A guide on the trait genes and genetic modifications of Jurassic World Evolution

With Jurassic World Evolution, players are able to customize their dinosaurs with the various genetic traits the game presents to the players. Here are the main gene traits that you could modify, and some tips I could give when cloning dinosaurs.

When applying genes to dinosaurs, you simply add to the overall traits of the dinosaur, there is so far no gene that makes a dinosaur weaker in certain traits compared to an unmodified specimen. Any genetic modifications done aside from comfort and social traits are guaranteed to be an improvement over the base dinosaur, as most genes would at least add to the dinosaur's overall rating. However, understanding what these gene modifications bring would help you in incubating the dinosaurs needed to help with exhibition design and overall park management. As long as you could comfortably cover the expenses and the success rate is favorable, it is often preferable to modify your dinosaurs to help reach your 5-star goal.



BASE GAME TRAITS

Cosmetic Gene


As the name suggests, this is a single gene slot that all dinosaurs in the game have. It would allow for the player to change the appearance of each dinosaur to one of (usually) six predetermined skin option assigned to each species. These skin options would either change the color of the dinosaur, or even change the pattern on the dinosaur to something else, depending on which cosmetic trait is applied to the dinosaur.

The Return to Jurassic Park expansion adds to the cosmetic gene, by also having the dinosaur to potentially have a different model altogether. These additional genes are the 1993 (Jurassic Park), 1997 (The Lost World: Jurassic Park), and 2001 (Jurassic Park III) cosmetic genes, and are assigned to some of the dinosaurs that were portrayed in the movie in addition to the 6 genes they would have from the base game.



Attack Gene

This gene trait determines how powerful a dinosaur is. All dinosaurs would have a variable level of attack, and this determines how strong they are in combat. Even those that do not engage in combat have a level in attack genes, as it determines how quickly a dinosaur would escape from its enclosure. During testing, an unmodified 100% genome T-rex would bash an electric concrete fence 6 times in order to escape, where the same T-rex with maximum genetic modifications to attack would only needed 3.

With this in mind, you could experiment with carnivores and the attack gene, as it would overall determine their level of control. A good tip is to avoid adding to the attack genes of your carnivores if you wish to keep them enclosed as much as possible. They may not get as high of a rating, but their base rating is well above the average dinosaur, and adding to the resilience, lifespan, and defence genes should be enough to raise the carnivore's prestige without worrying about them escaping as often.


Defence Gene

Defence has only a single function, how much damage a dinosaur could absorb from another dinosaur's attack. The only time you need to consider raising a dinosaur's defence gene is if you expect the dinosaur to get into a lot of fights. Investing a lot into defence would allow the dinosaur to have a higher chance to survive attacks, but there has to be a balance between attack and defence in order to have the dinosaur successfully win fights.

A test I made some time ago pits 2 aggressive spinosaurus together. Spinosaurus A is maxed out in attack genes, where Spinosaurus B is high balance of attack and defence. If Spinosaurus A fights an unmodified spinosaurus, it will surely win because its defence is the same or slightly higher than that of the unmodified spinosaurus. Spinosaurus B on the other hand has a higher level of defence, so it would take more hits to take down spinosaurus B compared to the standard unmodified spinosaurus. Since spinosaurus B is also balanced in attack and defence, she is able to take out spinosaurus A most of the time, because for as strong of an attacker spinosaurus A is, her defences were no match to counter spinosaurus B's attacks.


Resilience Gene

This gene is as less obvious as the other gene traits, but I think I figured out what the gene is focused on. The resilience gene I believe has 2 functions, how fast a dinosaur's health would drain from diseases, and how fast the dinosaur's health would be restored over time.

In regards to diseases, I initially believed the resilience gene would affect how susceptible a dinosaur is to diseases, and that it would increase the chance of not getting sick in an outbreak the higher the resilience. However, this is often not the case, as some dinosaurs in my park with resilience gene above 100 would often be the first to get sick. Dinosaurs getting sick in a park is often a random occurrence, and any dinosaur could get sick at any time without warning, regardless of species and genes. It is mainly by how potent the disease is, how fast said disease travels and which species are potential hosts to the disease.

However, I do notice that the disease would drain the health of my dinosaurs a lot faster if their resilience was not high. Often times, my ankylosaurid species of dinosaurs would lose the most amount of health when they get sick, often reaching fatally low levels of health compared to other dinosaurs that are mildly sick. My hadrosaurs on the other hand would have an easier time with diseases, as I often use the immune response gene on them in all of their gene slots for an extended lifespan and ratings, to which they would be the least of my worries as I tend to other dinosaurs.

Another aspect is how fast a dinosaur could recover its health over time. I did an experiment where I had an unmodified iguanodon and an iguanodon with maximum resilience genes. I starved both of them until they have reached below 50% health. I then introduce them to a feeder to have their hunger need filled, and looked at how fast they could recover their health from 50% to 100%. The end result is that the iguanodon with max resilience reached full health by the time the unmodified iguanodon has reached 60%. This makes the maxed iguanodon about 5 times as effective as the standard iguanodon when recovering health.

With this in mind, you could utilize the resilience trait for disease control. A park full of dinosaurs with overall higher resilience genes would give the player more time to medicate the dinosaurs in an outbreak. Another niche but interesting use of the resilience trait is for enclosures housing both herbivore and carnivore dinosaur combatants: players could apply only defense and resilience traits to these dinosaurs (and preferably no attack genes), so that if the dinosaurs were to fight, they would deal the least amount of damage to each other, and recover as much health as possible after a fight. This would allow for the enclosure to have dinosaurs to kill each other less often, or maybe not at all based on the number of dinosaurs and the species that are housed together.


Lifespan Gene

This is often the easiest gene to understand and utilize. Dinosaurs imbedded with additional lifespan genes would live longer than their unmodified counterparts. This is preferable for players wanting to make parks full of dinosaurs, with little worry of reincubating the same batch of dinosaurs for a long period of time. Players who invest in these genes, 100% genome, and perfect paleobotany boosts could see dinosaurs living well beyond their initial expected lifespan, some species could even live to be 300 years of age if handled properly.

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In order to make the most of these genes, you have to modify the dinosaurs gene slots, these slots are determined mostly in the quality of the species you are modifying. An early game struthiomimus would only have 3 slots to modify, where the late game hybrid, the indo raptor, has a whopping 9 slots to play with. You will find a listing of dinosaurs based on the number of modifiable genome slots below:

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When modifying genes of a dinosaur, you will find the gene slots to be sorted as: Cosmetics, Attack, Defence, Resilience, and Lifespan. Some dinosaurs have more attack genome slots than others such as carnivores, where some dinosaurs could be lacking specific genome slots altogether, like the harmless herbivores with their lack of an attack gene slots. This is a balance to modify a dinosaur based on its species, and compensate for what they are in the early game, to then give them some much needed improvements in the late game when more modifications are unlocked. For this guide, I will be using the ankylosaurus at 100% genome seen below.

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The ankylosaurus is a 1 star herbivore that has a major focus on defence. She has 2 defence gene slots, 1 lifespan gene slot, and 1 attack gene slot, 4 modifiable gene slots that would affect her base game stats. We will experiment what we could modify in her genome, so that we could incubate the ankylosaurus suitable for our parks.



GENE MODIFICATIONS

Gene modifications comes in 3 distinct applications when modifying the attack, defence, resilience, and lifespan gene slots. And they are:

Single Trait Modifications

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The single trait modifications focus on one trait alone. These modifications could be upgraded from version 1.0 to 5.0, and could only be applied to the gene slots of the same traits. They may not cover multiple traits or raise the dinosaur's rating as much like the modifications later on, but they would apply the most growth to their respective trait. For example, an edmontosaurus with a mix of cardio strength and immune response genes may not have as high of a rating as an edmontosaurus with only immune response genes, but it will more likely outlive the immune response edmontosaurus altogether.

The single trait genes also have the benefit of not decreasing the viability of the dinosaur's incubation too much, so these traits are safer to implement, but they do not provide that much control on what traits to improve on, as they are solely applicable on what gene slots the dinosaur species has in their genome.

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Our ankylosaurus has 2 defence genes, 1 lifespan gene, and 1 attack gene. If we were to only use single modifications, she would have +36 in defence, +21 in attack, and +27 in lifespan. This would make the ankylosaurus an improvement over her unmodified genome, but it leaves much to be desired. The gene modifications do not cover the ankylosaur's more flawed trait, the resilience trait. So I want to use genetic modifications that would allow the ankylosaurus to handle diseases a whole lot better.



Double Trait Modifications

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Double modifications are next, and they add to 2 traits instead of the previous single trait modifications, in exchange for a less viable genome. These are some of the more reliable genomes if you want to alter a dinosaur's overall trait growth to your liking, while allowing you to have an easier time incubating them compared to the triple trait modifications. And based on the gene slots, they could add more to the dinosaur's ratings if applied consistently compared to the cardio strength, and robust digestion single trait gene modifications.

These gene modifications could only be upgraded twice to their 3.0 variant. They are great modifications to use in early gameplay due to their cost and application, but would be underpowered when compared to the triple trait gene modifications you could research later on. This is balanced by the double trait modifications having an overall lower viability influence and cost to the dinosaur's incubation when compared to the triple trait modifications.

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This time around, I implemented intensive repair modifications to the defense gene slot (+24 defense and +36 resilience), an immune response modification to the lifespan gene slot (+21 lifespan and +18 resilience), and finally an intuitive learning modification to the attack gene slot (+12 attack and +17 resilience). Now with a total +71 to resilience, my ankylosaurus is sporting a healthy 90 resilience. It won't live as long or fight as hard as other modificated ankylosaurs, but if this ankylosaurus gets sick, it will have an easier time with the disease.



Triple Trait Modifications

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The final set of the base game gene modifications, these modifications are unique in that they are not upgradable, and that they boost 3 traits of a dinosaur when implemented. With the average boost in stats and hight rating boost per implementation, these are some of the best genes to use to get a dinosaur to reach their potential with genetic modifications. However, the downside is that the spread of genetic trait boost won't allow for single traits to reach their peaks, and the added cost and viability to the incubation would make it more of a risk to invest in compared to other modifications. However, mixing these modifications with some 2 trait genetic modifications could often time yield in some of the best genetically optimized dinosaurs, be it for combat, lifespan, and overall ratings.

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This time around, I went with a simple choice of implementing the strong muscle fibers to all gene slots in the ankylosaur's genome. This won’t be as resilient to diseases compared to the previous ankylosaur, but she should be able to fight a winning fight against some carnivores, live notably longer, and have an overall boost in ratings. I could also experiment more so if I want to give my ankylosaur a longer lifespan with more resilience if I use the rapid metabolism modifications in the defense slots, hyper efficient blood in the attack slot, and and the immune response in the lifespan slot. She won’t be as combat ready as this ankylosaur, and may cost a bit more, but she will live longer and be more resilient to diseases, despite her more defense oriented genome.



ADDITIONAL MODIFICATIONS (Dr.Wu DLC Genes)

With the Secrets of Dr.Wu expansion. Players could unlock additional modification genes that would affect the dinosaur's additional stats. These modifications affect the dinosaur's comfort threshold, their living tolerance, and their social needs. They would affect how the dinosaurs would handle external factors such as storms, living space, and other dinosaurs. These genetic modifications are also unique from the base game genes in that players would still have access to the earlier versions of the modification if they have researched the upgraded versions. So by researching stress inhibitor V2.0, you would still have access to V1.0, and thus, can choose which version you want to implement without going overboard in the end result, costs and viability.

A unique gene that I have not listed below is the camouflage gene exclusive to the indominus rex. It is a unique genetic modification that simply allows the indominus rex to change her skin color to a more green hue to allow her to blend with the jungle she would reside in. This change in skin color does not change the dinosaur's overall behavior, but it does a unique look to the indominous rex when compared to the other large carnivores, beyond being a giant combat heavy hybrid.



Comfort Modifications

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This is a very helpful gene modification set that would let players control the dinosaur's comfort threshold to boost their ratings or control their temperment to a more manageable level. the stress inhibitor would have dinosaurs be more calm and not be easily bothered or tensed up during stressful situations in exchange to the overall rating, where the rapid stress response would boost their overall rating, but would make the modified dinosaurs much more aggressive in stressful situations, leading to more breakouts if implemented to the wrong species.

The stress inhibitor is useful for handling dinosaurs that would otherwise breakout in storms. Aggressive carnivores like the velociraptor, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Indominus rex could be given the needed stress inhibitor to lower their comfort threshold to lower numbers. So a velociraptor with a default comfort threshold of 80% could be given a stress inhibitor 2.0 modification, lowering her comfort threshold to 60%. A good tip is to aim for a 60% comfort threshold at most, as that is enough for dinosaurs to endure a long storm and remain calm, mind you, it still depends on the species and how fast they get aggitates, but 60% is the safe number on average use.

The stress inhibitor could also be given to dinosaurs that have a very low comfort threshold of 30% or below. The gallimimus with a comfort threshold of 15% could be given a stress inhibitor modification 2.0 to their genome, lowering their threshold to 0%. This means that the dinosaur is completely numb to stress and could be kept in any habitat and in any social group without worrying of it planning to escape, which allows for social gallimimus populations of more than 18 become a possibility! It is important however, to be wary of the other dinosaurs she shares the enclosure with.

Another option is for the more peaceful dinosaurs like hadrosaurs and small herbivores to be given rapid stress response modifications to boost their overall rating. Due to their default peaceful stats, they won’t be an issue if given the added comfort thresholds as long as they are kept in the correct enclosures with all of their social and habitat needs met. However, be cautious not to accidentally give these modifications to dinosaurs of a 70% comfort threshold, as dinosaurs reaching 100% comfort threshold by genetic modifications would leave the lab in a constant state of stress, as indicated by the red "???" in their comfort stats. This will cause the dinosaur to always attempt to escape their enclosure and attack your guests and other dinosaurs. They would have to then be either killed off by other dinosaurs, or be tranquilized and sold.



Social Modifications

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These modifications are helpful in regulating dinosaur populations in your park. Dinosaurs that are antisocial could now be part of a pack, where oversocial dinosaurs could be contempt with being by themselves. These are great if you are limited in how many dinosaurs you could place in, or if you are looking to have the dinosaurs fill a specific niche count in your enclosure. Be wary of some aspects to modifying the social genes.

Firstly, they greatly decrease the viability of the incubation. So it is best to reserve these modifications to when you have access to better success rate upgrades, or if you plan to not modify the dinosaur too much beyond the social gene.

Secondly, these modifications affect both the minimum and the maximum count for the social and population needs. So if a dinosaur is given a cross species genetic modification, and that dinosaur has a population need of 0-8, then the new population need would be 5-13, and that dinosaur has to share the enclosure with 4 other dinosaurs so as to not get comfortable. This also is important if you decide to place a solitary gene modification to a dinosaur that is already solitary. A T-rex with any added solitary gene would end up going from 1-1, to 0-0. Since there is always going to be 1 T-rex , the dinosaur would slowly lose comfort since 1 > 0. That dinosaur would then need to be killed or sold as it will never recover their comfort need.



Habitat Modifications

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Finally, we have the habitat needs. This is only ever useful if you are limited in space for your dinosaurs to get comfortable. If your brachiosaurus is going to be in a more grassy environment, then apply the grassland modifications to make up for the difference. If the ceratosaurus is going to be in a forest heavy environment, then have her be incubated with the forest modifications. If the dinosaur is going to be kept in a very cramped space where neither forest or grasslands needs would be met, then try the confined space modification.

I will say that these genes feel like genes that would benefit new players who have yet to grasp how big or small an enclosure is to new dinosaurs. If you play more of the game, you could understand how big the enclosure should be for the species of dinosaur. Then you could forgo these modifications altogether as they will take up to 40% from the incubation success rate, a good chunk that could be used for other modifications. With practice, you could find yourself using less of these modifications and have comfortable exhibit sizes for your dinosaurs, even in a cramped space like the park on Isla pena.

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I hope this guide helps you all in building your parks. Please let me know if you have any other tips you would like to share, if you have any further questions, or if I had made a mistake in this post. The feedback would help add to the quality of this post and give many other players a better understanding in how the genetic modifications work in JWE. Do you have any interesting genetically modified genomes? Please do share them below!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you all take care. 👋

The genetic information was sourced from the Jurassic World Evolution Wiki.
 
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