Thanks again, Harbor Isle

Harbor Isle just keeps on giving. Flora and I found two wild horses on it yesterday. The first was this lovely Furioso.

Even though the Furioso's artwork isn't as special as many of the newer breeds, I've always rather liked the look of them. This mare's cute markings and "My Buddy" persona made her extra appealing. Too bad her stats weren't more impressive.

Then we rode east and found Harbor wild #2. As usual, I thought, Ooh, a pretty pinto! Please be awesome! 

She was! 

6/6 and +98. That makes her the 3rd best horse stat-wise we have ever caught. (Balderdash the New Forest mare still reigns supreme as +110, and Vinca the Newfie mare is 2nd as +104.)

Of course she would be a mare, when the next horse I get needs to be a stallion to keep my gender ratio even. That means either Bethany or Julie get to keep her rather than yours truly. Oh well, I have a wonderful draftie already. Love you, Solitaire! <3

The First 10

We have used our flute 10 times now, so I decided to memorialize our first 10 fluted wilds with this post. Enjoy!

Flute #1

8/15: 15.3 hand brown Lusitano stallion

2/6, -19

Flute #2

8/17: 14.2 hand mahogany bay Canadian Horse mare

2/6, -39

Flute #3

8/18: 16.1 hand mahogany bay Holsteiner mare

1/6, -59

Flute #4 

8/19: 14.2 hand buckskin snowflake Nez Perce mare

2/6, -23

Flute #5

8/21: 16.3 hand dark dapple gray Orlov Trotter mare

2/6, -36

Flute #6

8/22: 15.1 hand dun Sicilian stallion

4/6, +43

Flute #7

8/24: 14.1 hand flaxen chestnut tobiano Mangalarga Marchador mare

2/6, -36

Flute #8

8/25: 16.1 hand white American White stallion

4/6, +39

Flute #9

8/26: 16.1 hand dark bay tobiano National Show Horse stallion

3/6, +8

Flute #10

8/27: 17.0 hand mahogany bay Hanoverian mare
3/6, +5

Our flute seems to work very well in attracting mahogany bay mares. I wonder if it was made from mahogany wood? ;^) 

It's cool that the Nez Perce, Mangalarga Marchador, and Hanoverian were all represented in our first 10. We love all 3 breeds! 

So far, the best horse our flute has attracted stat-wise is the 4/6 dun Sicilian. Hopefully someday it will lure us a 6/6! *crosses fingers*

Horse Flute at Last

On Friday, August 15, all 4 of us teamed up together to answer the 5 questions about Esroh lore, the final part of Poseidon's quest. Even after having just read the lore the night before, we weren't always 100% certain of the answers. Thank goodness for the help site, Esroh Legends, for posting the stories of the Esrohs! We consulted them on every question to be safe. With 100k on the line, it's definitely better to be safe than sorry!

In our nervous excitement, we neglected to take screenshots of the 5 test questions. They went something like this, if you're curious:

1. In which land formation did the Esrohs find themselves trapped in Athena's story?
Answer: canyon

2. According to Apollo, "Suppleness with time comes, not with ____."
Answer: spurs

3. What is the name of the horse Apollo talks to in his story?
Answer: StarFire

4. What parts of Hera's body became worn in her story?
Answer: hooves

5. In Artemis's story, what kind of animal did the Esrohs raise?
Answer: stag

Why would you ever choose option 2?!

Ah, so that's what was in one of those mysterious chests!

Pepsi travelled out of the reef, back through the decay isles, through Dry Isle, through Narrowed Isle, and finally to Chilly Forest Isle to use the flute for the first time. Why Chilly Forest Isle? Well, most of our favorite breeds come from grassy terrain, and we needed blueberries. Chilly Forest's harvestable items were mostly already harvested when Pepsi arrived, but there are so many blueberry bushes that Pepsi had no trouble picking as many as we needed.

Before fluting our first wild, we had Pepsi switch to Galileo, the first wild horse we ever caught. We hoped he would bring us good luck. 

Oh, the suspense! 

He didn't appear where we planned. XD

We caught the attention of a brown Lusitano! Felicity lassoed him, and we held our breath as we went to look at him close up.

Triple strikeout: common color, poor stats, and undesirable personality

Well, he's no Galileo. Kind of cute, but not special enough to justify keeping him. We should have known better than to expect our first fluted wild to be as wonderful as Galileo. ;^)

All the same, because he was our first, we decided to retire him to our Millennium Fields. We named him August. =)

Hello, Herbie

As you may or may not know, we have been intentionally naming each of our stallions and each of our mares with a different letter of the alphabet. Here was the list as of August 1, when we added Judo to the herd:

Arion

Aspen

Brio

Balderdash

Cider

Cascade

December

Dasani

Equinox

Esker

Fortunado

Flora

Galileo

Groovy

Hazel

Infrared

Icing

Judo

Jessamine

Kestrel

Kaleidoscope

Landslide

Lysithea

Mistral

Melancholy

Napoleon

Nightshade

Onyx

Ophelia

Palladium

Petra

Quasar

Quickstep

Ravine

Rosetta

Solitaire

Skyrocket

Teddy

Toasty

Uno

Umber

Vaquero

Vinca

Wintergreen

Whinny

Xenon

Xanadu

Yoshi

Yetta

Zephyr

Zesty

7Up

As you can see from that obvious gap between Groovy and Hazel, we only had one more horse to go to complete the pattern. We needed a stallion to be named something starting with the letter H. That mission fell to me, and I was technically supposed to wait until September to begin it.

So much for that. On Sunday morning when it was nearly time for me to log off, I went to surrender a wild I'd found to the livery. As long as I was there, of course I looked at some of the other horses. I couldn't help myself. And there he was:

A 5/6 cremello leopard Nez Perce stallion. It's hard to tell from these small pictures, but he indeed has faint cremello spots all over. Click on one of the pictures to see it larger if you so desire. I'd never seen one like him before outside of the BBB. I was smitten.

But, Lily was in the room and saw what I was up to. She insisted I go to the BBB in the library and look at his avatar to make sure I really liked him as much as I thought I did. The horse's avatar was white with pale dapples and legs. Lily wasn't impressed. She said that he looked a lot like my cremello Morab, Brio, and her light gray NFP's, Balderdash and Jessamine. 
"But he has dapples," I protested.
"You already have a Nez, you already have a leopard appaloosa, and you already have a cremello," replied Lily.
"Yeah, but not a cremello leopard appaloosa Nez."
Lily just shook her head and walked away. She knew a lost cause when she saw one.

That conversation did make me second-guess myself, though. I went back to the livery to look at him again. His personality wasn't so great, and his stats only added up to +58, after all. What to do?

In the end, I made myself log out. Wait. There will be other Nez Perce stallions, I told myself firmly. Prove Lily wrong. 

I only held out for about 5 minutes before logging back on to adopt him. He was still there, thank goodness. 

So, now I am the proud owner of Herbie. It turns out he actually has the highest sum of total stat points of any of our horses: 2508! Because he's pale, speedy, and the 53rd horse to join our herd, Herbie seemed like the perfect name.

Herbie the famous Volkswagen Beetle

No worries about avatar confusion here. Herbie's dapples and dark hooves set him apart. =)

Herbie

Brio

Jessamine (same avatar as Balderdash)

Interestingly enough, just last night PintoMustang and Lily noticed this ad pop up:

My goodness! I wonder if the player had seen Herbie somehow, or if it was all an odd coincidence? At any rate, I'm not the only one who thinks cremello leopard is cool! =)

Atlantis

My sisters and I just finished listening to a series of books on CD, the last of which involved an ancient city disappearing into the ocean...

(the 6th and final book in the series)

... so I guess the timing of Pepsi's journey to Atlantis couldn't have been better timed.

I'd always wondered what that grid-like thing was on the HI2 map. Now I know: Atlantis! Of course, the big drawback to an underwater city is that you can't ride horses through it. Off Pepsi went in underwater slow-mo.

Finding the chests of bounty without getting lost was easy thanks to the map. The chests all looked alike and did not change in appearance when Pepsi collected the bounty. What was this "bounty," I wonder? Poseidon never got specific.

More entertaining than the golden chests, columns, and slabs of stone were the random statues. 

Oh dear. This is awkward. XD
I kept my eye out for the top halves of these. Nope.

It it just me, or does it look like she's awfully close to a wardrobe malfunction?

Wow. That's a big foot.

Once Pepsi had collected all 12 chests, she returned to Poseidon. Second task complete!

Ah, the dreaded third and final task. Since I didn't have $100k on hand and hadn't read the Esroh Lore lately, I decided to click the X and be on my way. I'm happy to let one of my sisters tackle this one later. ;^)

Bethany Meets Skyscraper

On Tuesday, Uno and I met up with Skyscraper, a fellow HI2 player and blogger, to go wild hunting. We were both pressed for time, so there was not a minute to lose. She arrived at the ranch, and from there we agreed to travel to Stem Isle.

Uno getting up close and personal. XD

Posing for a screenshot. ;)

We cantered down to the far east end of Stem to begin our search. It was a good sign to find this buried treasure - it meant that most likely nobody had ridden here in a while. Skyscraper let me dig it up. It was 11k!

Just seconds after finding the treasure, we found a wild British Spotted Pony! Skyscraper caught her, a 14 hand brown leopard mare, if my memory's correct. She is the largest BSP wild I've ever seen!

Unfortunately, Skyscraper had run out of time and logged out shortly afterwards. I had just enough time to search the rest of the isle before I had to log out myself. Guess what I found just a minute or two later? Another brown leopard BSP! I could hardly believe it!

Deja Vu

I guessed that mine would be tiny, and I was right. Only 8.2 hands! 

A little farther on, I found one more wild pony, a dark bay Fell stallion with quite the winning personality (not). He was cute, though. 

I sure had fun, as brief as our adventure was. Hopefully we'll see more of Skyscraper in the future! =)