News

Hello everyone and happy update day 2! Today is our second update for the week which includes even more new and exciting things!

Much of today's modern folklore and fairy tales can trace their origin back to Germany from Cinderella to Little Red Riding Hood. With origins in Germanic mythology, these tales often pique our interest and inspire movies, new stories, and even cosplays! To celebrate the rich history of such tales, this year's summer event is themed German Fables.  Over the weekend and into the next week, we will be hosting a variety of contests in our forum inspired by some of our favorite German stories and traditions.

[Photo] Story through Photo

Tell a story using 4 photos with captions.

[Daily] Riddle Me This

Use the daily riddle to find the hidden puzzle piece.

[Daily] Breed a Foal

Each day breed a foal with the daily characteristic.

[Design] New Mutation

Design the next somatic mutation.

[Design] New Tack Set

Design a tack set that might appear in-game.

[Coloring] German Fables

Color the provided line art based on the theme of your favorite German fable

[Writing] Inspired by Aren’s Poem

Write a short story based on Aren’s newest poem.

[Writing] Inspired by a German Fable

Write a story inspired by your favorite German fable.

Draft Harnesses

After years of requesting, months of planning and coloring, draft harnesses are officially available in HoFa! Two limited-edition harnesses are now available in the General Store until July 24th at midnight EST/Game time and through explore! The harnesses are inspired by the German flag and by colors often found in fairytales. Harnesses cannot be equipped with halters, blankets, saddles, pads, or bridles but offer the same show boost as these items combined. These Limited Edition Harnesses offer a handsome twin boost as well! In the coming weeks, some year-round harnesses will be available for bit purchase.

Halters, Blankets, and Polos

It’s time to customize your herd to the nines! Halters, polos, and blankets are available in the General Store. BUT WAIT! Just buying any color you like wouldn’t be that fun. To make colored halters, polos, or blankets, you must craft them! Dyes can be found in explore and when combined with a white tack item (bought at the General Store) you will create a new item. Ex. White polos + red dye = red polos! Crafting of these colored tack pieces costs bits and the price depends on tack piece size. As a note, horses with lots of feathering cannot have polos equipped. These are Generic Draft, Drum Horse, Friesdale, Friesian, Clydesdale, Irish Cob, Welsh C, Welsh D, and Percheron. Also, foals may be equipped with halters and blankets! Look at those itty bitty blankets. So cute!!

Halters, polos, and blankets currently do not offer any show or twin boost and act purely as a cosmetic feature. We are open to adding some benefit to them should the community be open to doing so.

German Hats

It wouldn't be a German celebration without the traditional Trachtenhut, sometimes called a Tyrolean hat, which translates to “traditional costume hat.” Special thanks to our German artist, Darya, for helping us learn and create these hats! Trachtenhut hats can only be found only in explore and offer a small twin boost when equipped to your horse. These hats come in red, green, black, and grey and can be equipped to all horses, foals included!

Vega the German Shepherd!

Returning for our German themed event is Vega! Vega is Bedouins dog who is a German Shepherd with a lot of attitude and spunk! She is available for purchase in the General Store until July 24th at midnight EST/Game time.

Crafting System - Dyeing!

As mentioned above white halters, polos, and blankets can be dyed to create new colored items. Dyes are currently only found in explore and include black, grey, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, pink, and purple dyes. The next version of the dye system will include being able to make your own dyes from various explore items.

To create a dyed item, you can enter your Craft Room and click the Dyeing tab. Here you can create new dyed items if you have a white item (white halter, white polos, or white blanket) and a dye. 

Pssst. Word around town is there are 48 more dyes coming and.. what's that? Dyed saddle pads you say?

We hope you all are having a fantastic time with all the new items and fun! Don’t forget to enter those forum contests!

Cheers,

Bedouin & Curly

Hello everyone! Prepare yourself for a wild two days of updates that includes 5 new tack items, new breed, an event, and more!

We hope you all enjoy what we have in store for the next few days. We are very excited to finally be able to push live these new features that we have been planning in the background for the past few months. It’s been a labor of love with lots of learning on our part to create a finished product we think you all will thoroughly enjoy. In just two months, Bedouin and I have managed to create all that you will see in the next two updates. We couldn’t have done it alone and we want to give a huge thank you to our staff team who have helped make such a feat a reality. To give a bit of perspective, there are hundreds of hours of work and over 8,000+ new image layers that came together in such a short time. We like to think our team works fast and adds as many player requests as possible and with this update, we believe this is evident. While you enjoy the new features know that we are taking notes and already have a few ideas of our own up our sleeves!

With such large new features Bedouin will be on stand-by the next few days to quickly fix bugs, site problems, and anything else that arises. Please utilize the Bug Box for anything you see so moderators can streamline bugs to her. I, Curly, will be in person at BreyerFest wearing some new HoFa merch (👀) and giving out a few goodies (👀  👀) to those who see me.

Now, on to the really exciting stuff!

Down from the mountain, a new breed has galloped into Horse Fable. Aren was keeping quiet as best she could but some peeks here and there managed to get out! The Hanoverian breed has joined the HoFa family and is now available via breed coins, bought at the general store, and magic and spectral tokens. Breed coins help fund the next new breed art and give benefits like a slightly higher performance stat option and better breed standards. On Thursday, July 21st at 6 PM EST/game time, the herds are expected to be large enough to open up sales to gold and platinum players. On Saturday the 23rd at 12 PM EST/ game time, they will be available for all! Since these lovelies seem like they will be so in-demand and sought after, Aren decided to keep their price at the usual 2,000 bits per.

The land before us stands wide and vast, covered in tall grasses seemingly hiding a world of adventure. Today marks the first day we may begin to explore beyond the town! Exploration is officially a go in HoFa!

We are calling this release of the explore system version 1 because we have so many other plans for it. Version 1 focuses on the mechanics behind events within explore. By launching these separate from future mechanics, we can make sure that all bugs are squashed before moving to the next version. In version 2 expect to do quite a bit more moving! 👀  

As you browse the site, you may see random events that prompt you to do an action. There are a few different event types:

• Wild horse encounters are rare but boast many benefits.
• Items useful in other parts of the game such as lassos and items to make treats.
• More to come in tomorrow's update!!!

Wild Horse Capturing

Wild horses are better than horses found in the Foundation Store in a few ways. Not only do they have notably higher PS than foundation horses, they are also mostly 4 or 5 stars and have a TB ranging between 1 and 5. 

In the near future, we will be shifting around which genes are available through the Foundation Store, the Design Lab, and through explore. This means that some genes may become explore only. We’ll also be releasing explore-only variations and white markings in the future. 

Wild horse capturing is interactive with you being able to see how your actions (lassoing, whistling, treat giving, and petting) affect the horse's bond with you and overall temperament. Wild horses have “wild essence” which indicates how wild they truly are! This is a good indication of how hard they will be to catch. Once a horse gets to 100% bond with will gallop into your transport for you to care for.

Discoverable Items

Explore has an hefty list of new discoverable items, some you see above and a few you may stumble upon that will be useful for tomorrows update! These items above are all used in wild horse capturing and cooking! To effectively capture a wild horse using a combination of treats, whistling, petting, and lassoing you can increase their bond and eventually attempt to capture them. Wild horses with 75%+ bond will have the option to be able to be caught. All other values and possibilities when using action and items is up for you to discover!

Crafting System - Cooking

With all of these new items you will be discovering you may be wondering what they’re used for. It seems like there would be more crafting options, right? You are correct! There is now the ability to “cook” treats to offer to wild horses. Some treats are more enjoyed by certain wild horses than others, but we won't spoil that for you, you must discover it!

Treats can be cooked by mixing together a flavor and base item. Flavors are currently apple, carrot, and clover with bases of oats or alfalfa. When combined together these make a “regular treat”. Now, bland regular treats are no fun. To spice it up a bit you can take any crafted regular treat, add molasses to it, and make a sweet treat! Mmm mmm, horses love those sweet treats. All treat items can only be found through exploring so get out there and find those goodies!

We hope you enjoy what is new today! Prepare for a second large update tomorrow and remember to report any bugs to the Bug Box so we can streamline fixes!

Cheers,

Bedouin & Curly

Hello everyone and happy weekend! We have a large grade image update for you all and a note about what's to come.

🦄 Grade Horse Images

A very large backlog of grade images managed to occur but we spent time over the weekend ferociously coloring to get all the layers in. Thanks to Solo for all her hard work! A few of our favorites from this round are…

Grullo (dun) and Tobiano Arabian from Talitha.

W20 in Percherons from Rivendell Stables.

Dun-less Light Chestnut Fjords from Brumby.

Leopard in American Saddlebreds from Talitha.

⏰ This Week

This week marks less than a week to BreyerFest! On Friday, HoFa will be attending BreyerFest virtually as well as a few staff members going in person. We have been taking on extra hours for the past few months to create new content and art for everyone to enjoy.

So, what will HoFa be doing for BreyerFest? For virtual BreyerFest attendees, we hope all of what we have prepared in-game will be fun for those attending both virtually and those who just love to play HoFa. What does that mean? 

• Expect a tack update with not 1…not 2….but 5 new tack items! Yes, 5! 💪🏻
• A new crafting feature will be added to make things a bit more colorful. 🌈
• A new breed will come galloping down from the wilds to join us. 🐎
• A version 1 of the explore system will be released for everyone to frolic and play with. Hint: You’re really going to want to explore. 🗻
• A week long forum contest will be held and will be our biggest forum contest ever! ✨

• Maybe a new friend will appear…. 🤔

Both Curly and ERA will be attending in person and will have on-hand some goodies for anyone who spots them! Keep an eye out on socials and our Discord for info on where they might be in Kentucky!

We hope you all had a fantastic weekend and an even better week to come!

Cheers,

Bedouin & Curly

Good afternoon! We’re back once again with a small update to address concerns and launch something new!

🧐 Previewer

We now have the tack and item previewer up and ready to be played with! The previewer is designed so you may view any tack, gem, companion, background etc. combo you like. As a bonus, you can also view your horse as a foal or adult no matter their age! Ex. A foal can be “aged up” to view it as an adult.

To get to the Previewer, you can click the magnifying glass from a horse’s page or go to Horses > Preview then select a horse. 

In the future, we plan to add a lot of this functionality to the Equipper page so you can directly preview then “save” the equipped items. This would only pull from items you own.

🛠️ Ingot Tack

Those who have ingot tack and wish to receive a refund for it based on it now having uses may do so. We will be trading the ingot value of the tack to you up until July 13th at 12:00 PM EST/game time. We will accept single items or full sets and trade for the full ingot value of the set. For Holiday Red and Holiday Green English Pads, we will only trade those in full sets (Gingerbread Saddle & Bridle)  given that English pads were once sold for a bit cost. Message me with a list of tack pieces/sets and we will work on trading.

✨ Small Changes

• Untrained foals will no longer show up in Crossbreed Campaign drop downs. This should prevent accidentally entering horses into Gen 1 when they could qualify for Gen 2 after training.
• The General Store now shows how many uses an item has before you purchase. Kind of important, huh?

🦟 Bug Fixes

• If you freeze your whole account then thaw it, horses in frozen tabs will no longer be thawed. 
• Frozen horses can no longer be sent to work in careers.
• Fixed a crazy bug where foals could be trained multiple times. 😳
• Club halter shows should now show up for foals.
• Halter show entries should now show the correct estate name.
• Halter show and discipline show entry totals should now update correctly.

🔮 Upcoming

We have quite a bit on the horizon for art and game development. To give a short rundown for our goals for the next few weeks:

• Add in grade horse images up to the most recent request on 7/1.
• Finish fixing any reported broken images from the Bug Box.
• Add in skewed roan and dun for crossbreeds.
• Add in emails for new players and inactive players.

In the next month expect:

• First version of the explore system.
• A new breed, new tack...lots more tack…
• A July event right on the horizon!
• More optimizations to speed up the game.
• Referral prizes
• … and more!

Cheers,

Bedouin & Curly

Hello all! We have a mini update for you with more info per our previous news post and some bug fixes.

🦉 Background & Companions Uses

All backgrounds and companions now have uses added to them. Use totals are based on bit or ingot cost. All items in your inventory will be updated to have the max number of uses. This means that a currently equipped item with 2 uses when removed from the horse will have 1.

• Ingot Backgrounds & Overlays - 3 uses
• Bit Backgrounds & Overlays - 1 use
• Companions - 4 uses, excluding Earthworms who have 2 uses.

🛠️ Repairing Tack

We have completed our thought process on tack uses and repairing after considering all possible scenarios and have concluded we will not be adding tack repair any time soon. We believe tack being used and removed from the site helps keep the economy flowing rather than having mass hoards of tack in inventories. 

🧐 Tack & Item Viewer

We have plans for the tack and item viewer to be implemented soon, but it is a large task to complete which means most of our dev time will be put toward that. Our current process for the tack viewer is:

• Selecting a horse you wish to view tack and items on.
• Selecting from a drop-down of your own tack and items to view what each will look like per horse.
• Potentially adding the ability to view all possible pieces of tack and items but you cannot purchase the items from the viewer.

🦟 Bug Fixes

• Foals not being able to be entered into crossbreed halter shows is now fixed for both the halter page and foal page.
• Enter All 1 now properly enters all crossbreeds into halter shows.
• Various missing coat color layers have been fixed and are now viewable.

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Cheers,

Bedouin & Curly