question time

hi all :) i haven't played for a lot of years and therefore i have forgotten quite a lot of stuff! i'm going to post a list of questions and whoever's feeling generous can answer the ones they know.

1. what happens if i put a horse into a riding school misaligned with its specialty?

2. do people breed in the goal of specific markings? if so, which ones are generally considered desirable/undesirable. or do people just choose the ones they like and go for that?

3. am i doing myself a disservice if i just put all of my horses through riding school? or should i keep doing shows with the ones <60NSS? because i have a lot of horses (172) around similar levels they are very often competing against each other. i guess i could just show the ones <50NSS or <40NSS and check where they are in their levels? i don't have the energy to check each one of my <60NSS horses to see where they are in their grade level to see if i should show them or not.

3a. if they're not winning, are they still getting stats? 

4. is there a way to select horses and put them into riding school faster? or do you have to do them individually?

5. i would love to hear of different strategies for how to choose which horses to pair for breeding / how to organise the information. i have ADHD and a giant herd so just keeping it in my head is impossible, i have to have it written down. i also don't have enough of a working memory to be able to keep track of even just 1 mare and go through possible stallions. i mostly go for pretty colours. any tips very welcome.

6. can you geld mares? the button is there but i don't know if it actually works.

7. is there a way to get more than 50 horses into 1 division
ty :)

Last edited on 2022-08-20 at 22:07:25 by Ж wox

5. I usually go for a combination that would result in a foal that has better conformation and stats than those of the parent(s). And also color.

6. Spaying mares is not an option in the game and there's been a debate for a while on whether to add it or not.

Welcome back! :)

1. I think you just receive somehow less money and/or XP.

3. I don't think it will do a disservice for you. Most players prefer the combination of riding school and shows. 
There's a great showing guide here: CLICK - but its point is that it worths to show your horse when it is close to the next grade and until that happens you just put it into riding school. If you have horses with lower NSS (maybe below 50), I think it worths to show them more, because they're more likely to win.

3a. Your horse will only get stats from showing if it places in the top three (1st-2nd-3rd) and the show had at least 5 competitors, when it ran.

4. You have to put them into riding school individually.

5. The same as Reign said. I also have an Excel sheet with all the data which helps me greatly with pairing my horses.
For breeding for NSS/stats, there's a great topic here: CLICK
Regarding conformation, I follow the advice below given by maple in another thread: 
"People generally tend to pair weak attributes to best attributes for each pairing whilst keeping as many goods paired together as possible. The main goal for a lot of people is to achieve all goods and then build on that, there's no use having a poor point dragging an all good score down. They also breed several times in order to get the highest conformation they can out of the pairing, as there's a random + or - aspect after the parents average for each attribute."

7. You can put a maximum of 50 horses into 1 division. It was changed in the game not so long ago, so progressing won't put much on the server, if I remember well.

thank you so much reign and olivia for your answers :)

I'd guessed that you didn't get stats from shows if you don't win, but didn't know that they needed at least 5 horses in there to get even that! Really appreciate that tidbit of info.

I tried an excel sheet once but it just became too overwhelming. I've paired up about 2/3 of my horses now mostly via having genetics info in their names and having rules for myself (e.g. can't pair 2 horses with tobiano together) but also now by including the NSS info in their names. 

This round I have only had to avoid inbreeding by not pairing siblings together (parents are mostly foundations) and double checking a couple outside horses I've brought in but I might actually cry the next time around when I have to be extra vigilant about checking pedigrees. Sigh. Don't know how you guys with horses with long pedigrees do it! It's definitely something to be proud of but seems like a bit of a burden as well if you really care about making sure there's no inbreeding.

Thanks for the confo tips, I've never focused on it before so it should be interesting. Breeding several times is going to be a pain though because I dislike dropping them off at the rescue centre or letting them starve, it just feels so mean!! I was about to complain about the price of adding extra horse room but then I saw that Olivia has *1105 slots*. o.0

Haha, it was a pain in the neck and cost me a fortune to add those extra rooms but now I can relax for the time being. :) My hoarder tendency is quite bad.

There is an inbreeding checker in the game, so it may help you a lot (although I have never used it before): HERE
Also, there is an Inbreeding Block in the game, so you can't breed:
- Parent x Child
- Sibling x Sibling
- Uncle/Aunt x Niece/Nephew
- Grandparent x Grandchild

1. To confirm, if you put a racing horse in a driving school it won't get the bonus of extra speciality stats and will receive less exp and earnings. You can read the introductory article here- Riding Schools!

2. There's only a couple breeds where people actively avoid markings as they don't look as nice as the breeds drawn after the first batch. But that's if it bothers you really. For all breeds I think people just tend to avoid white and grey if they are bothered about colour. Personally I don't mind what markings horses have. 

3 + 3a. You can gain stats from placing in the top 3 but has to be a minimum of 5 entries. Stats aren't guaranteed in showing, they are random chance. However compared to riding school if you were to consistently place (usually at the top of the grade level) throughout the horse's lifetime you will have a higher total stat gain than if you were to just school their whole life- this is also confirmed by the game owner in the above article. 

4. Individual entry like showing, but you can pay for an auto-school which allows you to collect horses in groups of ten (so the server isn't strained). 

5. I personally don't use sheets, I don't have the time to make or maintain them. When pairing I just compare all the unpaired horses between tabs and click and drag potential pairings next to each other. I usually do nss > confo > colour, unless it would be beneficial to do colour before confo, i.e I have two flaxen carriers that I would prefer to pair rather than risking losing the gene. It helps that I don't name horses/foals until I've done this, I put the confo and nss and any rarer genes in their names for a quick comparison. 

6. No spaying for mares currently, just gelding for stallions. One of the reasons for this is that mares have a week cooldown and limited foal count unless special items are used, whereas stallions have no cooldowns and can be bred infinitely. 

7. As Olivia said, the 50 horses limit is there for a reason. 

 
There's an inbreeding checker in the help section under breeding, so you don't have to go through all immediate pedigrees. For longer pedigreed horses it's very unlikely that they won't have some related breeding somewhere. 

Breeding several times, provided they are good quality, you can usually sell extra foals pretty quickly. My spares get picked up pretty quickly as they're not from common lines and are bred for showing. If you're selling cubed/minted or low statted (or over statted like 3k+ in andies, paints and quarters) horses they're probably unlikely to sell. 

Just to point out- the reason it's costly to expand is so that players don't get overwhelmed with picking up lots of horses, as they can quickly become money sinks and make it difficult to get out of debt. Sometimes less is more.  

@Olivia 
Hoarders unite! I have the worst tendency to see *something* worth keeping in even the crustiest equine centre horse imaginable. 

@maple 
Thanks so much for taking the time to answer all of my questions, I really appreciate it. It absolutely makes sense why the horse limit expansion is a bit pricey, but it shall not thwart my very smart urges to get more horses than I have the time for >:D. Why would people not want over statted horses?

to you both: wow, thank you so much for sending the link to that inbreeding check! I don't have the attention span to go through the pedigree of each great great great great great great great grandparent and trust that I would see if there was any overlap. I would like to propose marriage to whoever coded that thing.