Flower Maze Revisited

Before I get to today's news, I must shine a quick spotlight on this handsome Warlander stallion. I noticed him in the auction house last night when I was auctioning some wilds, and I didn't want to see him leave the game to the foreign bidder. 

I bid a mere $5k on him, and a long minute later, he was ours. <3 I took some screenshots, tweaked his profile a bit, and then surrendered him to the humane society. 

He wasn't in the humane society this morning, so I'm hoping that naming him, changing his background color, and mentioning some of his best points in his description ended up getting him adopted. 

This morning, Bethany and I each spent some time on the Leaf Isles. She tackled Leaf, Bud, and Stem Isles aboard Uno. For all their efforts, she and Uno only found one wild pony despite having the islands almost entirely to themselves. But, the fairy rings and leaf piles were bountiful, and they found a few buried pirate treasures, so it was still worthwhile. 

Here's her cute Fell, who just happened to be quite similar in color to Uno. :)

Then it was my turn to play. Vaquero and I started out exploring the chain of 3 little isles off Stem Isle. We found a pot of gold on Seedling Isle and stood there admiring its pretty flashing rainbow for a bit before scooping it up.

Getting to two of the three little islands involves walking in slow-mo through reefs, but at least there are fish keep you company.

Seedling harbored one wild pony, this New Forest Pony. The other two islands were sadly pony-less.

We figured she would have low stats since she's not our lucky NFP color, light gray, and we were right. ;^)

As we made the lengthy return trip to Stem Isle dock, I considered not even bothering to visit Flower Isle, my least favorite of the Leaf Isles due to the dreaded Flower Maze. But, for the sake of thoroughness, I figured I might as well. 

My plan was to ride clockwise around the outside of the maze only (and not bother with the maze itself), but that went out the window once we saw this:

"Come and get me, suckers! I dare you!"

I am no expert at this maze, and the overzealous popup blocker on the computer I was using wouldn't allow me to "cheat" and use the maze map on Esroh Legends. So, it was time to haul out that trusty old magnifying glass again and keep my fingers crossed.

With some trepidation, we entered the nearest maze entrance, the one on the west side, and began wandering. To our dismay, we couldn't find our way to the buckskin pony, and instead found ourselves heading north. 

Then we stumbled across this black pony, who taunted us by staying just out of lassoing range. We weren't sure if it was inside the maze or out, so we continued to wander.


This wandering lead us to yet another pony! 

She tried to flee, but we eventually found our way to her and lassoed her.

Our wanderings then brought us upon Flower wild pony #4. We were pretty sure this one was outside the maze, so we decided it was time to follow the magnifying glass trail back out so we could go for it and (hopefully) the black pony.

The trail more or less worked. Once out, we continued our way clockwise around the perimeter of the maze and eventually found the black pony, a December look-alike. I was so excited I forgot to take a pre-capture screenshot, but here are his profile shots:

Then we found the chestnut, who turned out to be a small, weakling Grade Pony. XD

We tried entering the maze from the east entrance to see if we could get to the buckskin pony somehow that way, but no luck. So, we headed back out of the maze and down around the outside. My goal was to check that the pony was still there (since I had noticed a red dot on the mini-map earlier) and then try the west entrance again.

It was still there. I had Pepsi get off Vaquero and try to squeeze through the gap between leafy things. (I knew from past attempts it wouldn't work, but it sure looks like a person should fit be able to fit through some of these gaps...) Then, miraculously, the pony came right up to her!

Way to go, pony-whisperer Pepsi! Maybe she was just nervous of big, dark Vaquero!

Wouldn't you know it, she's actually a beautiful, blue-eyed, red roan POA, not a buckskin at all! She also has the best stats of all 6 of the ponies we found, which makes me glad I was so persistent. 

Someday I'll figure out this maze once and for all. I'm not sure why it gives me so much trouble, since my sisters and I have all gotten quite good at navigating the mountain isles' ledges and tunnels. Oh well. For today, I'm just happy I could find all the ponies without getting hopelessly lost. ;^)