Whale on Land and Moose in Lake

It took some time, but I eventually convinced my sisters to part with Vice Versa, the oversized palomino pony, since his stat total didn't make 900 and his personality wasn't stellar. 900 seems to be a pretty good benchmark, since so far we don't find them very often.

I am pushing for this to become our unofficial policy: that unless a wild has an awesome personality and is exceptionally cute/good looking, we will not consider keeping it unless its stat total is over 900. So far, my sisters seem to be on board with me.

Not long after parting with Vice Versa, we found another interesting stallion, this time in the savanna at dusk. Check him out!

He's a huge 18-hander, his conformation seems pretty normal, he has a cool facial marking, and his stats are over 900! Nice!

However, he is skittish and ornery like Vice Versa, only his "ornery" is even more extreme. We found this out when Pepsi tacked him up and rode him. He bucked poor Pepsi off every few minutes. She is impervious to injury, thank goodness, but Julie and Bethany agreed with me that of all the negative personality traits a horse can have on this game, being ornery enough to buck Pepsi off is our least favorite. Felicity was unwilling to agree yet, since we haven't had much experience with extremely stubborn ones or extreme leader ones to know how annoying they are, but I don't really see how they can be worse. Getting thrown off is not only embarrassingly obvious to any nearby players but also quite inconvenient, as you are too far from the horse to do a 1-key remount and have to walk back over to it.

As you may have noticed from the above screenshots, White Walker is a tobiano. His spots are even more minimal than Cloud's, though, and are best viewed from above:

It sort of looks like a whale that's blown a little cloud of warm air from its blowhole.

Sadly, you wouldn't even know he's a tobiano when Pepsi rides him. Saddle pads and blankets almost totally cover the whale.

For being 18 hands, he doesn't actually seem that enormous when Pepsi rides him. It's nothing like when she rode our tallest wild to date, this 19.1 hand bog horse:

Pepsi looks tiny on this maneless giant, who was amusingly named "Arabian Dancer!" XD

This leads me to the second half of what I think our policy should be when deciding whether or not to keep a horse. Even if the horse's stats are over 900, personality and appearance should still be very important in our deliberations. We can be a little more forgiving with over 900's than with under 900's, but no extreme orneries unless everything else is amazing. Infinitum amulets are way too expensive to be used lightly! 

So, what about Heat Wave, the lazy silver bay Hotblood? We have kept him around and given him our last infinitum amulet to halt his aging, but we still aren't 100% sure about him. We're waiting to see if another wild that we like even more comes along before the end of the year before we totally commit. (If it was just up to me, we'd have sold him already so that we can keep our entire focus on our original four, but it's not just up to me.)

*Sighs* He is cute. I'll give him that. XD He seems small after White Walker, though.

It used to be that the only animals on HI3 were equines and rabbits, but that recently changed. HI3 is now home to a variety of other critters that are specific to the different biomes. The prey animals flee if you approach on horseback or on foot, but the large predators stand their ground and turn to face you. 

So far, we've encountered:

cheetah

deer

elk

fox (and yes, that's White Walker's head)

mountain lion

brown wolf

dark wolf

tiger

snow tiger

moose

We are happy to have them all on the game, even though so far they serve no purpose other than looking cool. The only downside is that from a distance, it's easy to confuse the larger ones for wild horses, leading to lots of unfruitful veering off from our intended course.

Thankful for Horse Isle 3

December may just have begun, but it's felt like winter for us for some time already. Mom's been practicing Christmas songs for the church program since October, and we had some major snow for a stretch in early November. After a break from the snow but not from the gloomy gray skies, we got another big dump of snow early this morning to ring in December. *Sighs.* Good thing there's Christmas ahead to lift our spirits.

HI3 has also been a great way to help keep our spirits up.

We finally figured out how to rotate the "camera" around PepsiSummer to view her riding from different angles, which is quite entertaining. For fun, here is Pepsi riding each horse:

Here is the stable so far. We added on a 3rd section to make room for temporarily holding more wilds. Felicity isn't super thrilled about the lavender, but we think it looks nice next to the lavender pool. The green she wanted wasn't enough contrast for us - it looked like moss.

We're realizing too late that it wasn't the best decision to select such a sloped parcel of land to build on. Since then, we discovered a larger lavender pool not that far away with flat surrounding land. Figures, right? Oh well, we'll stick with our little patch of arrogant damp rainforest for now. (We'd better be sure we show proper respect to these particular giant sequoias!)

Now to share with you a some cool wilds we've encountered lately.

A few days before Thanksgiving, we lassoed a spotted wild mare named "Butterball" on the edge of some badlands.

We loved her coat, her size, and how agile she was. However, we were bummed that she had no mane. I don't think it's a good look on pretty much any horse, especially not on a mare. That and her laziness (appropriate of a "Butterball," though) made it easier not to get attached. 

While exploring a wonderland region near dusk, we found another noteworthy mare, Gabriella. The timing was a bit eerie, because we could hear our aunt watching High School Musical: The Series in the next room when we caught her.

At first glance, she seems pretty great, right? Really cool coat and markings and fun two-tone mane. She holds her ears out to the sides a little bit naturally, which is also pretty cute.

She's a "silvery grulla silver," which means she is a silvery shade of grulla (dun on black) and also has the silver gene, which dilutes black pigment on a horse. (In this case, her would-be black mane and tail turned a silvery color.) So she's sort of double silver. Fancy! She also has a unique exactly 900 genetic stat total. 

Her personality isn't stellar, but none of the left-side ones are extreme enough to cause much trouble when ridden in normal conditions. 

Lily wants us to fully train and get special tack (or at least saddle pads) for all 4 horses we currently have before taking in any more, which will take ages. Felicity, Julie, and I were thinking we'd probably have to disappoint Lily and insist on keeping this one anyway. But then we realized that Gabriella shakes her head and pins her ears back when Pepsi approaches. Not exactly endearing. She also has an oddly crested neck and holds her abnormally long head in an odd position when being ridden.

She's actually somewhat typical for a horse found in the wonderland biome according to the library:

Rare color: check. Ostentatious stance: check. And even though her personality chart shows she's not especially antisocial, she still totally does the ear pinning thing. Sadly, she's not gaited, nor is she very intelligent.

Sorry, Gabriella. You're a bit too fancy for us.

Then, on Thanksgiving Day itself, we found quite a few wild equines in the fjord highlands near our ranch. One of them was this palomino stallion:

 This is an action shot of him lowering his head to graze. He holds his head low, but not this low. ;^)

We think he's adorable (now that's a mane!) and appreciate how evenly distributed his genetic stats are. He's built like a pony and was labelled a Grade Pony, but he's actually just tall enough to be considered a horse.

Interesting. Very interesting. Gryff looks like a horse and was labelled as a Grade Pleasure Horse, but he's an inch too short. Now we find this guy who looks like a pony but is an inch too tall.

Here he is under saddle:

Yep, super cute.

Then, on the last day of November, we found a fourth cool horse in the volcanic region near Where the Drafts Go Village. 

(Sidenote: this village is built on a smoking caldera. Good thing we have Gryff, because this is very scary!)

I'm not sure if he is from the volcanic region, the strangled fig forest, or the swamp, because when we found him we were right on the verge of all three, and it was the middle of the night. Had we not stopped and swerved from our course to solve a riddle box, we probably would never have seen him.

Like Cloudburst (and Gabriella), he is a silver, but his silver is on a wild bay base. His only white marking is a small white star like Starfleet's, his mane is the same length as Gryff's, and it turns out he gets the same breed designation as Windfall: Grade European Hotblood. 

Aside from being mildly skittish, he doesn't really live up to the "Hotblood" designation. He's a lazy slowpoke. Otherwise, he seems like a pretty great horse. And he looks great, which is clearly not a given for above-average-stat HI3 wilds.

Here he is under saddle: 

Yay, no weird head carriage here either. 

Hmm, it's going to be hard to part with both of these guys!

Birthday Horse Contest Winners 2019

Finally, it's time to decide the winners of what was probably our last HI2 birthday flute contest. It's rather sad that this might be it, yes, but it's not all that likely we'll be spending much time there now that our sub has expired. The lag, which used to only be an issue for us in forests, has gotten worse and is quite annoying. *Sighs.* There's nothing stopping us from doing a similar contest on HI3 next year, though. Maybe with the first wild horse caught on our birthdays?

Okay, enough of my rambling. Let's get to the winners!

Category 1:
Fluted wild that looks the most like the horse on Mom's calendar

The winner is Julie's Shagya! It's far from a perfect match, but the horses have the same base color, chestnut. That was all it took this year.

My Swedish Warmblood (perlino tobiano) wasn't that terribly far off from my palomino, but the spots vs no spots and different eye colors counted against them. Bethany's Sugarbush Draft (buckskin blanket appaloosa) and pale palomino were pretty dissimilar, as were Lily's Gelderland (dapple gray) and palomino. (Side note: what's with all the palominos on Mom's calendar? They're nice looking horses and all, but isn't variety the spice of life?)


Category 2:
Fluted wild with the prettiest/handsomest profile artwork

All four of our flutes were quite good-looking this year! First place ended up a tie between my Swedish Warmblood and Julie's Shagya Arabian. (The risk you take when there are 4 judges.) Let's just say my flute gets the prettiest profile artwork prize:

and Julie's gets the handsomest profile artwork prize:

Category 3:
Fluted wild with the coolest avatar

We unanimously awarded this one to Bethany's Sugarbush Draft. <3 It doesn't get much cooler than buckskin with a frosty rump.

If my Swedish Warmblood had had a tail that matched her cool orangey-gold mane, it would've been harder to choose between the two!

There were no boring or unattractive avatars in the bunch this year. Third place is a tie again, this time between Julie's Shagya:

and Lily's dapper dappled Gelderland:

Category 4:
Fluted wild with the best personality

Bethany's flute was the clear winner. Interestingly, 3 of the 4 flutes were "Unique" personalities this year. Julie's broke the mold with the "Drill Sergeant" personality label. 

My flute was a not-so-distant second, also with 3 traits on the desired right side of the chart.

Category 5:
Fluted wild with the highest sum of stats for its breed

My flute crushed the competition with an impressive +54 total!

Second went to Bethany's Sugarbush with a +12.

Julie's Shagya squeaked into third with a -12.

Lily's Gelderland came in last with a -13. Sorry, Lily!

The competition was fierce in this category this year. Last year the totals ranged from a mere +5 (Bethany's) to -82 (Julie's.) 

Category 6:
Fluted wild with the highest total sum of stats

My flute wins yet again with a stat total of 2254! 

Julie's Shagya squeaked into second with a 2238 stat total. 

Bethany's Sugarbush is just barely in third with a 2237 stat total.

Lily's Gelderland is fourth again. 

And now for two more random categories we decided to add for fun.

Category 7:
Fluted wild that coordinated best with the dog of the day on Mom's calendar

Bethany's Sugarbush wins!

Yay for spots!

Category 8:
Most Intelligent Fluted Wild

Let's hear it for Lily's Gelderland! We think he ought to win something after how much it cost to flute him. XD

Bethany's and my flutes have tied with 3 wins each, so we are the winners! We're not sure what the prizes are going to be, now that HI2 is so laggy. Maybe we can each choose something to build next on our HI3 ranch? Or we could concentrate on doing something special for Star and Gryff first, like getting them their own tack or stat training them first. Hmm...

Before we get totally sucked back into HI3, though, I have to mention what happened on November 15, during literally the last few minutes of our expensive monthly subscription. Julie had logged on to flute one last wild horse. Roughly 2 minutes remained before the sub expired. Not knowing if the sub expiration would immediately take effect, she and Ravine hurried to a non-Ton island and played that flute (sound on so we could hear the effect one last time.)

It was a pale horse whose avatar reminds us of Zephyr's, one of our first +6/6 wilds.

This horse, however, was not a cremello sabino APH, but a fancy "golden ivory champagne" sabino Mangalarga Marchador! Behold:

Wouldn't you know it, he had great +6/6 stats too: they add up to +85!

Turns out the sub expiration did not immediately go into effect - it doesn't do so until you log out and log back in. This means we had some time to ride around the very handsome Manga and dig up some pirate treasures on Narrowed Isle. 

I don't know if HI2 was thanking us for the 6+ years we faithfully played or was trying to get us to re-subscribe, but at any rate it certainly got our attention. XD Maybe it will motivate us to resubscribe for a while once the novelty of HI3 has worn off a bit. We'll see...