Only way I get gold is by having gold + silver or silver + silver.So i'm not the only one, either the essence system is borked right now, or it's on purpose essence level 5 nephelym spawn with barely any traits worth mentioning, maybe one gold trait, or 2 silver traits at best... after all, the changelog did say something about "putting the focus back to breeding", which makes me think is double-talk for "wild nephelymwere too strong"
as i said. during the world level times, at world level 5 epic and legendary Nephs would spawn in the wild with tons of traits. now? i'm lucky to see a rare one. and passing on traits is a headache on its own, gold traits hardly get passed on, if anything the child gets the bronze version of it. the basic gameplay loop doesn't appear to be fun at all with this snails pace of advancement.
If I'm not totally schizo'd I think I managed to pass gold without the partner having it once.
Anyway, the backlog of monsters when trying to gold a trait onto a specific species is huge.