Once you’ve been playing for a while — you know what you like, you have built up some reserves of money, and you understand breeding well — you can start work on creating your perfect waja. Many of these wajas have themes such as holidays, seasons, comic book villains, and so on. Use the custom demo to determine the exact markings and mutations; find the hex codes with the combine colours tool, the colour picker tool, or copying them from wajas you like; and you’re ready to begin.
1. Custom Waja Tokens
Tokens allow you to create a waja from scratch with a limited number of markings and/or mutations. The limits are: 2 (silver), 3 (gold), and 4 (diamond). Using a token, you can create any combination of mutations, but certain markings are not available. Markings that cannot be created through the token system can be later added by using dyes.
When you “activate” a token, you are asked to go to the custom creator. This works almost exactly like the custom demo, except that marking and mutations are combined into a single drop-down list, and the number of these drop-down lists is limited by the type of token. Once you have inputted the correct hex codes and markings/mutations, click preview to see the waja. This activates the create button. Your token is not used until you click create, so you can exit the custom creator without using the token.
Markings are listed upside down: the marking at the top of the list will be underneath the markings below it on the list. In the custom demo and the custom creator, the order that you select markings will be the final order that the markings will show. Make sure that you have used the custom demo to experiment with the layering, and that you know exactly which marking goes where.
Once you’re happy with the appearence and gender (make sure you’ve selected the gender you want), click create. You’ll be asked to confirm that you want to use the token. Once you confirm, the waja will appear in your cave named “CUSTOM”. The waja is already 20 days of age, and is generation 1. You can begin breeding immediately. A newly-created waja has nothing in MU, MG, and LQ; so you may wish to invest in at least a number of normal pears to increase your litter quantity. Feeding any type of pear to a waja during pregnancy does not affect the pups, so feed up before you begin.
Acquiring Tokens
Tokens for every known type of waja have been available at some point in time. At the moment, the token shop carries the following tokens:
- Bane: Diamond, Gold, Silver
- Corsie: Gold, Silver
- Egyptian: Gold, Silver
- Fire: Gold, Silver
- Normal: Gold, Silver
- Tempest: Gold, Silver
Tokens in the shop are purchased with CWP, and cost 40 - diamond, 30 - gold, and 20 - silver. Other tokens can be purchased off players. Divine tokens are available once per year on "Divine Day". Divine Day occurs on July 3; starting at 9am, divine tokens can be purchased from the token shop for the following 24 hours. There is a limit of two tokens per player, and the tokens are "locked" until the sale ends at 9am on the 4th. A gold divine token costs 60 CWP on divine day, the silver costing 50 CWP.
2. Dyes
If you can get your hands on a low-generation “blank slate” (a waja in the right colour with either no markings/mutations, or the markings/mutations you want), or you are creating your own custom waja, certain markings can be added with dyes. Dyes can be added to any waja, no matter the age, generation, gender, or breed. Once the dye has been applied, the waja will be treated as if they had been born with that marking.
When you add a dye to a waja, you can select the colour, strength of the marking, and whether you want the new marking to appear on top or behind existing markings. There is a preview option before you confirm the dye, but once you have applied the dye to the waja, you cannot cancel the process. Make sure you have used the custom demo to see what the dye looks like, because once you open that dye bottle, you can’t go back.
2.1 Availability
Dyes exist in two types: those available for purchase in the dye shop, and those that are not. Dyes that can be purchased in the dye shop range in price from 400,000 to 6 million waja credits. Dyes that could not be purchased in the dye shop may be available from other players, by trade or auction.
The dye shop restocks every fifteen minutes, starting at two minutes past the hour. Not all dyes replenish with each restock. Prices also fluctuate each restock. There is a purchase limit of one for dyes.
Shop Dyes: Blaze, Celestial Wing, Giraffe, Heart Cape, Jester, Kitsune, Large Dorsal, Mud, Okapi, Raging Wind, Skunk, Small Dorsal, Spectre Mask.
Non-Shop Dyes: Cheetah (trivia prize), Collar (given out by Estu), Dalmatian (given out by Estu), Hound (previous monthly items shop item), Knives (given out by Estu), Raccoon (previous monthly items shop item), Ritual (previous monthly items shop item), Side Stripe (temporary leaf exchange item).
3. Creating Customs
First thing, and I cannot stress this enough, make sure you know exactly what you want before you buy any tokens or dyes. They are expensive, and even if you auction them it is unlikely that you will get your money back. Use the custom demo to preview what you want the waja to look like. Look at the customs for sale in the forums: this will give you an idea of what people will buy, and what has already been done.
Gather together the materials you’re going to need: tokens and any applicable dyes. It is recommended that you make a pair of customs, rather than just one, as you can control what the offspring will look like rather than hunting for a low-gen mate that will suit your custom.
Create your customs and stuff them full of normal pears. A normal pear increases LQ by 1-3%, so you will need between 34 and 100 pears per waja. Once their LQ has been boosted, breed your customs. There is a fairly solid market for “limited edition” pre-dyed customs. You can use this to fund the dyes if you haven’t already bought them. If you do pre-orders for custom wajas, limit spaces at each stage to three or four breedings - people waiting for the fourth breeding will be waiting 20 days for a pup - and always underestimate the number of pups, even if both customs have an LQ of 100. Better to have some pups left over for sale, then have to wait for another breeding.
If you gave your custom mutations, you will also want to feed your customs strange pears to increase their MU. Personally, I would not increase it all the way to 100, as this could result in pups with unexpected mutations.
3.1 Useful Tools
The most obvious, and useful tool is the Custom Demo. This works in the same way as the custom creator, and allows you to fine tune the exact appearance of your custom before you spend a single credit.
Other useful tools include: colour picker tool - allows you to select a colour from a large visual palette; colour mixing tool - combine colours to refine the exact tone you are looking for; close colours tool - enter a specific colour and be shown a palette of colours that are lighter and darker on the red, green, and cyan (blue) scales to find colours similar to ones you already have; opposite colour tool - provides the exact opposite to a colour; random colour tool - generate random colours.
I also found this incredible link: colour mix calculator, on the downtime forums. Not only can it be used for pup predictions by entering the parents statistics on the left and right, but you can also enter the desired pup colour in the centre, the desired parent colour on the left, and click calculate to be given the colour code that you would mix with the first parent to get the pup's colour.
4. Custom Ideas
There are thousands of ideas out there for personalised customs. Customs have been inspired by chocolates, books, comics, and even rave parties. You do not need to limit yourself to creating an identical pair, either. Some very successful breeders set up a collection of wajas with the same markings in different colours that all create beautiful offspring when paired up in various ways.
