29 | Female | Writer | JST | 日本語OK

Stud book and fillers for horses with my affix available upon request.

All horses in my The other horses tab are available for sale. If they aren't listed, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Send me the link of the horse you want with your offer.

I only fill for my own team's horses and am not looking to join new teams.

I buy Parchments for 10k apiece.

All sales final.

DMs are always open.

My Guide to All Things Howrse is on hiatus for the two weeks encompassing Golden Week (4/25-5/10).

During this time, all DMs may take more time to respond to, and questions asked in the Forums will go largely unanswered by me - the answers I give there take me too long to type out.

Sales may or may not be put up during this time. All horses in The other horses tab are still for sale upon request.

DragonTrickster's Guide to All Things Howrse (in progress):

Goal: To assist new players and experienced players alike in progressing to a smoother, more enjoyable experience by giving tips, tricks, advice, and guidance from someone who has dabbled in all aspects of the game except for competitive donkey breeding. If you need help there, I cannot help you. (Sorry.)

This page is going to be an utter mess as I work on it, but I will be updating things at least once a week in my usual long-winded, partially-scathing style that you see in the Game Play forum.

Many thanks to Windwalker2 for providing me multiple calculations and details on the inner workings of this math game with a horse coat of paint.

Disclaimer: For now, this will only cover the game itself as you can play it on the browser version of the game.

Table of Contents:
Welcome to Howrse! - Introduction

The Horses - Breed Information

If you are a new or returning player, this game might seem overwhelming to you.

Don't worry; that's by design. It's not a malicious design, either - it's a design to make you feel comfortable and at-home in this game so you play it longer. Whether you have a competitive streak, want a casual relationship with the game, or just find the coats cute, there is something here for just about everyone.

Except cake. The cake is a lie.

The problem with being a live-service sandbox game is that there is no end goal. There is no final boss to slay. No story to finish. No side quests to mark off. You cannot join the game expecting to get all the achievements and move onto the next game. If you are a completionist, this game is likely not for you.

The other issue here is that other people are playing this free-to-play game. The markets, the rankings, they are all pushed every day by highly competitive players seeking to make their mark on the game, and, more than likely, can, have, and will spend far more time and money on this game than a new player can. The result is that most aspects of this game are a marathon, not a sprint, and while you can buy a car to give yourself a boost, that car will require more and more gas in it as you go along.

If you are a person who desires instant gratification, then this game is not for you.

Who, then is this game for? People who...

...love horses and wish to spend hours upon hours working them, even if they don't see progress.

...are devoted to a specific breed in real life and wish to play games containing said breed.

...love math! This game is a numbers game, after all.

...want something to do with their hands while catching up on YouTube videos.

...love pouring hours into things to watch the small wins add up.

...enjoy collecting pretty cosmetics and personalizing their horses.

...love color theory and storytelling through coat and background combinations.

...salivate over economics and spreadsheets. (Yes, this game lets you do that! No, you don't have to if you don't want to.)

...have some sort of long-term competitive bend and understand the time sink required.

...enjoy simplistic, easy-to-learn games that take a long time to fully master.

...don't mind repetitive motions or mindless tasks to accomplish something strategic.

and more I probably haven't thought of.

If any of those above descriptions fits you, then you have a very important question to answer.

For new players, what are you excited for?

For returning players, what makes this game fun for you?

As mentioned earlier, this game is a live-service, free-to-play sandbox game with a hundred different ways to play. So long as you are not actively hurting other players, you can and should play in whatever way you like. However, if you do not set realistic goals, you will find yourself frustrated time and time again.

But we're all here for the horses, aren't we?

Community -> Directories -> Horses lists every single breed on the game. At time of writing, this number sits at 49 different horse, pony, draft, and donkey breeds. Unicorn, Pegasus, and winged unicorn variants of each breed are available and follow the basic rules for their species.

Horses are the standard on the game. They are a moderate weight and height and therefore eat a moderate amount of food, and they can breed as many times as the game lets them. Because they are so ubiquitous, most daily schedules, including for training and foal games, are based upon their characteristics. They can interbreed with all other horse and pony breeds.

Ponies are a lot smaller than their standard cousins, and therefore they eat a lot less. This can drastically affect how much energy your horse has to use throughout the day, especially since food is energy and too much food can make your ponies sick. Adjusting your horse's daily intake, foal games, and training times are a must to making sure your ponies aren't going to suffer. Like horses, ponies are pretty common and can interbreed with all other horse and pony breeds.

Drafts are to horses what horses are to ponies: larger horse breeds that eat a massive amount of food, allowing them to do much more in a day, usually constrained only by the clock. Drafts also have the distinction of hauling twice as much during missions, netting you twice the money, your horse twice the skills, and its equestrian center twice the materials. Drafts can only breed three times, however, and only with other drafts.

Donkeys are the odd one out here. The ponies' lower food intake, the drafts' reductive breeding ability, and their GP goes down upon being bred instead of going up. They are cute, though.

Beyond the above general species information, each breed has a set of skills they excel at, which can be seen on the individual horse's genetics tab as well as on the training sidebar. These stats determine which horses are viable competitively, but if you care little about competition, then these only matter for breeding purposes.


Extra notes:
The basics of BLUPping is merely this: your horse must have won 20 competitions, reached 10 years of age, and obtained all possible skills from rides, training, and competitions for its top three skills. For Nokotas, for instance, that would be Dressage, Trot, and Jumping - you can find this info on the Genetics tab or, after 2 years of age, on the Training bars for your horse if you're on the browser version of the game.

This applies for all horses on the game. Your horse will receive BLUP for every competition it wins (up to 20), for every time it ages (up to 10 years), and for every bit of training, rides, or competition entries you do (up to 100%, the equivalence of 100 hours, and up to 25 entries for competitions that use that skill, respectively).

There are nuances for every breed and every circumstance (tear-bred or 0 IBS, low vs high GP, pure vs cross, etc.) that you'll come to learn over time, but for Nokotas, here's a rough schedule, assuming you aren't VIP:

<1y 6m Foal games

1y 6m - 1y 10m Forest rides

2y - 3y train Trot/Jumping

3y - tack up for Western competitions; enter exactly 25 Trail Class competitions - this should take you approximately one year of the horse's age (5-6 entries per 2 month aging period = 5 2-month periods, or 10 months)

Switch to Classical riding

Train Dressage, Trot, and Jumping

Finish Forest rides

Enter Cross Country competitions until 20 wins

Do mountain rides

The point of this schedule is to keep Dressage low until skills are fully gained from Trail Class competitions and Stamina low until Cross Country wins have been acquired.

If you are VIP and have the perk to switch disciplines on a horse regardless of age, this doesn't change that much; at that point, you would merely fully train Trot and Jumping before entering Trail Class competitions, and then you would swap to Classical and train Dressage.

Keep in mind that this is a framework - you may need to alter certain steps if your horses can see rookies but also train out of rookies.

Developing skillers is a bit more nuanced: you (paradoxically) don't really want wins. You'll get them eventually, and you can't breed them anyway, so the only reason to hit 20 wins with them is to move into the bracket where rosettes are visible. This is not necessary for Prix entrants. Because of this, training a skiller properly is far more important than pushing for wins - unlike BLUPping, where you want to prioritize your 20 wins.

Skillers are incredibly expensive to raise properly. You will need the following at a minimum:

Philosopher's Stone

Medusa's Blood (though, if you're using a Golden Apple, you can put on a normal coat before applying, assuming you don't want a Pegasus coat)

20 Pieces of Cloud OR the VIP Cloud Pack

One of the following customization items: a Magic Hat (Fairy Coat) = a Fifth Element (Metal Coat) > a Fifth Element (coat corresponding to the primary skill of the competition you want to enter) > a Fifth Element (coat corresponding to one of the secondary skills of the competition you want to enter) > a Double-Sided Medallion > some sort of coat BMI = a Rainbow Iris + Custom Clips + Button Plaiting + Tail Braid = a Fifth Element (coat corresponding to one of the three useless skills on your skiller) > a normal Iris Coat + Custom Clips + Button Plaiting + Tail Braid

a Bonus Pack or its individual components (if you're VIP, only apply this at the very beginning of your horse's life or after training is done; if you're not VIP, I believe you have to put on any Horseshoe Studs you may get from events separately)

a Water of Youth or a Sisyphus Stone

Some sort of Tack Pack

a companion corresponding to the primary skill of the competition you want to enter

a Falabella

The following are not necessary but will help you anyway:

A Nyx Pack (will contain the Philosopher's Stone you need, but will also contain a Chronos' Timer to speed up the process, an Achilles' Heel to cover your time and energy mistakes, a Nyx's Star to give you more time in the day, and a Morpheus' Arms to spare you the massive Aging Point cost)

Dragon, Knight, or Samurai tack

a Heracles's Horseshoe for your skiller's corresponding competition

a Ploutos' Parchment (money is nice and you'll be aging constantly anyway)

a Kairos Dial (to maximize training/ride/competition entry time and allow you to take care of your horse if you end up reaching midnight on accident)

a Philotes' Stroke (more energy)

There is no set way to skill a skiller, but you can treat it as you do a BLUPping horse. The only requirements are thus: Water of Youth or Sisyphus's Stone at 2 years exactly, never miss a lesson, never train at less than 100% health, make sure your horse's morale is at 100% before beach rides, and make sure to put on your Pack of Cloud/Pieces of Cloud and your Philosopher's Stone before 25 years of age.

A skiller is not considered complete or ready for top competitions until it hits 25 years with all Pieces of Cloud already used. Use the intermediary time to attempt to hit 20 wins and allow the horse to see rosettes. How you do so is up to you, but I would suggest keeping your horse's three worst skills as low as possible until you've hit those 20 competitions, unless you need to enter Prix in three hours, in which case just try to get wins where you can after Prix.