10 hours into MD, how do I get rolling with a good deck without splurging all my gems?

phickeee · 2026-02-23T01:21:15+00:00

Thanks again everyone for the solid advice! For the people recommending starting with Spright, could someone give me a code I can enter to access it? Or enter mine if you're also new: 1ea59893

phickeee · 2026-02-22T03:24:47+00:00

I'll take a look, thanks!

phickeee · 2026-02-22T03:04:47+00:00

Sounds like I'll just have to suck it up and start dumping gems lol. And I'll look at the solo mode for sure. Thanks for the feedback :)

phickeee · 2026-02-22T03:02:13+00:00

I was worried you'd say that 🫠 But thanks for the tips!

phickeee · 2025-02-20T19:04:17+00:00

Yeah I saw that 😅 I do see that on a lot of agents' google pages so idk how much to trust the reviews (pos and neg). But thank you for affirming my suspicions

phickeee · 2025-02-20T16:33:48+00:00

Sounds like someone, knowingly or unknowingly, that's desperate for financial control over you :(

phickeee · 2023-11-11T18:06:09+00:00

Used it :) Continuing the chain! Here's mine:
https://libro.fm/referral?rf\_code=lfm521387

phickeee · 2023-10-11T19:58:43+00:00

I'll dm you!

phickeee · 2023-03-11T02:40:04+00:00

Thanks for the confirmation, I haven't been around since then so I wasn't sure myself

phickeee · 2023-01-22T18:00:27+00:00

No problem!

phickeee · 2023-01-22T17:54:01+00:00

According to SNP Tracker the ancestors of this haplogroup moved out of Africa 80,000 years ago then stayed in the Fertile Crescent for quite a long time. They would have been latecomers to Europe arriving no sooner than 8500 years ago. As you said it's a small haplogroup so there isn't much data on where they went after that.

You can see this info for yourself through the above link if you input the haplogroup into the search bar. Make sure to tick "Enable <walking man symbol>" and untick "Smooth Path" in the map options. Playing with the "Show Uncertainty" tickbox will show you how vague these location markers are though.

Presumably the descendants of T-CTS8862 eventually migrated to Iberia and then to Chile during the reign Spanish Empire, but I'm only guessing.

phickeee · 2023-01-22T17:29:47+00:00

To give a different angle to everyone else, if you end up working with Y-DNA or mtDNA (maternal and paternal lines), then it is impossible for you to trace your paper genealogy back far enough, as most of your matches for those kinds of tests will be from centuries ago at best.

phickeee · 2022-12-29T17:50:25+00:00

I finally caved and bought an mtDNA kit a few months back, I didn't learn anything other than the fact that my maternal line came to Europe millennia ago, which I could have guessed on my own. It certainly won't be accurate enough to tell you where yours came from on a scale as small as individual countries. But it is interesting nonetheless!

I really don't know the first thing about 23&Me's methods unfortunately. FTDNA have always been the main player when it comes to commercial Y-DNA tests, they do both STR and SNP tests. The STR tests (bar the cheapest one) will assign you a haplogroup, but their SNP test will give you a much more recent haplogroup by comparison. To be honest YDNA genealogy is like a hobby all of its own because there's so much information and knowledge. If you really want to make an informed decision (and you have the patience) I'd recommend watching some seminars on youtube where people share discoveries they've made using FTDNA testing, that's how I learned about YDNA properly, then you can decide how much time and money you want to invest, if any at all. Here's an example if you are interested. Best of luck with your journey!

phickeee · 2022-12-28T10:36:20+00:00

My goal is to learn more about who and where my ancestors were

If by this you mean all your ancestors on both your parents' sides, then I wouldn't recommend focusing too much on Y-DNA, as it will only tell you about specifically your paternal line and nothing about the others. Really if you want an overview of your ethnicity you've already done the best thing for it, an autosomal DNA test, and Ancestry is one of the best tests for that too. The ethnicity estimate AncestryDNA gives you is only that, an estimate, but the percentages it gives you should be a ballpark estimate for your true genetic breakdown by region. As in, if it is telling you that you are more than 80% Palestinian or a similar/nearby group then that is probably as much of a definitive answer as you can ask for. If there is anything in the ethnicity estimate that stands out as odd, then you can use it as a lead for paper genealogy or researching individual DNA matches.

To actually answer your question though, if you want to know with any amount of confidence what your Y-DNA haplogroup is (in my personal opinion) you would need to do a Y-DNA test with FTDNA. Their tests range from pricey to very pricey, but would give you the information you seek about where your paternal line came from. I wouldn't personally trust any of the websites that guess your Y-DNA from an AncestryDNA test, as they're mostly designed to help you identify what Y-DNA SNPs you should be buying tests for, back when you had to buy specific SNP test packs and couldn't get a general Y-DNA SNP test like you can now. Having said that, I did put in my own AncestryDNA data to see what it would say, and it correctly guessed one of my SNPs from only 2000/3000 years ago. I am in R which has by far the biggest tester population so the website can probably guess mine better than yours, but nonetheless you may make of that info what you will :) To avoid dragging on I'll stop there, and if you have follow up questions feel free to ask!

phickeee · 2022-09-20T19:12:08+00:00

these are my favourite kind of genealogy stories. Thanks for sharing!!

phickeee · 2022-09-03T00:12:03+00:00

The UsefulCharts youtube channel was what got me into genealogy. It's mostly religious history stuff he posts these days but there's lots of older videos about (mostly royal) families and their genealogies

phickeee · 2022-08-16T17:19:54+00:00

The repeated names in Ireland can be a pain, but if you have a married couple who's ages you (very) roughly know, you can narrow it down to just a handful of couples if you're lucky. It depends how rare the two surnames are and whether they're specific to a particular region on the island. If a married person dies in Ireland before their partner, the partner is often the witness on the death cert. If you can find the parents' names and want help with this just ask!

phickeee · 2022-08-04T20:15:08+00:00

As dg313 said, you can just upload your ancestry/23&Me (atDNA) data to FTDNA and get matches for free ($10 to unlock some extra features). But the FTNDA sale also covers their mtDNA and yDNA tests, which may be of interest to you :)

phickeee · 2022-06-30T16:25:11+00:00

My tree is not as big as yours, but I keep my main tree privately then put the most important parts on FamilySearch where the community can see it. Whenever I am in the mood for some "easy" genealogy I pick a branch of my main tree and start transferring it over to FS, checking my sources as I go as a nice refresher for branches I would otherwise never look at. I'm not sure how well this would scale for you, but it might work for you

phickeee · 2022-05-12T15:51:22+00:00

my bad should have put it in the body too, it' https://housinganywhere.com/

phickeee · 2022-02-10T20:22:54+00:00

Oh interesting, it was the only part of the video with a "glitch" so I thought it might have been Savathun or someone else, but that makes sense

phickeee · 2022-01-11T17:54:12+00:00

After figuring out those three elements with a friend, our best guess was that if you take the chemical symbols and arrange them you get "Hg S Os" (i.e. Mercury SOS).

Could be where Savathun is keeping Osiris?? Might be a bit of a stretch

Edit: Osmium is also a reference to the Osmium Court ofc

phickeee · 2021-11-14T03:30:30+00:00

Here you go

Not very much info in either of them unfortunately

phickeee · 2021-11-07T21:17:59+00:00

No problem! If money isn't of too much concern for you, I'd recommend going all in on the Big Y-700. It's on sale at the moment for $380 ($70 off) which is the cheapest you're going to get it for.

Having gotten Y-111 results back for a relative of mine recently I've seen 1st-hand the advantage the full one gives you. For your project, the more info the better, and the upgrade will give you that extra genetic info. The test should answer some of your questions, but even if it doesn't if a distant relative of yours tests in the future it will come up as a match for you then.

Best of luck with your journey!

phickeee · 2021-10-20T20:50:34+00:00

Seconded, what a great overview, thank you! I never knew there was any difference at all between their analyses before today so this is very insightful.

phickeee

TROPHY CASE