The Fountain

With the Wandering Horses competition there was a great deal of discussion in the forums about the Grand Prix element. To win the 'Shy' horse, you needed to enter the Grand Prix. And the best way of getting enough points for this was to get a Fountain because you were awarded 50 points towards your'Shy'. Neither LucyLou or I had ever won a Fountain as they are only awarded to players who come in the top 100 of the Grand Prix each week.

Well, last week I managed to come 36th in the Grand Prix and so was awarded a Fountain (along with a Falabella, but I'll talk about that later!) which you can see in the picture above. As you can see it replaces the icon for water above the 'Drink' label. So what does it do? Well, with a normal water, your horse gets +2 energy and +1 morale. With the Fountain, your horse get +6 energy and +3 morale. This is really useful, especially when you are training/blupping your horse.

Now the Fountain only lasts a week. After that it disappears and you have to come in the top 100 of the Grand Prix again to get another one. However, a really good thing about the Fountain is that in the week that you have it - it appears on all your horses, which is fabulous.

So that's the Fountain.

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

Howrse foal games from April 2011

UPDATE: Following the changes made by Howrse in July 2012, these foal games will no longer work. See the ALL NEW foal games here.

These foal games have been devised since the major changes by Howrse in April 2011. With the removal of the saltstone, the removal of the two-carrot bonus and the increase in gains from the 'double lesson' the whole way foals are trained has changed. So it's great news that StaciMM has come up with these foal games to allow for these changes. So a big thanks to her, and here is her guide. We've tested it and it works perfectly:


This will work for any size horse/pony and should NOT result in a seriously overweight/unhealthy horse.
Board your foal in a centre with carrots & clean, fertile meadows, and make sure morale is 100% when you put the foal to bed at 6 months old.


Put your horse to bed in the meadow each night. If the temperature is under 10C put your horse to bed in the box.


NOTE: Your horse will now need a companion to be able to do these games.


8 months
Groom/1 Hr Pasture/1 Hr Games/Turnip/Feed 4 pounds/7 Hrs Games/Stroke/Carrot/Water


10 months
Groom/1 Hr Pasture/1 Hr Games/Turnip/Feed 4 Pounds/1 Hr Games/1.5 Hrs Pasture/7 Hrs Games/Stroke/Carrot/Water


12 months
Groom/1 Hr Pasture/1 Hr Games/Turnip/Feed 4 Pounds/8 Hrs Games/Stroke/Carrot/Water


1 year 2 months
Groom/1 Hr Pasture/1 Hr Games/Turnip/9 Hrs Games/Stroke/Carrot/Water/Feed **Feed 2-3 pounds less than it recommends**


1 year 4 months
Groom/30 Minutes Pasture/1 Hr Games/Turnip/Feed 4 pounds/10 Hrs Games/Stroke/Carrot/Water


1 year 6 months
Groom/30 Minutes Pasture/2 Hr Games/Turnip/Feed 14 Pounds/10 Hrs Games/1 Hr Games/Stroke/Carrot/Water


At most ages you are feeding a little less than recommended so as to get ready to overfeed at 18 mos. You MUST feed 14 pounds at 18 months to be able to put your horse to bed with 20% energy. Do not feed more than 4 pounds on each day when it says to feed just 4 pounds. The horse is eating a little in the pasture, and will be at a good/healthy weight when games are done. A pony (or small horse) may need to be underfed slightly at 20 months.So good luck with your foal games. As long as you follow these instructions carefully, you will be rewarded with a perfect 1.2 GP gain on your horse.

Check out our post on Training Methods to find out what to do next.


Patsy

Wandering Horses madness!

Looking for the April 2012 Wandering Horses? Then click here.

Well we've never seen anything like it. Howrse has gone crazy. We're all going mad for Fortunes', Pioneers' and Shy's. And as a result of the competition frenzy, prices for passes and HoP's have gone through the roof. Now aside from the controversy that has been raging in the forums about the 'Shy' part of the competition (we'll talk about that another time), this has to be the most popular competition ever on Howrse.

And so, in the frantic scramble to complete the objectives in order to win (for 5 days only, remember) these special horses, people are desperate to get hold of Horns of Plenty in order to get thet elusive 'Champion' horse. And I have to confess, I've been happy to sell pass horses for the going rate. And it's a record for me. 81,000 equus for a pass horse? Yes it's true. Three times! And when I got my Pioneer horse, I sold the HoP that is awarded with it, for 150,000 equus!

Crazy times and crazy prices. I just hope everyone gets what they want and enjoys the madcap mayhem that is the Wandering Horses competition.

Good luck everyone.

Patsy

Wandering Horses and NEW features

Looking for the April 2012 Wandering Horses? Then click here.

We've already seen that showers are coming to the international game but it looks like plenty more new things as well as some changes are on the way. Now all of these things are currently (5th April) only applicable to some of the non-international sites. We got our info from UK Howrse. So here's what we've found:

Wandering Horses feature

For two weeks UK Howrse is running a 'competition' wherby you collect a variety of UFO's or achieve certain objectives. These UFO's and objectives give you points and when you reach 100 points you get to have one of the 'wandering horses' for 5 days. Each of the 6 horses requires you to do things such as log on to the game, buy HoP's, enter races etc. When you 'win' your horse for the 5 days you also get an "awesome gift' when you take care of it. So it looks like HoP sales are going to be busy!

New features

Again, on UK Howrse, there are some changes coming.:
Apples can only be given to other players' horses. This is a strange one and we're not sure why it's been introduced. Maybe Howrse have something planned for the weeks ahead.
Also, the Salt Block is disappearing. No! We love our Salt Blocks. Apparently you will now get more energy when feeding, to compensate.
The double-carrot advantage is now being replaced by a single carrot and single turnip which will just provide more energy. Hmmm. Turnips cost 50e don't they...?
The two lessons are combined into one. So now lessons will take twice as long, use up twice as much energy but give 2.5 times more money and 2.5 times more skills. They will also provide 4% morale. The exisitng benefit of the third lesson will be replaced by additional equus earnings and skill gains in the remaining lesson.

So we shall wait to see if the international game gets all these new features and changes. There's certainly a lot to think about. Let us know your thoughts as we always love to hear from you.

Patsy

UPDATE: See info on the NEW Wandering horses contest

EC shower coming to Howrse?

We've noticed that on several non-international sites such as UK Howrse, you can now buy a shower (see the picture) for your boxes in equestrian centres. Bizarre but true. Howrse describes the shower like this:

The shower is equipment for boxes in equestrian centres.It allows horses boarded in the box to spend 10% less energy on actions. That's why it's in such high demand among horse breeders and an asset to your centre!

It's an interesting new item and one that would definitely be a boost for breeders. On the UK site today (5th April) showers are priced at 19,900 equus. However, it is the same as the price for boxes and meadows in that the price fluctuates. So expect the price to increase if and when it comes to the international version of the game. We'd be surprised if it didn't come to the 'main' game but you never know.

So will we soon be rushing off to buy showers for our EC's? Maybe next, we'll be buying jacuzzi's and saunas too!

Patsy

UPDATE: Ow has confirmed that the showers will be coming to the international site soon.

The Big Lottery has ended

Today, 1st April 2011, the Big Lottery has finally ended and in typical Howrse fashion, it finished at a different time than they had advertised. Ah well, never mind. The lottery has been hugely successful and popular with thousands of players entering each of the 8 daily draws. In fact it was so popular in the first few days that Howrse had to change the rules to stop massive amounts of prizes being handed out as well as to prevent cheating.

Originally you could exchange tickets with a friend 3 times during the lifetime of the lottery, but this meant enormous amounts of prizes were appearing in people's inventorys, which would have possibly undermined the game. For example on one draw, I won 840 apples! So Howrse changed the rules so that you could only exchange tickets with a friend once. A number of players had cheated by setting up multi-accounts and this was another reason for the rule change. Howrse also changed a rule which meant you could not take part in the lottery if your account was registered after the start of the competition. Smart move, we thought.

So players (including myself and LucyLou) were frantically sending and receiving friend requests in order to swap tickets. This became very confusing and it was hard to keep track of who had sent tickets and who hadn't. Howrse even set up a friend-making forum to make it easier for players to get large numbers of friends. Players soon realised that by deleting friends as soon as a ticket exchange had been completed meant you could get round the '10 friend requests per day' rule. A bit naughty but very useful.

So thousand of entrants for each draw and thousands of prizes awarded. Howrse added Nyx and Posiedon's packs to the items you could win, after the rule change. So players were also winning apples, Laurels, Eolus' Winds, Seahorses, Made to Measure Saddles, HoP's and of course bigger prizes such as Ploutos' Parchaments, Hermes' Winged Staffs and of course, Balios' - the new Divine horse.

I was very lucky. No I didn't win a Balios but I did win 7 Parchments and a Hermes' Winged Staff. Now LucyLou and I checked a large number of Balios winners and found that most of them had been registered on the game less than 300 days. So it appears that Howrse were possibly trying to prove that newer players have an equal chance of owning a Divine, by allowing more, less established players to win this fabulous new horse. Just our opinion of course.

And after several days of the Big Lottery, something totally unsurprising happened. Howrse started offering Balios' in HoP's. Well who'd have thought? We had to laugh when we saw this as the day the lottery started it was 100% certain that the new Divine would soon be available in Horns of Plenty - which you need to buy with passes of course. Oh well, that's how Owlient make their money as a business, so fair play to them. It was just so predictable it made us smile. We wouldn't be surprised to see that you can get one if you buy 30 passes. We shall see.

So, the Big Lottery was a success and an enormous amount of players took part. We'd love to know what you thought and if you'd like to see another one in the future. And if you were lucky enough to win a Balios - then share your good news with us.

Now, time to start saving for those passes....!

Patsy