User blog comment:Fantasylover4life/Trying to understand the SPIKE rarity system/@comment-35589567-20180527022558

Well, personally, I'm not an expert, but I've been trading for spikes for a while. (I have 10)

Basically, I call the blue, purple, and red collars the 'messy colours' This is partly in fact, because it varies so much from person to person their difference in rarities, it really is messy. Let me include some examples, because I think this is what you wanted. (?)

If you have a blue long, and want purple, you'll have to add a good long wrist, or the requried number of den betas to get a good long wrist. For the den betas, however, most people would much rather have a long wrist, because for some reason, even though they're worth the same amount, the community considers the two worths very different. (Usually, unless you prefer den betas)

If you have a purple long, and want red, you'll have to add probably a good long wrist and add a little bit. (1 den beta) I think. I personally got my purple long from a pet otter, and my red long from the Forgotten Desert, but I think this is the widely accepted trade. (Among Aldan traders)

If you have a blue long, and want red, that's a whole different story. Most people barely consider blue a 'good' spike collar colour anymore, it's kind of just there, floating on the line. You'd probably have to add a short collar (I'd say decent to good) to get a red long.

Tihis is pretty much it, but it kind of differs with short collars, but not much, and then with wrists, oh god.

With short collars, the gap between colours (for some reason) shrinks. Blue is closer to purple, and purple closer to red.

With wrists, you can probably trade a purple wrist for red, and they'll accept. (This happened to me just the other day) But then again, there is blue to purple, which for some reason, people consider blue a lower colour, so you might have to add a beard or something like that.

It also differs among the rarity of people. Less rare people will be more willing to accept an odd assortment of den and clothing betas for their long collar. Let's say someone has an orange long collar. They'll probably accept a purple/red short for their collar plus a bunch of den and clothing betas.

Rare people, however, will most likely be looking for more spikes, and less betas. For instance, if a rare person has an orange long collar. They would most likely be looking for a purple short and a red short for their collar, and maybe (maybe!) add one den beta or two.

I hope this helped anyway, I wrote this in like five minutes, so it's probably really bad and hard to read, but anyway, I hope I answered your questions.