Make stat and mutation repping possible!

_{My suggestion is fairly straightforward; Allow the option to retain your breeder male's appearance when retiring him in the same way that your "King" can retain his appearance on Lioden.}

When I realized that we are unable to keep the appearance of our breeding male when assigning an heir for mutation or stat purposes it left me feeling, to say the least, pretty disappointed. If I'm being honest that's one of my favorite features on Lioden, and while I acknowledge that they are entirely different games, I would love to see this feature available here too! If not now, then maybe in the future.

How it would work:
- Can only be done on breeding males, if your lead wolf is not also your breeding male then they do not get to keep their appearance
- When retiring your breeding male, you get the option to select "Keep appearance of current breeding male" or "Use appearance of new breeding male", it is completely optional to keep or change your breeder's appearance
- If you choose to keep the appearance of your previous breeding male, your new breeding male's appearance is wiped and replaced with that of your previous breeding male. Stats, levels, mutation, and heritage are all retained on the new breeding male, the only thing that changes about them is their looks.
To clarify in case my wording does not make sense: The new breeder male keeps literally all the same features about itself except for physical appearance. It's the exact same system as on Lioden. The new breeder male has the same stats, levels, mutation, and heritage that he always had, but his physical appearance has changed.

Pros:

• Ability to stat and mutation replace your breeder
  
• Saves player countless GC on re-making their breeder male if they have an attachment to the design
  
• Allows player the option of holding onto the designs that they have worked hard to breed, while others may choose a different appearance if they desire
  
  

Cons:

• Makes the game less difficult
  
• Could potentially damage the market for more rare bases and markings
  
  Feel free to leave your opinion or criticisms below! If you do not support, your reasoning would be appreciated!
  Potential solutions suggested:
  - Additional GC fee if you wish to retain your current breeder male's appearance (10GC, still a hefty price but cheaper than completely re-doing your breeder)
  - In the future, a crunchy-worm type item that can work on males as well as females
  

Definitely support! I've put a lot of time, effort, and energy into my breeding male/alpha, and for lore purposes I reaaally want him to stay. He's become an OC, and I can't possibly write his entire story out with the limited amount of time I'll have him for. I could recreate his appearance on another wolf of course, but that's... even more time and energy spent, plus all of the GC costs, it simply isn't worth the effort.

@Verridith, precisely! Plus once the more special and tier III bases are released I wouldn't want to spend a ton of GC on a breeder that lasts one WD lifetime!

I personally love that this is not carried over from Lioden.

I'd rather we have better pass rates, which seems to be true. My breeding male consistently passes between 3 to 5 markings with 0 mark NBWs. Sure they aren't rare markings since we haven't had harder-to-pass rarer markings released yet. But my King on LD can't pass his couple of customizer marks consistently with 5-7 marked lionesses and rarely passes 1 event mark with a lioness who also has it. And forget the base, he's not passed his stupid, lovely Cairngorm base for me once. Which works there as I'll have his looks until I decide to get rid of them.

But I like the fact that you have to try harder with breeding here and while I realize that maybe subjective, I like the finality of our wolves. If I achieve a breeding project, I some day will have to decide if I want to keep it in my Dynasty to look at or make that wolf immortal. But it will be a endcap. Something that will only encourage me to continue enjoying breeding, instead of not caring as I'm 'finished' and have no reason to move on from.

@UnheardSiren, That's valid! I get where you're coming from for sure, it does add that extra challenge and rates aren't quite as nerfed as on Lioden. However I still believe it would be nice to have the option, that way the players that wish to have an extra challenge can continue breeding heirs while others who have special attachments to their breeder males can keep them around ^_^

I personally like the current system more.

When we assign a breeding male we also keep its level(s). That would mean if you replace your 600 stat level 20 wolf and stat replace with a level 12, would you keep the level of the new male as well? That way you could cheat your way of leveling up past what you can naturally achieve in the game (random stat gains aside). And if you instead keep the level of your previous breeding male you could again skip the time you usually have to invest for leveling. 

A new breeding male assigned at 1 year gives you 159 rollovers, I don't think that is a short time or not worth the investment of a breeding male.

@Glass

If we got an item like the crunchy worm, but it worked for duplicating either the female's or male's look would that fix your concern? As then you could immortal your wolf if it was sentimental value, but have a clone if it was more the investment/studding use side? Because I hope less of the breeding items are female focused compared to LD.

Because if it's sentimental, I don't see where making the wolf immortal doesn't solve concerns. But I may just be missing the point.

I support. It's a favored feature from Lioden of mine. Not being able to keep the appearance of a king / lead discourages me from customizing my wolf. 

@Sienna Snow, I don't quite understand what you mean by cheating your way up levels :0 if you replace your male it's still an entirely different wolf aside from its appearance. The replaced wolf would retain its appearance alone, any stats or levels would be that of the replacing wolf. If that makes sense? Let me know if I'm missing something xD because you would still need to put in the effort of leveling up your replacing wolf.

@UnheardSiren, For myself personally it's more about the appearance and being able to replace a pretty breeder male with something that has better stats or say, for example, piebald mutation. However I would absolutely support a crunchy worm type item that could be used on a male!