Equestrian Festival 2026

Bethany was right to be concerned about Star Stable's March bazaar. It featured three familiar breeds: the Belgian Warmblood, Paso Fino, and Lipizzaner,  along with the mule for the first time!

 

Oh, the Belgian Warmblood. It's a fan favorite, since they come in quite a few interesting colors and look great in motion. We'd have purchased one several bazaars ago if only they didn't throw their heads and air chomp so much while idling.

We were "safe" on the Paso Fino front: we love our Riverrock dearly.

Same goes for the Lipizzaner: we jumped at the chance to take home our beloved Snowsecret quite some time ago.

Finally, the goofy, lovable mule. Had I not strongly suggested we be patient and wait for their second bazaar appearance to save a few star coins, we'd probably own one right now. Someday, dude. Someday.

It was a closer call with the sleek Belgian. We have several possible names brainstormed for the dapple gray in particular. What kept us from committing: our next horse (#27) will get a prominent spot in round 2 of filling the stalls, and I convinced everyone that we really didn't want to see an air chomper first thing when entering our stable.

Onyxsaga, on the other hand, is a fantastic "look at me" horse, an appropriate choice for one of the most visible stalls. We're so happy to have him! <3 He was our mount for the lead up to the Equestrian Festival.

He took us around in style for a few quests, like this one where we had to assist with getting this car and trailer out of the briny deep.

Thank goodness for friends with heavy machinery!

Once hauled to its new location at Goldspur farm, it was (unsurprisingly) in-operational. Clara "fixed" it by banging on it in multiple places, ha ha. 

It will be convenient to have a trailer there now, since Goldspur farm is a decent hike from Jarlaheim. 

One other noteworthy quest is a new addition, where we solved some puzzles made up by Isebell, Ydris's assistant.

Clara (horse-less, sadly) worked her way into previously-inaccessible depths of the Demascus Mine for this, which was exciting. The first round of puzzles involved determining which box Diggory (the monkey) was in from clues.

We felt proud of ourselves for getting these right on our first try!

The second round was just answering multiple choice questions about Jorvik correctly, which we did too. Go us! The third round was to mirror the path Diggory made across squares on the floor. We made it through the first two floors flawlessly, then had some issues with the final one. (Fortunately, the stakes were low - no falling into a bottomless pit or anything. We just had to redo.)

Clara made it to level 24 in the midst of the puzzling! Whoo hoo!

Onyxsaga got to see lots of Marcheghast and its beasts...

...and lots of Valedale: both its gardens and the surrounding (much milder) forest.

He reached level 15 just a day or two before the festival!

Life's been so busy for us that we were a day late to the Equestrian Festival party, but we have had time to enjoy it since then.

Many of the things we've seen in previous years, like group and individual races, festival-exclusive horses, pets, and tack/clothing sets, a new series of championship ribbons, and the "Sabine causes trouble" quest line are back again. 

Alas, this is the final year for the Sabine quest line. I hope there will be something to replace it (with new rewards) next year!

There has been the usual bump in championship participation, making it more of a challenge to earn the ribbons. Here is Frosty getting ready to for the Jorvik Stables championship, one of our weaker events. (Maybe someday we'll learn how to handle the oil slide... and consistently avoid the paddock riders and rolling cheese...)

The ribbons this year are rather boring in my opinion: all in the same color scheme, just fancier as you progress. At least it's a nice color scheme.

Now on to the new aspects of the festival!

a classy gazebo/photo op spot

Representatives from different SSO groups (Cavalry, Bobcats, Jorvik Rangers, etc.) performed a quadrille together. We get to pick which group parades around Jarlaheim each day.

one rather ridiculous group: pairs who dress up in horsey costumes. The bay version, McHorse, is sort of this year's festival mascot and hangs out by the task board.

Clara gets to do a short "race" while bouncing along on a bouncy horse in a color of her choice. 

The saddle bag and pet still show up. XD

We're all on board with this year's token sets. Two thumbs up on the style and color choices, Star Stable.

I'm especially excited for the saddle, bridle, helmet, and boots from the first set. They'll go with nearly everything. The only thing I'm a little sad about is that there's no saddle bag for that set.

With the festival come some new festival-exclusive horses. So far, it's a pretty but rather basic chestnut Andalusian and a more flashy black tobiano Friesian Sporthorse.

The two special English Thoroughbreds are back as well. If we were to get a Thoroughbred, we'd pick one of these. The price is good, only 467 star coins. With their bowlegged look from the back and mildly creepy near-constant chewing animation while idling, we just aren't that into them.

The special Hanoverians from last year have returned as well. As beautiful as these guys are, we don't love them while idling either. So much lip-curling. 

If all that wasn't enough, week 2 of the festival brought - you guessed it - another bazaar! This one features all warmbloods, which is highly appropriate.

Since we're not interested in the cartoony Trakehner (375 star coins) and already have a Selle Francais (495 star coins) and Dutch Warmblood (475 star coins), that just leaves the rest of the non-festival Hanoverians to tempt us.

This one is stunning, combining both fleabitten and dapple gray, though I also love the palomino, of course. I'm not sold, though, and I'm doing my best to convince the others we should wait. Similar argument as with the Belgian: do we really want to see a lip-curling fest every time we enter the stable? I'd rather not. 

Speaking of entering the stable, we were pleasantly surprised to see festival decorations appear on week 2! Apparently they were already available on week 1, but the default was toggled off. Now default is toggled on. We're loving it, random periwinkle rugs and all. Who will end up "sharing" Panda's stall (AKA occupying it while she is in the pasture)? Only time will tell!

Onyxsaga

March in the Mitten has been a wild rollercoaster ride of weather so far. Thunderstorms, hail, rain, snow, flooding, high winds, summer-like warmth and sunshine... we've seen it all, and we're only halfway through! We're currently chilling in an armchair in the basement: Mom has yet to move us back to her room after the severe weather threat last week. (No tornados in our area, but the area to the south of us was not so fortunate.) We're supposed to get more storms tonight, so we're staying put for now.

A welcome distraction from the weather chaos: Star Stable added a shiny new horse breed to the game this week: the Swedish Warmblood! We didn't make it out to Jorvik Stables to see them until a few days after their big debut, but even so, we came across a few other players checking them out at the same time we were. They are certainly worth a visit!

Here are 4 of the 7 color variations (disregard the bay Hanoverian on the far right):

and here are the remaining 3 (on the left):

A+ from us, Star Stable! We love these guys and are going to have a really tough time choosing just one when the time eventually comes.

They have two special animations, likely contributing to their hefty 950-star-coin price tag. The first is tempi changes, a series of flying lead changes. It will be fun to see this in-game! We haven't yet.

The second: a super cute bow. <3

So much better than bucking, yay!

Here's a look at a Swedish Warmblood next to two Hanoverians. It's got to be challenging to make different warmblood breeds look different from each other - we sure can't tell in real life - but Star Stable did a great job: different faces and builds while both still very recognizable as warmbloods.

We are thrilled to report that the Swedish warmbloods do not do anything annoying while idling: no head tossing, lip curling, nervous side-stepping, or dozing off. *Throws confetti.*

Even though there are no big new developments out in Marchenghast, we've kept our home stable location there for now. We're enjoying the ambience and the beasts, plus by doing the daily activities, we're earning points towards a "blight" set and earning decent shillings. 

Jollyjoust, our dragon horse, seems especially at home here.

Julie's interest in Valedale gardening has gotten us out there more often too. We have yet to get to the point where it's sustainable - right now we are close to running out of seeds - but we're hoping that changes as we slowly progress further in the Path of Terra.

We've learned some side-by-side planting combinations that occasionally yield a bonus rare plant, which is cool. Also worth noting, we're now able to craft hay from flax. It takes a lot of flax bunches (8) to make a single serving of hay, so we'll probably mostly be planting flax if/when the seed scarcity issue resolves.

We've made a few visits to Mario and his observatory too, and progressed to a quest where we helped him declutter the inside. 

Only in Star Stable

Too bad we couldn't keep this.

We finally got around to closing those pink cracks in the Silverglade area.

...we probably should've taken care of that a long time ago. Oh well. XD

Closing them with a combination of our vacuum and lighting magic didn't take long at all.

...and then the quest line came to a screeching halt. We'll see what happens next!

Our last bit of exciting news: we did decide to buy our big, black baroque before the end of the bazaar. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the alliteration.) As Julie told you last time, we were torn between the brown-black with a little star and the marking-less blue-black.

You know how we love white markings, but since that little star would've spent nearly all its time hidden under a long forelock anyway, we decided to go for the blue-black.

The name was such a challenge, not because we didn't have ideas, but because we had so many!

We all agreed on "Onyxsaga" in the end - it seemed to best fit a jet-black horse who would start out his virtual life immersed in the Marchenghast story.

Well, technically he started his virtual life in the Moorland bazaar area, but his time there was fleeting.

We forgot to take the tack off the horse we were riding (Nightnimbus) before buying Onyx, so the entire first ride on him was bareback. =)

Ours at last!

We actually haven't ridden him that much yet because we wanted to finish cycling through the other horses first, then train him, then start a "new cycle" beginning with Frostflight. It was finally his turn this weekend, so he got the grand tour of Marchenghast and Valedale.

Hold on, Clara!

There is one area of the witches' hamlet where players seem to idle frequently, and we've gotten to admire some new Swedish Warmbloods that way, including this handsome grey named Domino.

He's spent the majority of his time at high speed:

But we also had to try out his special animations, which are now unlocked. He does a stunning extended trot:

...and a top-notch pirouette:

Ha ha, his forelock makes him looks like a unicorn in this screenshot.

We hear another bazaar is coming to Star Stable already next Wednesday. Oh dear, for the sake of our star coins, we hope it will feature only breeds we already have, but we will see! Whatever happens, Onyx will now be getting our undivided riding attention until fully trained. 

Until next time!