From a plain pet to a Nova

Every pet you hatch arrives in its plain form. The Evolution Hub turns copies of that same pet into a stronger version of itself, and then it keeps going: Golden, then Rainbow, then Astral, then Nova. The species never changes. The form does, and the form is where most of your late mining power comes from.

There are four machines, one per step. Each opens at a different point in the game, each eats copies of a single pet, and each can fail and burn what you loaded. Here is the whole ladder in one place.

What each form multiplies

A form multiplies two separate things: the mining power the pet contributes, and the weight it carries on your net worth. The two are not the same number, and the gap widens sharply at the top of the ladder.

Which machine, and when it opens

All four machines live in the Evolution Hub. Golden and Rainbow open purely on your level. Astral and Nova each want a level and an event, and both of them lock again after a reset, so a returning player has to climb back to them.

The order is enforced by the server, not just hidden in the menu. You cannot skip a rung: a Rainbow only ever comes from Goldens, an Astral only from Rainbows, a Nova only from Astrals.

How many copies you load

Load between one and six copies of the same pet. More copies means a better chance, and a full load of six is a guarantee: at 100 percent the fusion cannot fail and nothing is lost. The published chances are 13 percent for one copy, 29 for two, 47 for three, 63 for four, 88 for five and 100 for six.

The Nova Machine is the exception on both counts. It always takes exactly six Astral pets, and it never reaches a guarantee. It starts at 50 percent, and the Nova Forge nodes in the Supernova tree push it as far as 80. A Nova fusion can fail with a full load.

The fee, and what a failure costs

The pets are not the whole price. Running a machine also charges coins on top, and that fee climbs with the machine's tier and with how many copies you loaded. The Nova Machine is by a wide margin the most expensive press in the game.

• A failed Golden, Rainbow or Astral fusion burns every copy you loaded into it.
• You then have twelve hours to buy those pets back with Gems or TimeStars before the offer expires.
• Recovered pets come back at base size and with new Zodiac signs.
• A failed Nova has no recovery at all. The six Astral pets are simply gone.
• A Shiny source doubles the fee on every machine.

What carries over and what does not

Shine carries. Fuse a Shiny pet and the result is Shiny too, guaranteed, on every rung of the ladder. If your source is not Shiny, the crafted pet starts at no shine chance at all, and only the Shiny Pet Craft research gives it one.

Size does not carry. A crafted pet rolls its own size from scratch, so feeding a sized copy into a machine does not hand that size up the ladder. The game asks you to confirm before it eats one.