The Bewitched Pumpkin and more

It is nearly Hallowe'en (note the correct spelling!) and of course, Howrse have created lots of special things to keep us entertained. We'll be looking at them all in a bit more detail soon. But for now, here's a quick summary of what's on offer.

Firstly, there's the Bewtiched Pumpkin which gives your horse a special Hallowe'en-themed coat along with additional bonuses for your horse. There are four coats: The Bat, The Vampire, The Skeleton and The Ghost. They cost 2 passes each and are all animated! So they look fabulous.

Secondly, you can buy BM items (including the Bewitched Pumpkin) in 'Flash Sales. These sales allow you to buy BM items with equus, rather than passes. And you can choose between direct sales, at a fixed price, or auction sales where you can bid on the Black Market item of your choice.

Thirdly, there's a sweet fight taking place! You catch sweet 'UFO's and receive one for you and one for a friend. The 'sweets' are actually just like normal UFO's, so you'll mainly get stuff like apples and aging points.

In essence, this is all pretty similar to the 'Beach competition' of a few months ago. So expect to see plenty of spooky horses in the sales!

Have fun,

Patsy

Gypse crazy

Well Howrse know how to create a buzz don't they? In case you've somehow missed it, this weekend (until October 18th 2010) you have a chance to win a Gypse Divine horse in a Horn of Plenty (HoP).

Now the Gypse or 'sand' horses first appeared in the beach contest back in the summer when you could buy them in the beach sales and auctions, using sand as cash. You mainly earned sand from entering and finishing in the top three of competitions. Anyway, Howrse have decided to give the rest of us a chance to own one of these unusual divine horses.

As always these days (!) you're going to need a HoP to get a Gypse for free. However, as we all know - passes cost money. Either real cash or virtual 'equus'.


Now this mad scramble for passes has sent the private sales crazy, with people desperate to get hold of a precious pass. LucyLou and I have seen dozens of Harlequins up for sale for 500e and 12-20 passes. Also 'pass' horses (horses that are over 30 and not immortal, which, when they die, give you a pass) have shot up in value. Typically, we sell them for 35,000e but people are paying 55,000e and more just to get a pass.

And it's not just the private sales. The auctions are now starting to see Gypse sales too. And the prices are amazing. We're seeing bids of 3 to 5 MILLION equus as we stand. That's the same as Xanthos prices. Crazy indeed. However, last night I spotted (and missed, sadly) a Gypse in the private sales for 200,000e and 20 passes. Wish I'd grabbed it as I'd happily pay that for this rather wonderful Divine horse!

So, if you want a Gypse either buy a HoP (with a pass), buy one in the sales (if you're lucky enough) or bid on one in the auctions (have lots of equus). To search for a Gypse just enter 1200 in the GP (Genetic Potential) box which is listed in the 'advanced search' section of Private or Auction sales pages.

Good luck.

Patsy

UPDATE: Well fancy that. I'm now the proud owner of a Gypse, thanks to my dear friend - moonbean. I'm a lucky Patsy indeed!

1000 Dressage competitions

Good news. It can be done! I'm sure many of you are working hard towards completing the dressage objectives. The first level is pretty easy. The second is a bit trickier but the third set of objectives are a bit daunting to say the least - get 150 dressage competition wins and enter 1000 dressage comps! Click on the picture above to see the validation of objective 3 'Frequent Competitor'.

Now to get 150 wins you're going to need a really good horse. I entered my dressage comps with my fabulous Fresian 'Dress for Success' and my top Irish Hunter 'Natural Disasters'. Now because of the way dressage comps work, currently top Fresians have the best skills for this discipline: dressage, trot and gallop. Many of the dressage comps at the moment are for higher-skilled horses, but even if you don't have a very highly skilled horse, you can still get wins and most definitely, you can enter plenty of races.

A few days ago, these comps were really rare. A few would appear every 5 to 20 minutes. But you had to be quick as they would all go within about 60 seconds. It was pretty stressful! Happily now though, more and more people are setting up dressage events for us all to enter so you should find enough races to keep you busy.

And of course, as you complete the objectives, your win some nice prizes including Made-to-Measure saddles, Boreas's Lunges and for entering 1000 comps (as well as three 'lunges') you win a Nyx pack. Lovely stuff. And don't forget that you earn money when you enter races. My Irish Hunter earned me 46,000 equus and my Freisian bought in 55,000 equus!

So get competing and good luck. You only have until October 13th 2010 remember.

Patsy

Dressage Snow horse

To coincide with the new dressage competitions and objectives, Howrse have bought out a brand new, shiny Snow horse. And this lovely fella is designed to excel in, of course - dressage.

At present, the only way of getting this new Snow horse is by purchasing 30 passes before 11pm GMT on 26th September 2010. Although I'm sure you'll be able to get your hands on one in other ways before too long.

OK, so what are those important statistics on Howrse's latest Divine?

Like all Snow's, this one has a total of 1500 skills, with 350 skills in it's top two disciplines and 200 skills in the rest. For the 'dressage' Snow - it has 350 skills in Dressage and 350 skills in Trot. It has 1000 GP (Genetic Potential) and is 46 'starred'. When you get your new Snow he will be 500 years old and, like all other Divine's he cannot breed. But unlike other Divines (not including the Cowbra) he cannot be sold. And finally, his name is in white - indicating he's a 'dressage' Snow. All Snow's have a colour-coded name to show you what their speciality is.

So, that's the new Snow horse. Hope you enjoy yours!

Patsy

Dressage Competitions and Objectives

Howrse have just introduced a brand new competition - dressage!

Currently you can only win a dressage arena for your EC by opening a lucky Horn of Lushness but we guess they'll be open to everyone eventually. This means there aren't many about at the moment, so they're quite hard to enter - but keep trying you will come across one eventually.

To be good at Dressage your horse has to have good skills in Dressage, Gallop and Trot. We've found that this makes the Friesian the best breed enter and get wins. Although high dressage Irish Hunters are also doing quite well.

Howrse have also introduced a new set of Dressage based objectives. Six in total:

Dressage Objective 1: Enter 10 Dressage Competitions. Reward: 20 apples
Dressage Objective 1: Win 1 Dressage Competition. Reward: 500e

Dressage Objective 2: Enter 100 Dressage Competitions. Reward: 1 made-to-measure saddle and 1 Boreas's Lunge
Dressage Objective 2: Win 20 Dressage Competitions. Reward: 5000e and 1 Boreas's Lunge

Dressage Objective 3: Enter 1000 Dressage Competitions. Reward: 3 Boreas's Lunge and 1 Nyx Pack
Dressage Objective 2: Win 150 Dressage Competitions. Reward: 3 Boreas's Lunge and 1 Atalante's Pack

You can win some really great stuff, so good luck and get entering those Dressage Competitions.

Lucy

Boreas's Lunge

Lots of exciting new developments on Howrse right now. We'll be covering all of them in the next few days. But we thought we'd give you some info on one item which has raised a lot of questions in the forums - Boreas's Lunge.

So what is it and how do you get it?

Well Howrse describes it like this: Boreas's Lunge is a very handy object that you can use to improve the performance of the horses in dressage competitions. It brings excellent bonuses.


Obviously with the new dressage competitions coming (more about those soon), the Boreas's Lunge will by a handy little item to have to improve your horses' skills.

However, it can't be bought with passes at the moment. You can only win them as part of the new dressage objectives which end on October 13th. We'll talk all about this in another posting.

Back to the Lunge then. Here are the bonuses it gives you:

• Dressage: +6 %

• Galloping: +8 %
• 
  
• Trotting: +8 %

So get yourself entered into those dressage comps and let us know if you manage to get a Boreas's Lunge.

Good luck!

Patsy

EDIT May 2011 - The Boreas's Lunge is still not available to buy from the Black Market for passes. You have to win them in HoPs or other promotions.

Latest crazy Sleipnir auction

Prices on Howrse go up and down - we all know that. But some prices just seem to keep increasing. Sleipnir's used to sell for around 4-5 million equus. We've even seen them sell for under 3 million. Of course, Fire Sleipnirs are the most desirable, mainly because they look so utterly gorgeous and they always sold for the highest prices.

However, in recent weeks even the poor old grey, black, white and brown Sleipnirs' have been fetching increasingly high prices. Just last month I sold my black Sleipnir for an amazing 8 million equus. Now I'm not showing off. Honestly! It's just that we don't remember a non-Fire Sleipnir ever selling for such a high price.

Until now.

At the time of writing this, there is a grey (or gray if you live in the USA) Sleipnir in the auctions, that still has 4 days left to sell and is already on 9 million equus. This is a huge jump in prices and like nothing we've ever seen before. Obviously, we'll keep you updated and hopefully - let you know what he finally sells for.

Oh and one other thing - the top breeders have already managed to breed horses with over 1300 skills. So we're waiting excitedly to see when the first of these hit the sales. Expect some more very high prices for those!

We'll keep you posted

Patsy