Hold on to your horses everyone! We’re ending the year with a bang!
🐴 New Breed: Morgans!
Surprise! Aren was close but a bit off on her prediction for the new breed. Morgans have joined us a day earlier than expected. The Morgan breed has many wonderful colors and sports quite a sassy pose. These beauties excel in many disciplines and come in a wide array of colors with more being discovered!
Morgans are available via custom coins today. On Thursday, December 23rd at 6 PM EST/game time, it’s expected the herds to be large enough to open up sales to gold and platinum players. On Saturday the 25th 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.
⛄ Holiday Items
Will has gotten some feedback about more non-ingot items and items having more perks. For this new set of items, he has imported a couple of items that cost bits alongside those that cost ingots. Will also negotiated for perks to each to give purchasing customization items a bit more benefit to you all. All items below except for the Great Horned Owl and Winter Background will be available from now until January 2nd at 11:59 PM EST/ Game time.
Gingerbread Tack
The holiday ingot tack set is the gingerbread tack set! Handcrafted from the finest leather and dyes at the capital, the gingerbread tack set offers great benefit to those wanting to increase the chance of twins. This tack set is based on the holiday tradition of making gingerbread houses and gingerbread cookies. Each set comes with a bridle, saddle, and either a red or green saddle pad. Gingerbread colored leather is embellished with white piping to resemble a delicious gingerbread cookie. Gingerbread tack sets come in both western and english tack types and can be bought in bundles in the ingot store.
Gingerbread tack offers both a show and twin boost. Horses wearing the tack set increase the chance of producing twins by 5%. Gingerbread tack sets are available in the ingot store as bundles and cost 125 ingots and include a winter background.
Snowflake Tack
The capital decided to go all out for the holidays and was excited to export a new snow-themed tack set. Will managed to get his hands on a second holiday tack set, snowflake tack! This tack set has leather inspired by the purple-blue hues of glistening snow and is embellished with silver piping. Most from the capital do not experience snow in the winter but were inspired by whispers and photos of purple-blue snow drifts in Snowhock.
This tack set comes in both western and english tack types and is available for bits in the general store for 1,500 per set and offers both a show and twin boost.
Blowing Snow Background Accessory
Brrrr! It's the winter season and the snow is blowing. A blowing snow background accessory is now available in the general store. Equipping blowing snow adds a small blizzard of snowflakes behind your horse to give an even more winter festive look! Blowing snow costs 500 bits in the general store and offers a show bonus.
Winter Background
Snow is falling and reindeer have been spotted walking around town. Will has restocked on winter backgrounds and has them available in the general store for 100 ingots. These backgrounds offer a small show boost. The background features a snow-covered landscape with a small herd of reindeer grazing on the horizon. The winter background will be available until March 1st at 11:59pm EST/ game time.
Reindeer Calf
The reindeer calf has a new look! Will has taken on the duty of finding all the reindeer calves that have come for the northern wilds a home! These cute little babies are quite wobbly and awkward but have managed to learn to stand by your horses. Each reindeer calf helps your horse feel a bit perkier and increases the chance of twins and offers a small show boost. These cuties are for sale in the general store for 100 ingots each.
Great Horned Owl
Although not a winter item, the Great Horned Owl companion now has a new look. These wise owls keep an eye on your horse from above and cheer them on in competition. Great Horned Owls now offer a show boost for HOO ever has them equipped. They can be bought year-round in the general store for 50 ingots.
Mistletoe
A batch of mistletoe has been imported! Mistletoe increases breeding success to 90% when equipped and you own both horses. Each mistletoe has 10 uses. Mistletoe is available in bundles in the ingot store and makes a great gift to give to others.
✨ New Markings
Helix has been quite busy observing horses in the wilds and even some back at the capital! Thanks to Helix, several new markings have been discovered and are now possible in many horse breeds. In the interest of keeping things interesting, Helix has also managed to make the occurrence of such markings rare. This means those that have the markings are quite rare and valuable!
Lacing
For the first time in a while, Helix has discovered a new body marking! Lacing has randomly occurred on the bodies of several horses that have come to Helix from the wilds. The lacing marking occurs randomly in horses in the foundation store, through breeding, and is available in the custom generator.
Calico Tobiano
Helix did a bit of digging through some old notes and found information on “Calico Tobianos”. Calico tobiano is a rare making that occurs when a horse has both a cream and tobiano gene. Rarely, horses with these genes display patches of non-cream diluted coat which makes them appear to be calico.
Skewed Roan & Skewed Dun
Along the road to the capital Helix couldn’t help but hear the frequent request for “brindle” horses. Thankfully, Helix managed to find two brindle copy-cats, skewed dun and skewed roan. Both of these markings occur due to a mutation in foundation horses from the wilds but are not a type of brindle. As of now, the brindle gene remains elusive to Helix.
Blood Marks
Oddly enough, Helix stumbled upon an older grey horse that had a blood-like marking. Finding interest in this, Helix decided it’d be quite interesting to make it possible for more horses to show such a marking.
Horses that are GG and aged 10+ now have the possibility of having a blood mark appear on their 10th birthday. Blood marks are a mutation on fleabitten grey horses where many “fleabites” are located in one spot. This causes the horses base coat to display as a blood-like mark. All grey horses have a small chance of receiving a blood mark on their 10th birthday.
Reverse Dapple
Helix just couldn’t get enough of those wonderful dapple horses so they decided to add another type of dapple, reverse dapple. Just like dapple, reverse dapple is an uncommon marking that displays dapples on your horse. Reverse dapples is a variation of dapple and is caused by hidden genes.
Dapple
Dapple is a marking that has been around for a few weeks but finding it was quite difficult. The chance of finding a foundation dapple horse has somehow been increased. This means more of them should now occur in the foundation store.
❄️ Holiday Sale! ❄️
The past few months have been quite costly for those at the capital. To bring in a bit more income for upcoming large projects, ingots are now on sale! Now until December 26th at 11:59PM EST/ game time ingots will be on sale for up to 35% off. All sales will go toward funding new features and art.
Bundles
There are quite a few items available in bundles at the ingot store. These items are limited and only available during the winter holidays. Bundles are a great way to bulk buy ingot items and stock up until next year. Current bundles are:
- Western and English Gingerbread Tack Sets
- Under the Mistletoe - A bundle of 5 mistletoe.
- Stocking Stuffer - A small bundle of winter items.
- Glittering Gift - A medium bundle of winter items plus a magic token.
- Peppermint Present - A large bundle of winter items plus a spectral token.
- Magic Token Sack - Buy 5 get 1 free for magic tokens.
- Spectral Token Sack - Buy 5 get 1 free for spectral tokens.
🦟 Bug Fixes
Those from the capital have been hard at work squashing bugs the past few weeks and have almost gotten them all! The feedback from the most recent feedback form indicates players want bugs fixed before anything else so, for now, bug fixes are being prioritized over everything else. This means the original date of exploration in January may get pushed back depending on bug fixing.
- Fixed using straws/embryos where one or more parents were retired.
- Horses that haven't been approved into clubs yet should no longer show stars.
- All invisible Clydesdales should now show the appropriate white image.
- Retired horses should now show all markings they had previously.
- You can now reorder tabs.
- Search pagination and pages now work.
- Bank transaction pagination and pages now work.
- The foal predictor now works and generates a prediction.
- Pagination was added to the bug box.
- Bug box now has a search option.
- You may now unset all working paths for horses.
- Selecting a default game avatar now works.
- Limiting number of breedings to a horse now works.
- Career history now shows up for horses in the history tab.
- Brands using emojis are no longer broken.
- Large breed registries now load much quicker with the TB registry now loading.
- Multiple items appearing in crafting drop down now only shows one item.
- Edited new page to have pagination and pages.
- Registering horses now auto fills registry box with next horse.
- Discipline show placements now show correct placement and not a “?”.
- Vet auto fills next horse for all services.
- Registered and transferred horses now show correct new owner in registration, not the old owner.
- All stable page tabs default to open and display 10 horses per page.
- Horse statuses show up on stable page for care, private breeding, and public breeding, fully shown, and fully trained.
- Stable tabs now act independently and do not affect other tabs.
- You no longer need to refresh a horses page after care to breed,train, or show.
- The option to remove from board is now available if no discipline or career is set.
- Fixed broken light blue western pad images.
- Fixed Brumby, Marwari, and Shetland broken images in the design lab.
- Fixed various layers for first, dominant whites, and splash.
- Fixed explore transaction in the bank to show correct mine name.
- Small show arena now adds shows to your number of daily shows.
- Links to boarders in boarding center now links to correct horses.
- Editing forum posts/replies should now work correctly.
- Fixed retired horses missing info for: color, gender,owner, and halter title.
- Fixed the forever load on lineage for all horses.
- Fixed offspring forever loading.
- Entering horses into a halter show now shows entered horses without refreshing the page.
- Entering horses in halter shows one-by-one now auto fills next horse in drop down.
- The cherry petals background accessory now covers full width of the background.
🔓 Role Play Forum
On January 1st we will be removing the RP forum. After reviewing the forum it is often used only by a few and takes up quite a bit of space. Those who wish to RP may do so in group messages in-game.
😄 A Special Note
We hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season celebrating with those you love. Bedouin and I celebrate the Christmas holiday with family and will be away December 23rd - January 3rd. Don’t fret! We have an update and special holiday gift coming your way during our short vacation. After all, it is the season of giving, isn’t it? :)
Enjoy the holidays everyone!
Cheers,
Bedouin & Curly