Tortoises (very important, generally around 400-800 exp) and coconuts. The items that actually give stats to your lion are certain food items, like Egg Yolk (possibility of 0 to +15 stats, tho generally low), Honeycombs (possibility of 0 to 6 stats, higher chance than yolk) and a few others tho their chances of yielding stats are low. There are also toys that can give stats as well but are never guaranteed to do so. The main items you'll be looking for are Giant tortoises, broken drones, and egg yolks. There is now real easy way to go through with this. if you plan to hit stats higher than 20k, you'll need a ton of tortoises and the same with egg yolk.

Now before I go too in depth into the guide, I'd like to highlight some important months to look out for.

November- Very good month for gaining stats. Doing quests for the shamans rewards you with piety which you can in turn, use for a stat boost of up to +15. you can also claim whispers rewards on the final tier which could possibly give you a 10+ to 20+ in stats (tho last year, it unlocked basically on the last few days of the month so barely got a chance to use it)

January- Chance for giant tortoises found in the boneyard

February- Honeycombs in the second tier shop (also buffies which would be good to sell and trade for other items)

April- Very important month, as not only do prices for egg yolk go down, but you can also get them from the event shop. Not only that but you can deage your king by a couple of years (which is good when setting up your statter)

May- Egg yolks as trophy (rare), Giant Tortoise in event shop along with a red bull (doubles energy gain)

July- Tons of battles in the celestial explore. Can be spammed as long as you have meteorites. Lions can be sent into the portal for random rewards, one of them being exp.

August- Broken Drones in the peddlers shop as well as buffies to trade or use

September- GMO cow and Ochre Gnawrock in event shop, good for trading/using

That covers most of the important months tho if anyone would like to add anything, feel free!

One last thing I'd like to cover is what gives most of the stats when working on your lion. As it turns out, leveling your lion is going to be the primary way to gain stats. It may seem like stat items would give the most but they aren't as important as levels (though does help out a lot) On another post, I'll put up the info and amount of stats total you'd get up to 140 or so

Now for the actual guide and how to start out. Generally you should look for a lion that is young and has decent stats. I'd recommend start at around 2k stats on an ado lion. You could always start lower as well (depending on what stats you're aiming for) but going for anything above 20k stats, you'll probably want to start training your submale early.(also something I completely missed but it is important to have a secondary account linked so you can store and hold items and foods so they won't spoil. you can also use it to freeze certain lions or potential heirs so they don't age as well. Just send items to and from your secondary account when needed and keep rolling to the minimum)

Early Stage:

Now once you have your heir, you'll want to start feeding em stat items and training them (if they're still a cub and adolescent). This is where having yolks stored on a secondary account comes in hand, as you can send them over whenever needed. The best thing to do is not feed your heir for a bit until you can feed it as many yolks or combs as possible. Egg yolks will only increase hunger by 3% and honey combs by 10%.

Mid Stage:

After they age up, you can send your submale heir out on patrols and gain a pretty good amount of stats per patrol. You can actually send your heir on as many patrols as possible per day, just know that it takes an hour per patrol. The amount of stats obtained can range from 0 to 8 though I usually get around 2-4 per or higher. Now from personal experience, you can get around 3k-4k stats total per lifetime when training like this (without stat items) So if you start immediately patrolling a 2k stat lion from 2yrs until say around 15yrs, it could go up to 5k or 6k stats in patrols alone. Factor in actual stat items and it goes even higher. You basically want your lion as high statted as possible before you king him.

Late Stage:

Now you'll want to do this until your heir reaches around 14 yrs or 15 yrs, whatever you believe would be best. Just remember they have a chance of passing away at 15 and above so its a risk not kinging them. Now why king them at that age? Because once kinged beyond the age of 10, they deage back down to 8 years old. So your potential stat heir will be younger and you can work even further on him.

King Stage:

Once you have your nicely statted king, you can finally work on actually leveling your lion. This is where the real grind begins, so buckle up. Now is when you want to fight everything and anything in explore. It's also when you'll want to start using all your giant tortoises you've been hoarding (Tortoises do not expire so no need to hold them on a linked account) Quests give a pretty decent amount of exp early on, try to aim for quests that involve hunting as they give the most experience. Gorilla's also give a great amount of experience as its based on your level and will always increase the higher level you are. Now depending on what you're aiming for, it might be better to use all your tortoises and get as high as a level you can. Then either freeze your king until you can get more or start training him more by exploring and doing daily quests and such. It will be pretty difficult leveling off just exploring but def possible. I believe the best thing you could do is aim for a specific amount of Tortoises or drones and try to hit the level you want. It will be hands down the easiest way to level and best way to get your stats up when kinged.

Final Pointers:

Just wanted to throw a few more pointers in before concluding everything. You generally want to try and king your lion close to the month of April, that way you can deage him and have more time to keep him kinged. Once kinged and lowered to 8 years old, you have about 3 months real time before he hits 16. This is also where freezing your lion for certain months comes into hand. Say you king him November, get all the piety you can then freeze him until April. you'll be able to deage him more without having him pass away before he reaches the month. It's also a good idea to farm certain months for things like piety and event currency, just so that you can use it when you finally king your statter. Reaching truly high stats requires a lot of planning and a lot of freezing but it is definitely possible!