Howrse Cup

A brand new game is coming. It's called Howrse Cup and the game is currently is beta testing with a selected number of players from around the world. There is already some information on this new game, in the Events forum on International Howrse.

Here at Ultimate Howrse, we will be bringing you all you need to know about this groundbreaking new game which will be launched on 24th July 2012.

The game is a limited time game. That means it will only exist for a few months, before the servers are closed. This is because Howrse Cup is a group competition game where the focus is on competing against other teams of players, rather than spending time breeding and training your horses.

The aim of the game is to be the team who win the world championship in December.

A team has up to 15 members and the top 25 teams who collect the most diamonds in the next few months qualify to compete in the world championship for the Howrse Cup. The players of the team that win the Howrse Cup each get 100 passes and a new and exclusive Divine which they can activate on any server they wish.

To earn diamonds on Howrse Cup your horses need to win races. Every race you enter and place 1st - 4th brings you diamonds. The player and team rankings are all based on how many diamonds you have.

You can also enter challenges against other players to try and win their diamonds off them. For a challenge each player enters 2 horses into a Trot, Gallop, Showjumping, Cross Country and Dressage head-to-head competition. Whoever wins overall gets the diamonds.

However, it's not as easy as it sounds. On Howrse Cup you cannot see the skills or GPs of any of the other players horses - so you have no idea what you're up against!

The game is set up to make it as easy as possible to get your horses trained and start competing. Horses age 4 months instead of 2 and there are no WoYs, there are no rides, no strokes, no turnips and training is done in chunks of 3 hours in a single click.

There are no foal games, your horses age every 6 hours instead of waiting for the update and you can only buy / sell 1 horse a week (unless you have a Unicorn Account, similar to Howrse's Pegasus Account). Another thing is that you can't make your horses immortal!

Horses only start to lose health after the age of 30 and they never lose their skills - so you can keep them alive with Black Orchids if you wish. It takes a while to get used to after playing Howrse but is really simple once you pick it up.

So, an exciting development from Owlient and one we will be following closely. And of course, we will bring all the news and developments as they happen. Watch this space!

UPDATE: A lot of you are asking questions about the Howrse Cup, both here and in the forum on Howrse. Here are answers to some of those:

Q. Can I bring my horses over from Howrse to the Howrse Cup?

A. No. You start from scratch with just one horse

Q. Do you HAVE to buy passes to play?

A. No. But without passes, you have no chance of winning enough races to gain enough diamonds for your team, to climb the rankings.

Q. What is the point of the Howrse Cup.

A. To win. You join (or create) a team of players and compete against other teams to win as many diamonds as possible.  You win diamonds by coming 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th in races. That's it!

Finally, there is a great deal of chatter about the Howrse Cup. It's important to be clear - this is a separate game from Howrse. It runs on it's own server and is a short-term, competitive game. It is designed to be very fast-paced and well, competitive! 

There are no free BM items or passes to help you. The second the game starts, players will be buying dozens, hundreds of passes to race and breed their horses. The game is designed to make breeding and training much faster than on horse - so you can concentrate on entering races. BUT those players who can buy passes and give every BM item to their horses will be the ones who win the most diamonds for their team.

To BLUP a horse on The Howrse Cup only takes about 10-15 minutes! This game is fast and to be competitive you definitely need to buy passes.

If you cannot (or don't wish to) buy passes then of course you can still play. Just don't expect to earn many diamonds and don't feel too sad when more highly skilled horses 'stomp' on yours. It will happen I'm afraid. However you can still enjoy the fun of getting a team together and doing the best you can - passes or no passes.

Well, either way, everyone (over 13 years old - according to the rules from Owlient) will be able to join the Howrse Cup from July 24th. Then you can see for yourselves what the fuss is all about!

UPDATE: The game is now live. Enjoy!

Patsy

Our big interview

As promised, here is our interview. We were kindly asked to be interviewed by red_chick94 who has interviewed quite a few players on Howrse. Anyway - here's her interview. We hope you enjoy it:

red_chick94 interviews LucyLou and Patsy

This is my first combined interview I’ve done with two great players, LucyLou & Patsy. Please let me know via pm or on here if you like combined interviews.....

Hi you two! Do you feel privileged to be the first players to have a combined interview with me?
(P) Oh most definitely. Having looked at your list of illustrious interviewees, I feel honoured to be interviewed at all!
(L) Absolutely. I hope we can do the interview justice.

So, how did you two meet/get to know each other?
(L) We actually know each other in 'real' life. We used to work together and one day I introduced Patsy to Howrse, via a conversation about the price of turnips!
(P) Yes, that's right. I have to admit, I was a bit sceptical when I first saw the game but I thought that any game that had fluctuating vegetable prices in, had to be worth a look.

How would you describe each other in one word?
(L) Hilarious (but I mean that in a good way - she never fails to make me laugh!)
(P) Inspirational.
(L) Awww, thanks Patsy.

So, I noticed you had a fabulous website. Can you tell us about it?
(L) Well it's basically a help site/blog that we set up together for the players of Howrse.
(P) As LucyLou says, it's really just intended to help players of the game. However we find it helps us too. We find out loads of things we never knew, when we're researching for our postings.

How did you think of the name?
(L) I'm not sure really. We wanted it to have the word Howrse in so people could find it easily. Patsy came up with the Ultimate bit.
(P) As LucyLou says, we definitely needed it to have Howrse in the title. I chose 'Ultimate' as I thought it summed up what we wanted the site to do, it's easy to spell and has a memorable sound to it, I hope!

Why and when did you set it up?
(L) It was Patsy who came up with the idea originally. We both get so many questions from players each day asking for help so she thought it would be a good idea to make a site where we could share all the knowledge we have about the game. Hence Ultimate Howrse was born.
(P) Yes I suppose it was my idea. But as soon as I discussed it with LucyLou, she was really excited about the whole thing. We launched the site on August 31st 2009, with an article about how to take care of your first foal. Since then we've had over 39,000 unique visits and more than 81,000 page views. Our readership is based mainly in the USA, with the UK second and Canada third. But we have readers from all over the world. Places such as Guam, China, Iran and Brazil.
(L) Wow. I'm impressed by Guam.
(P) Oh there's loads. Angola, Belgium and even Christmas Island. In fact we have readers in 101 countries around the world.

What is your aim with your website?
(P)We have a pretty simple aim with Ultimate Howrse - to help players enjoy the game as much as possible. We wanted to create a site outside of Howrse where people could come and find answers and information on the game. As it turns out, it's not just us providing the help - other players come on and answer questions and share their knowledge too.
(L) I agree with everything that Patsy has just said. Sometimes it's quite hard to get your question answered on the Howrse forums so hopefully we're providing another place for people to go to get help and advice, as well as news and special features such as interviews. Like this one!

Are any new features going to come to UH?
(P) Something we've just introduced is videos. We found that sometimes trying to explain how to do something is quite difficult just using words. So what better way than to use video?
(L) I really like the videos - we've just posted one showing what happens when you wake your Gypse up in the morning. Not a lot of players get to see this as they don't own one (me included!) so it's a really nice thing to show. And also very hard to explain by just writing about it.
(P) In the future we may get into Facebook and Twitter but for now we just want to build a community around Ultimate Howrse. We average around 300 visits a day, so right now, we just want to make sure we're doing all we can for our readers and contributors.

Do you find it hard to manage this game and the website?
(P) I have to say that it can be rather time consuming but I'm always conscious that we need to keep the site up to date. I'm always the one who posts about any 'breaking news' coming from Howrse. Things such as a new Divine horse, new features or a new competition. I like us to be the first for important news because a lot of players search Google for information when something major happens in the game. So I love it when we are there with the answers - or most of them at least. LucyLou does a great job of writing about things such as training, breeding or running your EC. Mainly because she knows what she's talking about and I don't.
(L) LOL thanks Patsy. I find it quite hard to do both. Sometimes I'll be in the mood for playing the game rather than writing about it and at other times vice versa. Patsy has to keep me on the straight and narrow! But yes, I really enjoy helping players with the 'nitty gritty' elements of playing the game.

What do you two enjoy doing the most on this game?
(P)That's easy - making money!
(L) That's easy for me too - skilling horses.

Can you two tell me a random fact about yourselves?
(L) I wrote my University Mathematics dissertation on 'Equations of length seven over free groups'.
(P) Nice! Hmmm, I can't quite compete with that. However, my voice was once used as the voice of a cuddly bear that was sold in gift shops. I had to say things like "Happy birthday" and "I love you" in a cartoon voice. Strange but true.

You both have great rankings. What has made these rankings achievable?
(L) I've been playing the game since 2007 and after about a year I realised that to get up the General rankings you need to buy horses, and lots of them. So that's what I did and still do to this very day. The highest I've been is 6th overall but these days I'm quite happy to just be in the top 10. In fact, just today I went back up to 8th - it's a lot harder these days though.
(P) I have to confess to being a bit inconsistent. I'm currently in the top 10 of the Breeders' wealth rankings and I achieved this mainly by buying horses in the auctions and then selling them at a profit in the direct sales. I do buy passes too which helps. But I get bored easily. About a year ago, I was in the top 20 of the Breeders' wealth rankings but decided to spend nearly all my money to buy 1561 horses which got me to 19th in the General ranking. And then, I sold them all and got back into the top 20 of the Breeders' wealth rankings! Random.


Do you agree that having a close friend on the game is useful?
(P) Absolutely. I'm actually quite rubbish at playing the game and if it wasn't for LucyLou's patience and advice I'd probably have given up about 900 days ago!
(L) Yes definitely. We help each other out all the time and it's great to have someone to talk to about the game. Most other people would think I'm mad.
(P) You are mad.
(L) Thanks for that!

You’re ECs are looking great as well; however have either of you made a mistake within the EC?
(L) Oh I'm terrible with my EC. I'm forever forgetting to plant crops, get new employees and extend my horses board. I am proud of my EC's ranking - when everything is as it should be - it took a lot of time and hard work to get it up there.
(P) I made a brilliant mistake with my EC recently. I accidentally bought 50 DO (small) boxes instead of manure! No joke - 50 of the little devils. I had to destroy them all and only got half my money back. I'm a bit stupid like that sometimes. Other than that, my favourite trick is to forget to extend my employees' contracts. Doh.

Can you tell us who inspires you most on the game?
(L) Anyone who's above me in the General ranking - I know how hard they must have worked to get there. And also Patsy inspires me too - with her vast amounts of money and herself restraint when it comes to spending it!
(P) Well obviously LucyLou because she keeps me going but also players who do things like play the game without buying passes or people who produce really creative GA coats. I just admire players who play their own game really.
Finally...if you two could swap seats with each other and play each other’s game for one day, would you do it? If so, why, if not, why?
(L) Oh I would, definitely. Although Patsy might find she has considerably less money when she comes back the next day as I would spend it all buying lovely horses! That's my downfall on Howrse; as soon as I have money I spend it.
(P) It would be great - to have all those horses and all those PM's to deal with. Not sure I could cope with the lack of equus. I may have to sell a few Divines! Hmmm. maybe we should just stick to our own games. Things may just get a little messy!

(L and P) Thanks for a great interview. We've really enjoyed ourselves. Happy Howrsing.


Patsy

Coming soon - an interview with ... us!

Ah fame at last. Well LucyLou and I have been running Ultimate Howrse for nearly 2 years now and we've finally got the recognition we deserve! The other day, red_chick94 contacted me and asked if LucyLou and I would like to do an interview for her forum. Well, of course we said 'yes'. She has interviewed quite a few players over time, including people such as horsekitty, Dr Zig and sassyk. So we were both honoured to be asked.

Currently we're just waiting for the interview to be published in her forum. As soon as it's in ready you'll then be able to read it if you just visit her page on International Howrse and go to her EC forum. We'll also be publishing the full interview here, on Ultimate Howrse. So either way, you won't miss out.

So come back soon and you can find out all you wanted to know about Patsy, LucyLou and Ultimate Howrse.

You lucky people!

Patsy

Gypse

We've written about the Gypse divine horse before but we've never written about what a Gypse is and what makes it different from other Divines and Specials. So, the Gypse (or 'sand' horse) first appeared in the summer of 2010 Beach Competition, when they could be bought with 'sand' which you earned by winning competitions, buying passes, training horses etc. After the competition, Howrse then gave players the chance to win one in a Horn of Plenty (HoP). And I was lucky enough to get one.

Now the Gypse is very unusual in that the skills it had when you got it could vary hugely. Gypse's that were won in the Beach Competition came with zero skills. Players had to use the 'sand' they had left to give the horse skills. However, players who won Gypse's in the HoP's found that they came with 10,000 grains of sand which meant that these Gypse's effectively had around 1300 skills!

Like most Divines, they are male and cannot breed. However they can be sold. What makes them different from all other Divines is the fact that players can add skills to their Gypse every day and they can decide which skills the horse gains. Howrse states that you have to 'rebuild' Gypse's each day but this is a little bit misleading. In fact, you simply get given a certain amount of 'sand' each day which can then allocate to whichever skill you wish.

The best way to explain this is to show you. Click on one of the links below to see what happens when you activate your Gypse horse each day.

Ultimate Howrse video guide - Rebuilding Gypse (Standard definition)

Ultimate Howrse video guide - Rebuilding Gypse (High definition)

So that's all you need to know about the Gypse.

Patsy

Ultimate Howrse videos

We're big fans of technology (as well as Howrse of course) here at Ultimate Howrse, and we thought it would be a rather great idea to try a new way of helping all of our lovely readers. So we decided to try our hand at video guides. Whilst we love writing about all of our hints, tips and news, sometimes it 's just so much easier if we can actually show you instead. As from today, we will, from time to time, be using video to help you learn about Howrse, its features, gameplay and much more.

As you'll see, we've added a new tag (called 'Video' obviously!) to help you search for anything we've posted to our YouTube channel. Below is our first video, so please be patient as it's out first attempt. Practice makes perfect remember!

This first video is really just a test and is intended for people who are brand new to Howrse. We shall be producing videos ona whole range of topics, so if you have any requests, just drop us an email to ultimatehowrse@me.com and we'll do our best to help.

Ultimate Howrse video - The Menus

Ultimate Howrse video - The Menus (High Definition)

Enjoy,

Patsy

First Green star NIB on Howrse - The Interview

So the first ever Green star NIB (non-inbred) horse has finally arrived on Howrse. You can read about it below. This is a monumnetal achievement that has, quite literally, taken years come to fruition. Here at Ultimate Howrse we love to bring you hints, tips and news, but we also love to bring the inside story on the people who help make this game so wonderfully varied and exciting. Recently, we bought you an interview with moonbean and we're now very proud to bring you an interview with the people who have created the first Green star NIB in the whole game - HYDEIST and kaliko99. So sit back and enjoy this fascinating insight into the amazing world of NIB breeding.

• Ultimate Howrse (UH): Firstly, for those who don't know, what is a NIB horse?

• HYDEIST (HY): From Rivenwood’s NIB FAQ on the NIB Horses thread: “A NIB horse is a horse that is not inbred; every horse in its pedigree appears only once (with the exception of Ouranos and Gaia). Horses with "Horse Disappeared" in their pedigree are generally not accepted by NIB breeders unless the horses in question were bought before the horses disappeared and have verifiable pedigrees.” Basically that means no breeding brothers to sisters, or daughters to sires, etc. No easy path to a high GP as you need fresh lines every time you want to breed!

• UH: What made you want to become a NIB breeder, what's the appeal?

• kaliko99 (KA): I saw Yankee Lady bred NIB Appies which gave me the idea initially and I moved it to Connies. It’s an interesting challenge as blupping foundations and lower GP howrses takes more skill than doing monsters. Also to breed good NIB takes skill in selective breeding, tracing lines etc. Also there is a much better sense of community and team work between fellow NIBers than in the high GP world. High GP breeding can be stressful and there is constant rivalry for rankings and top GP. There is a much lower sense of achievement as each horse is purely about gains.

• HY: It’s something I started off doing instinctively to begin with when I was learning. I didn’t want to see any “gross” lines on my horses, like breeding siblings, etc. Then I realised it wasn’t frowned upon but I didn’t have the time or money to keep up with the GP race and started hunting out foundations instead because they matched my starter. After that it became a bit of an obsession, and my herd grew. The appeal now is in being able to blup out low-skilled horses and the pride you can take in knowing how much work went into your new foal. Like Kaliko said, there is also a brilliant NIB community – we may all do different breeds but we support each other rather than being highly competitive. It’s just a lot more fun and much more relaxed, although it can be frustrating when the game goes against you!

• UH: So what makes NIB breeding harder than non-NIB breeding?

• HY: The worst thing really is it’s very hard to find decent foundation horses for sale. I prefer to get them as foals so I can game them and train them my way but beggars can’t always be choosers when there are so few available. When they are, they’re often expensive. I really advise any prospective NIBers to establish their own lines and to own the foundations if possible, as a “Horse Disappeared” in the lines later means the horse can’t really be verified as NIB easily.

• KA: We need to blup new lines continually, for example it takes 64 foundies, 32 1st gens, 16 2nd gens, 8 rd gens, 4 4th gens and 2 5th gens for green star. That’s 128 blups! Now to get a star inbreeding does not take anywhere near. And after the 1st star we need to blup the same again just to get a small GP increase. The other challenge is getting hold of a constant supply of good quality foundations.

• UH: Why is BLUPing so difficult for NIB breeders?

• KA: It is very difficult to get comps wins as our foundations and NIBs are all very low GP compared to the GP breeders blupping howrses which means we need to try and achieve wins against howrses with often 4 times the skills. This means it takes a lot of skill in what to train up and what comps to enter to try and get wins. It also means team work is often required to blup to supply fillers. I often find high GP bluppers see the NIB affix and use us as easy fillers.

• HY: Which really isn’t very friendly of them but we’ve had the tables turned on us quite a few times in recent months. First there was the morale drop for losing competitions, which affected everyone, then there was the range widening in competitions. That little change there was nearly my programme’s undoing – suddenly high GP skillers were in against my NIBs and naturally flattening them! Then there was the beach rides, which take skills from the horse’s worst skill and put it into the top one, meaning that monster skilled horses with one untrained skill, like jump maybe, could see our ponies and claim easy wins on them. And most recently there was the changing of the Ageing Point ranking to the Number Of Wins ranking… there was a boom in skillers target training (leaving one skill completely untrained in order to get into the low level competitions) after that and flattening low-skilled horses. Up against that calibre of horse, it’s not even enough to have every BM item on an NIB to win.

• UH: OK, so how long does it take to fully BLUP a NIB horse?

• KA: Depends on whether you use BM items or not. I personally buy passes and blup using timer and MA, and usually work alongside HYDEIST for fillers. In this case I can be blupped and bolded in just over an hour. Blupping without BM items or fillers could potentially take months.

• HY: How long is a piece of string? Hehe. It depends on a number of factors – how much you can age them (lots of APs or Morpheus’ Arms, or natural day-by-day ageing?), do you have a timer, and do you have a way of securing your wins? I use a timer and arms for mares and just arms for a stallion. The stallions obviously take longer but they normally are capable of getting more wins on their own as lower comps are open longer.

• UH: What's most satisfying about working as a NIB breeding team?

• KA: Having someone who has the same goals as you to share all the successes with. And obviously it halves the blupping!

• HY: Having someone to share all the highs and lows with! Teaming up with Kaliko only became official in the past couple of months but we’ve worked closely together for years, giving each other foals and coverings. It’s nice knowing you can trust someone else with your lines.

• KA: A NIB team requires more trust than a GP team as if they quit your lines are instantly ruined, unless you trust them implicitly to pass all howrses over. With GP lines, if someone breaks rank with sales or covers, you just blup harder to recover the lead.

• HY: But with NIB, if someone breaks off and quits the game, you could potentially lose years of hard work.

• UH: How do you organise a NIB breeding programme?

• KA: With lots of help from HYDEIST. Given my last disaster with bolted foundies I clearly can’t, lol.

• HY: Aww, that disaster was a total accident though – Howrse really should address that issue with bolted horses only showing offspring from the current gender they are. I keep track of what foundies we use with a spreadsheet right now although I am also working on a database which will be able to record everything down to the ID number of the horse for ease.

• UH: Do you have to buy a lot of passes?
  

• KA: Only if you choose to. I like blinged up pixels with GA coats and I prefer to blup with timer and MA, but lots of players have very successful NIB programmes without and there is certainly no pressure to buy passes. It is a condition in the top GP breeding teams to have a consistent supply of passes, where there is no such pressure with NIB.

• HY: You don’t have to buy passes for anything. There are ways to make passes in the game anyway, if you want them. I buy a few here and there (I’m a poor student) to support the game, and also to fund any arms/timers I need, but I’ll also buy or age pass horses and breed the odd unicorn to earn a few more. I have a few NIB friends who only use timers, or who put a Philosopher’s Stone on every horse so they have unlimited time to work them. It’s all preference.

• UH: So how did it feel to finally get that first Greenstar and how long did it take?

• KA: Well, it felt fantastic and I was so proud and happy to share it with HYDEIST and also our good friends livelyblueyes, Pollyanna202, letia and lanikot. As for how long it took, I have been working away on NIBs at a low level since 2007 and have been working in loose partnership with HYDEIST for maybe 2 years, however in the last year I made more of a push and in the last few months since HYDEIST and I teamed up formally we have been consistently blupping and breeding.

• HY: Yeah, I’ve always been quite slow with mine! Kaliko held the top NIB GP for the longest time with her pony Sister Act, so she definitely worked through the higher generations more than I did. I tended to keep the foundations going!

• KA: The first green star was achieved in around 3 months, as all of his lines were newer lines in an attempt to pair my Sister Act who was my current top GP, but used foundie lines we had both been collecting and blupping for much longer than that.

• HY: We definitely pushed harder just lately to try and get that star – friendly rivalry with the Arab NIBers! And believe me when I say you don’t want to know how many ageing points we burned through to get there! In the end, our baby actually hit the green star on his own without needing to be put to Sister Act. And due to some complications with outside lines, Sister Act’s family tree is a little precarious so we’re in the process of going through and rebreeding older horses to ensure our lines are secure. She’s still a very special mare though, having held the top GP for so long!

• UH: Would you recommend NIB breeding to other players?

• HY: Sure! If you’re patient, and you enjoy a challenge, NIB breeding could well be for you. It can get a bit costly when you’re starting, especially recently with the soaring price of foundations, but it’s very fulfilling and we have one of the best in-game communities on the game, in my opinion!

• KA: I would welcome anyone to give it a go, and the NIB community on the forum is extremely supportive. It’s a great challenge and a great chance to play the game your way. I am always happy to give advice to any player interested in NIB. =)

• HY: Yep, same here – I don’t bite. =)

• UH: Are all the horses you own 'NIBs' or do you carry out any other breeding programmes?

• HY: I also have NIB Purebred Spanish Horses, Peruvian Pasos and Lusitanos – I’m a bit crazy! But I also often have the odd skiller and unicorn to earn some equus/passes, and a big stable full of fillers for aiding other NIBers. I casually breed NIB on the four English-speaking regional servers.

• KA: I have a couple of high skilled EC howrses to give good lesson gains in my EC so I can blup my NIBs. I also have a large selection of fillers, which are not NIB they are just whatever is cheap in the sales. On INT I only actually breed NIB howrses though. I have in the past been part of several top GP teams and am part of a top GP team on UK Howrse but on INT I choose to focus on NIB.

• UH: Are you now setting your sights on that second Greenstar?

• HY: Wow, I think we’ll just be going for new green stars first to get a partner for Anything’s Possible! I can’t even begin to imagine how many foundations we’d need for two stars!

• KA: More than I want to consider seeing how we needed 64 to get a 6th gen! So probably 10-11 gens to the next star. That seems horrific!

• HY: I just worked out we could need 512 foundations if we’re VERY lucky… otherwise we need 1024! Yikes!

• UH: How do you feel the Howrse community responded to the recent plans by Owlient to change the GP of new foundation horses?
  

• KA: I think we joined together and supported one another and were united in our concern. I feel the community made an amazing gesture to HYDEIST and myself by supporting us with passes and BM items to help us to reach the NIB green star, a universal goal amongst the NIB breeders. In return I am now committed to helping and supporting other NIB breeders to achieve this goal. =)

• HY: Yes, the entire community was united, not just NIBers. We had support from some of the top ranking players, which was absolutely amazing, and NIBers scraped together everything they had to make sure our foal was born just in case these new foundations arrived with stars already on them. Sure, there were a few individuals who were determined to get under our skin and be generally unpleasant about the change, but as a community, we overcame all the hurdles and in the end we were rewarded with the powers that be listening to our request. It was truly an amazing day when that baby was born and the change was halted! I too am indebted to those who helped us out, and will do whatever I can to ensure other NIBers reach a little green star of their own to brighten their breeding programme!

• UH: Finally, anything you'd like to add?

• HY: I’d just like to say thank you to everyone who supported Kaliko and I during the push for the green star – in particular, thanks goes to livelyblueyes (our honorary partner), lanikot (a great friend and a true star for rallying the troops and holding us all together) and our best friends Pollyanna202 and Ietia, who have been there for us since the beginning, all those years back! Also, well done to everyone who opposed the GP change – we could never have stopped it without you all speaking up. =)

• Lastly, thank you Ultimate Howrse for interviewing us! We hope we’ve been able to give a bit of an insight into our breeding.

And a huge thank you to HYDEIST and kaliko99 for such a wonderful insight into the whole world of NIB breeding. We're certain it will encourage other players to give it a go too which we think would be a fantastic testament to all the hard work from these two, lovely players.

Better get blupping!

Patsy

Interview with moonbean

Here at Ultimate Howrse we work hard to bring you all the best hints and tips as well as the latest news on your favourite game. So we're delighted that one of the games' most delightful players and creator of three of the most loved Golden Apple coats on Howrse, took time out to speak to us. moonbean has been playing on Howrse for over three and a half years and in that time she has produced a trio of memorable GA coats. We wanted to find out about the two adorable 'Humphrey' coats and the wonderful 'Tim-Tom' coat, so who better to ask than the person who made them?

Ultimate Howrse (UH): Where did the idea for these fabulous coats come from?

moonbean (MB): Not sure about the word 'fabulous' (lol) but Humphrey came about when I decided to try and make a Black Pearl (BP) coat and, being totally useless at drawing, I kept it simple and blobby looking. The idea for Tim-Tom just popped into my head and I used the basic Humphrey design with some tweaking here and there.

UH: All your coats are now retired. How many Humphrey, Winged Humphrey and Tim-Tom coats are there in the game.

MB: There are 31 Humphrey's, 3 Here's Humphrey's (the winged version) and 200 Tim-Tom's out there.

UH: Does that make the Winged Humphrey the rarest coat in the game?

MB: No, there are other coats with just 1 or 2 uses

UH: How do you create the coats? Are they hand drawn or produced on a computer?

MB: I use Paint Shop Pro but if you Google 'Gimp' you can download a similar program for free.

UH: Which is your favourite?

MB: Humphrey

UH: And have you had many coats rejected for use? How many have you submitted?

MB: When the last BP came out I submitted 8 coats and 7 were rejected with only Tim-Tom making it through. The rejected coats included Humphrey's girlfriend Gertrude; I've posted the rejected coats in my forum.

UH: The big question - are you planning more GA coats?

MB: I've lots of other ideas for coats but they are just ideas at the moment as its the drawing that I have trouble with lol

UH: Do you get 'paid' for each use of a GA coat?

MB: You are given 1 pass every time 5 players use your coat with a limit of 40 passes per coat.

UH: Any advice for players who want to try and create/submit their own coats?

MB: Yes, go for it! Its fun to do and you will learn new skills along the way; if I can create a coat anyone can.

UH: Your page is truly hilarious and wonderful - were the 'photo boards' something you created yourself or do you just know some clever people?

MB: Thanks. I created them myself using Paint Shop Pro; I'm been planning to do a Humphrey & Gertrude board but don't seem to have the time.

UH: Finally, are you surprised at how popular your coats have been?

MB: Yes!

UH: Thank you moonbean

And there you have it. A great insight into he world of Humphrey, Tim-Tom and the creation of GA coats. So a huge thank you to moonbean for talking to us. We really recommend you visit moonbean's page on Howrse so you can see the wonderful photo boards. And we hope you'll feel inspired to create your own GA masterpiece the next time the Black Pearl is open.

Have fun!

Patsy