Picking a Starter & Beginning
Picking the right starter can change your project massively. In general, you want to pick a starter that has as many traits in common with your final project as possible, though depending on the traits, you can also shuffle these around. For example, adding Eyes and Skin on near or at the end actually tends to be cheaper in the long run, since you need Opal Saltlicks and Rock Salts for these, and that's 700SB per breeding which adds up fast.

I'm about to give you a list of cubs, and I want you to guess which is the best to start with!

Cub 1: This cub has Bunting Skin & Slot 8: Cream Soft Unders, and nothing else in common with our final product.

Cub 2: This cub has Royal Clay Mane & is a Special Base, but isn't a Madagascar factor, but has nothing else for our final product.

Cub 3: This cub has the Madagascar Base, and nothing else in common with our final product.

That's right, we're starting with Cub 2! The reason for this is because Mane Shape and Color is actually one of the most annoying parts of a project. The only way to guarantee a Mane Shape passing down is with an Ochre Saltlick, which is a very expensive item to be using with every single breeding. In addition, while the pass rate for Mane Shapes hasn't been confirmed yet, we know that Mane Shapes pass at a significantly higher rate when both parents has the same one than each parent having a different one. Player made estimates via scry testing places the pass rate of a Royal x Royal pairing at nearly seventy percent, compared to the pass rate of a Royal x Any Other Mane pairing, which is estimated at twenty-five percent.
Since we're doing the base last, the special base doesn't actually matter. I threw that in to throw you off. Did it work?

Now that we have our starter picked out, we're going to king him. Then, we need to look at the lions we have and figure this out. We're lucky enough to have already gathered all our traits on female lions, and we already have our Mane Shape & Color on, so we'll be able to skip that for Tory, specifically. However, I'll still cover it in the next section for those of you who need that.
Let's draw up a quick plan. This isn't going to be a cheap project, due to the presence of a rosette, so you might consider having studding open to bring in some slight passive income. I would also recommend having an account that can make enough of a profit to funnel money into this, either by selling mass bred G2 mutations, special bases, or studding.

Let's see...
Let's get the eyes and skin on, first. From there, we'll move on to the markings, where we'll do the non-rosette markings first, and then use lionesses with Double Uterus and Ochre Gnawrocks to get Seal Rosette on. The reason why we'll use DUs instead of just hoping for a natural pass is because DUs can have double the cubs, and you can sell any DU fails on the side to drum up some money! Once we breed Seal Rosette on using the DUs, we're going to keep the ones that are close to our final project, apply Madagascar factors to them, and apply a factor from the opposite side onto our current step. At that point, it'll just be hoping for RNG to cooperate. We've got this!

Mane Shape & Mane Color
If we didn't already have our Mane Shape and Color on Tory, we would do that first. We want our first step to have the Royal Clay mane we need, in order to keep the pain of breeding it on away.

Since Clay is an NCL Exclusive color, we're actually kind of lucky! We can just go hunting for any NCLs who have this mane color, and breed them to kings with Royal Mane until we get a cub with a Royal Clay mane. The markings that end up on the cub won't matter, as we'll be removing them.

If your desired mane color isn't an NCL Exclusive, it would actually be roughly the same process, though if you were starting with a non-combo base, you would already have your first step kinged. If you were doing, say, a Ruffian project, you would already have your Ruffian kinged and stripped of his non-project markings. From there, you would buy a lioness (or lionesses) with the Mane Shape, Color, or both you desired, and breed to her. If you got lucky enough to get a Ruffian with your desired traits first try, then you'd be able to king that! If you don't get lucky, or it's a non existent combination, here's how we'd do it:

1. Buy lionesses with your desired breed-only Mane Shape in bulk, and breed them to your project king until you get a cub with your desired traits + Mane Shape, known as 'Step 2'.
2. Replace your current king, 'Step 1', with 'Step 2'
3. Buy lionesses with your desired breed-only Mane Color in bulk, and repeat Step 1, just for mane color until you get a cub with all traits from 'Step 2' + the mane color, aka, 'Step 3'
4. Replace 'Step 2' with 'Step 3'

This is only applicable if you want a breed-only mane shape and color! If either your desired Mane Shape or Color can be applied, you should save this until the end in order to minimize the risk of losing the traits during the project.

Eyes & Skin
Now, this is something new. Tory currently doesn't have anything but her mane shape and color, so breeding eyes and skin on is going to take a bit of work.

Currently, we only have 1 lioness with Bunting Skin, and 1 lioness with Grape Eyes. They are not on the same lion, so what should we do first?
First, we should get them on the same lion. It'll save us a lot of headache further down the road, especially considering we're doing a combo base. If we were doing any other type of base, I would recommend saving this for last, but combos are annoying.
We would get this on the same lion by breeding our lioness with Bunting Skin to a stud with Grape Eyes, and using a Rock Salt on her, and an Opal Saltlick on him. We would also do the same with our lioness with Grape Eyes, just in reverse! Once we get a few cubs with what we want, we can chase the Moms as we don't need them anymore. Alternatively, you can keep them and use them to keep breeding more cubs, but once you have one, it snowballs pretty quickly, and soon you'll be overrun by cubs with Grape Eyes and Bunting Skin!

Once our lions with Grape Eyes & Bunting Skin are adults and are ready to breed, we're just going to breed them to Tory. Make sure to use both Eye and Skin Rocks (Opal Saltlicks and Rock Salts) on the lioness, otherwise, you may not get what you want! We just have to rely on RNG to pass the Mane Shape and Color, but we haven't gotten too far into RNG territory yet. We should get a cub with Mane Shape, Mane Color, Eyes, and Skin within a few attempts, and once we get a cub like that, say goodbye to OG Tory, and Hello to Tory 2.0!

We're going to king Tory 2.0, and continue forward to markings, which are the scariest part.

Markings
Well... this is where a project snowballs from manageable to incredibly expensive. If there was ever a time to drop out, it's now. But you don't really care about that, do you? Good, neither do I!

Just like with every other trait, we originate this from our lionesses. Since Tory has so few markings, she'll actually go pretty smoothly until the end of this section, especially since we don't have a base to worry about at this moment.

In general, this is the pattern that projects follow at this point:
1. Breed a cub with all of the current step's attributes + 1 new project marking
2. King that cub, and chase/kill breeders with the marking that's now on your king in order to save space.
3. Rinse and Repeat.

So, let's do this real quick with Tory! Since I'm not actually breeding her, I'm just going to say I got really lucky and managed to get all of her non-rosette markings on 4 Steps, meaning we're now on Tory 6.0. We've got everything done but the dreaded rosette... oh boy, now it's time to really start suffering. The longer the project goes on, and the more markings get on our king, the easier it gets, as breeding parents with the same (non-rosette or hybrid) marking in the same slot increases that marking's pass rate to a staggering 75%. For context, breeding parents where one has a marking in that slot, and the other has that slot empty, the marking will pass 50% of the time, and breeding parents that have different markings in the same slot means that each marking has a 25% chance of passing.

First, we need a DU. We're going to look around on TC to see if we can find a DU with the rosette we need, but we have a pretty rare rosette slot on Tory. We're lucky enough that the rosette slot has a king with it, though, otherwise, we would have to put our project on hold temporarily to king a lion with the rosette we need, and then breed the DU + Gnawrock the rosette. So, we'll send out a stud request, making sure to use a Great Tit, a Lion Scrotum, a Buffalo Scrotum, and a Gnawrock in the right slot. Once our DU is bred, we'll IBF her, and check her cubs. If we got lucky, we have a DU or two with the rosette we need. If not, we'll need to repeat until this happens. Let's just say I did get lucky, and we got what we need. Yay!

From there, we're going to let our DU grow up, and breed her to our king. We're going to make sure to use all of the items we used on her mother, as well as Eye and Skin Rocks, to have the best chance at either DUs to continue the project, or for a step. If you get a step that happens to be a DU, we're going to keep it as a DU, and just keep using it to breed for a non-DU step. They're valuable enough to the final product to where we don't want to waste a DU with our project markings by kinging it. For the sake of the guide, we're going to pretend I got lucky again and the first breeding had not only a project step, but it was a non-DU step, as well as a spare DU in the litter. Now, we're going to king that project step, and Tory is one step closer to being done!

If you don't have access to a DU, you can do the exact same steps, just on a normal lioness. Just note it'll be a lot more expensive in the long run, as she'll have less cubs at once, and less chances to roll a step. You can also hope for a natural rosette pass, but it's far more likely to end up not happening, as rosettes only have an estimated pass rate at around 1% when a lion with one is bred to a lion with an empty slot in their rosette slot.

All we need to do now is the base. Oh no.

Base
As a reminder, this step is usually first. The only reason we are doing this last is because we are doing a combo base. If you are breeding a non-combo base, you will do this step first.

Remember those DUs from our markings? Yeah, don't get rid of them. They're going to be the key for this. We're going to take Tory 7.0, the one with all our markings, even the rosette, and king the cub. Then, we're going to apply specifically the Unholy Base to her. Why Unholy? Because there's more variety in app bases on the side of Madagascar opposite to Unholy, and they tend to be cheaper than Unholy, as well.
And for the DUs, we're going to apply either Ivory, Nacre, or Supernal to them. Combo Bases have a very low chance at passing, so by using DUs, we essentially double our lioness's breedings and have way more chances than we would have by not using a DU. Just like in the marking section, we're going to use all the same breeding items, with a new one added to the mix this time, Ochre Saltlick. The reason we'll be using an Ochre Saltlick on Tory is because Madagascar is one of those combo bases with a mane attached, meaning 50% of all Madagascar cubs born will have the Madagascar Mane, and we don't want Madagascar on our project, we want Clay.

And this time, I'm not going to get lucky on the first try. We'll get really close, but no dice, and have a DU Marking Clone born. Just like with her mother, we're going to base change her and breed her to Tory. While we can definitely avoid inbreeding, it'll just make the project far more drawn out and expensive, plus, Tory is going to be a king, so we can just heritage replace her. We're not breeding her for anyone else but ourselves, so who cares if she's dirty or not. I certainly don't.

We're going to IBF and... it happened! We finished our project, the final step was born! What do we do now?
Well, we have a few options. If you think you may want to go back to this project at a later date, you can have the cub be female, and try and clone it for your king. This is especially helpful for things that you plan on RMA'ing in the future, or if you like to change your kings semi often. By having your own clone line, you can safely go back to your project whenever you desire.
Or, if we were going to use Tory as a permanent king, we could just king the cub immediately. After all, we don't plan on changing our mind, so there's no reason to keep a female back up.

In the end, it just depends on what you personally want to do. I prefer to keep female clones of my finished breeding projects, just because I like the flexibility of being able to go back whenever I want.

Now that we're done, this is where we would put on any applicator markings, or any other applicator traits, that we wanted to dress up our project with. I'm going to slap a few on to Miss Tory real quick, and...

Wow, she's beautiful!