Gold in the Mountains

I know we're supposed to be competing our hearts out with our club contest horse, but we took a break on Labor Day to do some mining in the eastern mountain isles. In addition to mining gems in the twisting tunnels, we always take the time to check ledges for golden eggs, lost Dutchman mines, and wild horses. We found a few of all three this time around. When it was my turn to play, Ophelia and I found this pretty golden mare:

It turned out that she was a Grade Draft Horse. While purebreed HI2 horses vary from +25 to -25 in each stat category for their breed, HI2's grade horses vary from +100 to -100. You'd think this would result in some awesome, super high skilled 6/6 grade horses, but there's a catch: grade horses' base stats start out far below purebreeds' stats. This means that even 6/6 grade horses tend to be sub par stat-wise. (I'm sure there are some 6/6ers out there that are near +100 in all 6 stat categories, but the odds of that happening are pretty slim. We've never found one and never expect to, that's for sure!) It's a shame that high stat grade ponies, saddle horses, and draft horses are so rare, because they come in a wide range of colors and have nice artwork.   

Hence, I was a bit disappointed when I discovered the pretty gold horse was a grade draft mare, but obviously we lassoed her anyway. As it turned out, she is by far the highest-stat grade horse we've ever caught. Her stats far surpass the stats of the 6/6 brown blanket appaloosa Grade Draft stallion that Felicity caught back in September 2013. She's +296 for a grade draft, which sounds ridiculously high... until you realize grade drafts can theoretically approach +600. When you add her gene stats together, you only get about 1800, while the horses in our herd tend to have gene stat totals between 2000 and 2400. So... yeah, unfortunately, her stats are nothing to get very excited about.

Still, she is, like I said, the highest stat Grade Draft we've ever encountered. Her avatar is lovely, she's amusingly huge, and she has a nice mid-range personality. It's really tempting to keep her!

Back to our contest horse, Kudos the Holsteiner, we aren't exactly putting experience on him in leaps and bounds, but we made a good effort today. At least we aren't always coming in last place anymore... today in the cutting arena, anyway. He even got his first 3 wins in cutting group III wearing our new falcon tack! No wins in group II, but here's proof he isn't always last!

Here's a look at Kudos with his new companions, which we decided to treat him with on Thursday night: Star the hedgehog, Lady the Falabella, and Charcoal the Daschund. (We just left them with the names they came with for now due to lack of inspiration.)

1,399 experience points in 13 days? Well done, sisters! Well done, Kudos! It may not come close to what the experienced competitors in our club are doing, but we should be proud of ourselves!