How do you get trait points?? Also, what are the essences and how do you get them??

To answer your first question, you can't 'get' trait points, per se. All pets are created with a certain number of trait points (1 trait point (often called gp or genetic point) is 1 carry, 2 gp is either 1 visible or 2 carries, and so on). If the pet is one that was caught in the wild then you do have a chance to add either 1 carry or 1 visible to that pet using a genetic mutator. Lesser mutators (available in the scale shop) give a random carry or visible trait in an empty trait slot. Greater mutators (available in the diamond shop) give 1 visible trait of your choice in a chosen empty trait slot. Whichever mutator you choose, you only get to use one per pet (so, if you used a lesser on one, you cannot use a greater or another lesser). This is why mutating caught pets will lower their resale value: people often want to be able to use a greater mutator to choose a new trait.

The only other way to 'get more trait points' is to breed sylesties together. Parents pass traits down to their offspring giving a chance of creating babies with more traits. More in-depth information about this can be found in the guides section of the forum.

As to essences, these are items used to create a chosen syesti. Instead of catching a pet with random traits and dying it with many dyes to get the colours you want, many people will start with essences to get very close to their desired pet. You can get essences for any of the pets available in game, and they come in three varieties: Regular, Enhanced, and Mystical. Regular essences give the newly created pet 2 gp and not-so-great colour accuracy (see the 'generator: before and after' thread in general discussion for an idea on colour swing with these essences). Enhanced essences have better colour accuracy and the generated pet gets 4 gp. Mystical essences also get 4gp, but they have nearly perfect colour accuracy (important if you want to do a lot of pure blacks, pure whites, or very pale colours). There is also a bit of difference between base stats for each essence, Regular being the lowest and Mystical being the highest, of course.

To use an essence, you have to go to the generator and 'load' the essence where it asks you to at the top (be careful to notice that after you click 'load an essence' there are thee subtitles "mystical, enhanced, and regular". You have to click the correct one to find the essences you own).

To get an essence, there are several ways. Easiest is to buy them from the diamond shop or from the trade broker. you can also, very rarely, get them for free by nurturing, battling, or opening satchels from going on missions. If you're super lucky when playing Jinxie's Jamboree, you can also get them there.

Hope this has been somewhat helpful XD It kind of became a bit of a wall of text >> Sorry about that ^.^;;

Oh, okay. So what about when it says "trait points: 9/0" for example, what does that mean? Like you just don't have those particular mutations on any of your pets...?

If you're looking in the generator (which I'm assuming you are), 9/0 means you have 0 trait points to spend. If you loaded a regular essence in the generator it would say '0/2 trait points' meaning you haven't assigned any gp to the essence yet. At that point you could add 2 carries or 1 visible to make it 2/2. If you tried to do more then those numbers would turn red, meaning you have gone over the allowable number for you to generate.

Okay, thank you, I was so confused over all of that X}