How to manually breed and recreate an extinct raffle lioness from scratch
-An in depth breeding guide by Quills-
This is probably going to end up being a fairly long guide, and it may get updated over time with more information.
I hope that this guide can be helpful to you if you choose to start your own project.
If you need any assistance, don’t hesitate to reach out to me or comment on the thread! I’ll try to get back to you as quickly as possible. Good luck!
-> Picking the target - what raffle lioness do you want to recreate?
-----> Finding the right difficulty for you
-----> Rare vs. Special bases
-----> Rosettes
-> Dividing the project into..
-----> Phase 1
----------> Finding project lions
----------> kings, heirs and studs
----------> Gathering all markings & BO traits
-----> Phase 2
----------> Clean lined? Short heritage?
----------> Mass breeding
-----> Phase 3
----------> Sustainable breeding items
----------> Hanging in there!
-> Conclusion
Picking the target - what raffle lioness do you want to recreate?
All my tips and advice, and what you should keep in mind when trying to pick a target.
First things first: picking the raffle lioness you want to recreate. This can be overwhelming, but I want to give you a few pointers to keep in mind while browsing your options.
-> Finding the right difficulty for you
One of the great parts of this project is how customizable it is to your needs. Do you have a small budget? Maybe you don’t want to spend months if not years of your life on this project? In that case, you can choose an older and therefore easier raffle lioness to target. Raffle lionesses from 2013-2015 don’t have that many breed only attributes and can therefore be realistically recreated within just a few months (if not weeks?) and not require tons of breeding items at all.
On the other hand, because a lot of them lack a lot of breed only attributes (some have as few as 2-3 BO traits), many might not find it worth their time since their clones won’t be all that valuable. A crunchy worm is probably a lot more valuable than any clone will ever be. However, if you want to dip your toes into this without dedicating too much time and funding into it, this could be a nice way to test the waters.
I personally think the raffle lionesses from 2016-2018 and 2019-2021 are the best possible targets for a project like this. Most of them have a decent amount of BO markings, usually around 6-9, and a rare tier BO base.
I specifically think that 2017-2019 is the golden age. Most lionesses from this time are posed and come with a pretty background, unlike lionesses from 2016. 2020+ is when raffle lionesses start to get really complicated and not as easy to recreate (and also more likely to not be extinct).
Take some time to browse through all the options, and if a lioness catches your eye, use the search feature to look up her attributes and see if there’s any breedable clones around!
-> Rare vs special bases
Another important thing to keep in mind is whether or not you’d like to target an RL with a rare base or a special base.
The thing about special bases is that one of the parents (though preferably both for the best odds) need to have the base to pass it down to cubs, unlike rare bases. This makes it a LOT harder to achieve a perfect clone, especially with a short heritage. Since there obviously doesn’t exist any special based lions with all the project markings (that is after all what you’re trying to achieve in the first place) you’d have to settle for a lion with the right base, and slowly build up more and more markings over many generations.
While still possible, this is gonna be very time consuming! If you’re super new to these kinds of breeding projects I’d recommend you maybe target a rare based RL instead. Though hey, that’s just my advice, please do whatever you want! If you want to tackle a real challenge, don’t let me stop you. I’d love to see you succeed. <3
With a rare based target, you can simply focus on getting all the raffle markings onto one lion. By applying the right genetics to your project lions, you can get any lion to pass the correct rare base onto their cubs. This is a MUCH simpler process, since you can basically just completely ignore the bases of all your lions until you’ve gotten far enough into the project.
Say you’ve decided you want to target an RL with a rare base. There’s still a few things you may want to keep in mind, depending on the genetics of said base.
Sometimes, there are multiple rare bases within one category.
Take for example “Black Dark Solid”. For my project, I targeted an RL with a noctis base color, meaning this was the genetic group I was using for all my project lions. However, noctis is not the only rare base within this group: ebony is also a part of it. Meaning there’s the chance you’ll get unlucky and breed the wrong rare base onto your raffle clone cub. Which happened to me. three times. (I’m not salty at all. Totally not.)
Okay, so say you want to learn from my mistake, and want to target an RL who’s rare base is the only possible rare base within its category. You look around and boom, you’d like to target an Anjeer based RL. Anjeer is the only rare base within the “Red Medium Countershaded” category.
Unfortunately, this also comes with a drawback, the keyword here being the medium shade category. Even when breeding two “Red Medium Countershaded” lions to another, there is only a 70% chance the offspring will be within the medium category. You still have a 15% chance of getting a light based cub, or a 15% chance of getting a dark based cub. While anjeer is still the most likely rare base this pairing will produce, this means you can also end up with prune, fiery, maroon and taupe based cubs.
Shoutout to Coconut #212840 for bringing this to my attention!
Does this mean you shouldn’t target RLs with a base that isn’t the only rare base within its category, or a base that has a medium shade? Absolutely not! I just want you to be aware of these facts, so you know some rare bases will be more difficult than other rare bases, and you can make an educated decision.
To summarize, if you want the easiest possible rare base to breed, pick something that is either “dark” shaded or “light” shaded, and the only rare base within its category. An example of this would be Slate, the only black dark countershaded rare base, or champagne, the only cream light solid rare base.
All of this information is from the base genetics wiki page. Check it out here!
-> Rosettes
Please don’t.
On a more serious note, this all comes down to budget. You cannot expect to achieve this without a ridiculous amount of gnawrocks, and even then. At the time of writing this the cheapest gnawrocks are selling for 64 . You’re gonna need a boatload of these, so unless you’re made of money and don’t mind spending probably at least a few thousand GB on a project like this, I’d maaaybe recommend you skip any RLs with a rosette on em.
Dividing the project into…
When I did this project, I divided it into three phases. This was necessary since I wanted to breed the final raffle lioness clone with a clean, short heritage. Project lions tend to become ridiculously inbred, and that’s okay! That’s just the way it has to be. This is how I was able to work around that, though.
If you do not care about heritage, you can completely forget about the whole “dividing the project into phases” thing. That’s your choice to make. However, you should be aware that means a lot of people might not be interested in your RLC in the end. To a lot of people, the appeal of an RLC comes from that many BO traits being on such a low gen lion, and some simply refuse to buy or breed dirty lions. Still though, this adds a lot of extra work onto the project, so if you’d rather just ignore heritage and not add months of extra pain work, that’s your call.
-> Phase 1
To best explain how I set up my project, we need to think backwards a bit.
Lets picture the heritage of our already successfully bred RLC- the shortest heritage for the father would be a G1 king. His heritage can be wiped as many times as we need, meaning he will be the key to this. He needs to be as close to a clone as we can possibly get.
The mother is where it gets complicated. The odds of breeding an RLC from just a near clone king and an NCL is ridiculously low. It’s not reliable at all. So then let’s picture the mom as a G2 lioness, instead of a G1 NCL. This gives us a lot more room to create as close of a clone to act as the mother.
So the goal is to breed our future G1 near RLC to tons and tons of NCLs. The result of this mass breeding will be a boatload of generation 2, near clone lionesses, which can then be bred to the same king again. (after he has been heritage wiped a second time to avoid inbreeding!)
Keep this up, and you’ll end up with your clone!
The goal of phase 1 is to create a stud that has as many BO traits as possible, usually everything but the base. You’ll work towards getting all the project markings, and if there’s any other traits like eye color, skin color, etc, you’ll need to get that onto him too.
For this guide, I’ll be using the 10.04.19 raffle lioness as an example.
First thing’s first- what traits does our G1 king need to have?
The base of the target has black dark solid genetics, meaning any applicator base with the same genetics will be fine. That gives us a lot of options, including Haruspex, Incense, Interstellar, Nuummite, Spectre and Velvet. It doesn’t matter which one it is, so pick whatever you prefer. For my project I went with Haruspex simply because it was the cheapest applicator at the time.
She’s got no BO eyes, skin, mane or mane color. This means the only thing we need to focus on, is breeding a cub that has all 8 project markings, then apply the correct base applicator, king and heritage wipe him. If your target has something like BO eyes, you should try to breed this onto your future heir as well. Remember, you’ll king tons of cubs to use as project studs throughout your project, so there’s no rush to get your final project king ready immediately.
Sounds simple enough, but this might take some time!
You wanna start off with simply collecting lions with your project marks. Remember, at this stage, heritage is completely irrelevant. All that matters is finding lions with the markings you need, fixing the heritage comes later.
For starters, check the trading center and search for lions with the markings you’re after. I personally decided to try and work towards the rarest markings first, and get the most common later. (You can check this on the marking rarity page on the wiki)
If you can’t find lions for all the markings, don’t worry. Next thing to do is collect studs you can use for your project. I remember getting very lucky and finding an active stud that had 3 of my project marks on him; paired with one of my lionesses, I was able to breed a cub with 4/8 markings. A really good start! I immediately made him my first project king.
If you can’t find a marking on the trading center, and no active studs, you can try to create a thread and ask around for help. Spread the word on forums and maybe you can get some help on lioden discord servers.
Once you’ve managed to breed a cub that has multiple project marks, go ahead and king them right away! Most project like this start small, so even if you get a cub with just 2-3 project markings, that’s a great start. From there on, continue breeding him to your project lions, and slowly expand your collection with more and more lions with multiple project marks. Whenever you get a cub that has more traits than your current king, I’d recommend you retire him in favor of your now better cub! You’re gonna end up doing that a lot: I got to 8/8 markings on my 5th project king.
Once you’ve gotten the final cub: first of all, congrats!
Time to king, and for the first time, heritage wipe. Now’s the time to apply a base applicator to him to match the genetics of your target base. This is where your current project lions will become kind of useless. Our focus is now on clean breeding, and most, if not all, of your project lions will by now be horribly inbred. Even if they’re not, they won’t be G1 lions, which is what we need.
Time for phase 2!
-> Phase 2
It’s time to mass breed to NCLs!
That’s… about it really! not that complicated.
I was using markingless, in heat NCLs for my project. If you recall the drawing from phase 1, we are now trying to mass produce G2 near clones of our target.
How long you want to stay on phase 2 depends on you.
You’re gonna want to get a good collection of G2 near-clones. I kept all the cubs that had at least 5/8 markings, but I’ll be honest, I wish I had been even more picky and only kept those with 6 or more traits. Quality over quantity; remember, you can mass breed for as long as you want until you’re satisfied with your new cave of project lions. I’d say you should aim for at least 10-20 lions with as many traits as possible, but this depends on how complicated your project is. The more BO traits your target has, the more picky you should be with what cubs you keep and who you don’t, and you should probably then aim for even more near-clones to give yourself some room to work with. Remember each cub you keep will give you 7-8 clone attempts.
I believe I mass bred to NCLs for about a month or two before I swapped over to phase 3 of the project. Important note: If your target has BO eyes, skin, mane shape or mane color, don’t waste breeding items to guarantee them passing onto your G2 near clones! Use these on phase 1 & 3, but they’re wasted money during this phase.
Now that you’ve got a good collection of G2 lionesses that are all near clones of your target, it’s time to base change every single one of them. Hope you’ve got some GB to spare! This can get pricey depending on how many lions you got. Remember once again, what base it is doesn’t matter, just the genetics. Find out which applicator is the cheapest currently to save yourself unnecessary expenses.
To summarize, at this point you should have a G1 king that has all BO traits of your target with an applicator base of matching genetics, and a boatload of G2 near clones that have as many marks as possible, and once again an app base with the right genetics. Still with me? Awesome job, you’re in the final stretch now- phase 3!
-> Phase 3
Before you can start breeding your king to all your G2 near clones, remember they are all his daughters! To avoid inbreeding, heritage wipe him a second time to get a clean slate. This should now be your final project king.
This is where I personally chose to introduce more and more breeding items to up my chances. If your target has BO skin or eyes, you should 100% be using the rock & eye salts from monkey business for every single breeding.
As for more expensive items, like gnawrocks or saltlicks; These are so ridiculously expensive that unless you have an abundance of them laying around, I doubt it’d be worth it. It’s a waste of high quality breeding items, unlike the eye & rock salt which are easily available for cheap.
Buffalo scrotums on the other hand… If you’ve stocked up on them, go to town!
Pairing a buffalo scrotum with your now two very close clones will speed up your progress significantly. However, this is of course not a requirement, but works great if you have a large budget and want to complete your project as fast as possible.
I went through about ~50 ish buffalo scrotums during my project (all paired with an IBF- can you tell I was getting impatient?) and considering how it still took me this long to get my target, I can’t imagine trying this without.
This phase requires a lot of patience. You're probably gonna have a lot of cubs born that are just barely a marking off from being perfect, and it's gonna be frustrating. Stay focused, don't get discouraged, you got this!
Conclusion
If you made it this far… wow, thanks! This guide is so long I honestly was doubting anyone would bother reading the whole thing. Thank you, really!
I hope you’ve found this helpful, and I hope you feel inspired. To give you some motivation, I’d like to introduce you to the lion I was able to breed from this project, a true clone of the now no-longer-extinct 4th of October, 2019 raffle lioness.
A bit over a year of work, but oh so much fun and totally worth it!
This has honestly been the most fun I’ve had on lioden. Sure, there were some salty moments, like when the game decided to give me three ebony RLCs before I got my noctis cough cough, but overall, a really fun journey and a great way to meet and interact with tons of people.
I’m really proud to see others taking inspiration from me and starting projects of their own. I hope to keep this going and bring back even more RLs, and I hope that if you choose to do the same, best of luck and please don’t hesitate to reach out if you need any assistance! We’re all here to support each other through this journey, for both the highs and the lows.
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for creating a guide for this <3 Just today I started my own rlc project and honestly had no idea where to begin, this is actually so helpful. Congrats on your clone btw, she's beautiful
A very interesting and well-written post :) Going through a similar pain with my own project, except it's more of a creation than a re-creation, so my markings are flexible outside of the mottled rosette and mottled stripes - still not sure which project could prove to be harder between em!
Wow I didn't realize how many buffies you used! I maybe used 3-5 gops during the entire process LMAO, then again buffies were extremely scarce at the time
I ended up using so many buffies since I just had a whole bunch of them- I stocked up on about 100 ish during February 2022, and used up roughly half, and sold the rest. Have re-stocked now after feb 2023 though so I'll probably continue wasting using them on any future projects
Oh this is great! Definitely gave me some ideas on what to do next with my own project! Started out very differently but I'll be sure to try out this method next time I recreate an RL!
By using a groupie (check the wiki for the May Event) or by rerolling your king. Note that rerolling your king ENTIRELY WIPES your kings looks and stats. Groupies are often used because they are easy to get during May and can be trained throughout other months, like any submale.
Hello! I was wondering if I could ask for some advice? So if I wanted to do a special base [normal BO not combo] when would I want to start working on getting the marks and such onto the base? Would It be best to make a separate phase for that? Thank you very much for this awesome guide and any advice!