Jollyjoust

Goodbye, February. Hello, March! The end of our long winter is finally in sight. 

Being mostly stuck inside is not all bad, though. We have gotten around to some serious questing the last few weekends on Star Stable. Most exciting for us was finally unlocking Wildwoods, which immediately became my favorite area of the game. 

Heading to the previously locked tunnel:

This quest was extra fun because NPCs (Clara's good friend Raina, some Jorvik Rangers, and their horses) made the journey with us. 

Clara's weed-whacking skills came in handy once again to clear the thick brush. Goodbye, red "ye shall not pass" icon! Eerily, the forest seemed to try its best to send them packing even once it was gone. 

Two of the party had to turn back to get this ranger medical attention, dwindling the team to 5.

They were caught in a thunderstorm not long after...

...and intense, close-range lighting caused the lead ranger's young horse to spook big time.

The ranger fell off, and the horse, Shay, bolted. Clara and Garnetgazer took after him...

...and the storm ended as quickly as it came on.

They kept going anyway, and the redwood forest is incredible! 

Finally, they arrived at the long-abandoned ranger station and set about making repairs.

Clara was tasked with fence repairs...

... and then had a close encounter with the legendary deer!

He appeared again later to lead them to a stream...

...and a root bridge magically grew across the gap so that they could proceed!

He led them to Jorvik Wild Horses!

The first three were Rosemary and two foals under her watch.

They talk! =D We had no idea!

The horses were even more surprised to meet a human, and a talking one to boot. The various Foresters all seemed pretty welcoming, but not so much the Warriors.

The Mystics give off Pandora vibes - they even have blue highlights! 

We are so happy we get to keep doing quests out here with the wild herds! Best part of the game so far, in my opinion.

After finishing a few, we got a text from "Spymaster" urgently needing us to come to his hideout. We navigated our way to his hideout in the mountains using the map, only to reach impenetrable closed doors. We're assuming this means we're not far enough along yet in the main quest line. 

This text pops up every time we log on now, which is pretty annoying. It gave us the push we needed to face spy mission #2 to GED headquarters.

Thank goodness for do-overs! We got caught by the guards so many times before remembering how to hide behind boxes. (Just crouching behind them isn't enough - you have to click a "hide" icon instead.)

Not the best shirt for this quest, ha ha. The white stands out from a mile away.

Eventually, Clara made her way to this sinister gathering of the bad guys, complete with mysterious glowing portal.

She overheard their entire conversation...

...and then got quite a monologue from Justin 

Even though Justin let her go and even gave her a shortcut for escaping, we spent a pathetic amount of time wandering around into the same dead ends and repeatedly getting caught before finally stumbling upon the shortcut. We probably couldn't find it again if we tried. It was such a relief to finally get back to Brighty and our ride out. (How did Brighty fit in that little boat, though?)

Clara returned to Elizabeth in Valedale and reported all the goings-on. 

1. Katja arrived through the portal to be the 4th Dark Rider, completing the group

2. Justin seems to be there cooperating of his own free will 

3. Lisa is "neutralized" and hidden somewhere in the Graydew Mountains

4. Mr. Sands indeed has the lost Light Ceremony Book. They intend to use its information to perform the Light Ceremony backwards to free Pandoric power, then somehow control it and use it to take over the world.

Fortunately, Elizabeth went on to inform them that the good guys, the Keepers of Aideen, made copies of some important chapters of the Light Ceremony Book and hid them. Clara will no doubt be tasked with tracking them down (and Lisa too) eventually. We'll leave that for another day. 

Our other big piece of news to share: another horse bazaar came to town for a week! The horses on sale this time around were the Hollow Woods unicorns Tynan and Phoebe (669 star coins), the Jorvik Wild Horse (689 star coins), and the older two dragon horses, Faramawr and Aldrach (379 star coins.)

We aren't tempted by the unicorns, since they are based on the Paso Fino, which we already have. 

We all LOVE the Jorvik Wild Horses, even more so now, so we are super tempted by them! Here are the other color variations not pictured above.

This is the first time they've ever been on sale in the two years we've been playing the game. However, after much deliberation, we've agreed our favorite is actually Duskgrim, one of the two Halloween Jorvik Wild Horses, who can color change between iridescent black and cremello. Hence, as hard as it is, we will pass these guys over and keep our fingers crossed that Duskgrim will return (and not cost an arm and a leg) in October.

And oh, the original dragon horses. They are based on the rather outdated, clunky Jorvik Friesian. As Felicity mentioned in her last post, I prefer these dragons to the new ones: their mouths are more horse-like and less reptilian, which makes them seem less sinister. Also, the more we view them in both forms in the preview area, the more they've grown on us all. Another significant shift since last time they were on sale a year or so ago: if you toggle off the magic coat, it stays toggled off now. This means we could let him be a goofy grullo horse nearly all the time if we wanted, and just "unleash the dragon" for special occasions. Much more appealing that having to see a dragon every time you enter your stable!

Our clear favorite of the two: the green/grullo one, Faramawr.

Lily wasn't as on board as the rest of us, but the discount on this guy was so good that she didn't try very hard to talk us out of him.

So, on last day of the sale, Jollyjoust became ours!

He started out in dragon form, naturally.

The first ride! 

(It sure is fortunate that there is a break in the spikes where a rider can comfortably sit!)

And here's horse form!

Coincidentally, our buddy Leni bought both Aldrach and Faramawr at this sale.

Now we can really twin out if we feel so inspired.

We think of him as a gentle, vegetarian dragon. He does have a mouth like a horse and can disguise himself as a horse, after all. =)

Fire-breathing Friesians? When Pigs Fly!

Star Stable's focus over the last few weeks has been on the medieval area, where new races and other new items have been added. It has not inspired us to shell out major shillings for the super expensive medieval tack or clothing, though a lot of it is really cool. 

Clara took Snowy for one last evening ride in the snow before it disappeared for the season. 

Impractical but very pretty!

Goodbye, virtual snow!

Winter still has the Mitten tightly in its grip: our real-life cold and snow and aren't going anywhere anytime soon. *Sighs* So, while we may have retired the holiday sweaters for the season, we still have Clara wearing wintery outfits: non-holiday sweaters, fleeces, quilted vests, or coats, usually paired with mittens. 

In our quest to earn all of the medieval-themed championship ribbons, we continued participating in quite a few championships. The club we recently joined even held a "competition night" last weekend, where the intent was to participate in the championships together. Participation was pretty sparse - a lot of the time it was just Clara and the two club leaders, plus plenty of other non-club competitors, of course. Ironically, the best attended was the one in Valedale, where most of us (including Clara and Panda) failed to complete the course. Oops. Clara did much better in ones that followed, even winning two "regular" ribbons before the end of the night.

Here are a few fun pre-championship screenshots.

I wish we could've seen how they got up there!

Somebody else has a twin Paso Fino to our Riverrock called "Riverracer!" I guess we're not the only ones who think the reverse dapples look like rippling water.

All the competitions mean extra shillings to spend! 

We spent some on this forest green top and saddle pad, figuring they will get lots of use in March especially.

Here's a peek at the new purple saddle pad, leg wraps, and top we treated ourselves with in honor of Valentine's Day. Unfortunately, this is the most expensive saddle pad we will (hopefully) ever buy. We were clicking too fast and accidentally used star coins to buy it rather than using Jorvik shillings. The mistake cost us 55 star coins, over half of what we make in a week as a Star Rider, or over 2 weeks of what it costs for every-other-day stable care. Ugh, we hope never to do that again. We felt so bad about it that we haven't spent any star coins on stable care since. Instead, we spent a week caring for all 14 horses ourselves, and now we are midway through using one of our precious tickets for a week of free stable care.

Another unfortunate recent development: a persistent, super inconvenient bug. Usually at least once a day, this screen randomly appears when we click on something. The only way to get rid of it is to force quit our Star Stable session. This may not sound like that big a deal, but if you have partially-completed tasks when this happens, you lose all progress on said tasks. For example, this has happened to us multiple times when we had completed a championship but hadn't yet returned to Moorland or the far-flung medieval area to claim our daily championship rewards. Hence, we have to revisit Moorland and the medieval area to restart the tasks, complete another championship, and return yet again to Moorland and the medieval area to claim the rewards. Not cool.

It seems to happen most often when we're doing stable chores or clicking on gather-able plants or recyclables, but it's also happened twice now when trying to claim our reward after one of the Baroness's training races. We've wised up and avoid doing these things when we have major tasks in progress, but we sure wish we didn't have to. Fingers crossed this gets fixed soon!

On a happier note, we did finally complete our medieval ribbon collection this weekend.

As anticipated, the flying pig is our unanimous favorite, though we also like the helmet a lot more than we thought we would. =)

In other news, we've been occasionally hanging out with a new buddy on the game. We've visited each other's stables (she has gorgeous horses, none of them duplicates to ours), and we've done some comps and group races together. She even led us to a hard-to-find star!

We both love the Icelandics and bought ours at the same end-of-the-year bazaar

Her dapple gray Ardennes is so cute - and it matches the NPC horse near the well in Moorland.

The hidden (and waterlogged) star! 

Our buddy has collected almost all of the stars, while we are nowhere close.

Finally, here's a look at the two new dragon/Friesian horses that joined the game this week, Ryume and Keima. (Ryume, the black one, was also in one of the pre-competition screenshots above, as you may have noticed.)

So far, Keima seems to be more popular, judging by how many we've seen being ridden around by their proud new owners. The opalescent thing they have going on with their scales in dragon form is a fantastic touch.

They're great in both dragon and horse forms, and the fire-breathing feature in dragon form is especially impressive. Will we ever buy one? Alas, probably not. Bethany and I really like them, but Lily and Julie aren't as wild about them in dragon form. Lily would prefer we stick to horses only, this being a horse game. Julie finds the dragons' crocodilian mouths a bit off-putting and prefers the older dragons, Aldrach and Faramawr.

It's all hypothetical anyway, thanks to the steep 950 star coin price tag on all 4 of these guys. As long as we can keep from inadvertently clicking on things we shouldn't, our star coins are safe for now. Until next time!