It's been raised that there seems to be something wrong with the fairness of the Meeroos game. So far, the talk has been about observations and feelings. The numbers, however, tell the true story.

As usual, a preface. I'm making some basic assumptions about how things Are. I might be wrong. But decades of experience has taught me to go with Occam's Razor whenever possible: the simplest explanation is usually correct.

The Tome exposes two facts. First, there are five, and only five, "discoverable" species. And there are exactly 40 coats. These counts do not include special Meeroos like Clovers who are simply Costumes painted over a normal 'roo.

This most likely means we have 5 groups (species) of 8 items (coats), and the odds of a given combination are trivially computed.

For a given species, the odds are:

Most common- (4): 9 in 25, let's call this "Pine"
------------ (3): 7 in 25, let's call this "Gael"
------------ (2): 5 in 25
------------ (1): 3 in 25
Least common (0): 1 in 25

For coats they are:

Most common- (7): 15 in 64
------------ (6): 13 in 64
------------ (5): 11 in 64
------------ (4): 9 in 64
------------ (3): 7 in 64
------------ (2): 5 in 64
------------ (1): 3 in 64
------------ (0): 1 in 64

To find the odds for a specific case, we simply multiply. For example, the odds of species 3, coat 5 appearing, are 77 in 1600, or about 1 in 20.

There is one "least common of all" coat. If you purchase 1,600 nests, and nothing else effects the odds, you're likely to get it.

But wait .. this flies in the face of what we've seen from over 160,000 randomly chosen nests. We've not seen many, if any, of the least common species and coats. If the odds were unbiased, we'd expect to have seen all 40 coats, with at least 100 examples of the very least common, ultimately prized coat. WE HAVE NOT! In fact, we're not even close.

This could mean they're not implemented, yet. It could mean they're masked by their parent's regard. But it most likely means there's a "cooler" in place on the genetics "randomly" chosen for the nests.

We *could* say this cooler is Levio and Dawnara's personal regard score. Rumor (I've never checked) has it that as a Meeroo gives birth, it gains some regard. The maximum feasible regard score is 14,400 (Levio and Dawnara are special cases and might go much higher but any higher score is meaningless .. the "unmask everything" point *MUST* be less than 14,400, probably well below). So, at only 1 point per birth, Levio and Dawnara's regard passed its maximum very early on. From the nest numbers, it's safe to assume Dawnara and Levio's regard scores ceased to have any meaning during the initial pre-order distribution; most likely even before nest #3 could be coaxed. If we insist on using the term "regard" when discussing Levio and Dawnara, we're best to assume, no matter what their stated score might be, their effective score, used to birth nests, is fixed and constant (and, I'd guess, precisely and always 250).

From observation, it's safe to say the effect of the cooler is to limit the species to only the two most common. It may also limit the coat choice, but evidence seems to indicate not, based solely on the feeling more than 8 different coats were discovered fairly early on.

What does all this mean?

Well, the odds I gave above are the "perfect case". That is, if you have two random parents, and your and their regard scores are sufficiently high enough (say, 14,000 each of the parents, and you .. what the heck .. have several million regard points) the odds I gave are precisely the odds your randomly chosen parents will produce a given species and coat.

But you don't have those ridiculous regard scores. And Levio and Dawnara certainly don't. So what you see coming out of the box from the main store is a very limited set.

As I said, I don't *think* the coat is effected by the cooler. But I am pretty sure species is. The cooler doesn't change the odds, relative to each other. It probably simply lops off the three least common species from the range of possibilities. This reduces the odds to about 50/50. Specifically:

Pine Meeroo: 9 in 16
Gael Meeroo: 7 in 16

And we have only 16 coats we can see early on:

Pine 7: 135 in 1024 let's call this Winecoat
Pine 6: 117 in 1024 and this might be Ursine
Gael 7: 105 in 1024 and perhaps this is Fawn
Pine 5: 99 in 1024
Gael 6: 91 in 1024
Pine 4: 81 in 1024
Gail 5: 77 in 1024 so Red is probably about here
Pine 3: 63 in 1024
Gael 4: 63 in 1024
Gael 3: 49 in 1024
Pine 2: 45 in 1024
Gael 2: 35 in 1024
Pine 1: 27 in 1024
Gael 1: 21 in 1024
Pine 0: 9 in 1024
Gael 0: 7 in 1024

Sounds terrible, doesn't it? But it's even worse. If you didn't "play the game" early on, but simply built your regard, while you can't effect the odds for the starters, you can effect them for your offspring. If you max out regard (and if there are no other coolers), the odds of Gael/Red coat change from 77 in 1024 (about 8%) to 77 in 1600 (about 5%).

Now, is the FAIR? If you dive in and pop-and-drop early on you have a BETTER chance of getting that Red coat you want?

Actually, yes. It's VERY fair. It's what you want. It means, when your chance of getting that Red drop nearly in half, you go from NO chance of getting any of those other, even "better" 24 coats to having some (if small) chance at all.

I'll bet by the time you could even notice the change in the odds, especially since it's gradual, not sudden, that Gael/Red coat you prize so highly now will be just more junk to release to the wild without a second thought in your quest for that Gold Pressed Latinum coat I've heard rumor of ...