Good morning everyone and happy first day of winter! We have prepared for the cold weather and brought back many winter items, found a few new things, and fixed some bugs! Since it is almost the end of the year, we are now going to slow down a bit until January 2025. We will post our yearly wrap up once we return. New Year is right around the corner…time flies fast, huh?

❄️ Winter Returns to HoFa ❄️

🎄 It’s a Winter Wonderland

The twinkle lights have been placed, snow has begun to fall, and a winter wonderland has made its way into HoFa! From today until March 19th at midnight EST, winter will be in full swing. Enjoy the fresh cold snow and winter vibes while they are here!

⛄ 2024 Winter Tack Set

The locals have gone all out executing their winter tack set vision. This year, our annual winter tack set is inspired by gusts of chilly wind and mythical fairies. The tack set features airy chiffon fabric and dainty pearls to give off a winter fairy vibe. The set is available now until January 31st at midnight EST in both the General Store and as a chest in the Ingot Store.

🎅 Winter Items

Will has stocked up on many winter favorites such as our friendly neighborhood stoats, winter backgrounds, snowflake tack sets and more. A few of these items have found their way into explore special thanks to a few rambunctious stoats scurrying off with items. Winter items will be on sale at the General Store until January 31th at midnight EST.

✨ *NEW* Winter Chests & Bundles

To make buying winter items a bit easier, a few Winter Chests have been placed at the Ingot Store until January 31st at midnight EST.  Amy Thyst has been put in charge of organizing all of Will’s old item stock and she has organized winter items into several new chests. Chests include previous winter tack sets and a few odd bits n’ pieces here and there…

Since Amy has kindly also agreed to organize chests, Will convinced her to bring back item bundles add a few more. New bundles include mane and tail tool items and winter dyes! These are available alongside the spectral token bundle, magic token bundle, several tack bundles, and more.

💧 *NEW* Winter Dyes

Deck the halls with colorful taaaack! Fa la la la laaaa! Winter dyes have arrived again! Today until March 19th at midnight EST, winter dyes can be found in explore. We are welcoming back a large collection of previous dyes and we have found two new ones to add to the list. 

New for 2024: Deep Amethyst and Sugar Cookie!

Returning are the Cinnamon, Snowcream, Frasier Fir, Evergreen, Dark Teal, Ice, and Navy dyes!

🍬 *NEW* Winter Treats

Munch munch. Cronch cronch. It has been awhile since a new treat item was created in the lands. Lucky for us, Aren Gee found some interesting white and red round candy disks while searching for new foundation horses…

Aren must not get out very often since she did not realize her discovery is peppermints! Helix took a liking to them so much they decided to multiply the candies using “advanced technology”. Turns out Helix’s reputation for explosions is there for a reason. During the experiment, the machine exploded and sent peppermints all over the town and wilds. Well, have fun cleaning those up and making some new treats.

💰 Ingot Sale

Need some ingots to buy all that fancy winter tack? Now until January 3rd at midnight EST, ingots will be on sale for up to 35% off! Gallop on over and grab a handful.

🥳 NEW Text Editor

We’re excited to introduce a brand new text editor to the game. Not only does it not have the annoying popup about upgrading an account for AI, it’s styled to fit in more seamlessly with the game. Another win is that the old text editor was actually charging us every month based on page loads and this one is free! 👏

A couple small changes:

• The text editor has been removed from the training centers and boarding centers.
• The text editor has been added to bug report and feature request comments.

🎄 Winter Background Updated!

Today, we also release our updated winter background. This has been updated for all winter backgrounds.

🦟 Bug Fixes

• Bug #1564 - You should no longer still see deleted letters in your mailbox.

This week, we put a lot of dev time into fixing the text editor to improve player experience and avoid a future monthly cost. More bugs will be tackled in future updates!

✨ Reminder: Upcoming Breed Redos

As we get ready for 2025, we are also planning upcoming breed redos and have two questions for y'all today! First, we need to know which breed to redo off a list of three. Second, we need to know what is most preferred for the redo schedule. Read the questions and submit your answers here by December 31st at midnight EST!

✍️ Reminder: HoFa Helper Applications

Applications to help with a wide variety of tasks are still open until December 31st at midnight EST. Those who volunteer to help receive a platinum upgrade during the duration of helping. Positions are expected to use 2-5 hours of time a week. Being 18+, using Discord, and signing an NDA are requirements for all positions.

Applications are still being accepted and some have been reviewed. Soon, we will be pulling in a few applicants to help with testing. Those selected will be contacted in the coming days.

View the Application

🌟 Reminder: Preparing for 2025

As we start better planning and organizing, we will be preparing for our 2025 updates. While we work on bug fixes and new features, we will also be adding feature requests. We will be reviewing these starting January 6th and adding them into our planning. Be sure to use the feature request system to submit ideas, up or downvote, and comment on features by January 5th. Once we review on January 6th, we won't be reviewing the feature requests again until mid-2025.

☃️ Holiday Break

We’ve been hard at work the last few weeks working on plans, fixes, and updates, but the holidays only come around once a year so we will be taking from now until January 2nd away. We hope to come back refreshed for a new year of breakthroughs on HoFa! 

Happy holidays to everyone! We hope you enjoy time with your family and loved ones.

Cheers,

Bedouin, Curly & Roze