Time's running out

The 'Sand Contest' doesn't have much longer to run on Howrse, and by all accounts it's been a big success. It seems most players have been able to earn enough sand to buy the various goodies on offer, even if that hasn't included those elusive Sand horses.

But, you can get a Sand Horse or a Nyx Pack cheaply if you manage to nab one in the private Beach sales. We were lucky enough to see a Nyx Pack come up for sale, as you can see on the nifty screenshot above. However, we couldn't bid because of the four day buying limit. Frustrating! But at least it proves that they do pop up in the private sales (on the Beach) from time to time.

And just today, Howrse has given us all some extra sand and promised to lower the prices of items in the sales. So get down to the beach before it's all over and you may just grab yourself a sandy bargain.

Patsy

What is a Humphrey?

I get asked this question a lot. Mainly because I have a Humphrey as my avatar. Many people think he's a Divine horse or a Special horse. Well, although he's special to me, he's just an ordinary Arabian with a Golden Apple (GA) coat on. It's just a bit of fun really. LucyLou has one too as do a few other players, although there are not many about.

The coat was created by 'moonbean' who has a very special version of the coat - with wings on. And my Humphrey (and other people's) is called that because that was the name moonbean gave to the GA coat when she created it.

The 'Humphrey' coat is now retired so you can't buy one unless you buy a horse with it already on. People seem to love the coat as much as we do and therefore it has become extremely collectable and valuable. Someone recently paid 200,000 equus and 20 passes for one! We often get offers for ours, but we love our 'Humph's' too much to sell them.

Another reason we love Humphrey is because he is so silly and fun. To celebrate this, moonbean has created a truly fabulous profile page which shows pictures of Humphrey travelling the world. If you search for moonbean's page in the Player's Directory, you can see for yourself why we love our Humphrey's.

And we hope you will too.

UPDATE: The lovely moonbean has been in touch with us and let us know that just 31 Humphrey GA coats were created. The last two appeared on 11th May 2010. An even rarer vesrion of the Humphrey coat - called 'Here's Humphrey' was a pegasus version of this fab coat. This one had just 3 uses. One of these can be seen on moonbean's page as the player's avatar. So Humphrey is indeed a very rare and wonderful coat - with or without wings!

Patsy

Growing Crops in your EC

Absolutely the first thing you should do when you get an EC is grow crops!

Don't spend your money on boxes, bedding, pets, staff or anything else - use it to buy fields, seeds and manure. This may sound weird but there is method in this madness...

Crops = cash!

Spend the first few weeks that you own your EC growing and harvesting crops to build up your equus reserve. Then, once you have a good amount of money, you can start to buy the boxes and employ the staff that you'll need. And you'll be able to afford much better quality. Which means your EC will get off to a flying start.

The seasons that you can plant crops (and how long they take to grow are shown below):

Carrot seeds - spring - 9 days
Wheat seeds - summer - 9 days
Barley seeds - spring - 10 days
Oat seeds - spring - 11 days
Turnip seeds - summer - 7 days
Pass seeds - autumn - 30 days
Apple seeds - autumn - A harvest every Fall
Flax seeds - spring - 8 days

The best things to grow are Flax in the spring and Turnips in the summer - these will bring in the most money when you sell them back to the store.

We'll explain about the other crops that you'll need to grow in a future post.

So it is true - sometimes money does grow on trees (well on crops anyway!)

Lucy

A rare thing

There's a good chance you will have seen a Sand Horse in the 'Beach' auctions in the last couple of weeks. The price they are selling for is increasing as players get more sand piles. We've seen them sell for 12 and 13000 piles of sand. They occur pretty much every day.

However....

Seeing a Sand Horse in the private 'Beach' sales is really rare. It's even rarer to get a screenshot. But we managed just that as you'll see. As far as we can recall, Sand Horses sell for just 500 sand piles in the private sales. So whoever nabbed this one got a truly fantastic deal.

Just a shame it wasn't us!

Patsy

Sand everywhere. Life's a beach

Well the big sand and water balloons event is now running. Many people are still unsure of the details so we thought it would be a good idea to explain things. First up - Sand.

The idea behind this is that you can earn 'sand' which is a temporary currency that you can use to buy gifts. So, the first question you may be asking is: How do I earn 'sand'? Well Jaguar (one of the Moderators) helpfully posted a thread to explain things. So here's how you earn 'sand':

- Winning competitions 3rd place and above
- Training/rides
- Logging in each day
- Birthing a foal or twins
- Buying passes ( with real money)

The fastest way to earn 'sand' we've found is to enter races. Now, to find out how much you can earn from races, click the 'Participate' button from the Howrse home page. There you will see a list of the sales as well as a list of the sand items you can win. it's a little confusing because it says you win things such as seahorses, whelks and starfish. In fact - these just represent what you win in terms of 'sand' (currency). For example, if you hover your mouse over the hermit crab icon it tells how often you will win 'sand' and how much you will win. In this case, it says "regularly when you place in the top 3 of a competition" and it tells you that you win 4 sand piles. So you still win 'sand' even if you don't win a race. Below this list is your total 'sand' earnings.

Below your earnings total are the two selling areas. The first is just like the private horse sales. You pay a fixed price (in the 'sand currency remember) for items such as Passes, Laurels and Horns of Plenty. Beneath this is just like the horse auctions. You have to bid against other players to win the item.

Beware though: you can only buy 1 item for each sale, every four days.

Well good luck and get earning that sand. Next time we'll explain the water balloons.

Enjoy the beach!

Patsy

Your Horse's Health

Keeping your horse's health up at 100% is vital if you want him to be happy and successful.

Horses lose health for a variety of reasons including:

- Being too fat or too thin
- Not going to bed before 22.00
- Going to bed with less than 20% energy
- Not being groomed

If your horse does lose health then check the above factors. If he is too fat or too thin it will tell you this when you click on the 'Feed' icon. If he is too fat, give him half of what it tells you to. If he is too thin give him twice as much as it tells you to.

Putting your horse in the meadow or box and doing lessons with him will improve his health. If you are in an EC with health mashes give him one of these - this will immediately improve his health by 10%. However, you can only give a mash every 3 days.

If your horse does lose health then stop training him. If you train a horse with low health he will gain less skills than he would otherwise have done. You can continue with lessons though until he is better and ready to start training again.

Always make sure you put your horse to bed before 22.00, with 20% or more energy and that he has been groomed. If you do all this then your horse will stay happy and healthy!

If your horse is over the age of 25 and NOT immortal then he will slowly lose health the older he gets. This is simply him getting too old. If he dies over the age of 30 and you send him to Heaven you will get a pass in return.

Lucy

Croesus

The Croesus' first appeared on Howrse in the spring of 2010. To get one, players had to be in the first 100 players to reach level 10 of the 'old' Achievements. Myself and LucyLou were lucky enough to be amongst those first 100 players. As it happened, about 120 Croesus' were given out originally, due to variations in people getting their level 10 of the Achievements.

Each of these first 100 or so players was also awarded a 'VIP' icon which remains on their profile pages. After the first 100+ players had won their Croesus', Howrse decided to allow people the chance of winning one (without the 'VIP' badge icon!) in Horns of Plenty. This obviously meant many players were buying a lot of passes in the hope of winning one of these rare Divine horses.

Now all the Croesus' have been given out and there are less than two hundred in the game - making them both rare and valuable. One or two have been sold in the auctions and have fetched a huge amount of equus - around 4.5 million!

So, what are Croesus' and what do they do? Well here is Howrse's own explanation:


Croesus is a Divine horse that produces money instead of manure. Every 13th day of each month, Croesus earns his owner 1 pass provided the owner was logged on the previous day. If the 13th falls on a Friday, Croesus earns his owner 2 passes.
Every month, one horse among those named Junior Croesus is turned into Croesus.

Aside from this, Croesus' skills aren't that great - just 470 skills when you get them. They can be Clouded so will make around 505 skills. Like all Divine's - they are male and cannot breed.

However, they are a lovely addition to anyone's collection - especially if you also have that little pink 'VIP icon sitting on your page!

Patsy