Rank and eligibility are two different axes, and “rainbow” conflates them
Every passive in the 115-entry catalog carries two independent properties. One is rank, an integer on the row that drives the visual tier you see in game and that runs negative for detrimental passives. The other is eligibility: four separate boolean flags saying which roll pools the passive can appear in. Neither one implies the other.
What the community calls the “Rainbow” tier is really just rank 4 and above. Counted from the data, there are 31 of them, and they are scattered across every acquisition route the game has. Counts for this tier vary wildly between sites, and they vary because the tier is usually defined by how a passive looks rather than by the field that produces the look. The number above is recomputed from our committed catalog on every build, so it cannot drift from the data behind it.
Three passives that prove the point
All three sit in the top visual tier. All three come from a completely different place.
- R4LuckyRare poolEffect text is absent from the 1.0 game-data export for this passive. We will not guess at the numbers.
- R4BabysitterMutationWhile at a base, increases egg production speed by +30% and incubation speed by +30% for Pals assigned to a Breeding Farm.
- R5Demon’s HandWorld TreeWork Speed +90% SAN decreases +15.0% faster World Tree harvestables won’t vanish when approached.typo fixed
Where a passive can come from
The catalog flags four roll pools, and a passive can sit in none of them. Group by pool and the shape of the game’s design falls out immediately.
Rolls on ordinary wild pals and ordinary breeding. Also the only pool that contains detrimental passives.
Flagged for none of the four roll pools. Almost every one is instead welded onto a specific species as an innate passive, which is the fifth acquisition route the flags do not model.
Carried by World Tree pals. Every entry is a large upside bolted to a real drawback.
Only reachable through mutation. Every entry is pure upside.
Its own separate roll, and in the 1.0 catalog it holds exactly one entry.
How rank is actually distributed
Rank is a plain integer on the row, negative for the ones that hurt you. The distribution is lumpy in a useful way: the bulk of the catalog is the rank 1 floor, and the top two tiers together are a small minority.
Rank is a good proxy for how strong a passive is inside its own family. It is a bad proxy for whether a passive deserves a slot, which is what the next two sections are about.
4 slots, and most passives are competing with a cheaper version of themselves
A pal carries 4 passives. The reason that budget bites is that a large part of the catalog is organised into graded families: several rungs of the same effect at different ranks, plus matching penalties on the way down. Two rungs of one ladder is a wasted slot, so a good loadout is 4 different ladders, or 3 ladders and something unique.
The best 4-slot stack for each job a pal can hold
Each stack below takes one rung from 4 different ladders wherever possible, and every pick names the passive by its catalog row so you can check it against the browser.
Combat ace
A pal you actually fight with, so damage first and then enough bulk to keep it on the field.
- SLOT 1Demon GodR4Standard pool
Top rung of the attack ladder, and the only slot on this list that is genuinely non-negotiable.
Effect text is absent from the 1.0 game-data export for this passive. We will not guess at the numbers. - SLOT 2Diamond BodyR4Standard pool
Top rung of the defense ladder, and it folds flinch and knockback immunity in with the raw number.
Defense +30% Immune to Flinch Immune to Knockback - SLOT 3VampiricR4Standard pool
Sustain that does not compete with any ladder, so it costs you nothing you were going to take anyway.
Absorbs a portion of the damage dealt to restore Health. Does not sleep at night and continues to work. - SLOT 4SwiftR4Standard pool
Repositioning and disengaging. Swap it for an element boost if you are building a specialist.
30% increase to movement speed.
The 30% element boosts (Flame Emperor and its eight siblings) beat this fourth slot for a single-element specialist, but they are flagged for none of the four roll pools, so you cannot breed for them.
Base worker
Output per hour with no intervention, which means work speed plus the two drains that stop work happening at all.
- SLOT 1Remarkable CraftsmanshipR4Standard pool
Top rung of the work-speed ladder and the whole reason the pal is at the base.
Effect text is absent from the 1.0 game-data export for this passive. We will not guess at the numbers. - SLOT 2Heart of the Immovable KingR4Standard pool
Top rung of the SAN ladder. A depressed worker produces nothing, so this is throughput, not comfort.
SAN drops +20.0% slower. - SLOT 3Mastery of FastingR4Standard pool
Top rung of the hunger ladder: fewer trips to the feed box, less food logistics.
Hunger decreases +20.0% slower. - SLOT 4InsomniaR1Standard pool
Rank 1, and still worth a slot. It works nights, which no rank 4 passive replicates. Rank is not value.
Does not sleep and continues to work even at night.
Nocturnal (Insomnia) is the clearest case against ranking by rank alone: a rank 1 passive with a unique effect beats a rank 3 rung of a ladder you already topped out.
Mount
Ground covered per stamina bar. Three of these four are ladder tops that most builds never think to stack together.
- SLOT 1SwiftR4Standard pool
Top rung of the movement ladder.
30% increase to movement speed. - SLOT 2Eternal EngineR4Standard pool
Top rung of the mount stamina ladder. Rideable pals only, so it is dead weight on anything else.
Max stamina +75% *This effect is only valid for rideable pals. - SLOT 3LightfootedR4Standard pool
An extra mounted jump, which is traversal rather than speed and does not compete with either ladder above.
Mounted Jump Count +1 - SLOT 4King of the WavesR4Standard pool
Only if the mount swims. On a flyer or a runner, spend this slot on defense instead.
50% increase movement speed on water.
Skymarcher gives two mounted jumps instead of one, but it is mutation-only, so the ordinary breeding route tops out at Lightfooted.
Breeding farm pal
Faster eggs out of the farm. This is the shortest list on the page for a reason.
- SLOT 1PhilanthropistR3Standard pool
The only breeding-speed passive in the standard pool, and it is a large effect.
When assigned to a Breeding Farm, breeding speed is increased by 100%. - SLOT 2BabysitterR4Mutation
Egg production and incubation together, but it is mutation-only, so it is a bonus rather than a plan.
While at a base, increases egg production speed by +30% and incubation speed by +30% for Pals assigned to a Breeding Farm. - SLOT 3Heart of the Immovable KingR4Standard pool
Keeps the pal working the farm instead of wandering off, which is what actually caps a breeding loop.
SAN drops +20.0% slower. - SLOT 4Mastery of FastingR4Standard pool
Same reasoning: uptime, not throughput.
Hunger decreases +20.0% slower.
Exactly two passives in the whole 115-entry catalog touch breeding, and one of them cannot be bred for. Anything else you have read about a four-passive breeding stack is filling the other two slots with general-purpose uptime, the same as we are.
Innate passives: the ones a species is simply born with
The four eligibility flags describe rolls. They do not describe the passives a species carries by definition, which is a separate field on the pal itself and the reason the pool-less group exists at all. 46 pals in the 1.0 roster carry at least one, covering 23 distinct passives, and 16 of the 17 pool-less entries are accounted for this way.
| Passive | Born with it |
|---|---|
| R2HeavyweightStandard pool | Aegidron, Braloha, Broncherry, Broncherry Aqua, Dualith, Dualith Noct, Kingpaca, Kingpaca Cryst, Knocklem, Knocklem Ignis, Mammorest, Mammorest Cryst, Pierdon, Pierdon Cryst, Reptyro, Reptyro Cryst, Silvegis, Wumpo, Wumpo Botan |
| R4LegendNo roll pool | Frostallion, Frostallion Noct, Jetragon, Necromus, Neptilius, Paladius |
| R1Hard SkinStandard pool | Astegon, Digtoise, Warsect, Warsect Terra |
| R1Otherworldly CellsNo roll pool | Xenogard, Xenolord, Xenovader |
| R3Lord of the UnderworldNo roll pool | Frostallion Noct, Necromus |
| R1HooliganStandard pool | Gorirat, Gorirat Terra |
| R4Eternal FlameNo roll pool | Blazamut Ryu |
| R4InvaderNo roll pool | Xenolord |
| R4LunkerNo roll pool | Neptilius |
| R4SaviorNo roll pool | Hartalis |
| R4Siren of the VoidNo roll pool | Bellanoir Libero |
| R3Celestial EmperorNo roll pool | Paladius |
| R3Divine DragonNo roll pool | Jetragon |
| R3Earth EmperorNo roll pool | Anubis |
| R3Flame EmperorNo roll pool | Blazamut |
| R3Ice EmperorNo roll pool | Frostallion |
| R3Lord of LightningNo roll pool | Orserk |
| R3Lord of the SeaNo roll pool | Jormuntide |
| R3Spirit EmperorNo roll pool | Lyleen |
| R1AbnormalStandard pool | Lovander |
| R1SadistStandard pool | Splatterina |
| R-1CowardStandard pool | Cattiva |
| R-1GluttonStandard pool | Relaxaurus |
Three things the catalog does not settle for you
- 21 passives have no effect text at all
The rows exist with a name and a rank, but the description is empty in the export. That includes several of the most sought-after passives. Where one of those appears on this page we say the text is missing and place it on its ladder from the row id, which does encode the family and the rung. We do not fill the gap with numbers from elsewhere.
- One description ships with a typo in the game itself
Not an extraction error on our side: the string in the game data is misspelled. We correct the spelling for readability, mark it, and change nothing else. Every number in a corrected line is the game’s own.
- Nothing here tells you the odds of rolling a specific passive
Eligibility says a passive can appear in a pool. It does not carry a weight, so the catalog cannot tell you how likely any individual roll is. For inheritance odds across a breeding pair, the mutation and cake lab models the counts the game actually uses.
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