Mysteries Uncovered... or why you need a guide

I restored the Race Course early in the game and found it to be a waste of time, at least for me.  I have no desire to spend coins to race my Creatures, hoping I will beat the others that are entered randomly.  You do receive prizes if your creature wins, places or shows but it really was not useful early in the game.  After that, I basically ignored the other mini-quest and side building restorations to concentrate on Habitats and new Creatures.

What I did not realise was why one should unlock the Chat Room and Mystic Pyramid.  The Chat Room offers global access to players with good information sometimes.  Often the chats are rubbish but there are some gems as well.  More to the point, if you create or join an existing club, access is solely through the Chat Room and you will be able to solicit speed ups for your breeding, nursery (kindergarten, according to the game, although they are infants in cradles!), shipments, building projects and food harvests.  This is a very useful addition to regular gameplay.

Rare Creatures
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The Sand Creatures appear randomly and there is no guide within the scoreboard as to how to create them.  Thus interesting to find out from other players that:

Sand Lizard:  Hawk and Serpent.  Breeding time 2 days, 12 hours.  You can use Wadjet and Horucobra or any combination of Hawk/Serpent creatures as well.

Sand Bug: Jackal and Crocodile.  Breeding time: 2 days.

Sand Scorpion: Cat and Human; Breeding time: 2 days, 8 hours

Sand Wraith: Cat and Serpent: Breeding time is two days.

Other Rare Creatures:

War Horse:  Cat and Jackal; 24 hours

Nut Skygood:  Although she is a Sand Creature, she cannot be obtained through breeding, unless you use an existing Nut Skygood to do it.

Chat Room
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If you join a Group, you can ask for speed up help in the Nursery or in the Kindergarten, in speeding the transport of your ships, your building projects and food harvests.  There is no limit as to the number of DIFFERENT speed ups you can request at any given time, but once requested, you have to wait until the option becomes active again.  This certainly is better than using premium cash!

Mystic Pyramid
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This is a mini-game that gives rare Creatures if you land on the right tile.  It is progressive and you buy a tile by using Scarabs.  Scarabs are obtianed randomly in gifts as well as when you harvest Food.  I now grow Corn (quick harvest) to try to obtain Scarabs.  Unfortunately, my luck always has been poor and I still have not won the creature Sekhmet.  I am going to assume that she can be bred randomly in your kingdom because the cost of purchasing her using Diamonds (premium cash) is utterly prohibitive!

Unfortunately, many of the creatures like Sekhmet that appear in the Mystic Pyramid ONLY can be obtained there.  When you access your Pyramid, you will find one chamber open probably.  Go to your Scoreboard to see whether or not the Creature is listed there as one that can be bred.  I have listed below the special Creatures that cannot be obtained through breeding.

You can obtain Scarabs randomly through many different actions, whether inside a gift, harvesting food or even collecting coins from your habitats.  It is random, always, and if you are not particularly lucky, you will not have enough to win the Creature currently on display!  If, however, you are lucky, you can win the Creature for less than 100 Scarabs in the first couple of attempts.  After that...

Lighthouse Building or Sanctuary
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This option is unlocked at Level 35 and costs 75000 Stone.  Like many of the other optional buildings, it takes a day to complete.  It is here that you sacrifice your extra Creatures to obtian coloured Tokens that can be used in the Revive Pyramid to revive rare Creatures that cannot be obtained in any other fashion.  Each Sacrifice takes about half a day to complete.  It is a grisly affair wherein the chosen Creature will be seen standing in a gilded boat going literally down the river to be executed.  You will not see the destination nor the actual act of Sacrifice, however.

Without the Revive Pyramid, unlocked at the same level, your Tokens will be unusable.  Buy and build the Revive Pyramid, then collect the Tokens required for each of the Creatures.  The time it takes to revive any Creature depends on the identity of that Creature.  Some can take 4 days to revive.  Others can be revived in a single day.

Creatures that cannot be obtained through Breeding
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Mystic Pyramid Creatures
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Sekhmet
Horunaje
Meretseger
Tefnut
Ginger Bread Pharoah
Star Mask Pine
Reindeer God

Creatures obtained through the Revive Option
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This option is unlocked when you reach Level 35.


Ammit
Renenutet
Behemoth
Manticore
Shazmu

Creatues obtained through special Promotions
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Nut Skygod

Seasonal Creatures
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Chinese Dragon
Monkey King
Horinama
Hathor
Love Goddess
Love Cat
St. Patrick Man
St. Patrick Lady
Bunny God
Bunny Goddess
Sarcophagus
Pumpkin Mask
King Corn Fu
Turkesh
The Cursed Turkey
Snow Mummy
Camelight
Ryramideer

Creatures of the 2nd, Underground Kingdom
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The following are creatures that do not appear on the Underground scoreboard


Underground
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Egyptian Bat: Ha and Bennu
Spiderqueen Scarab and Ha

Building Your Second Kingdom
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At this point in time, you can have two separate Kingdoms in this game.  They each have their own Habitats and Creatures but the second is unlocked only by acquiring a specific number of different Creatures in the 1st Kingdom.    When you go to the Entrance to the Underground Kingdom and tap on it, you will see a list of Creatues similar to the Scoreboard.  It will show you how many you have obtained and how many more you need if you wish to unlock the 2nd Kingdom... if you do not have enough Creatures, you will be given the option to purchase entry.  The price in diamonds will depend on the number of Creatures you still lack.

The first thing you should know is that EVERYTHING in the 2nd Kingdom is far more expensive than the first.  It therefore makes no sense to unlock it early in the game.  In fact, I would recommend that players build all possible habitats in the first Kingdom before building any Habitats in the second Kingdom.  The most expensive Habitats in Egypt are the Sand and Vizier Habitats.   Sand requires 650,000 Stone and Vizier requires 700,000 Stone.

In the Underground, the first Habitat is the Scarab Habitat.  It costs 135,000 Stone anda Scarab will cost 750,000 Coins.  Remember that you need two different Creatures to breed, so you need the second Habitat in the form of the Serpopard Habitat costing 270,000 Stone.  A Serpopard will cost 2,500,000 Coins.   

Then, although you are given a Nursery, the only building to exist in the Underworld when you enter it, you must purchase and build a Breeding Nest if you wish to breed these two Creatures.  That will cost you 300,000 Coins.  Fortunately, it only takes a minute to complete, allowing you to get right to business once you have the two initial Creatures.

As you can see, even an early breeding project is costly.  What I do recommend is that, once you unlock this 2nd Kingdom, you buy and build a Farm and a Stone Quarry as soon as possible.  The Stone Quarries are more efficient than the Ships.  A Stone Quarry will cost 300,000 Coins but will allow you to quarry 10,000 Stone for 200,000 Coins in 6 hours or 20,000 Stone for 400,000 Coins in 12 hours.  (A Stone Quarry can be upgraded as well.)

The Underground Food Farms are efficient as well.  Buy a Stone Quarry and Farm even if you are not ready to embark on Underground Breeding.  It will make your life easier in the end.

Creating your own Land of Ancient Egypt

(Screenshots of two of the mythical creatures obtained from crossbreeding in Ancient Egypt as well as a shot of a view of part of a player's land with its Habitats.)

I recently discovered Frismos games for mobile devices and I have to say that, although I love Fish Adventure Seasons and enjoy Creatures of Olympus, I never have encountered anything quite as breathtaking as the Ancient Egypt: Age of Pyramids game.

The graphics are amazing but in fact, gameplay is a little more complex than either of the other games made by Frismos that I mentioned.  Fundamentally, it follows the same principles of Creatures of Olympus, but I feel that the ancient Greek game is an older game and therefore its Egyptian counterpart is more complicated and sophisticated.

All three of these games are free.  You can purchase premium cash in the form of Diamonds in Age of Pyramids and use them for special items or speed-ups but you can find Diamonds in the game as well in gifts placed by your Neighbours.

When you first begin the game, you need to build Habitats and then purchase Creatures to inhabit them.  Habitats are build with Stones that have to be taken from a quarry.  In the initial land of Egypt, you obtain Stone by setting sail to specific destinations using the ships at the piers on the river Nile.  As your levels increase, you will be able to access bigger Stone quarries that allow larger yields.

The Market is divided into a number of categories:

Creatures
Habitats
Buildings
Decor
Inventory

Inventory actually consists of your storage space and will contain any Creatures or Decor that you have stored.  If you do not have the appropriate Habitat for a Creature that you have created through crossbreeding or you have no space in an existing habitat, you either can store or sell the Creature.  I recommend that you never sell a new Creature.   I even keep duplicates of some high earners.

Later, after you have unlocked the Sanctuary and purchased and built the Revive Pyramid, a Level 35 requirement, you will find that you need extra or duplicate Creatures as Sacrifices in order to collect the tokens that allow you to Revive rare Creatures that cannot be obtained through ordinary breeding.  It therefore is important to keep some Creatures in your Inventory for future use.  (It may sound a bit cold, but Sacrifice is the way of the ancient world!  Moreover, the ancient Egyptians believed that the Afterlife was a rich and wonderful world even better than this one, so who knows where your Creatures will be after they go down the river as Sacrifices?)

The first Habitat you will be able to build is the Jackal Habitat for 100 Stone.  Each habitat takes a different amount of time to build and has a different cost. The Jackal and Cat habitats are finished almost at once, however.  Do not yield to the game's prompt to speed up the building process.  It is a waste of a Diamond.  Simply ignore the prompt and wait for the habitat to be complete then tap on it to earn XP and finish it properly.  Now you can go to the Shop, to the Creatures department to buy a Creature for your habitat.  Do NOT buy the premium Creatures.  You can create all of these through crossbreeding and indeed this is the point of the game.  Instead,  once you have built one Jackal Habitat and one Cat Habitat, crossbreed the Jackal with the Cat.

N.B.  Here is an important tip about Breeding.  If you can find a Creature in the Market, YOU CAN OBTAIN THAT CREATURE THROUGH BREEDING!!!  It may be difficult or easy to obtain it by breeding, but it can be accomplished.  There is no need to spend your premium Cash in the form of Diamonds on Creatures in the Market.   Creatures offered as special Promotions in an icon on the left side of your screen, however, usually cannot be obtained through ordinary breeding.  If a Creature is offered as a special 24 hour promotion and you want it, buy it.  You may not have another chance!  Nut Skygood is an example of a special Promotion that is offered to new players often.  It is well worth the price, even if you cannot place her immediately as she requires the Sand Habitat.

Unlock your first Ship and tap on the Map to access all possible destinations, then pay to send out your Ship for Stones.  You will need Stones for the Serpent Habitat, the logical choice after you have the Cat and Jackal.

Another tip:  You ALWAYS need Stone for buidling throughout the course of your life in your Kingdom.  Always try to have ships in transport for Stones unless you are saving all your Coins for a specific Creature.  Creatures and Habitats become more expensive as you unlock them and everything in the 2nd Kingdom of the Underground is very expensive!  You unlock that second Kindgom essentially by obtaining a specific number of different Creatures.  Again, do not be tempted into paying Premium Cash or Diamonds to unlock the Underground early.  Chances are, you will not be able to afford to build anything there if you have not played long enough to amass the number of Creatures required to unlock it by default.

Breeding is done in one of two buildings:  a Breeding Nest or a Breeding Temple.  You will have the Breeding Nest from the start.  The Breeding Castle cannot be unlocked until you reach Level 20 I believe and then must be purchased with premium Cash in the form of 30 Diamonds.  You do not really NEED the Breeding Temple, but it allows you to have two ongoing breeding experiments at the same time.  I do recommend upgrading your Breeding Nest as soon as you are able to do so to have two cradles instead of one.  That allows you to grow two Creatures at once to maturity.

In the beginning, the Creatures that you breed probably will not take long to hatch but as you progress, you may find that you have obtained a Creature that will take more than a day to hatch.  Having two cradles make the game more interesting when this occurs.

Note that the more valuable Creatures have longer breeding times than the less valuable.  Players usually are happiest when the breeding time for a new pairing displays a long time period as this indicates that a rare and valuable Creature will be the result.

Tip:  When breeding itself is completed and your new Creature is moved to the nursery, you may be able to find it has been highlighted on the Scoreboard.  Some Creatures do not appear there at all, but if the Creature is listed, you will see it highlighted as soon as it moves into a Cradle.

One other very important aspect of the game is food.  You need to purchase and build Farms.  The cost is low at 50 Stone and any Farm can be upgraded.  When a Creature is grown sufficiently to leave the cradle and be placed in a Habitat, you still need to grow it at least to Level 4 if you wish to use it for breeding purposes.  Even at Level 1, however, it will generate coins if it is placed in a Habitat.

Here is where a guide may be useful.  At a certain point, a coin will appear above any occupied habitat, and you can tap on it to harvest all the Coins it contains.  You need not wait for this to occur, however.  Simply tap on any occupied Habitat and you will see an option to 'Collect' in the bar menu at the bottom of the screen.  Tap on that to collect every coin that has been generated.

The basic Creatures may be placed only in the Habitat that is natural to them.  In other words, the Cat must be placed in Cat Habitat and Hawk in Hawk Habitat.  For other creatures, however, who are hybreds, you have a choice of two habitats, unless the Creature belongs to the Sand or Vizier race.  A player who is new to the game may not notice the difference in terms of placement but in fact, some Habitats will allow you to earn more money than others.  It is not that the Creature generates more money but that the LIMIT that can be collected in the Habitat will differ from habitat to habitat.

An upgraded Habitat usually has a larger maximum Collection than the initial Habitat.   Here are a couple of examples:

A Cat Habitat at the initial level allows a maxmim collection of 10,000 Coins.

A Jackal Habitat at the initial level allows only 700 Coins.

The problem here is that the Jackal allows you to house 2 Creatures where the original Cat Habitat only allows 1 Creature.  When upgraded, the Jackal Habitat will house 3 but the Cat only will house 2.

Upgraded, the Cat Habitat allows a maximum collection of 50,000 Coins but the Jackal Habitat even when upgraded, only allows a maximum of 700 Coins still.

What this means is that the player who uses the Jackal Habitat over the Cat for those Creatures who are hybreds of both must log into the game constantly to collect Coins from it or lose a lot of money.

At the upper level of Habitats, the Hawk Habitat when upgraded is one of the best, offering housing to a total of 4 Creatures and allowing a maximum Collection of 90,000 Coins.    At the initial Level, however, it is less efficient than the upgraded Cat Habitat.  Both allow housing for 2 Creatures but the Cat allows a maximum collection of 50,000 Coins while the original Hawk Habitat allows a maximum Collection of only 30,000 Coins.

At the start of the game, however, you probably will not care about any of this and simply will focus on Breeding all possible Creatures and housing them SOMEWHERE.  It is only when you have sufficient Stones and Coins to build whatever you wish that you may change your choice of Habitats for certain Creatures.

For the other component here is that every Creature earns different amounts and the amount will change according to the Creature's Level as well.

At Level 1, for example, you will obtain only 7 coins per minute from the beautiful flying Horucobra.  At Level 10, however, the Creature will give you 35 Coins per minute.  This Creature is a mix of Hawk and Snake.  An upgraded Snake Habitat allows a maximum Collection of 12,,000 Coins and houses a total of 3 Creatures.   At its original level, it houses 2 Creatures and allows a maximum collection of only 5,000 Coins.

Finally, there is a limit to the number of Habitats that you can have on your Kingdom.  That limit changes according to your own Level of experience.   If you go to the Market to buy another Habitat of ANY kind once you have placed the maximum allowed at your Level, you will see a prompt to the effect that you only will be able to buy the Habitat once you reach a specific Level.  I became confused initially when I was trying to buy the Sand Habitat, a very expensive purchase requiring 650,000 Stones.  By the time I had amassed the necessary Stones and went to the Market, i saw a prompt telling me I could not buy it until I reached a higher level!  I had thought I would have been able to purchase it at a lower level had I possessed the Stones and I was correct.  It was only because I had the maximum number of Habitats allowed at my Level that I was unable to purchase the Sand Habitat.  To do so, I would have to sell off one of my existing Habitats or wait for an increase in Level that would allow me one more on my land.

The menu that you open by tapping on any Creature in a Habitat is the one that will allow you to grow your Creatures to higher levels.  Tap on the icon of any Creature occupying the habitat and then tap on the option to 'Feed' the creature.

Here again, a player who pays attention to details may be able to choose wisely in terms of which Creature to feed first.  Unlike Frismos aquarium game, where the fish become hungry on a daily basis and need to be fed before you can earn points by tickling or petting them, Egypt Creatures never need to be fed unless you wish to breed them or sacrifice them or earn more Coins from them.  Feed them to Level 4 to breed them or, once you have the Sanctuary, to sacrifice them to obtain tokens.  Feed them to the highest level possible to earn the maximum from them.

The default highest level for any Creature is Level 10.  There are Statues that can be purchased and built once you reach Level 30 that will allow you to breed your Creatues to levels above 10.  The highest Level if you have the appropriate Statue or Statues for any Creature is Level 20.

Note here that purchasing ONE of the Statues related to any hybred Creature will not allow you to increase its level above Level 10.  You need to have BOTH Statues related to it.  In other words, if the Creature was bred from a Hawk and a Human, you will need both the Human and the Hawk Statues if you wish to increase its Level above Level 10.

Crossbreeding two Creatures that are at Level 4 or higher can be quite exciting as the results are somewhat random and there are many possible results.  You even can obtain a Creature of an entirely different type such as Sand or Vizier.  You will not be able to place these until you advance much further in the game, but store them in view of the future.  They are quite rare.

Raising Levels
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As in most games, the highesr your own Experience Level, the more options you will unlock.  The quickest way to raise your own levels in this game is to raise the levels of your Creatures.  Again and again, my own level increased when I fed my Creatures to Level 9 or 10.  This means that Food is essential.  ALWAYS keep food growing in your Food Farms and have as many upgraded Food Farms as possible.  Even if you are growing fast-growing Crops for the sake of potential collections of Scarabs while playing Shuffle in the Mystic Pyramid, have all your farms at their upgraded Level.  Food is a Gift from the Gods!


Keep your Eye on the Prize
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One learns through trial and error but I regret wasting money now on unlocking the Race Course when it was unlocked.  You do not NEED the Race Course or the Chat Building immediately.  I am going to have to bite the proverbial bullet to recover the Mystic Pyramid as it is the key to obtaining rare creatures.  Its description is:  You can win epic creatures here only by trying to outsmart the shuffle master.  At present, however, I feel that it is more important to build all of the habitats and I still have to build my first Sand Habitat and my first Vizier Habitat.

My advice therefore is to build ALL the habitats first without wasting Coins or Stone on mini-games.  Once you have completed this goal, you should work on the recovery of the Mystic Pyramid.  Race Course may be fun but really is not needed, in my view.   It does allow you to win Scarabs randomly but even so... The Chat Room, on the other hand, allows you to request speed ups for ANY activity from a member of your Clan/Club.  You can create your own Club or join an existing Club.   I believe that the Race Course is kind of a luxury item for a later date.  Certainly I would not opt to recover it before recovering the Mystic Pyramid.

Recovery of Mystic Pyramid
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The Mystic Pyramid is unlocked at Level 25.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the cost of recovering the Mystic Pyramid is only 40,000 Stone.  It does take a full day to complete, however.

This is where Frismos can make a lot of money if a player is determined to obtain a rare creature that cannot be created through crossbreeding.  The Mystic Pyramid is a mini-game that shuffles cards on a board and then asks for Scarabs to uncover a single card.  As you progress, the cost of uncovering cards becomes increasingly higher.  You can opt to purchase the Creature for Diamonds instead at any point... actually, that cost is about $20. more or less, U.S. currency.  If you find that you will be spending about that to uncover any further cards, either opt to purchase the Creature directly or give up!

The next post gives lists of all the Creatures that can be optained through the Mystic Pyramid.  Only one chamber will be open at any given time and you have almost a week to win it before the door shuts upon it.  Once the door shuts, you will have the option to purchase the Creature for 650 Diamonds.  As this is a price that is greater than that offered DURING the Shuffle, if you are willing and able to use Diamonds for the Creature, do so while the price is influenced by the number of Scarabs you have expended on the Shuffle for it.

There are Creatures in the Mystic Pyramid that can be obtained through ordinary breeding.  These are as follows:

Wadjet
Maunekhe
Ininekhe
Iniape

Those Creatures can be obtained at any time through ordinary breeding.

Formerly, there was only one Creature that was 'seasonal' which means that, in a specific season, you would be able to purchase it in the Market.  When any Creature is in the Market, it can be bred.  When it disappears from the Market, you no longer will be able to obtain it through ordinary breeding.  If you have one and it no longer is in the Market, you can 'clone' it, but you cannot obtain one otherwise out of season.  The seasonal creature in the Mystic Pyramid was Horinama.  In a year, however, I never saw him in the Market.

For Father's Day in 2017, however, Apis was offered in the Market for a fortnight, which gave players the opportunity to breed him rather than winning him in the Pyramid or paying Diamonds once the Chamber expired.

This leaves you with a number of rare Creatures that you never can obtain anywhere BUT the Mystic Pyramid.  The list of these is:

Sekhmet
Horunaje
Meretseger
Tefnut
Apis
Tahallah

Scarabs
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You may obtain 30 Scarabs randomly in gifts even if you have not recovered the Mystic Pyramid yet.  You will not see these anywhere on your screen until you recover the Pyramid and enter to play Shuffle.  You then will see your Scarab total.

Scarabs can be collected randomly from any harvest of Food or Habitats or from the collections you make on a Friend's kingdom.  As previously stated, they can be obtained in Gifts as well.  The other way to obtain them is by racing your Creatures on the Race Course.  Here the prize randomly could be 20 to 200 Scarabs.

While you are inside the Mystic Pyramid, you will have the option to buy additional Scarabs using Diamonds.  This actually is a better option than using Diamonds directly to purchase the Creature, although once again, every Shuffle is based sheerly on chance.

Tip from Pharaoh Dave:  Many of us played through the Mystic Pyramid without thinking too much about strategy.  I certainly spent far more Diamonds on the Shuffle game than I could afford in the effort to obtain every single Mystic Pyramid Creature.

Pharaoh Dave suggests that a player WAIT before entering the first Chamber until many, many Scarabs have been collected.  You literally may need thousands of Scarabs to play the game in every Chamber and obtain all Creatures without spending Diamonds...  once you open the first Chamber, you have less than a week to obtain the Creature through the Shuffle game.  Each turn of the cards will cost more.

Once the first Chamber expires, the countdown for the next Chamber begins.  In other words, the more Scarabs you have saved, the better your position.  Do not be hasty to open the first Chamber!

The only problem potentially is the temporary addition of a seasonal Chamber.  If you have not opened all other Chambers, you may not be able to play Shuffle for the Seasonal Creature.

List of Creatures
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In front of the site of the Chat Building, to the right of your farm, you will find a standing scoreboard structure surmounted by the Eye of Horus.  Tap on it to access a menu that will show you a list of Creatures you can obtain with their descriptions and the two types needed to obtain them.  By obtaining a certain number of different creatures, you can unlock the Underworld, a second land with its own Creatures and Habitats.  This is an advanced option, however!  You can pay Diamonds to unlock the Underworld earlier, but I do not recommend that.  There is enough to do in the land of Egypt and your Diamonds will be needed to purchase a Breeding Temple at Level 20.

There are Creatures that do not appear on the scoreboard and none of the Sand Creatures that appear display their combinations for breeding.  You will find all this information in the Breeding page that always is found ABOVE any post on this site.  Breeding results for both Egypt and Olympus are provided as stand-alone Pages through Tabs above any post here.

This is a game of patience, a classical 'waiting game'.  I yielded to temptation to speed the process of breeding a few times and regret it now.  It was a waste of Diamonds really.  You may breed the same creature again and again after all.  As exciting as it is to obtain a new type of Creature, speeding the process of breeding will not guarantee that as the result.

Gift Statue
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In all Frismos games, gifting is important.  Go to the Social icon at the bottom right of your screen.  Under Profile, you will be able to create a Nickname for yourself.  Under Community, you will find a random list of other players.  Visit them and give them gifts.  If they return the favour, continue to visit them and give gifts each day.  If they do not send you gifts, you can ignore them and find new friends.

When you visit a Friend, you will be able to collect Rewards from up to four of their habitats as well as placing a gift beneath the Gift Statue.    It is through reciprocation of gifting that you can obtain daily rewards randomly such as Diamonds, XP, Food, Scarabs and Coins.

Optional Buildings
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There are optional buildings in Egypt that either offer mini-games or an opportunity to obtain Creatures that you cannot breed in the ordinary way.  The buildings that can be unlocked are:

At Level 15, you can unlock and build the Race Course.  This is strictly a mini-game wherein you can race your own Creature against random opponents (game-generated rather than neighbours' Creatures) for prizes in the form of Stone, Food or Coins.  I really do not recommend that you build or restore this building until you have created all types of habitats but every player has different personal preferences and if you like action in your games, this is where to find it.  Breeding itself always takes time and there is little to do while you wait unless you have the option to race a Creature I suppose.   Age of Pyramids is not the sort of game where you need to play constantly throughout the day.  In fact, you cannot play this game in that fashion.  Instead, you will visit your Kingdom to place completed breeding results in the Nursery, start new breeding experiments, harvest and replant in food farms, collect your Stone and send ships out again for more.

At Level 20, you can unlock the Chat Room.  This is far more useful than it might appear at first glance.  Although it may be fun to chat with random players in the Global area, and even useful to obtain game tips from them, it is the Club that is most important.  Join a Club or create one with your friends to obtain help with Speed-ups.  You can request speed ups for your Breeding, your Nursery/Kindergarten, your Food Farm, your Transport Ships or your Quarry.

At Level 25, you will unlock and can restore the Mystic Pyramid.  This is a mini-game where cards are shuffled.  Currency is in Scarabs that can be obtained in gifts, randomly by harvesting food farms or habitats or can be purchased with Diamonds.  With Scarabs, you can buy one card.  If when it is turned up, it displays the Creature in the Chamber that is currently open, you will obtain that Creature.  About half of the Creatures in the Mystic Pyramid cannot be obtained through ordinary breeding.  A section of this post above gives lists of the Creatures in the Mystic Pyramid according to the methods by which they can be obtained.

At Level 35, you will unlock the Sanctuary or Lighthouse.  It is here that you can sacrifice your extra Creatures for tokens of different colours.  If you build the Revive Pyramid, you can use those tokens to revive rare Creatures that cannot be obtained in any other fashion.

The Underground or 2nd Kingdom
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Unlocking the Underground or 2nd Kingdom is not determined by your Level but by the number of Creatures you have obtained... you can PAY to unlock it if you haven't obtained sufficient Creatures but this would be counterproductive.  The fact of the matter is that the Underground is extremely expensive compared to the 1st Kingdom.  If you haven't obtained sufficient Creatures to unlock it without paying, you probably have not amassed sufficient Coins or Stones to build anything there!

The first Creatures available in the Underground are the Scarab and the Serpopard.  Here are the costs for embarkation upon the Underground:

Scarab Habitat: 135,000 Stone

Scarab: 750,000 Coins

Serpopard Habitat: 270,000 Stone

Serpopard: 2,500,000 Coins

The Nursery/Kindergarten will be in situ when you unlock the 2nd Kingdom but you will have to purchase and build a Breeding Nest for 300,000 Coins.  It will take only a minute to complete.

Now you can breed your first Underground Creatures.  The Creatures that can be bred with this combination are:

Serpokhep:
  Sells for 100,000 Coins

Khepropard:
  Sells for 150,000 Coins

Scaropard
  Sells for 200,000 Coins

The reason I am giving their selling prices is that, once you fill your Habitats, you probably will be in a position to breed more of these before being able to afford the next Underground Habitat.  Unlike Egypt, the 1st Kingdom, where it is worth your while to SAVE all your extra Creatures in your Inventory in order to be able to use them as Sacrifices, Underground Creatures are not available for Sacrifice.  They are a good source of Coins, however, when sold, as you can see.

The next Habitat is the Scorpion Habitat which is even more expensive:

Scorpion Habitat:  450,000 Stones

Scorpion: 5,000,000 Coins

At Level 45, you will unlock the Ha Habitat.

At Level 47, you will unlock the Sorcerer Habitat.

What you choose to do here is your own business.  Age of Pyramids is not a game that you win or lose.  Apart from some of the options, like the Mystic Pyramid that have time limits once activated, for the most part you have all the time in the world to expand your game and raise your Levels.

The Sand Habitat and Vizier Habitat in Egypt are the most expensive.  Sand Habitat costs 650,000 Stones and Vizier requires 700,000 Stones.  Whether you prefer to build these before building any Habitats in the Underground is your own choice.  There is no right or wrong way to play this game.  I do think that the first Building you should complete in the Underground is the Stone Quarry, however.  It generates the following:

10,000 Stone in 6 hours for 200,000 Coins
20,000 Stone in 12 hours for 400,000 Coins

Contrast this with the Ship Transports in Egypt where the most you can obtain in 6 hours is from Hermopolis for 20,000 Coins giving you only 2000 Stones.  If you wish to wait an entire day, you can pay 200,000 Coins to obtain 20,000 Stones.  Send your ship to Thinis for 2 days for 400,000 Coins to obtain 40,000 Stones.  If price is a consideration, yes, the ship transport gives you more Stones for each Coin spent but the time it takes is longer.

Coins or Stones
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When you have unlocked the Underworld, you will find that, increasingly, you may need to choose between collection of Coins and collection of Stones at certain moments.  Creatures in the Underworld have high Coin price tags and their Habitats requires massive amounts of Stones.  Whether or not you choose to leave your Ships at dock temporarily is your own choice...  in general, though, it is good to grow Food constantly and quarry or transport Stone constantly...  Even when you have build and placed all possible Habitats at your Level, you may wish to upgrade them...  in the Underworld, many Habitat upgrades require Diamonds but in Egypt, they all can be completed with Stones.