Considering how worthless they've already become, it might be a good idea to make invites at least a little rarer, maybe. When I'm struggling to sell a lot of two invites at like 50 silver this early in the game, something's wrong.

I think invites need to be reworked. As they are currently, only a couple of them have any good use while the others fill a very small niche as it is -- something that makes them worthless without needing them for that one specific purpose.

Case in point:

Reptile/Mammal/Bird catcher - each increase the chance of catching their respective groups.

Dragon/Cockatrice/Gryphon/Unicorn/Thunder(Roc)/Claw(Puma) Magician - each increases the chances of catching their respective pets.

Both of these provides a small boost, but each is less useful without each other. If they absorbed the catcher invites INTO the magician invites, so that it increased chance of den inhabitance AND chance of capture, then it'd really be useful. As it currently is they only fill a very small niche.

Trainer Invite - Really only useful when training a LOT of pets and/or high level pets (40+). To fix this, the trainer invite should also reduce the amount of time it takes to train a pet by 50% (so 2 hours instead of 4). Honestly the only thing stopping me from MASS training my pets is the fact that in the 4 hours it takes, I lose 4 energy, and with that 4 energy I could pretty much gain a level anyways.

Clairvoyant - Useless once you have the cartographer's guild. This one needs to just be gone or absorbed into a different invite - maybe captain of rangers? Either way Cartographers Guild > this useless invite.

Captain of Rangers - Not really useful because most of the time you'll only have 2-3 pets on your screen at a time anyways; besides the fact that you can't really 100% know where every pet is going to go. Only useful without knowing where the pets are/are going and even then, probably not too useful since you're better off just camping the watering holes with 2 catchers or the fields with 3 catchers. I think the Captain of Rangers should allow you to send out unlimited expeditions. If you think about it then you could cover the whole map if you wanted, which wouldn't be any more effective than only placing catchers exactly where you need them but at least this would be useful if you didn't know where a pet was going to go.

Geneticist - Really niche. Only very useful when looking for specific gene couplings, and even then isn't too useful unless you do a TON of catching/breeding. To fix this the geneticist should be able to research genes without either the vermillion or the money. Either way then this would be super useful. Imagine saving 2000 coins on researching a pet -- or saving 20 vermillion.

Dryad - only useful when you've caught all the pets on the map and you don't want to wait for more to appear naturally. This function may be better off left to the specific breed occurance invites instead. Also there have been complaints of this invite not doing ANYTHING so it probably needs its effectiveness increased.

Traveling Merchant - Usefulness debatable. Fills a small niche. You're probably better off spending your money at the magic shop. Should probably be limited to only selling magic items; which would then make it VERY useful since being able to buy premium items with coins is always nice.

Druid - One of the only REALLY useful invites. 10% permanent stat gain can make wild caught pets REALLY good; especially if you get some decent genes.

Traveling Magician - The other of the 2 really useful invites. Fog of War is so pointless and annoying and makes exploring a map take at LEAST twice as long as it should. I expect one they do the energy fix then it wont be so bad because you'll only be exploring twice with each pet so that fixes that.

I agree with you, actually. I was talking to Wes about that before I made this suggestion, but I didn't feel like a more complicated one would be considered so I went with 'make them drop less'. Preferably, redesigning them AND making them drop less could happen.

Support! Since a Dryad is a tree nymph, the Dryad invite should increase the likelihood of a wild pet going to the Big Tree, Magic Glade, or Heart of the Forest. Clairvoyant could be turned into a Farmer invite, which increases the likelihood of pets going to the fields (Western, Eastern and Big). One of the others could be changed into a Patrician, which pays 100 SC every day instead of 50.

Support for the changes, not so much for them being made more rare.
The few nice invites are in enough demand they are already fairly expensive, it's just the more useless ones that are dirt cheap.

My own idea for the catcher would be a private expedition. An invited catcher would set out on their own and have a certain percentage chance of returning with a wild-caught pet of  their species for you in 24 hours (the rest of the time spent at the inn could be "resting up." They would still occupy the inn for the full time.) I like Irrimn's idea too.

I've used a couple magician invites and they did nothing, the species they were for never spawned. They could be useful (for people like me who can never actually get the species they are breeding most to appear) if they actually worked. Maybe make it 100% at least one of that species would appear.

I've done the math on training, it isn't too bad a deal. At around level 35 and beyond it's pretty hard to get a level with full energy so the ridinghall is a better bet with that four hours. Niche, but useful for those who train a lot.

Personally, I think the geneticist is fine as is for bred pets. I can pretty much research the 5 or so genes I need to see if the pet inherited what I want and save a ton of money/vermillion. For wild-caught pets it would be more useful if the genes were sorted somehow, like dominant on the right, recessive on the left, so we could only research what we wanted. Right now there still is a 50/50 chance of uncovering what you wanted.

I think the dryad only makes the pets that already exist on the map return to their dens. I dunno but that is the impression I get. That would make it basically useless if you have the cartographer's guild and are good at tracking pets. I don't know what she should do instead though.

Agree 100% with Irrimn on the merchant, if he sold the same items as the magic shop, at the same price, it would be great.
Also agree on the clairvoyant, but not sure how to make it useful.

For wild-caught pets it would be more useful if the genes were sorted somehow, like dominant on the right, recessive on the left, so we could only research what we wanted. Right now there still is a 50/50 chance of uncovering what you wanted.

Wont happen because that's not the way the genes were designed to work. As it is, genes inherited from the mother are on the left and genes inherited from the father are on the right. This actually makes it easier to determine if the genes you wanted to inherit from x parent got passed down. I still feel like it's not as useful because I'd much rather have a traveling magician, 100 times over. With him, I can easily get 200+ vermillion and not have to worry about spending too much vermillion identifying genes. Plus with genes fully discovered breeding is much easier to know what pets to breed together.

Wont happen because that's not the way the genes were designed to work. As it is, genes inherited from the mother are on the left and genes inherited from the father are on the right.

Wild caught. As in, they don't have real parents. They are computer generated, and there is no reason the computer generation can't sort genes.
As I said, and I quote, "Personally, I think the geneticist is fine as is for bred pets. I can pretty much research the 5 or so genes I need to see if the pet inherited what I want and save a ton of money/vermillion."
Sorry if that was hard to understand, I don't want it changed for bred pets at all, just the computer generated ones that have no real parents.

You're pretty lucky with vermillion. Even clearing entire islands it takes me several days to get that much. But I am doing a lot of breeding, trying to breed up better genes and getting woefully unlucky with recessives.
Edit: It's better with the new system but I can still only get about 100 a day. 100 is probably plenty with the geneticicst but for the random system it really isn't.

I support... I have too many invites and no real interest in using them at this point because my focus is on capturing and exploring... I have loads of the things o.0 (not to say that I won't be craving them in a week)

Support. So much support. >.< These and blueprints and schemes keep flooding my inventory when I'm exploring (because I seem to find every blueprint EXCEPT Warehouse 2) and I just can't sell them!