how do you guys deal with proficiency in new wolves?

hello! i apologize for my awful wording, i'm just. really bad at words. (i also hope this is the right board for my post, if not, please tell me! but i assme it is because i'm asking for advice on how to get past something that feels like an intimidating obstacle in the game). but i'll try to explain it better here:

SO. it's been a few weeks since i started playing wolvden. i have some Uh Thoughts , on it.

when i first got registered to wolvden, i thought i'd play it the same way i started playing lioden: i'll claim ugly potato lionesses bc i am in need of hunters, and when i become a dreamboat and start claiming prettier chased lionesses, i'll replace all the ugly potato lionesses with my prettier new lionesses. in my experience at least, it's kind of easy to level up my lionesses, hunting is overall easier in lioden i think. the whole idea was based off of the thought of "i will temporarily have ugly lions in my pride bc i need em to function and ill replace them with pretty lions when i get them later on".

in wolvden i claimed (and still have) wolves i consider ugly, thinking "yeah i'll make them my scouts, hunters, puppysitters and herbalists for now but i'll replace them with pretty chased wolves once i get them!" but that idea now seems pretty daunting because of this:

the proficiency meters. i've been playing this game for around 20 days or more, but both my scouts are only 20% proficient, my first hunting party ever still has only 27% synergy, and my herbalist is still only 15% proficient! my worry is that if i get my hand on prettier wolves and replace all my old wolves i'll go ohhhh NOOOO it's going to take FOREVER ALL OVER AGAIN to get them to a decent proficiency/synergy!

SO....i'm sitting here wondering if i should just grit my teeth and bare it, having to go through the process of gaining proficiency all over again, OR should i keep my starter wolves and breed them despite the fact that i don't think i'll get any pretty pups out of them at all.

so! what do you guys do/what did you guys do? did you guys stick with your starter wolves and breed them just bc it'd be such a loss to lose all that proficiency progress, or did you replace em with prettier wolves and go through the process aaaaaall over again? what do you think i oughta do?

You can keep them and get your breeding wolves too. You need allover 8 to 9 wolves with roles. Dependin on how many females you want to breed with you'd end up with about 11 to 14 Wolves total. Which is definitely manageable. So no reason to have to decide between being efficient or breeding.

As a matter of fact - as your wolves will grow old and start dying you will have to go through it all over again. Not much of a problem on the scouts. Not much of a problem on the hunters. Because you can train a new team or a new scount while still having a full proficient team/scout for all your needs. The Herbalist though is tricky as you can only have one at a time. I suggest stocking up on medicine before starting to change them - I don't know it a change causes them to loose all recipes or just some.

Personally, I valued synergy and proficiency above look for my staring hunters.

Even if some of them are quite ugly (I tried to befriend good looking ones, but it wasn't always possible), I decided to keep them until they naturally die. At that point, I will start replace them with better looking ones. Also, my hunters are all males (during testing I found out that I don't like having female hunters because of nesting) so I don't have a breeding problem.

But I have 3 NBW female pupsitters (and my starting female) that, even if not so good looking, have now max pupsitting proficiency, so I don't want to let them go. For them, I found out that breeding to 10 markings studs could still give decent results even if they are just ugly NBW. Even if my girls have just 2 or 3 markings, breeding them to 10 marking studs get me interesting pups, sometimes even with 6, 7 markings (coming mostly from the father).

I know studding it's a bit expensive, but there are a lot of users that refund part of the fee.

Hope I was of help

That's a big issue for me too, especially with hunters as they remain useless for days and days and never bring anything back, I just don't want to spend so much work and effort on common starter NBWs that I wont even breed and will just have to replace later as I get better wolves!

Personally for myself, I decided to kick out the hunters for now - they're entirely useless, and 5 less wolves is so much easier to feed - and focus on leveling up my lead wolf. At level 10 there will be a chance to find better wolves for the pack - chased wolves that might have cool traits on them - and then Ill fight my way to level 15 where NBW exlusive stuff will start to appear. Then I will have a way to find better wolves, wolves that can lay the foundation of my pack, that can be bred and will produce keep-worthy pups - those, I will consider actually training hard.

Until then Ill personally just stay away from spending too much effort on wolves I'm likely not going to keep!

This is what I did: My first hunting party Starters was 4 NBWs and my stud. I am planning to keep them going and will replace if my pups grow up or they die of old age; none of em are for breeding/male. I have trained up a second hunting party of G2 "pretty" wolves for breed and feed me. They take priority to raise synergy/proficiency.

My herbalist will probably stay a male so I am in no rush to replace him (as a tip: queue up 5 recipes before you go to bed so he earns prof while you sleep :D)

I am almost done discovering the map, so prof is less interesting to me now. I will probably exchnage wolves in and out of the scout role as I please to gain more wisdom/smarts and to train up new level 1 adults fast.

And if you decide to replace em, you can always sellf wolves with proficiency!

hmm...ive read you guys's posts, and while yall have different ways of going bout it ive decided to keep my pack to the "minimum"-- only having who i need. so i'm keeping my herbalist, hunters, and scouts, but i think when i reach level 10 and get my hands on prettier wolves i'll slowly replace them? also Sienna, what do you mean queue up recipes?? :O i never knew that was something you could do?

A recipe needs 20% energy. So if you have 60% energy, you can simply craft/learn one and queue up 2 more. Simply press craft/learn again and it will show up next to the first recipe. Your herbalist will start with the next one they are finished with the first one. Energy will start replenishing once the queue is done (no matter if you collected or not)

Oh thank you. Didn't knew that you could do that.

I think you might consider buying pretty wolves you like in the trading center rather than waiting for better NBW. I am at level 16 and honestly any of the specials ones I've found aren't anywhere as pretty as the ones I've bred myself from my original starters. I've found maybe 1 special mark or a special base, but nothing I even like.

I've been chasing some really nice ones because I cant sell them-there are a lot of nice wolves in the trading center. 

This game is much harder than Lioden, which I personally love, but it is challenging. 

I lucked out in that most of my nbw are rather nice-looking. I made sure there were no personality clashes, so party synergy doesn't suffer, and focused primarily on critter and small trails to bring up proficiencies. And if I find prettier wolves, mostly my pups, my scouts have got the desert unlocked, so I can use it as a primary source of food while I retrain my hunters. I usually have my herbalist foraging during the day and queue up some recipes before i go to sleep as well. A lot of it is just checking in at half hour intervals.