Chasing Rainbows

Happy Fourth of July! Despite the poor air quality here (the Midwest has been downwind of Canadian wildfires for quite some time now...), firework shows have gone on as usual over the long weekend, both the big community productions and the intermittent backyard booms.

The long weekend also corresponded with the final days of Star Stable's Rainbow Festival. We're slowly getting used to the new player characters as we continue gameplay, but it was a big change!

Clara before

Clara after (auto-generated)

We immediately headed to the barber shop in Fort Pinta for our one-time free appearance adjust. 

Here she is post-adjust, with the slimmest body type option. 

Mom is not as uber-thin and model-like as those original characters, nor is she as un-curvy as the new slim character. Too bad nothing was offered in between, but this will work as pre-teen mom.

Most of Clara's go-to t-shirts look clingy and uncomfortable now, but her starter t-shirt fits better for some reason. Different clothing bottoms also make her lower half look very different: she looks a lot slimmer in these jeans than many riding pants, for example.

It's great the developers wanted to build in more options for diversity and realism in the characters, but now Clara is taller and less cartoony than many of the NPC's, which is kind of weird. Maybe the NPC's are going to be revamped eventually too?

She blends in better when you stick her next to Katja, for example.

At any rate, we were not that attached to the old characters, since we've only been playing for a few months, but I do think the old ones had some charm that's just not there with these Sim-like new ones. Oh well, she functions and doesn't look utterly ridiculous on Tigertin, so we'll deal.

We've noticed a few cosmetic glitches, such as the hoof pick continually floating near the hand long after it's been used and - even more annoying - the feet not sitting properly in the stirrups of many saddles. Hopefully they work those out before long.

Our big goal for the long weekend: to chase as many rainbows and collect as much gold as it took to obtain the elusive rainbow chaser bridle and saddle pad. (We didn't really care about the hat, shorts, and netted gloves, but we were lacking them also.) We'd heard our chances of not getting duplicate after duplicate were best if we saved up enough for at least all 10 items, then make a whole bunch of successive trades with Chaun the leprechaun. 

So, we looked up the rainbow locations and times and kicked those dirt piles' butts when we could. 

We got a lot better at finding the piles and clicking our way to the 10 max gold per pile. It wasn't easy, though. This tends to happen to us mid-search with disheartening frequency:

Sadly, when we reconnect, the rainbow and piles are gone, even if less than a minute has elapsed.

We also have dealt with...

levitating piles

invisible piles

and even piles near aggressive, prowling wolves!

Once we had over 1000 pieces of rainbow gold, we finally began the epic trade sequence! Chaun gave us 8 different items in a row: everything but the polo wraps and gloves, and then started giving duplicates. The bridle and saddle pad were finally ours! No gloves, though, so we have given up on them. (What's the point of meshy white gloves anyway? So impractical!)

You'll probably never see Clara wearing the crop top or shorts again, but the rest of it is quite nice. Since Mom wears glasses in real life and since Clara just got revamped anyway, we may have her start wearing the rainbow chaser glasses all the time. I like them. =) I also think Brighty likes the tack, especially the bosal bridle. (I see many more bitless bridles in our future now that they're on our radar.)

As an added bonus, selling all the duplicate rainbow chaser gear over the last few weeks has made us some serious Jorvik shillings. I seem to be slowly losing the battle regarding putting most of our earnings into hay. Once the horses eat their way through our current stockpile, we'll probably switch to every-other-day stable care using our star coins. We don't want to do it but dislike the idea of unhappy horses more. We'd still be gaining more star coins per week than we'd be spending, so our dreams of more horses would not be dashed. 

So, rather than buying lots of hay, we picked out a nice black saddle with rainbow stirrups and stitching and a rainbow hackamore.  

We didn't realize the hackamore had brown on the noseband when we bought it, so it doesn't match the saddle as well as we'd hoped. The mismatch isn't as noticeable on some of the other horses as it is on Magic, so we'll still probably pair them together sometimes anyway. Also in this screenshot is another character oops: occasionally Clara keeps posting even when her horse has stopped trotting. =)

We haven't done much questing because we've been so busy chasing rainbows, but we have been exploring two new regions to us: Goldenhills Valley (perpetual fall) and The Valley of the Hidden Dinosaur (perpetual winter). It's totally inappropriate to be spending time in both in July, but we don't care, ha ha.

Goldenhills is home to those territorial wolves, though they've not seemed as aggressive since Clara gave them dog treats.

We've also been helping Justin's grandpa around his pumpkin farm, including toting 4 logs at once to rebuild a jump! How ridiculous would this have been if Tigertin had been Clara's mount that day?!

Elizabeth Sunbeam, our druid mentor lady, suggested we check if the pass to The Valley of the Hidden Dinosaur had had enough ice melt from it to be passable. It was! Walking through the narrow pass reminded us of walking through the wardrobe into Narnia.

Brr! Should've brought a coat!

The valley used to be accessible through this 100-year-old elevator. It was no longer operational, obviously. 

So, adventurous Clara rode Brightbeam down twisty ledges and and crumbling ice shelves to the bottom. They made it!

From the bottom, Clara was able to repair and refuel the motor. It seems to be working - for now. She, Brightbeam, and the new terrier rode the elevator back up to test it (if they were going to plummet to their doom, they were going to do it together, apparently), then reported back to Elizabeth.

Like Clara, Elizabeth came totally unprepared for the weather. (Sandals, even!)

Clara helped Elizabeth collect various items, including these cool blue crystals called Kallstones. No fossils or other evidence of dinosaurs yet, though. 

To clear the road ahead, which was blocked by more ice, they put down some of the Kallstones on the ice, sheltered behind a log, and had Clara ignite them with this rune-encrusted wand Elizabeth had brought along. Kaboom!

Success! 

Amusingly, her reward for one of the quests out here (maybe this one, can't remember) was a winter trench coat. Elizabeth headed back to Valedale with her items, but Clara and Brighty ventured farther down the road. They found Nic Stoneground, the ironically named explorer with the hot air balloon. He had been stranded here after a hot air balloon accident. Even though he was freezing, he didn't seem to want to return to civilization and instead had Clara set up camp for him. 

This included starting a fire... with our new pup way too close! Oops! 

Don't worry, she was fine.

Their second trip up the elevator was a success too, and then it was on to more rainbow chasing. 

We're so glad it's still summer! Until next time!