Monster Skills Glitch Update

OK, apparently the glitch is in the middle of being fixed. You should now be gaining the normal amount of skills from the Showjumping competitions. And, if you have a monster horse they will have their skills reset to what they should be shortly.

But hey, we had some fun whilst the glitch was happening - check out the skills that LucyLou managed to get on the little Shetland opposite (click to enlarge picture). 2407.27! Possibly the highest out there? We'll probably never know, but it looks pretty impressive!

Lucy

The Great Monster Skills Glitch 2010

Now, we've never seen anything like this before on Howrse. Take a look at the picture of the horse opposite. Notice anything strange? (Click to enlarge the pic).

Is it a new Divine horse? Is it one of Ow's 'experiments'?

No, it's just a normal horse trained on a very abnormal day. For some reason the jump races have today gone completely bonkers!

Right, so we know that when you train your horses they gain skills from entering competitions. And slowly these skills get less and less until they fall to zero and your horse becomes bolded in that skill.

Well today if you enter the jumping races you keep gaining the same amount of skills each time. Forever. So we've got 'Monster' horses running around with 600 skills each in dressage, speed and jumping! And over 2200 overall skills. It's mad!

According to the forums the developers are working on trying to sort the situation out but we don't quite know what's going to happen yet. Afterall this will affect the horse skill boards, the EC prestiges, the sand contest (think how much sand you can earn with a 'Monster'), the competition prestiges, the victory boards - and who knows what else!

We think it's quite amusing.

So keep your eyes peeled and let us know if you spot a 'monster'!

We'll keep you updated with what we know as this develops.

The Howrse Helper

This is a normal Newfoundland Pony

OK, so the screenshot to the left is of a normal Newfoundland Pony. Nothing remarkable about him is there? Quite pleasant to look at we think.

Now have a peek at the 'Newfie' below....

Patsy

And this is NOT a normal Newfoundland Pony

We're not quite sure how or why this has happened although it is, rather boringly, probably just a glitch on Howrse. However, we love this little fella. Isn't he cute? He reminds us of the old style Shetland Pony graphics.

Personally, we think he's a normal 'Newfie' who is a little scared by all the new Sand Horses and has run away to a safe distance! What do you think?

Patsy

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