Animal Crossing: New Horizons update requires players to have basic knowledge of Mendelian Genetics
Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been in full swing with millions of payers enjoying the deserted island vacation experience, but many are now trying to decide how they want their island to look and feel like. As a reason, Animal Crossing: New Horizons Datamining Reveals A Surprising Need For Background Knowledge In Mendelian Genetics.
This is both fortunate and unfortunate that many of the Animal Crossing mechanics have changed ever since the days of New Leaf which has made it difficult for several players to figure out some of the game’s most obvious features.
One such feature, which seems to quite odd includes flower breeding. Staring with Eschewing New Leaf’s simple flower crossbreeding mechanics where it seems that the New Horizons have chosen a system that is a bit more intensive and requires the player to have at least some basic knowledge of Mendelian genetics, which implies that the junior high biology lesson on Punnett Squares is finally going to become handy.
However, in the other games, the flower cross-breeding was quite simple where certain color combinations would give rise to certain offspring. For example, a red and a white flower would produce a pink offspring or a red, and a yellow flower would produce an orange, and as it goes that different flowers and colors.
All credit goes to a little data mining by Animal Crossing fan Aeter on Discord that the players can now know that this system has been expanded extensively following the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. All of this is rather simple once a player gets a decent and fair amount of grasp on it.
To have a grasp on the flower cross-breeding mechanics of AC: NH. A player needs to have a little bit of an idea about genetics. They can look up to the Crash Course Videos on YouTube if they do not wish to get caught up on the basics.
What they need to know and understand is that certain color genes are represented by different letter combinations. This means, that some flowers will have the presence of multiple colors in their genes, but the overall combination will, however, be determined by what color the flower grows to bloom.
It is the Rr gene that controls the color of the flower, for example, whether or not a flower is red based or not. Red based flowers are red, black, pink, and orange. And, the non-red is yellow, white, and also purple. However, one has to note that not all flowers with the R gene will be red based because other genes can cover it. But a flower with the genes rr will never be red-based. In short, RR or Rr = red-based flower, rr= non-red flower.
Going forward, the Yy gene is responsible to understand whether or not a flower has any yellow in it. In this case, also, other genes can at times cover up this gene. Here also the same note for the Rr gene implies that is YY or Yy= yellow or orange, yy= non-yellow.
Ww controls whether or not a white flower will be white or just show off its underlying color that is either purple or blue which depends on the particular species. The white flowers are fairly recessive to most of the colors, and therefore this gene will affect if the white doesn’t get covered by the reds, yellows, or any other colors. Summarizing in short, WW or Ww = white, and ww =purple or blue.
Next is the Ss gene which controls which shade the red-based flower will turn out to be. Here, pink is the lightest shade, flowed by red which is the middle, and finally black which is the darkest. This particular gene holds no effect on the non-red flowers. However, it has to be noted that in this species which is without the S gene, pink is instead obtained by certain interactions between the R and W gene. Therefore SS= pink and sometimes, red in some species, Ss = red, ss = black or orange when it is combined with yellow.
Overall it is quite easy to understand and now for better understanding, it is crucial to know how these genes interact with each other to obtain certain colors during their show up.
Before further proceeding, it is important to note that rose is the only flower in which all the four genes, which are R, W, S, and Y are present whereas all other flowers have only three of them. And, hence rose shall be used as a reference as they are the most complicated ones and have the most colors.
For information, every seed that we get from Nook’s Cranny has set genes and so its best to use them to start initial breeding as in this way we can keep a track of the offspring. The red seed roses are expressed as RR-yy-WW-Ss. Therefore, it can be derived that the RR determines whether or not the flower will be red, the yy and the ww will make sure that the flower will not show up as yellow or white due to the lack of presence or getting covered by the more dominant color, Red or RR. Moreover, SS shows that since the color has been determined as RR, so the shade of red will further show up as in this particular case, just red.
If a player wishes to get more information about the mechanics then they can fully immerse themselves in the world of flower cross-breeding by checking out the link mentioned in the description of the video above.
I am Jessica Gonzalez and i have over 16 years experience in the financial services industry giving me a vast understanding of how news affects the financial markets. She is an active day trader spending the majority of my time analyzing earnings reports and watching commodities and derivatives. I have a Masters Degree in Economics from Westminster University with previous roles counting Investment Banking.
