1400 'skillers' are here

It wasn't that long ago that LucyLou and I were excitedly trying to breed our first '1000 skiller'. Well, as you probably know - things move fast on Howrse and the top breeders and breeding groups work day and night to increase the skills of their horses.

And only in the last few days, we've reached another Howrse milestone. The '1400 skilled horse'. The one on the left (click to enlarge the picture) is number one as I write although, depending on when you read this, it will already be old news. Not long ago, when 1000 skills was the highest you could get on a horse, the Divine horses such as Xanthos', Sleipnir's, Snow's etc all seemed to be infinitely better and more valuable than 'ordinary' horses. And whilst Divine and Special horses are still valuable, the skills gap is narrowing every day. But, it's worth looking at this in a bit more detail.

Whilst the overall skills of one of the new, '1400 skill' horses is 200 higher than, say, a Xanthos; it's trotting skills may be only 87 and its jumping skills only 160. The Xanthos has 200 in every skill. But the 1400 skiller, may have more than 200 skills in four of its six skill sets. So which is the best horse? Almost certainly the '1400 skiller'. This is because more of its skills are SO much better than the Xanthos. Even in trotting where the '1400 skiller' has 87 against Xanthos' 200, the '1400 skiller' has 403 in speed which is double the Xanthos' and more than makes up for the lack of trotting skill. So in a trotting race, our '1400 skiller' would win every time against the Golden One!

However we compare Divines & Special horses against 'normal' horses, one thing is for sure. Eventually the skill levels of these ordinary horses will be higher than every current Divine & Special horse. Even the Cowbra which has 2000 overall skills.

But... Howrse won't let that happen will they? If we could all buy an ordinary Irish Hunter with 2300 skills then the market for Sleipnir's, Gypse's, Harlequins' etc would disappear. True, there are some horses such as Falabella's, Croesus' and Archimedes that are not highly skilled but still fetch a lot of money in the sales. But we, as players will always want a magical horse that is far, far better than any ordinary Arabian, Thoroughbred or Quarter Horse. So I think you can be sure that there will always be a new 'mega-skilled' horse just around the corner.

Like the new Divine horse 'Mist' which will be appearing at Christmas 2010. Now how many skills will he have I wonder?

Patsy