Breeding Guide

You can breed all of the new magical horses just like normal horses, and they can interbreed freely to make magical horses that have traits from both of their parents. For instance, you can create an alicorn (a pegasus with a unicorn horn) by breeding a pegasus and a unicorn. Traits are represented by DNA. Some traits are dominant over other traits (making other recessive).

Breeding magical horses works just like breeding normal horses, except the magical horses in the Ultimate Unicorn mod actually pass on their traits with simulated DNA. Each horse possesses 2 genes for each important attribute. Important attributes are listed below, preceded by a letter that represents them.
  • U = Unicorn Horn
  • A = Aura
  • Wings (B = big wings and T = tiny wings)
  • F = Flaming Hooves
  • D = The Destrier Body Type, which is overly large
  • Hide (skin) type (u = Unicorn, p = Pegasus, n = Nightmare, d = Destrier)
Some genes are dominant over others, meaning that if two different types of gene are present, the magical horse expresses the dominant one. In other words, if a horse has a dominant gene, you can see the gene's trait on the horse's body. Genes that are not dominant are called recessive. If a horse has one recessive gene and one dominant one, the recessive one doesn't show up on the magical horse, but can still be passed on to its children. Only if a horse has two of the same recessive gene does that gene get expressed (show up on the horse's body).

For simple genes, like the Horn gene with 2 possible values, the "on" value is dominant ("H" in this case, for "Horn"), and the "off" (or "No horn") value is recessive ("off" is always represented by 0). If your horse has one or two H genes, he will have a horn. If he has only one H gene, it's possible he could have a baby with no horn, depending on the genes of the mom, because the baby could be unlucky and get no H genes from either parent.

DNA Format


DNA is formatted as follows, going from right to left:

Positions 1 and 2: Horn. Values 0 or H.
Positions 3 and 4: Wings. Values 0, T, or B.
Positions 5 and 6: Aura. Values 0 or A.
Positions 7 and 8: Destrier Body. Values 0 or D.
Positions 9 and 10: Flaming Hooves. Values 0 or F.
Positions 11 and 12: Hide/Skin genes. Values u, p, n, d, h, etc.

(And some new genes, since the introduction of the Hippocamp and Kirin)
Positions 13 and 14: Water Breathing genes. Values 0 or G.
Positions 15 and 16: Hippocamp Fish Tail genes. Values 0 or F.
Positions 17 and 18: Long Tail genes. Values 0 or T.
Positions 19 and 20: Antler genes. Values 0 or N.
Positions 21 and 22: Alternate Body Type. Values 0 or O (or a variety of other characters if you use cheat codes) - right now everything not 0 makes the Kirin body type.
Positions 23 and 24: Magic Powers. Values - 0 or O (or a variety of other characters if you use cheat codes) - right now everything not 0 makes Kirin powers (walk on water, breathe fire).

A typical DNA string for a unicorn: 000000000000 uu0000AA00HH. A typical unicorn has unicorn hide, an aura, and a horn.

A typical DNA string for a pegasus: 000000000000 pp000000BB00. A typical pegasus has pegasus hide and big wings.

A typical DNA string for a hippocamp:  00000000FFGG hh0000AA0000. A typical hippocamp has water breathing ability, a fish tail, hippocamp hide and an aura.

A typical DNA string for a kirin: OOOONNTT0000 kk0000000000. A typical kirin has magic powers, the kirin alternate body type, antlers, a long tail, and kirin hide.

Using the DNA Tester


To use the DNA Tester, simply equip it as a weapon and hit a magical horse with it. The title of the DNA Tester will change, showing you the DNA of the horse you hit. You can see it easily by hovering your mouse over the DNA Tester in your inventory.

DNA Tester results for a hippocamp


How DNA Combines from Parents to Make a Baby Magical Horse


When you breed two horse together, their DNA mixes to make the baby's DNA. Each parent has 2 of every kind of gene (2 for unicorn horn, 2 for flaming hooves, etc.), and gives one at random to the baby. Since the baby gets one gene from each parent, the baby ends up with two. There's luck involved here, so you might need multiple tries to get the kind of baby you want.

A typical DNA string for a baby of a unicorn and a pegasus looks like this: up0000A00B0H. The pegasus hide is dominant over the unicorn hide, so the baby will have pegasus hide. It also has one Aura gene, one Big Wing gene, and one Horn gene. Since these are all dominant over 0s (0 indicates "doesn't have trait" remember), the baby will have an aura, big wings and a unicorn horn! That baby has a chance to pass on those 0s (as well as the good genes) to its children, though.

Breeding Techniques


I usually try to fence in the horses I want to keep breeding, and sometimes just kill off the ones who don't have good enough genes. If you can get a horse with two copies of any one gene, it makes a good parent. Magical horses recharge their mating ability in half the time of regular horses, so you don't have to wait as long!

Don't get too many horses crowded together. They are hard to manage that way, they tend to kick each other (which can lead to some flying out of their pen or dying), and you can accidentally mate the wrong ones.

Nightmares are a challenge to breed. Gentling Horseshoes help a lot! Also, Nightmares will calm their flaming hooves when they are in love, so you can still mate them without too much trouble if you are careful. Other options are to stick them in a pool of water, or make sure it's raining when you deal with them. These last two are especially helpful, because babies can inherit the flaming hooves and start things on fire, too (including a non-nightmare parent).

Keep trying! Persistence is key to getting a horse with all the traits you want! There are some secrets hidden in the gene pool, including weird mutations, that can happen while breeding your horses, so keep a keen eye out, and try to get different combinations of DNA!

Ultimate Unicorn Mutant Breeds!


If you are an expert breeder, you can breed one of mutant breeds, which are called Ultimate Unicorns.  See this post to find out how.

Cheating


If breeding horses properly is too slow for you, or you are having a hard time getting the kind of magical horse you want, cheating is always an option.  Check out the Cheats page for more info.

48 comments:

  1. What do you use to breed what food?

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    1. All the foods that let you breed normal horses also work with magical horses. This includes apples, carrots, golden apples, golden carrots, etc.

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    2. Is there a way to convert the DNA strands to cheat codes for the /summon command?

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    3. I can't get them to breed in 1.11...

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    4. THIS IS NOT HELPFUL im playing in 1.16.5 but i dont understand this when will you make a breeding chart ythat shows what horses to breed to get ultimate unicorns

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    5. and also when i try to breeed the horses i only mount on them i play in version 1.16.5

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  2. how to breed? i right clicked the unicorn and pegasus but i just mounted them??!! how do you breed?

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    1. Did you right click with an apple or golden apple in your hand? I'll take a look and see if I can replicate the issue. 1.7.10 version of Minecraft, right? Which version of the mod? 1.5.10?

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    2. I cant seem to breed any horses but the magical ones, with the specific names and abilities. Its very confusing.

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  3. I tried breeding two adult hybrids together but they wouldn't breed. I am on the minecraft version 1.7.10 and the mod version 5.10.

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    1. Thanks for letting me know! I will check it out and see if I can reproduce the problem. What kind of hybrids were they?

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    2. I tried it with multiple different hybrids, so I do not think it is important. However, I remember with most - if not all - of the pairs had at least one kirin hybrid.

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    3. I tried breeding two non-kirin hybrids, and it worked. It's probably a glitch with a kirin gene.

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    4. Have you learned anything else new? When the breeding failure happened, did they successfully try to breed, but no child was created? Y can tell if this happened by seeing if you can make hearts appear again right afterward by feeding them - if no hearts appear, then they successfully tried to breed.

      I'm trying to figure out if there's a bug in the code that makes baby horses appear, or in the mating code. Any extra info you can provide would be helpful!

      If you have the two horses that can't breed together, it would be *super* helpful if you can get the DNA for each (using the DNA tester item) and post those DNA strings. Then I can make horses just like them and see if I can make them breed successfully.

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  4. What hide genes are dominant and which genes are recessive to each other? I know that pegasus hide is dominant over unicorn hide, nightmare hide is dominant over pegasus and unicorn hides, and destrier hide is dominant over all three. But what about the hippocamp and kirin hides? Are hippocamp hide genes dominant over destriers? And are kirin hide genes dominant over hippocamps?

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    1. Also, if a big wing gene is inherited from one parent and small wing gene is inherited from the other parent, which one would appear on the baby horse?

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    2. Hide dominance ordering at the moment is listed below. Items higher up the list are dominant over everything lower. If I add new breeds (like a mutant "Ultimate" deer breed), they will likely be higher up the list (which helps explain the current ordering, i.e. why deer hide is dominant over everything else).

      In the course of breeding, mutations can sometimes happen to turn a hide gene into its mutant version (e.g. "unicorn" becomes "rainbow smash"), but this is only really happens if a baby has lots of special traits (wings, horn, and large body) or no special traits.

      Deer
      Golden Kirin (mutant Kirin)
      Kirin
      Celestial Sea Horse (mutant Hippocamp)
      Hippocamp
      Red-Winged Blackbird (mutant Destrier)
      RedRum (mutant Nightmare)
      Blue Belle (mutant Pegasus)
      Rainbow Smash (mutant Unicorn)
      Destrier
      Pegasus
      Nightmare
      Unicorn
      Zebra

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    3. Big wings are dominant over tiny wings, so big wings are expressed in the baby if both genes are present in its DNA.

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    4. Thanks for the reply. I haven't been able to keep up with updates, so I wasn't even aware that mutations for hippocamp and kirin hides existed! Also didn't recall a deer being added!

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. I'm curious if you've discovered anything new. Looking at my code, I can't see why kirin breeding would be having issues.

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  6. so can you add maybe a dna reader? that would transform this dna code into an table that would basically simplify it xD
    such as a gui that simply said
    horn: yes/no
    wings: Yes/no (large/small)
    tail: yes/no (large/small)
    aura: yes/no (maybe aura type here?)
    etc etc etc

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  7. i bred a Typhon the destroyer and Velvet the mystical healer and this was the baby's DNA PP00D000BBHH. first of all, what do the two H's at the end represent?? then i bred this baby with Aleah, the bringer of dawn. this was the results for that baby's dna test: Pp00D000BBHH this time, the DNA was the same only one of the p's at the beginning is lowercase. what does that mean?????

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  8. Is it possible to have the fish tail properties without the fish tail appearance?
    Or is the fish tail appearance always dominant over the long tail appearance, for instance?

    I like the appearance of 4 legs, but the swimming ability is very useful.


    Using Minecraft 1.11.2

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    1. At the moment, the swimming ability only works if the horse has a fish tail. I may look into changing that (or making a magical item that allows it) in future releases.

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  9. Is there any chance you could get regular horse colors on a magical horse? A palomino unicorn or pegasus world be awesome. XD Or chestnut ones. <3

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    1. This is a good idea, but unfortunately at the moment you can't do that without getting a special custom skin made. The custom skins for Khryseis and Joker have a more natural look to them, so try giving a unicorn or pegasus one of those custom names.

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  10. in the DNA format 20 is entered twice

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    1. Good catch! Thanks for telling me - I've fixed it.

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  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  12. Um.. I can't breed Typhon or any of those special horses? Are they not breedable, or am I just missing something?

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  13. i typed in /summon Kirin ~ ~ ~ {Dna1:330003377} do it! it makes a blue kirin that creates fire

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  14. my three ideas for crossbreeds:
    unicorn + pegasus
    nightmare + hippocamp
    nightmare + destrier

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  15. Has summoning been disabled or something? I literally can't summon anything, even with codes posted by the mod author. 1.12 with mod version 1.5.16

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  16. hello for some reason i can't seem to find any deer what biomes do they spawn in?
    sincerely girl obsesed with minecraft

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  17. These posts are all quite old now. I only recently discovered this mod and LOVE it! Are you done updating it? Any chance of a version compatible with 1.15 or even 1.14? Seriously thanks for making this, has been loads of fun!

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    1. I'm actually working on making it compatible with 1.15 right now. Unforunately, big changes were made to Minecraft and Forge in 1.13, so it's more work than I expected. It is coming along, though.

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  18. Hey Joel, for years I couldn’t understand how to use summoning commands. Can you please explain?

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  19. What would the command be for Kirin Body Shape, Kirin Powers, Destrier Size, Pegasus Wings, and Unicorn Horn?

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  20. kirin hide as well, and aura and water breathing

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  21. Is there a way to get Typon, Velvet, Alea and Asmidiske without using creative?

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    1. At the moment there is no way to get them outside of Creative mode. I've been considering adding a way to get them in Survival mode, however. Just haven't put it in yet.

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