How To Get Creatures
Stream
The simplest way to obtain a creature is to visit the stream, accessed via the banner at the top of every page. Here, you will find a selection of nine eggs floating downstream. When an egg reaches the edge of screen it will reappear on the other. If you don’t like any of your current choices you can : take one, causing a new egg to be spawned in its place, or wait until the stream “refreshes” and an entirely new set of eggs is available. This happens every fifteen minutes at X:00, X:15, X:30, and X:45.
Here is a spreadsheet containing stream creature's names, eggs, and rarities.
Spoilers!
Shop
Clicking “shop” on the banner above will take you to a list of shops, from which you can by a number of creatures for varying amounts of gold.
To access the Dark shop, you will need to complete the quest "Mysterious Business."
For the Herbalist Shop, you need to finish "The Hidden Path."
To buy things from the Society of the Trident, you need to finish both "Vasial's Crush" and "The Invitation"
In order to access the Artificer Shop you'll need to complete "Still Animals."
(See Quests section in a below post for help with these quests)
Quests
Quests often award creatures on their completion. See the below section on quests for more information about them.
Breeding
If you have two compatible creatures of opposite gender, you can breed them to obtain a new baby creature. Some creatures can only be obtained through breeding. These are called hybrids.
Other Players
You can buy nearly any creature from a fellow magi with gold in the Merchant District. In the Zocalo you can often receive creatures for free! See the section on trading if you need help with this.
Egg limit
You can only care for four live, or unfrozen, eggs at a time. I you want more eggs, you’ll need to hatch one of your current ones first.
There are, however, a few exceptions to this rule. If you already have four eggs, you can still purchase up to two creatures from the donation shop. This raises the limit to six, but only if you purchase the donation pets last.
Additionally, certain holiday events come with “gifting” during which you may receive live eggs from other players. You can open these presents all at once, possibly resulting in you carrying more than four eggs. You’ll have to hatch them down to three or less to obtain new eggs.
How to hatch eggs
Creatures gain progress when they are clicked. Putting your creatures in your signature here, and on other forums, is a good start. Your creatures can be clicked once every twelve hours per IP address.
You can also post your creatures in the three click threads, located in the Reindeer Games section of the forums. Daycare services are available in the Merchant District; someone else will post your creatures for you.
•You can share your creatures on facebook or twitter for an extra boost via the buttons in the upper righthand corner of the creature’s page.
•Additionally, there are off-site nurseries in which you can leave your pets for others to click. Here are a couple :
•Yarold’s Click exchange is another form of nursery in which you “trade” your clicks by clicking other’s links in exchange for them clicking your links. See the Yarold’s thread in Community Discussion for more information.
How to get rid of creatures
If you no longer want a creature, you can click “release” next to its name or trade it in the Merchant District. You cannot release a creature you’ve owned for less than six hours. If you want to get an egg out of your way and can’t release it, you can freeze it. This frees up an “eggslot” for you to take another egg.
Alternatively, you can send your frozen eggs or other creatures to Master Belmos, or Nursery Helper, who will unfreeze, unname, and hatch anything you send them to be sold to players someday.
Appearance changing creatures
There are a few creatures that change their appearance based on the time of day. One example is the Abeoth Frog, which rotates from green to red to blue to yellow. Revisit this image in six hours to see for yourself :
Parentless Hybrids
I said before that hybrids can only be obtained by breeding right? Well… you can occasionally find a hybrid with no parents. This can happen a number of ways :
•The site crashed and data was lost. Creatures are restored with no parents. Or the creature’s parents were lost in that crash.
•The creature was transformed via an item, such as the Gryphon Carving, into a hybrid.
•The creature was taken from the stream during a holiday event, and later was allowed to be bred from a different creature.
Dateless Creatures
Normally, you can see the day a creature was born on its information page. Sometimes, however, there will be no birth date listed. This usually happens as a result of a creature being lost in a site-wide crash and restored without its birth date.
Lineages
Or families of creatures. All children of the progenitors carry the family name behind their personal name. Each lineage has its own page where one can view every creature in the lineage, sorted by generation. Additionally, the family page may have a crest, description and list of rules. Here is an
example lineage. You can view all families in the Bestiary by choosing “Families” near the top right. (But be warned : ther are 17,000 and counting families listed on a single page)
Before creating your own lineage, you should know that it cannot be undone, the name cannot be changed, and the progenitors will only be able to mate with each other from here on out.
To create a family, attempt to breed your creatures as usual but click the “create a family” button in the top left corner. Next type in your desired family name. Keep in mind it must not be exactly the same as an existing family. If the breeding was successful, you are now the owner and creator of a new family!
Now, if you visit your lineage page, there are a few options available to you by clicking “edit” under the family name. First, you can upload an image to be your family’ crest. You can always upload a different one, or remove it altogether by checking the box labeled “remove” Second, you can enter a description for your family. And lastly, you can set a number of rules by checking the boxes next to them.
•No Egg freezing will prevent people from freezing eggs belonging to your lineage.
•No hatchling freezing is the same, but for hatchlings.
•No releasing will stop people from releasing creatures in your lineage, so they will not be owned by “nobody”
•No breeding with other lineages will stop your family from intermingling with another’s family, potentially resulting in the child taking their name instead of yours.