Test of Khefre's Children

Khefre is a goddess of the sun, she who pushes the celestial disc across the heavens each day. The scarab beetles of Egypt are sacred to her. In the Test of Khefre's Children, the first Test in the Discipline of Art and Music, you will breed beetles of marvelous colors and compete them against other breeders.

Overview

Breed beetles with beautiful colors and patterns on their shells, and display them in Scarab Gardens for others to judge.

Principles

• Catch a Wild Beetle
• Grow Cabbage
• Place a Male in a Terrarium
• Place a Female in a Terrarium
• Breed a Beetle to 0%-50% Ownership
• Breed a Beetle to 51%-75% Ownership
• Breed a Beetle to 76%-89% Ownership
• Breed a Beetle to 90%-99% Ownership
• Rename a bred beetle
• Vote on a Garden
• Mix any Reddish Paint (Any paint color that has "Red" in the name)
• Mix any Yellowish Paint (Any paint color that has "Yellow" in the name)
• Exhibit a Beetle in a Garden
• Build a Khefre's Locker

For the paint, you only need to take the paint from a pigment lab; you can get someone else to mix the right colours first. Verified - Razalguhl

Demonstrate the Principle

• 100 Cabbage Seeds

Beetle Breeding

Legacy Beetle Breeding Guide full of useful if slightly dated stuff.

To breed a beetle to a % ownership you must trade a bred beetle with someone and then interbreed that beetle with your own stock.

Any beetles you breed where both Female and Male are 100% yours will create a 100% yours sub beetle

• Male's give the color and Female's the pattern 90% of the time to the children - Tawret

• From discussions with other players it seems that for some people the above statement is reversed, ie females give the colour and males give the pattern, - Mortality

Beetle Showing and Judging

Technically, what you put on display is not your beetle, but a statue replica of your beetle assembled by you. The beetle itself remains in your possession, and you can take it home for further breeding, or for display in a later competition. (Or, if it displeases you, mulching.)

To show a beetle at a beetle garden you have to build your beetle statue in garden then wait as player judges judge each of the beetles up to a certain number of votes. A this time the winners will be announced and all of the beetle statues can be torn down to make room for the next competition.

Building a Beetle Statue

To build a Statue of a beetle in a Beetle Garden you need:

• 2 Mud Granite
• 2 Small Ruby
• 10 Concrete
• 20 Clay
• 12 Gold Wire
• 5 Paint of each of two colors.
  • To find the required paints, display the beetle on your terrarium, and use the "Special" command.
  • It is possible for them to be the same color, and it's common for them to not really be the colors you think your beetle is.

NOTES:

• You must have your beetle in your inventory to build.
• Beetle must be at least 90% yours to display it.
• For Level 2 and 3, you must have your Certificate from the previous level in your inventory.

The Competition

Beetles are entered into competition by bringing them to a beetle garden and building a beetle statue in one of the alcoves. You may only enter 1 beetle in a contest per week (note that's measured in TeppyTime). Note that a beetle which is not 100% yours may not be a valid beetle to enter (cutoff is somewhere around 90% being fine to build a statue). You must have a certificate from a Level 1 competition to enter a Level 2 competition, but you are not required to use the same beetle; the same is true for Level 3 competitions. Passing a Level 3 competition passes the test. Once judging ends, the owners have a few days during which only they may tear down their statues, so that they can reclaim materials (note that a spouse can do the tear-down too). After that anyone may tear them down to clear the garden for the next competition. The amount returned from tearing down a beetle is dependent on your salvage level.

Note that you have to have the actual certificate with you when you enter a higher-level garden. I left my certificate at home -- I don't think I even realized that there was a stashable item representing this game concept -- and had to go 3 chariot hops back home to get it when the Level 2 garden I wanted to enter wouldn't let me exhibit without it. Don't leave home without it!

You can build a beetle statue once every 168 hours (1 week), probably to prevent you from entering multiple beetles at once.

Scoring of Beetle Gardens

The ranking system for beetles is actually based on the number of unique beetles that your beetle has beaten. People voting on the garden determine the placement of the beetles and points are calculated based on how many unique beetles were beaten. At level 1, you must beat 4 other beetles to place (hence 3 passes at level 1). When you enter a beetle into level 2 or 3, the number of beetles you've beaten at previous levels will count towards whether or not your beetle advances, regardless of how it places - hence is is possible to have variable numbers of beetles advance in the later ranks. It is important to emphasise that it's unique beetles beaten, so if you beat beetles at level 2 that you've already beaten at level 1, they don't count towards your score.

The wins are actually recorded on the beetle certificate you use, meaning you can enter different beetles at different levels - you're actually competing against other people's certificates, but :it's easier to explain in terms of beating other beetles. So for a level 2 certificate, it has the names of all the players (not beetles) you beat in round 2, and all the players *they* :beat in round 1. The total number of unique names is what matters for determining an advancement. Note that because player names are recorded, not beetle names, you can beat a new beetle :from a previously beaten player and not gain points.

You can determine how many wins your certificate has by examining it (tests->Khefre's Children menu when holding the certificate in inventory).

The scoring system is designed to prevent 'incestuous competition' - winning against players you've already beaten (possibly by proxy). However, this means that it will be impossible to pass the higher ranks until the beetle population in competition is large enough.

Your beetle will be given a win of strength X, where X denoted how many distinct beetles/breeders you have beaten. At level 1 it will be upto 7 (you "beat" yourself too if you have the most votes). At level 2, your strength of win includes not only the actual beetle/breeders you have gained more votes than, but all the beetle/breeders that they beat in their level 1 wins, minus any duplicates. A level 2 win could be upto 49, however this would be uncommon as it would have to mean that you won on strength 7 and beat 6 other beetles that all won on strength 7 wins and did not have any duplicate beetle/breeder entries. At level 3 same thing happens again, you get a strength of win of the number of beetles you gain more votes than, as well as points for all beetle/breeders they have beaten on their way to level 3, again, minus any duplicates. Hope this simplifies all the below description for people. For a level 3 win you theoretically could have a strength of 343 but it will usually be considerably less.

In other words, you gain points for each beetle/breeder you get more votes than, plus any beetle/breeders they beat, minus duplicates as you go through the higher level gardens

The following example will hopefully show how scoring works (note that it refers to 'beetles' for ease of comprehension, but means 'players owning the competing beetle'):

Rank 1 contest

   * A - 1st place
   * B
   * C - 3rd place
   * D
   * E
   * F - 2nd place
   * G 

Now, A has beaten B, C, D, E and F, G (7 points), while F has beaten B, C, D, E, G (6 points) and C has beaten B, D, E, G (5 points). Say some of these beetles compete with others in a rank 2 garden (which have also won level 1 contests), it might look like this (second level indent shows which beetles each has beaten in the past):

Rank 2 contest

   * A
         o placed 1st against B, C, D, E and F, G (7 points) in rank 1 
   * F
         o placed 2nd against B, C, D, E, G (6 points) in rank 1 
   * C
         o placed 3rd against B, D, E, G (5 points) in rank 1 
   * V
         o placed 1st against X, D, P, Q, R, S (7 points) in another rank 1 
   * X
         o placed 3rd against P, Q, R, S (5 points) in another rank 1 
   * Y
         o placed 3rd against C, I, J, K (5 points) in another rank 1 
   * Z
         o placed 2nd against C, I, J, K, Y (6 points) in another rank 1 

If A, C and Y place first, second and third by votes, they will have beaten other beetles as follows:

   * A beat B, C, D, E, F and G in rank 1, and also beat F, C, V, X, Y, Z in rank 2, which beat:
         o F: B, C, D, E, G in rank 1
         o C: B, D, E, G in rank 1
         o V: X, D, P, Q, R, S in rank 1
         o X: P, Q, R, S in rank 1
         o Y: C, I, J, K in rank 1
         o Z: C, I, J, K, Y in rank 1 

Accumulating all these, A has directly beaten B, C, D, E, F, G, F (again), C (again), V, X, Z and by beating beetles in rank 2, it has beaten (B, C, D, E, G), (B, D, E, G), (X, D, P, Q, R, S), (P, Q, R, S), (C, I, J, K), (C, I, J, K, Y) by proxy. These are all combined into a single list as follows:

   * beaten A 2 times (always beats itself)
   * beaten B 3 times
   * beaten C 5 times
   * beaten D 4 times
   * beaten E 3 times
   * beaten F 2 times
   * beaten G 3 times
   * beaten I 2 times
   * beaten J 2 times
   * beaten K 2 times
   * beaten P 2 times
   * beaten Q 2 times
   * beaten R 2 times
   * beaten S 2 times
   * beaten V 1 times
   * beaten X 2 times
   * beaten Y 1 times
   * beaten Z 1 times 

In total, this is 41 'wins', but only 18 unique wins, so A now has 18 points. Because C & F competed with A again (they were in the first rank-1 with A), A does not gain extra points from having beaten them again. Similarly D was beaten by V in another rank-1, and A has already beaten D in the past and does not gain from beating D via V. However, A does gain from having beaten other new (to A) beetles by proxy.

To advance from rank-1, your beetle needs to have 5 points. To advance from rank-2, you must have 15 points. Advancing from rank-3 and passing the Test requires 70 points.

In this example, A will advance to rank 3 with 18 points, having beaten (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, I, J, K, P, Q, R, S, V, X, Y, Z).

The theoretical maximum points are 7 points from rank-1, 49 points from rank-2 and 343 points from rank-3 (assuming all beetles are totally unique).

Beetle Garden Locations

Rank 3 Garden is in Alcyone 1317 2986

Rank 2 Gardens are in Taygete and Maia and Alcyone

All Other Gardens are Rank 1

Map_of_Scarab_Gardens

Beetle Guilds

• Beetles Under Glass (BUG)