So i bought this game last night and played it for a bit and had fun with it but soon realized that the nuance of the game was lost upon me and i could use some help understanding it.
 
I've seem to grasp the basic mechanic of the game: Eat to live, take over territory and mate to create future generations, rinse and repeat (right?)
 
But playing the game for more than 5 minutes you can tell there's other things at play that one needs to be aware of. 
 
For example, when moving through the city and going through the whole "Eat, Mark, Fuck" thing that you do, should i be trying to go a certain direction/into certain territories? 
 
Should i be focused on the challenges as oppose to just randomly going wherever and seeing what happens? 
 
Every time i've played the game i've eventually became toxic one way or another, is there way to completely remove/avoid this? 
 
is the amount of offsprings i have dependent on the type of female i sleep with? or a better question would be, what's the advantage to sleeping with a higher ranked female as oppose to a lower one.  
 
As you eat and/or as the years pass by i notice you get bigger. Is there any gameplay significance to this or is it just for show?
 
I read a post on gamefaqs saying that it's probably best to reproduce every ten years. If so that means, you're probably taking over territories and not mating every single time. Is that wise or should you be mating every time you take over a territory?
 
Any help or clarification /tips/etc you guys could toss my way to expound upon the "eat and stay alive" nature of the game would be great.

1. You should do the challenges, specifically the ones that unlock new animals. It's not mandatory, but it's the way the game is meant to be played as far as I can tell.

2. If you go to a nest without a mate, you can sleep there which removes all toxicity and heals you to full. Eating healthy animals also reduces toxicity.

3. I think female rank only affects how many stats your kids inherit

4. Just for show, I think. With the chicken however, you can't mate until you've slept and became an adult. EDIT: Actually I think your health and other stats might grow as the animal grows.

5. Mating too often is not good, because you lose the stats you've gained from doing challenges. If you're gonna do it, do it at the beginning of a new "challenge cycle" i.e. year 11, 21, 31, etc.

Speed is the only stat that reduces when you're a youth (Lions being an exception), if you need to get somewhere fast don't mate immediately beforehand. The main thing about the game is setting up areas so you'll have the capacity to beat the challenges, if you see there won't be enough food then mate to reset the food levels; if you absolutely can't make it somewhere in time then focus on doing the other challenges and setting yourself up for the travel of the next set. Sometimes challenge stats stay past generations, sometimes they don't, don't know what dictates it (isn't recorded in the stats gained from mating, though those stat gains only occur amidst the challenge period).

Generally for the first year I just sit there until the challenges pop, drinking water to keep hunger up; I then immediately do the challenges and have 3-5 years to do whatever, if the challenges included mating I'll only mate if necessary to change the amount of food in particular districts. Apart from that don't mate at year 11, mate at year 9 or 10 so your speed is closer to normal; unless the challenges include mating. Usually the hardest challenges are year 21-30, as you only have 10 years to do a generally increased number of things, or possibly even something like "reach Yoyogi Park East;" after that the challenges are usually pretty straightforward provided you can still have access to food. The later the game goes the more the game becomes about survival instead of doing the challenges as fast as possible, though the Tuxedo is absolutely superb for unlocking more animals so there's always an incentive to try to get every one done.

Thanks guys for your input. Focusing on the challenges has made things a bit more interesting. 
 
Another question. If i fail a particular set of challenges, do i still get access to the next set of challenges after the next ten years? I just played a game where i was doing challenge D and i had to eat a certain amount, get a couple of clean kills and go to the shopping district. The first two were really no problem but in order to get to the shop i had to go through the starting area which had now been occupied by a lion harem. In try to complete the challenges, i tried to make it to the shopping district but was quickly met with ferocious lion teeth as expected. 
 
Would it have been smarter to just say eff that and keep doing my thing somewhere else? I was afraid that i would lock me out of subsequent challenges or something. 
 
Also, since challenges only come every 10 years, if you beat a challenge in 3 or 4 years, is there anything in particular you advise doing with that time till the  next set of challenges?
 
Also when your choosing an animal, it'll say something like 1G or 5G underneath it in read. What does that mean? How many times that you've played as that animal?

It sort of depends what type of animal you were playing, you're going to have to get used to avoiding lions eventually, thousands of them (okay dozens), Shop District is generally pretty fast and easy to get to so I definitely would have gone for it. Enemy vision is a narrow cone along the "line" that they're walking, so staying out of their lane and holding down L1 to creep works wonders. I think almost any carnivore has a shot at avoiding Lions, if you're playing a large herbivore with very low stamina then maybe not; cheetahs, panthers, and dinos are what are really a huge pain to avoid. Use Jerky liberally.

If you beat the challenges quickly set yourself up for the next challenge (using the food bars on the map as a guide), if there's a preponderance of food then you can accumulate KCal, if you don't have to mate then you can try to get to boss and mate with a prime female (more time to look for one), but if the next challenges require a lot of travel then you can get that done in the interim. If the food situation looks grim for those challenges then mate as quickly and often as possible until it doesn't anymore.

"G" is the number of generations you've played with that animal (doesn't count if you die before mating I believe). Generation stat boosts are permanent, so I have Cheetahs with 23 Generations and greatly increased stats (though still vastly inferior to the best dinosaur). This shows up as a red glowing area next to the blue initial stats area on the screen, usually you can still see it even if you only have a scant few generations; certain situations later in the game can be overcome by grinding if you have really terrible luck with bosses; and ultimately the last phase of the game requires maximum stats to survive in any way but the most boring.

@Turambar said:

@Jack268: I don't think female rank actually effects stat inheritance, though I can't be certain. I know that female rank effects the number of off springs though. Desperate is 2, average is 4, and prime is 6.

I believe it does, but it doesn't cause the stat increases, so if you mate with an average female you're more likely to retain more challenge stats than if you mated with a desperate one; but if you did no challenges and mated you would see no difference.

First thing I do when I start a run is check the challenges and then decide what to do depending on what they are.

Let's say I start as a herbivore and the first challenges are: Change 1 generation, consume 1 mushroom and move to the shopping district. I try to eat everything that's not a mushroom and mark all the territories before the first year comes and the challenges pop, then I get on completing them. You can see all the challenges from the start so how far you plan ahead is up to you. I haven't gotten very far into it yet and unlocking the next animal usually trips me up in completing all the challenges, will have to get them another run.

@hbkdx12: Missing challenges doesn't lock you out of subsequent challenges, you just miss the stat boosts, the survival points and unlocking the tuxedo that you seem to get if you manage to do them all.

G1, G5 etc is the generation of the animal, when you complete challenges you get stat boosts but these are lost once you die. Stats carried over when mating however you can keep the next time you start a game with that animal. a G5 animal has all the bonus stats you've gained from mating in previous playthroughs, I'm pretty sure.

personally i think there are 3 ways to play the survival mode.

1. play just to unlock the next story mission. completing all of them will unlock 2 animals i think

2. playing trying to complete the different challenges.

3. playing while using specifc animal to complete the challange to unlock a new animal

Thanks for all the tips duders. 
 
I managed to survive for 69 years with the cat until i found myself in over my head with some of the challenges and found myself in territories i had no business being in. Then it just turned into pure survival and flight mode. 
 
It seems like a large factor of survival is determined by how "easy" the challenges are and kind of what order they're in. On my second set of challenges it wanted me to go like 3 districts over and i had to take to the sewers because there was a lot of toxic and ultimately i just never made it and then the next set of challenges wants me to go to another out the way district from where i was at after running through the sewers. it just kind of sucked. 
 
The game is real fun though. I like it. 
 
Also, correct me if i'm wrong, but you have to play as a newly unlocked animal to unlock another new animal right? Like you can't just keep picking the Pomeranian and unlock everything right? Because i noticed i fought a bunch of alley cats as the pomeranian and unlock the cat but i also fought a boss beagle but that didn't unlock the beagle. Not until i had to defeat it with the cat

@hbkdx12: Correct, you have to move onto the newly unlocked animal to unlock more animals. If you want to see which animals you can unlock as whichever animal your playing as, just go to the bottom of your challenge list. It should be the second to last challenge listed.

Also a great tip that can help you a ton, use the sewers to get around. They're much faster than taking above ground routes, and almost always safer. You also don't have to worry about any pollution down there aside from drinking the water, and larger predators can't even get inside. Here's a map of the area that should help out.

The Shibuya Station entrance won't open until you've seen it from inside the sewers. Once it's open it becomes a great place to quickly pop out and mate if you need to.

Does anyone know why the US version is half the size of the EU version?

@Lorbst:

Localization files, probably

I just wanted to say thanks for all the help! Bought this game a few days ago and I had a ton of questions, but it really is a joy to learn more as time goes by. My current record for years lived is 50. :)