Hephaestus's Horseshoes

Well, as Felicity told you last time, we did finally tackle the Esroh Hephaestus's quest! It was a group effort, hence you will see various horses starring in the screenshots. 

But first a little background. We satisfied Hep's guardian's requirement of 250 pieces each of gold, silver, copper, and iron ore years ago. However, we had been stalled out since on Hep's requirement, which is to have horses shod by the farrier 100 times. Since we hardly ever compete, we don't shoe many horses. It seemed wasteful to us to shoe horses for no reason, so we didn't. 

Fast forward a few years, and we had still only visited the farrier about 70 times. We still don't care much for competing, and most of the time lately there are so few players online that we're guessing the arenas are pretty dead anyway. After occasionally spending millions of dollars on horses, though, buying 30 sets of unnecessary horseshoes no longer seems so unreasonable. XD So, Felicity gave the farrier a real workout and had him shoe approximately 30 of our unshod horses in rapid succession.

Finally, we were ready to begin the most exciting part of the quest, finding Hep's 4 missing platinum horseshoes!

PepsiSummer made the long slog underwater through the reef to Harbor Isle, where Hep's sinkhole is, to talk to Hep. Over the next few days, we had to make several more excruciatingly slow treks through that reef. We collected more seaweed and crafted more nori than I care to remember.

Hep told us that the first horseshoe was buried behind one of the blacksmith shops. Which one would it be? Julie took a stab at it first. She tried the NarrowTon blacksmith shop first, naturally. 

No one can accuse us of not being thorough. XD

Nope, that would've been too easy. She and Shady tried the PlainTon blacksmith shop next.

No. Solo and I proceeded to dig up the ground around MeadowTon's blacksmith shop...

...and then AngleTon's blacksmith shop with no luck either.

Felicity and Vinca then travelled to DryTon and found the horseshoe on their first dig behind the blacksmith shop, the lucky ducks.

Felicity travelled triumphantly back to Harbor Isle to return the first horseshoe to Hep and get the clue about the next one. Shoe #2 was buried at the center of an isle starting with the letter B.

Since Bend Isle was in the Narrowed island complex, Felicity figured it would be logical to start there. She rode Vinca out towards the center, dug one hole by the Wabbit & Turt game, and voila, second horseshoe!

Wow, that was easy!

After returning the second horseshoe to Hep, we learned that shoe #3 was buried somewhere on Arid Isle. This was definitely going to be tedious, no way around it - Arid is a big island. I made the executive decision to start on the far right of the island and systematically began digging up the island from right to left in north-to-south and south-to-north lines. Why right to left? Because I didn't want us to deal with the sand dunes and pyramid in the big bulgy part of the island if we didn't have to - it's annoying enough trying to ride straight lines with only smaller objects in the way.

Again, aren't you impressed (and maybe a little scared) by our thoroughness? What can I say? We really didn't want to have to do this over.

Flora and I made it back even to the dock house without finding anything, and we all called it a day.

Bethany and Julie took turns at searching later on too, always keeping careful track of where they stopped - we weren't leaving that island until we found that horseshoe! Turns out I picked the wrong side of the isle to start with, though. We ended up having to deal with both the dunes and the pyramid. And we never found a single wild horse, other than the two we fluted while we were there roasting. In the end, it was Felicity again who found the horseshoe. It was - of course - way on the far left side, totally clear of the pyramid and sand dunes. I was more relieved than annoyed, though. I'd actually started to worry that we weren't going to find it with our systematic ride, that maybe the location of the shoe changes with each log in. 

Yay, Felicity and Galileo!

We returned the third shoe to Hep, and he told us we'd have to search the various libraries around HI2 to figure out where to look for the last shoe. Off we went. We each got a turn at searching a library with no success.

I found nothing in the NarrowTon Library,

Julie came up empty in the PlainTon library,

Bethany struck out at the MeadowTon library,

and Felicity found nothing but an interesting (not relevant) note in the AngleTon library.

It was my turn to tackle a library again, so I tried the DryTon library. Finally, in the 6th bookcase, I found it, the legend of the platinum shoes! If you haven't done this quest yet and want there to be some surprise when you tackle it, stop reading now!

You've been warned!

Yetta and I travelled back to Harbor Isle as quickly as we could. It took 4 holes, but then we had it, the 4th and final horseshoe!

We moved closer and learned from the master. Our horses' horseshoes will now last twice as long! So, I guess it's not such a bad thing that we have tons of horses wearing 100% unworn horseshoes now, especially since one of the Esrohs we have yet to see is Ares. (His guardian requires 250 competition entries before letting someone meet him. And, with our luck, one of the random tasks he will give us after that will be winning competitions. I have a feeling this will take us way longer than digging up nearly all of Arid Isle.)

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We still have tons of non-Esroh quests to complete too!