Test of Khefre's Children

The Test of Khefre's Children
(Test - Natural Philosophy)
Prerequisites
	Entomology;

The Test of Khefre's Children is a test in the Natural Philosophy discipline.

Test Description

You must breed the most strange and beautiful scarab beetle that you can. After encountering some beetles in the wild, you can capture them and raise them in a terrarium. You must exhibit your beetle at a Scarab garden, and be judged.

Archive photos of Tale 10 scarab entries: Scarab Photos

Task

The Test of Khefre's Children requires you to breed and display beautiful beetles. The task will guide you on exhibiting your first beetle at a Scarab Garden.

Place a male Beetle in a Terrarium
Place a female Beetle in a Terrarium
Breed a Beetle to 0% 50% Ownership
Breed a Beetle to 51% 75% Ownership
Breed a Beetle to 76% 89% Ownership
Breed a Beetle to 90% 99% Ownership (1 Talent point)
Rename a bred beetle
Vote on a Garden
Mix any Reddish Paint
Mix any Yellowish Paint
Exhibit a Beetle in a Garden
Build Khefre's Locker
Win a Level 1 Garden (1 Talent Point)
Win a Level 2 Garden (2 Talent Points)
Win a Level 3 Garden (3 Talent Points)

Additional Information

Khefre is a god of the sun, he who pushes the celestial disc across the heavens each day. The scarab beetles of Egypt are sacred to him.

Beetle Breeding

To breed a beetle to a percentage of ownership you must trade a bred beetle with another player, then interbreed that beetle with your own stock. Any beetles you breed where both the female and the male are 100% yours will create 100% owned offspring. However, if your spouse or perhaps another player feeds your beetles, you may find your ownership percentage decreases.

For developing colors and patterns, check out the Beetle Breeding Guide

Building a Beetle Statue

To find the required paints, display the beetle on your terrarium, and use the "Special" command.

To build a Statue of a beetle in a Beetle Garden you need:

2 Mud Granite
2 Small Ruby
10 Concrete
20 Clay
12 Gold Wire
5 Paint of each of two colors.
- It is possible for them to be the same color, and it's common for them to not really be the colors you think your beetle is.

NOTES:

You must have your beetle in your inventory to build. The beetle is not used up.
A beetle must be at least 90% yours to display it.
For Level 2 and 3, you must have your Certificate from the previous level in your inventory.
You can build a beetle statue once every 168 hours (1 Duck week), probably to prevent you from entering multiple beetles at once.

Beetle Judging

Until judging begins, all beetle designs will be hidden. Judging will begin once all seven alcoves have been filled and remain open until a sufficient number of votes have been received from players (note looks like 45 votes does it). Click on the Statue in the middle of the garden to vote on a beetle and to determine how many votes are still needed. Exhibitors are not permitted to vote.

Once judging is completed, 2-4 winners will be announced and their alcove highlighted with a glow. Winning exhibitors will receive a popup notifying them of their win and a Beetle Certificate, indicating the name of the exhibitor and the level won, will be placed in their inventory.

After the competition, the beetle statues must be torn down. Once all the statues have been removed, the garden will accept statues for a new round of judging.

Exhibitors must wait 168 hours before entering another beetle.

Tearing Down Statues

After the winners are determined, the beetles remain on display for 24 hours.

After that, the exhibitors (or their spouse) have 2 days during which they may return to the Scarab Garden and tear down their statue, regaining materials as per the normal salvage rules.

Beetle statues that remain unsalvaged after that are free to be salvaged by anyone.

Note: Salvaged materials from a Beetle Statue are placed directly into inventory.

Passing the Test

Every Scarab Garden in Egypt is designed for either Rank 1, Rank 2, or Rank 3 competition. At first, you must display your beetle in a Rank 1 garden. Winners of a Rank 1 competition receive a certificate enabling them to enter beetles in Rank 2 competitions (they do not have to use the same beetle that won at Rank 1). Those players who have won in a Rank 2 competition may, in turn, display beetles in the Rank 3 garden.

If you win a Rank 3 competition, you pass the Test of Khefre's Children.

To receive Talent Points and check off the Task, you need to examine the certificate that is received after winning a competition. Go to Self->Tests->Natural Philosophy->Test of Khefre's Children->Examine Cert <certificate name> to complete the process.

Scoring of Beetle Gardens

The ranking system for beetles is actually based on the number of unique players that you have bested in competition. People voting on the garden determine the placement of the beetles and points are calculated based on how many unique beetles were beaten. At level 1, you must beat 3 other beetles to place (hence 4 passes at level 1). When you enter a beetle into level 2 or 3, the number of players you've beaten at previous levels will count towards whether or not your beetle advances, regardless of how it places - hence is possible to have variable numbers of beetles advance in the later ranks. It is important to emphasize that it's unique players beaten, so if you beat player's beetles at level 2 that you've already beaten at level 1, they don't count towards your score.

The wins are actually recorded on the beetle certificate you use, meaning you can enter different beetles at different levels. So for a level 2 certificate, it has the names of all the players (not beetles) you beat in round 2, and all the players *they* beat in round 1. The total number of unique names is what matters for determining an advancement. Note that because player names are recorded, not beetle names, you can defeat a new beetle from a previously defeated player and not gain points.

You can determine how many wins your certificate has by examining it (tests->Khefre's Children menu when holding the certificate in inventory).

The scoring system is designed to prevent 'incestuous competition' - winning against players you've already beaten (possibly by proxy). However, this means that it will be impossible to pass the higher ranks until the beetle population in competition is large enough.

Your beetle will be given a win of strength X, where X denoted how many distinct beetles/breeders you have beaten. At level 1 it will be up to 7 (you "beat" yourself too if you have the most votes). At level 2, your strength of win includes not only the actual beetle/breeders you have gained more votes than, but all the beetle/breeders that they beat in their level 1 wins, minus any duplicates. A level 2 win could be up to 49, however this would be uncommon as it would have to mean that you won on strength 7 and beat 6 other beetles that all won on strength 7 wins and did not have any duplicate beetle/breeder entries. At level 3 same thing happens again, you get a strength of win of the number of beetles you gain more votes than, as well as points for all beetle/breeders they have beaten on their way to level 3, again, minus any duplicates. Hope this simplifies all the below description for people. For a level 3 win you theoretically could have a strength of 343 but it will usually be considerably less.

In other words, you gain points for each beetle/breeder you get more votes than, plus any beetle/breeders they beat, minus duplicates as you go through the higher level gardens

The following example will hopefully show how scoring works (note that it refers to 'beetles' for ease of comprehension, but means 'players owning the competing beetle'):

Rank 1 contest

   * A - 1st place
   * B
   * C - 3rd place
   * D - 4th place
   * E
   * F - 2nd place
   * G

Now, A has beaten B, C, D, E and F, G (7 points), while F has beaten B, C, D, E, G (6 points) and C has beaten B, D, E, G (5 points). Say some of these beetles compete with others in a rank 2 garden (which have also won level 1 contests), it might look like this (second level indent shows which beetles each has beaten in the past):

Rank 2 contest

   * A
         o placed 1st against B, C, D, E and F, G (7 points) in rank 1 
   * F
         o placed 2nd against B, C, D, E, G (6 points) in rank 1 
   * C
         o placed 3rd against B, D, E, G (5 points) in rank 1 
   * V
         o placed 1st against X, D, P, Q, R, S (7 points) in another rank 1 
   * X
         o placed 3rd against P, Q, R, S (5 points) in another rank 1 
   * Y
         o placed 3rd against C, I, J, K (5 points) in another rank 1 
   * Z
         o placed 2nd against C, I, J, K, Y (6 points) in another rank 1

If A, C and Y place first, second and third by votes, they will have beaten other beetles as follows:

   * A beat B, C, D, E, F and G in rank 1, and also beat F, C, V, X, Y, Z in rank 2, which beat:
         o F: B, C, D, E, G in rank 1
         o C: B, D, E, G in rank 1
         o V: X, D, P, Q, R, S in rank 1
         o X: P, Q, R, S in rank 1
         o Y: C, I, J, K in rank 1
         o Z: C, I, J, K, Y in rank 1

Accumulating all these, A has directly beaten B, C, D, E, F, G, F (again), C (again), V, X, Z and by beating beetles in rank 2, it has beaten (B, C, D, E, G), (B, D, E, G), (X, D, P, Q, R, S), (P, Q, R, S), (C, I, J, K), (C, I, J, K, Y) by proxy. These are all combined into a single list as follows:

   * beaten A 2 times (always beats itself)
   * beaten B 3 times
   * beaten C 5 times
   * beaten D 4 times
   * beaten E 3 times
   * beaten F 2 times
   * beaten G 3 times
   * beaten I 2 times
   * beaten J 2 times
   * beaten K 2 times
   * beaten P 2 times
   * beaten Q 2 times
   * beaten R 2 times
   * beaten S 2 times
   * beaten V 1 times
   * beaten X 2 times
   * beaten Y 1 times
   * beaten Z 1 times

In total, this is 41 'wins', but only 18 unique wins, so A now has 18 points. Because C & F competed with A again (they were in the first rank-1 with A), A does not gain extra points from having beaten them again. Similarly D was beaten by V in another rank-1, and A has already beaten D in the past and does not gain from beating D via V. However, A does gain from having beaten other new (to A) beetles by proxy.

To advance from rank-1, your beetle needs to have 5 points. To advance from rank-2, you must have 15 points. Advancing from rank-3 and passing the Test requires at least 70 points (After Pluribus changed that, a pass with 59 points is known. If somebody knows about a lower passing score, please update this - Sabuli)

Jaenelle and Reisa both passed on 2/2/18 with a strength of 51. -Jaenelle

Tale 10: In the second Level 3 garden to run, all seven scarabs passed. Four of the strengths ranged from 31-38, the other three did not answer. (First level 3 had 6/7, third had 5/7.)

In this example, A will advance to rank 3 with 18 points, having beaten (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, I, J, K, P, Q, R, S, V, X, Y, Z).

The theoretical maximum points are 7 points from rank-1, 49 points from rank-2 and 343 points from rank-3 (assuming all beetles are totally unique).