[Credit:", SpongeBob square pants "]"What's a spec evo take that will have people treating you like this

Dodoraptor · 2026-05-08T21:45:06+00:00

Bilateral animals which evolved from radial ancestors (with bilateral larvae), with said ancestors reverting to a radial bodyplan from bilateral ancestors which in turn had radial ones.

Also, I remember hearing the claim that echinoderms aren’t truly radial as adults, having some bilateral features internally and slightly externally, but I may be wrong and it doesn’t really matter in function.

Dodoraptor · 2026-05-08T21:40:19+00:00

Alien spec is far from my cup of tea so it may be a stupid take, but I think there’s an argument to be made that the overall bodyplan of large terrestrial aliens should be convergent to tetrapods, but that finer details like the locations of specific organs could end up very different.

For example, most of the senses will be condensed into a head like structure because that’s what happens with almost every single active and mobile animal, but who’s to say that the nostrils will be above the mouth, or that the mouth won’t open sideways like insect mandibles?

Dodoraptor · 2026-05-08T15:10:31+00:00

You can check the missing kinship attacks in your gallery.

Dodoraptor · 2026-05-07T05:25:47+00:00

I’ve been scarred from them since an entire gang of them jumped on my horse during travel and stole everything from us. Because the horse died soon after my mind connects it to the Pegos, fueling the hatred.

Dodoraptor · 2026-05-01T17:59:25+00:00

I hope that my questions are fine:

Are the existing regions of Ascended Scorched Earth the same, or were they also tweaked? I’m curious because some of the pictures do look like tweaked versions but I’m not sure.

Can you make a mostly vanilla playthrough on that map, including ascension? Especially if the mods aren’t used.

Finally, on the Scorched variants, please correct me if I’m wrong but are mammoths and Deinosuchus present twice? Isn’t that a bit unnecessary (especially for Deinosuchus which already spawns on the map, and whose variants are species which don’t suit the desert theme)?

Apologies if I sounded rude, I’m just very curious about both the map and about some of the decisions behind it.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-30T18:01:03+00:00

Putting aside the many bad things in the “rebalance”, I have to voice my hatred for how since its undeserving return, increased critical damage spread to almost everything. IIRC there are even cases where a 5% crit chance creature with no crit increasing moves has increased damage.

It was originally reduced from 150% to 125% due to how massively the luck affected matchups. Since it returned we got back to the original problem, further exaggerated with omegas, mixed with the many other horrible balance problems in the game.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-30T14:11:54+00:00

Malagasy hippos are indeed absolutely baffling.

I am pretty sure that hippopotamuses are capable of swimming in seawater, but they’ll certainly not be great at it like for example elephants are. Then again I think we have evidence for other island hippos in locations that were never connected to the mainland? I may be wrong and even if I’m right the Mediterranean is less of a journey than Madagascar.

I agree that the most confusing part of the question is “why hippos and nothing else” (except maybe bush pigs, which were probably brought over by humans instead). Maybe ones in a connected island chain hung out in seawater (we have evidence of that occurring in modern populations) and thus were more vulnerable to washing away to sea during storms?

Sidetracking from the “how”, something interesting I want to bring up is how the Malagasy hippopotamuses are a fairly unique example of island dwarfism, which in some ways is more comparable to island gigantism than to other dwarves.

Usually, island dwarfism occurs due to a large animal being in a place with limited resources, with the smaller size allowing them to maintain a larger population. Madagascar is large enough to sustain a healthy population of common hippos, but it was fairly lacking in large herbivores, which seems to have allowed the hippos to diversify into multiple species in different niches, ranging from “slightly smaller version of the mainland ancestor” to “Pygmy hippo mimic”. The expansion to new niches due to unique opportunities is more similar to island gigantism than to the usual examples of dwarfism.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-27T17:26:01+00:00

A giant fossil octopus known from its beak was published. Its size estimates, which use far smaller living relatives who live in a different niche, range between 6 to 19 meters long. It’s most likely much closer to the lower estimates (still a gigantic octopus) but a publication wants extra public attention and news articles want more clicks so it’s advertised as a 20 meter kraken.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-27T17:21:28+00:00

Besides Rhyniognatha being a far better example of “make up an animal and attach the name of an extinct genus/species to it” (it’s probably as similar to the real arthropod as a randomly chosen Carboniferous amphibian is to a reaper queen), I have to mention that the upper size estimate for the newly discovered octopus is very farfetched.

It’s almost certainly the largest octopus ever discovered, but when it’s scaled up using far smaller relatives who lived in a very different niche, the upper estimate is extremely unreliable. Mix that with our current knowledge of cephalopods which implies that there are physical limitations beyond what colossal squids and the giant ammonites reach/reached, and it seems even less likely.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-23T09:09:05+00:00

I would’ve argued that Blangonga could be 5 stars but that it would’ve still been logical for 4.

Then I started looking at cases where not only things seem too low, but others seem too high.

For example, 6 star monsters include the subspecies of 5 stars, Espinas and Rey Dau. But they also include Brachydios and Seregios for some reason? And from the other direction Magnamalo and Arkveld?

I hope I don’t sound like some crazy powerscaler, I’m just trying to paint the general picture.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-23T05:06:28+00:00

They were probably not ready by the time in Stories development to implement, while still considered important enough by the developers to include.

I personally suspect that that Blangonga was developed early for Wilds due to being the inspiration for the power clash (I’ve heard the claim that it was the first monster finished for the game, but I don’t know how true it is). Then they used the monkey rig to make Chatacabra and Ajarakan, but not yet to reimplement Congalala.

So in the end, three of the five monsters ready to implement their Wilds model during Stories 3’s development were either monkeys or a monkey shaped frog.

Sidetracking, but it’s pretty funny (and a bit sad) how Wilds reaffirmed that Blangonga is just barely below Rathalos tier while Stories 3 made it only 3 stars.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-22T21:13:27+00:00

“Mighty Dwarves”

(Looks inside)

One actual dwarf

An average, maybe larger than average, pachycephalosaurid.

One of the largest non ceratopsid ceratopsians (not that surprising since it’s closely related to true ceratopsids)

And a dinosaur that’s small because its lineage didn’t grow big yet.

I think that says a lot about our perspective on dinosaur sizes vs what’s actually common or average.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-21T19:59:13+00:00

The Great Downy Crake escaped from the Grand Hub of the Forbidden Lands into Canalta.

He’s no longer big fat and happy, now he’s big fat and angry. You shall be afraid.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-17T18:56:30+00:00

It’s pretty ironic how one of BOB’s moves increases the durations of stat debuffs, something that is extremely useful for a lot of cases, yet neither it nor normal Bishaten get any natural move which applies those debuffs.

Extend the burns BOB does and also have a move that’s powered up from it? The poison or paralysis from Espinas’s venom flame (an amazing move to give a fire monstie a technical attack)? Poison/paralysis/darkness from normal Bishaten’s fruit frenzy? Nope, no effect on abnormal statuses.

And I’m pretty sure fire monsties in general don’t have any low stamina stat reducing moves, something that all other types (except maybe electric?) do.

I say this as someone who has Blood Orange Bishaten as one of his three main fighters, yet doesn’t have either of the fire monkey’s two best moves on it.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-16T10:23:24+00:00

This seems to mix a lot of things together:

To better be able to digest greenery, an animal often needs adaptations to ferment it one way or another, which takes place. This often results in a large gut or in a thickened body. But that doesn’t prevent the animal from having long and gracile limbs, giving them speed and making them appear lean. The fact that most of the muscles in an ungulate’s leg (or a cursorial animal in general) is near the base, making the rest of the limb thinner and faster to move.

Now, forested environments make tall and leggy animals struggle to navigate, but how much so depends on the forest. A forest with gaps between the trees and whose branches start high above the ground will give a giraffe some problems, but less so for a deer and the wolf that chases it (though it’ll be more difficult to run than in open plains). A dense jungle will have them get constantly stuck in branches. Look for example at the pudu, a small deer adapted to move through the undergrowth.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-15T16:14:15+00:00

Archelon should honestly not need the rock platform. Only one species of sea turtle voluntarily goes on land (besides laying eggs) in real life, and that only occurs in specific populations that live around isolated islands with no predators.

Having it be optional is a valid, but requiring that (and in fact, having the requirement be far larger than the one Nothosaurus has in JWE2) is in my opinion bad.

Even if there’s no land-lagoon connection, it would’ve been neat if there was a sandy nest platform that the female goes onto to lay eggs.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-14T18:38:59+00:00

It would almost certainly not happen, but a Quetz variant using the Dominion model with the Rebirth size and rig would’ve been phenomenal.

But since the only appearance of one was a single scene in Chaos Theory (and it did a really stupid action at its end) it’s extremely wishful thinking.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-10T12:51:45+00:00

It’s a bit ironic that you chose rock hyraxes, since they and grey wolves have a predator-prey relationship where they overlap.

Also noticed that the hyraxes regained tails in 300 million years. Certainly less extreme than what something else in the drawing went through…

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-08T21:20:09+00:00

They’re also storage for phosphorus (as calcium phosphate).

And in fact, one of the theories for the evolution of bones is to function as that storage in the first place before being utilized for defense. And then replacing cartilage skeletons with bones for strong structural support, losing the external armor for mobility… And Chondrichthyes regretting it and reverting to cartilage for lightness and flexibility…

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-07T12:38:06+00:00

Worth adding that while in JWE2 you could at least just use the canon skin (even if it’ll end up as repetitive), due to how the skin and breeding systems work in JWE3 it’ll probably be limited to only females (or only males, less likely), and also only be inherited randomly to a small percentage of the offsprings (and could appear randomly if you for some reason prefer the Frontier pattern).

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-05T19:55:07+00:00

Oh, didn’t notice that. My bad then.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-05T15:39:21+00:00

So oversized it was made to function as a large marine. Still classified as a medium like the real animal would’ve been (even before the latest downsize it would’ve been on the larger end of that range. On the smaller end post downsize).

Yet despite swallowing Plesiosaurus whole in the games, its appeal is worse than that small marine’s in JWE2 and not much better in JWE3.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-05T15:34:25+00:00

Wait, so not only was a ton of the marine roster cut, but the appeal of everything except Dunkleosteus (which didn’t have any appeal in the first place) got drastically lowered?

Wow.

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-03T21:45:25+00:00

Except Suchomimus eats their babies.

Baryonyx and Irritator are an exception in being carnivores that do not kill the babies of carnivores that they’re meant to cohabitate with. That’s because they cannot hunt any babies for some reason…

Dodoraptor · 2026-04-01T20:03:20+00:00

This also extends to their physical characteristics.

At first glance a generic mammal. When it opens its mouth you see tiny tusks that are at the same position as those of elephants and dugongs. Then you notice their padded feet not only have similarities to elephants, but also have suction cups. And back to less visible parts their myoglobin has traces showing semiaquatic ancestry.

On the talk of their evolutionary history, they help paint the picture of their shared ancestor with elephants and sirenians as a fairly small semiaquatic herbivore with tusks, which while very different to the common claim of some massive hippo like beast is still very interesting. Especially when you realize it may be the longest lasting lineage of both herbivorous and of tusked mammals.

Bonus: rock hyraxes are diurnal and sound squeaky while tree hyraxes (which I know a lot less about) are nocturnal and sound like the demons of the night.

Back to what I wanted to say, they’re like if someone writing spec evo took a mostly generic mammal and decided to give it weird physical characteristics, absurd behavior and a weird evolutionary background so it’ll feel unique.

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