I know messages can be read in different tones depending on the person, I promise I’m not coming at this with a poor attitude, it’s just feedback.

I purchased the grooming staff member for $50,000 yesterday. Today is the first day I’m using the service, and I realized that I still had to pay her to groom my horses after dumping fifty grand just to hire her in the first place.

I understand its realistic to pay your employees, but the initial cost of hiring her feels too high if I have to pay her daily. I only have 35 horses right now - if I had known I would still have to pay daily fees, I would have withheld purchasing her for another long while and just done it myself.

I feel like the hiring costs of the employees should be dropped, or at the very least, it should be added to the employee descriptions on the construction page that you have to pay them daily so that players know before making the purchase.

How much is it per day? I was thinking of getting them too, would be good to know in advance. Definitely agree with you there. 

Wish my job gave me 50k upfront plus daily rates 😂

You still pay the care costs (which can be found in the wiki), but you unlock the ability to mass care in Horses → Manage which is why they cost a good chunk to unlock

Aaahh okay, so is this only applicable if you're in DIY boarding at someone else's stable? I've noticed that horses boarded at home don't seem to need feeding or water as long as I keep the water and feed topped up

I don't use feed / water storage things (I prefer using the space for other things) so employees help me care for ALL my horses I board at home and all my DIY boarded horses all at once when I get on after rollover

Once you start to get into having more horses, as Rose said, you kind of get rid of that storage space, for feed and water, as that takes up acreage for owning more horses. I used to not be that way, and preferred storage, but at some point, my game play shifted and now I just have the stall space instead and use all 3 employees.

While I do not have every tab unlocked, it runs me about $1,300 to $1,500 which for me, is easily negotiable due to the Halter winnings my horses bring back, plus whatever show winnings too.

So, technically moreso, applicable once you start hitting hundreds upon hundreds of horses, give or take.

It’s about $6 per horse if I did the math right, which really isn’t bad at all.

The ‘groom all’ option is certainly helpful, and I can imagine even more so when players reached onwards of a hundred horses.

It’s just that, the way I’m seeing it, if we’re still paying a daily care cost, then we essentially paid $50,000 for a button. Unless the groomer actually comes with a significant show boost or if that part of her description was just a description.

If all we’re paying for is a mass button to click all the horses at once, $50,000 feel excessive. I personally feel like a mass care button should be accessible to subscribed accounts as part of the subscription. Or, again, the initial hiring cost could be lowered.

I love the game, I just don’t love the way the staffing works. I feel like $50,000 would be more appropriate to build a staff room, in which players can hire all the staff than continue paying daily care costs.

@Kerry daily care is 3 bits for feed, 1 bit for water, 6 bits for grooming (according to the wiki - https://horsefable.wiki/care/ ) and Grooming is optional (so 4 bits for daily basic care, 10 if you want to also groom).    Feed and Water are required to do things with your horse, but grooming itself comes with breeding related benefits (for breeding groomed horses have a different foal BS range possibility than non groomed horses) as well as extra +10% health.   For example if you have a bunch of career horses, you could just do 4 bit daily care and send to careers and you would make some more money than if you did the 14 bit option

As for the employee costs, these are meant to be things you work towards and that as you said, get more useful as you have more horses.    The bits ability (at least in my mind, and I love the discussion for this) is a nice change from say the Enter All or Training Manuals that are a mass ingot dump (which not everyone can do, or do as quickly - but these examples are arguably meant to be harder to get in my mind), and it not being a sub feature is nice because it makes it obtainable to everyone - not just select players.  For example some games have mass care options tied to subscriptions only, which in turn means free to play players can't get them, in HoFa its a bit different because you can get bronze tier sub with ingots, but again, that means needing ingots (which is easier, but not everyone may be able to buy ingots themselves for it, or always find someone to buy them off of, though we do have a more open community than some other games in that sense).    Once you get going and find some stable income options that work for you - 50k in the scheme of things is nothing - which is about when you would probably have enough horses to make it useful anyways.    

Some more reading about grooming and BS ranges:  https://horsefable.wiki/breed-standards/ (you can find the specifics under “Breeding for BS”)

As for the description, no the grooming employee herself doesn't offer show bonuses, but it popped up in the discord the other day (through WirelessMouse) that grooming offers show boosts for Halter Shows (similar to how tack offers show boost to Discipline Shows), but I am trying to confirm that as I don't think I have actually seen that written down anywhere but I could be blind :)