Second evolution

In the original games a chao picked a form at the cocoon and wore it until it died. Here that is the halfway point.

An adult carries a second, permanent pool of investment, separate from the one that decided its type, and keeps reshaping itself for as long as you feed it. The result is a sub-type: a swim chao sculpted toward power, or a run chao slowly growing wings.

The four tracks

Every adult has four influence tracks, one per morph stat: swim, fly, run and power. Stamina has no track and never votes on shape.

Each track fills toward 960 points, which is 100%.

A chao’s silhouette is a blend of the four. Fill one and starve the others for a pronounced, specialised body; keep them level to stay close to the shape it evolved with.

Drives

A drive is the chaos capsule from the market, and it is the direct tool.

One drive is worth 48 points, exactly one twentieth of a full track, so a 5% notch. Twenty drives fill a track from empty.

A drive does two things:

1. It adds 48 points to the track you aimed it at.
2. It drains 48 points from the highest unlocked rival track.

A drive is a transfer rather than a deposit. Sculpting toward power takes that weight off whichever track is currently leading, which is what makes the system a sculpt rather than an accumulation, and why a chao’s direction can genuinely be reversed instead of only added to.

A drive also raises the target stat’s level, so it is never wasted even when the shape is already right.

Locking a track

A locked track freezes in both directions: it cannot be filled and cannot be drained, so a drive’s drain skips it and takes from the highest unlocked track instead.

Locking protects a shape you like while you work on the rest of the body.

Animals sculpt more gently

An animal moves influence along one track only: its own largest positive stat delta, at that delta’s value.

A Peacock is +48 fly, its biggest positive, so it pushes 48 points of fly influence, the same as a drive. A Penguin’s biggest is +36 swim, so it pushes 36 into swim. An animal whose deltas are all small barely moves the shape.

Animals do not drain a rival track, they only add. That makes them the slow, safe tool and drives the sharp one.

It takes days

Second evolution runs on wall-clock time, including while the game is closed.

• Nothing visibly changes for the first 24 hours after a chao becomes an adult. The influence banks, but the body has not started moving.
• From there the change eases in and completes at about five days.

A chao fed a stack of drives on Monday will not look finished until roughly Saturday, whether or not you open the game in between.

Two speeds of change

A drive shows its result almost immediately, because you asked for it and should be able to see whether it worked. Everything else moves at the slower rate so the garden never looks like it is twitching.

Locking a sub-type

Once a track has accumulated 30 raw points the leading track can commit, and the chao has a named sub-type.

A committed sub-type claims at least 60% of the blend while it develops, which stops a chao drifting into a mix of all four. That floor lifts once the chao is authored, meaning you have locked any track or fed it a drive that moved something. After that you have full control.

Changing your mind

A sub-type is not permanent. If a different track takes the lead by more than 15% of the runner-up, the sub-type re-targets and switches.

The switch crossfades over 24 hours, so a chao caught mid-decision looks like it is becoming something rather than snapping between two shapes.

Two maxed tracks

Pushing two tracks to 100% expresses both in full rather than splitting one form’s worth between them. Each morph target runs from the chao’s young shape to its own mature destination, so the two mature forms combine and the maturation they both carry is counted once.

Two tracks at 50% each is the half-and-half case and looks different. Both are reachable in play.

What a child inherits

A child’s visible traits and its eventual evolution read the same underlying investment. This is enforced, so a chao can never wear a silhouette it will not grow into. If a child looks like it is leaning toward fly, it is.

Practical routes

Specialise hard in one stat. Lock the three tracks you do not want, then feed drives into the one you do. With the rivals locked the drain has nothing to take from except the track you are filling. Twenty drives is a full track.

Rebalance a chao you overcooked. Aim drives at the track you want to raise. The drain comes off whatever is currently highest, so nothing needs unwinding by hand.

Develop slowly and stay balanced. Use animals only. They add without draining, and you get the stat deltas and body parts on the way.

Keep a shape you like. Lock all four tracks. Nothing you feed the chao will change its silhouette, and drives become pure stat items.

Related

• Evolve: set the four influence tracks and the age slider, and watch a form develop live.
• Evolution: how the first form is decided.
• Animals: the full table and the parts they graft.
• Chaos Chao: the one adult form that never changes again.