Escher

4 more pacers have passed through since Julie's post! Still no amblers. If we hadn't seen a YouTube video of an ambling HI3 horse, we might be inclined to think they are a myth!

Amulet sure was cute! She was only 12 hands tall, though, and Pepsi looked a bit silly.

Ice Spire was 5 inches taller than Amulet and looked like she could be gaited from her stance. Sure enough!

When this little 11-hand pony took off as we were trying to approach and lasso him, he paced! So even in the wild, gaited equines gait. Nice touch, HI3!

Yay for the pony cart! I like how it's the same color as our banana kayak.

It doesn't seem that pacers are limited by biome or conformation. I really wasn't expecting it from Chariot of Fire!

Felicity's birthday was last week Tuesday. As she feared, it was a chilly one. Snowflakes drifted through the air at various times throughout the day. Unlike Lily, Felicity did not find a horse she just had to keep on her birthday. She did find this unusual pintaloosa though:

She also found yet another equine with well over 900 genetics stats:

I'm impressed that Felicity even spotted this one!

Only 9.3 hands! She could (slowly, very slowly) pull the pony cart, but we felt rather bad about making her do it. XD

Not skittish, ornery, or lazy, though!

Three days after Felicity's birthday, on a ride out from Ad Astra Village to deliver a letter, Lily and Talvi found this guy out in the volcanic biome:

It was love at first sight for Felicity, as you can imagine. She even likes his randomly-generated name and won't be changing it. M.C. Escher, it turns out, was an incredible Dutch graphic artist who often worked in grayscale. (We googled him and his art and were quite impressed.)

Here he is with Pepsi on board. As you can see, he's a slim-barreled 15-hander, but Pepsi looks fine on him. I love how unique the pinto spots are on this game - they're even different on the left and right sides of a horse. 

At long last! A piebald! 

We continue to have lag issues at times, which has led to more ghost horses. Check these out!

Pepsi's also gotten to shape shift into a wild boar! 

I don't know why Pepsi drew the attention of another player. Maybe the player thought Cloud was a wild from a distance? Whatever the reason, she stayed to watch Pepsi the boar tromp around, 

levitate on a rock, 

chase around a poor red panda, 

and eventually shift back into a human. It was laughably awkward. Neither Pepsi nor the other player said a word to each other, and when it was over, Pepsi just got back on Cloud and rode off into the night. XD

Finally, this was going on last time Starfleet and I passed through Blood Ruby Knights Village. No idea what this was all about (somebody was even using a cart up there!), but it's even more impressive than the new Victorian-style buildings.

Pizza, Stratus, and Kung Pao

Easter has come and gone, it's almost my birthday, and this has been happening on and off this week:

Enough, already. At least Mom's stuck at home due to Michigan's stay-at-home order and isn't driving anyway.

We haven't been going on HI3 as much lately, since our wifi can't handle HI3 when other people in the house are doing serious internet-ing at the same time. One night, we were just trying to groom our herd, and it would take about 30 seconds for each new horse to be placed. A generic ghostly horse shape would appear first, then abruptly change to the solid size and shape of each horse. That was mildly cool, actually, but waiting for the horse menu to appear, waiting for the mood and grooming bars to update, etc. was not so cool. We made it up to Mariette before being booted off.

When the wifi is not in high demand, we have had a few solid stretches of non-laggy playing. Of course, this means more cool horses to talk about!

Two more gaited horses made appearances since Julie's post. Both of them are again pacers. We're still waiting in eager anticipation for an ambler.

Gaited Horse #1 was hanging out in a Mediterranean herd of 4. She is the one straight ahead of Pepsi and Topi in this shot.

Here she is. How perfect is her name for a gaited horse? XD

Her metrics were ok but not amazing. Ditto to her personality - lazy horses seem to be drawn to us like moths to a flame.

Here she is pacing away. Very cute, but her head goes up so high!

Gaited Horse #2 was waiting all by herself in Wonderland.

I think she's gorgeous! Her genetic stat total is a sad 584, but she still manages to be fairly fast and have a fairly powerful jump.

Her personality is quite nice too!

Here she is pacing in all her fancy glory.

Neither of these mares wowed us enough for us to seriously consider keeping them, though, so Teatime is still our only pacer.

We tried riding another too-small pony and got some action shots of Pepsi jumping and crouching while inside. Enjoy!

And now on to the 3 stars of this post!

On Easter afternoon, during a mail delivery mission, we caught this impressive little pony:

She surpasses our two lucky finds with her genetic stat total: a whopping 1051!

I love her markings, especially that gigantic blaze! Her stat distribution is fairly evenly distributed, with the most in agility but no dramatic stand outs.

Her metrics aren't anywhere near as amazing, probably because there's only so much you can do when you're only 12.1 hands tall and being compared to equines of all heights.

Her personality is mostly mid range, and I don't think her leaderish tendency affects much of anything under saddle. Speaking of under saddle...

Yeah, Pepsi looks awkwardly big. Not quite as bad as on Okey Dokie, but close.

Bummer. We're considering keeping her anyway, since she has the highest genetic stats of any of our wilds to date, is easy on the eyes, and is pleasant to ride. Too bad there's not a way to shrink Pepsi a little. 

In honor of Pizza and our other fun size equines, we did finally buy the pony cart. I don't know that we'll use it all that much because it seems to be slower than riding, but it is pretty fun.

Here is star #2, our first curly-coated horse with over-900 genetic stats!

Isn't he cool?

He seems huge after Pizza! He's not above average in any stat but intelligence, but his performance metrics are still pretty good.

While he's ornery, he's not ornery enough to buck Pepsi off. And look, energetic! That's a change of pace. 

We found star #3 while trying out the cart with Ginkgo. Mesa had just given way to taiga. 

Another bay silver, but this time with roan on top.

Talk about... sturdy. He definitely was from the taiga (like Teatime), not mesa.

I can only assume his high agility score is due to his powerful hindquarters, not his short little legs. 

Slow and lazy - shocker. His stride length is shorter than Pizza's. XD He's brave, playful, and has pretty good pull power and turning speed, though. And let's not gloss over the fact that he's roan! Roan is awesome!

Great. Three very tempting horses already, and we're only about half way through the month! Sorry, Peach Blossom. Pretty sure Lily's going to insist you move on...

Let's end on a more fun note. Once in a while, HI3 gives you the option of shapeshifting your avatar into a random animal for 5 minutes. We've done it three times now. The first time, Pepsi was grooming Blitzen on our ranch and became a raccoon:

She could move around as a raccoon...

and swim...

...but she couldn't climb trees. Oh well.

Ha ha, horses must be so confused when this happens.

The second time was during a mail delivery mission. Pepsi shape-shifted into a tiny fennec fox!

You've never looked cuter, Pepsi. XD

The fox had no trouble climbing a big rock,

strangely levitated on logs,

and could also swim. :^)

The third time, Pepsi was in Sequoia Village and turned into a dark fox! Somebody else was prowling around as a cougar at the same time, but unfortunately we accidentally re-humanized early and didn't get a screenshot of that. XD

Dark foxes swim too, and this one looked unnaturally buoyant!