Tigertin's Travels

Mom may have swapped out the teddy bears in her room for the bunnies, chicks, and lambs, but it still feels like winter here. *Sighs* 

Winter is totally over in Star Stable, though: ever since the calendar turned to March, no more snow toggle. Fortunately, our winter welcome terrier did not disappear like the snow (or Frostflight's polo wraps). We had a moment of panic when we took the saddle and bridle off Frostflight and he disappeared. To our relief, we discovered that he and the saddlebag were still equipped on Frostflight - just presumably invisible due to the lack of saddle. They've now been safely transferred over to Tigertin.

Here they all are hanging out with the rehabilitating Welshie foal. 

He was quite a needy little guy.

Mom showed up right on cue once he'd fully recovered.

Happy trails! No more eating poisonous plants, either of you.

Clara may not have a foal to take care of anymore, but she's stayed busy. Here she is herding a horse back to the stables at Silverglade Manor. (Not sure why none of the communal stables have doors on the stalls...)

Here they are rescuing one of several ducks from the Silverglade Village fountain that ended up at the GED oil drilling site covered in oil.

With help from various NPC's, Clara could eventually return pristine ducks to the fountain.

And here they are searching Fort Pinta for kittens that escaped from the pet shop.

All the equines on this game ascend and descend staircases with ease. =)

Clara's progressed a little in the main quest line as well. We've wondered for some time about the imposing black horse that was in the Silverglade Manor stable, as well as the buff chick who was striding purposefully around the area. They are the same bad-news horse and rider from earlier in the story, who galloped off with stolen documents.

Bad news, clearly.

Then she made an attempt to start over with Clara and wheedled her into delivering a letter for her.

Justin Moorland freaked out, said he had to leave, and mentioned his grandfather...

Clara met up with Alex and her pony Tin-Can again. (Alex and her now-missing friend Linda blew Clara off earlier by some glowing rocks.) As predicted, Sabine is bad news.

They followed Khaan's flaming hoof prints down to the beach...

...just in time to see Justin, Sabine, and Khaan departing on an ugly steamer. 

Alex was not pleased and seems to know more than what she's telling Clara.

The investigation continued. Clara eventually found marriage documents in building ruins possibly linking the Moorlands biologically to the Baroness (the snooty old rich lady who owns Silverglade Manor.) Seems plausible, but it's still just a theory, and nobody knows yet how Sabine fits into everything.

Meanwhile, Linda is missing and possibly being held hostage in the Silverglade castle? So much drama!

All of Clara's efforts questing, training, and doing stable chores have been paying off - we've been able to shell out big virtual bucks on tack. The brown starter set didn't do a whole lot for Tigertin, so we tried to find an inexpensive matching black saddle and bridle.

We perused the global store, found a fairly basic black bridle, and bought that first. Then we bought a mid-priced "pitch black" saddle... but immediately regretted it. It appears dark brown compared to the bridle, and we also had silver vs. gold metal hardware mismatch. (You can sort-of try on tack before buying it, but it's in such a small window it's hard to tell, and we haven't been able to make the rotate feature work on our laptop...)

So, we continued saving until we had enough for one of the expensive black jumping saddles. We had a choice of what appeared to be "black shiny" and "black matte" for the same steep price. For better or for worse, we chose "black shiny." That really cleaned us out last weekend, but we think it was worth it. No more distracting "the blacks don't match" issues when already none of our pinks and purples are perfect matches, ha ha.

As you can see, we have also since splurged on some polo wraps. Again, not a perfect color match, but oh well. Tigertin might end up with multiple sets of polos to alternate between, the lucky pony.

And maybe we'll get some blue ones for Frostflight too... <3

Frostflight Makes a Friend

We've been galloping full speed ahead on our Star Stable adventure. And yes, we have also run into many solid objects and fallen from significant heights a time or two. Fortunately, Clara, Frostflight, and Scout (the tag-along terrier) seem to be indestructible. 

Here are a few screenshots to illustrate some highlights.

Rescuing shipwreck victims

Getting ready to race an escaped pony 

Meeting Luciana and her soon-to-be-a-movie-star Lusitano stallion, Sirio.

Returning a lost sheep with Luciana and Sirio

Well done, Assistant #3!

Scout posing near his mega-me on Steve's farm.

Frostflight modeling the new nautical-themed saddle we were gifted after a quest. 

Turns out the game will only let you have 10,000 Jorvik shillings on hand, which we didn't find out about until we reached 10,000 shillings way out with the hermit on South Hoof. We loaded up on hay and bought this blue striped saddle pad from the global store to bring us well back under the total. Interestingly, when we first put the new saddle on Frostflight, these mysterious matching polo wraps also appeared. Frostflight rocked them, but when we logged out and came back later, they were gone. We can't find them for sale anywhere, sadly.

Galloping with wild Welsh Ponies, NPC Madison in tow. It's amusing how they tend to gallop in sync.

Madison's first time on Nightdust, a wild Welshie. (It didn't end well.)

Frostflight's largest passenger so far, a former fisherman

Clara put lots of effort into helping fix up an abandoned old ranch into a rescue ranch. Here she is working to remove boulders from a paddock. How they got there is anyone's guess.

Embarrassing story: as we were trying to fix up the stable, we rode Frostflight into the stable looking for where the game wanted us to click to complete the repairs. We got off Frostflight and let him chill there while we kept circling around looking. We eventually figured out that we had to go up a land ramp on the side of the stable to fix it from that vantage point. We fixed the stable... but trapped Frostflight inside. Closed doors had replaced the open doorways we'd ridden through before, and we could not get to him. Not even falling through the hole in the roof worked - the game just told us we'd taken a nasty fall, warned us to be more careful, and stuck us back on the land ramp. We logged off and back on, and this brought us into the stable so that we were trapped inside with Frostflight. The only way out without leaving South Hoof was to change our home stable to this one for a significant fee, which we didn't want to do. So instead we had to use the "take me home" option for the first time and get dumped back at Moorland Stables, then figure out how to get back to South Hoof without the borrowed boat we'd been using previously. This also puzzled us for way longer than it should've and forced us to use the horse trailer to teleport us there.

We did eventually get back to South Hoof to rescue our first equine. This wild mare led Clara, Frostflight, and Scout to her sick foal in the middle of a rainstorm.

Clara's been helping care for this foal ever since. Turns out it ingested poisonous plant compounds through its mother's milk. (Yikes!) Soon they should be able to release it back to its mom.

We did eventually figure out how the Fort Pinta-South Hoof ferry works. It comes every few minutes, and when we first tried to use it, we saw no sign of a ferry and figured we were doing something wrong. (Nope, we just had to be patient.) On our first trip, this trio joined us while we were waiting. (I hope "Claire Lakeheart" didn't think we ripped off her name, ha ha.) We kept a respectful distance and did not engage, but aren't the horses pretty? =)

When we entered Starshine Ranch, a western-themed settlement, for the first time, the game shut down unexpectedly. We were able to restart and take a trail ride with this NPC, but it shut down again when we were in about the same spot later. (Maybe the game doesn't approve of us doing anything Western-related?) We got out of there and haven't been back since. 

Clara is a girl of many talents.

Gradual progress reviving the Sun Garden. Clara's had to sneak up and capture cartoony chipmunks multiple times now.

When Scout follows Clara around, he often gets himself into some amusing situations, such as perching on troughs and running along fences.

Frostflight climbed through his experience levels faster than Clara. He finally reached level 15 this weekend, which is bittersweet. He's been such a trusty steed that we knew it was going to be a little sad when he was no longer our one-and-only equine, but we think he will like having a well-deserved break and an equine companion.

We originally figured our second equine would be a breed we all love, like a Paint Horse or an Appaloosa. As it turns out, however, the game has type-specific courses that makes it more practical for #2 to be either a pony or a Baroque-y breed (its 3 Baroque-y options are Andalusian, Lusitano, and Paso Fino). Since we discovered the need for a pony first, near Fort Pinta, we agreed #2 should be a pony. Our pony options are:

Chincoteague Pony:

These come in some fun colors and are the only American pony breed, but we're not huge fans of their heads. This took them out of the running.

Connemara Pony:

The Connemara was Mom's favorite pony breed as she was growing up. They're out of the running for now as well, unfortunately, because Clara would have do go up several experience levels before they're available. The one above is an NPC named Lynx (the pony we raced earlier), who lives at Moorland Stables.

Gotland Pony:

Perhaps the cutest SSO pony breed. 

Gotlands were recently on sale, and we've seen quite a few of these around.

Jorvik Pony:

Also adorable and come in some fun colors. Because of this and because they're readily available (relatively inexpensive, no player level restrictions), we've seen many of these around as well.

Welsh Pony:

As already mentioned, Welshies run wild on South Hoof peninsula, though they seem to be the less attractive older-generation ones. According to the hermit who helps care for them, the ones for sale on the game are formerly wild Welshies who've decided they prefer the domestic life, and the adoption fee goes towards helping the wild Welshies. For this reason, choosing the Welshie would be the obvious sentimental choice. However, we don't care much for these ponies' aloof eyes...

Zony:

Ydris the magician/circus master created this one from a Jorvik Pony using magic. Its forehead glows magenta at times. It is described as headstrong with a voracious appetite, which is not especially endearing, but it is undeniably cute.

Vega:

Ydris created this pony with magic as well, by wrapping a blanket of stars around a Jorvik Pony. Its forehead and blue eyes glow aqua periodically. This one is described more positively: as dreamy.

Can you guess which pony we chose? 

It may come as a shock, since none of us are really into pink or headstrong munchers, but we chose the Zony! 

It was a tough decision, and we may eventually purchase a Vega as well since they go so well together. In the end, the Zony's darker coloring (more of a contrast after staring at mostly-white Frostflight for so long) and less extreme glowing effect won out. Mom recently had a nightmare that involved ghosts and blue light, which also helped tip the scales in the Zony's favor.

Here she is in the starry magenta saddlepad we picked out for her in advance! <3 Let the training begin! 

We bandied about quite a few name possibilities, such as "Shadowrose," "Raspberryglow," and "Fernberry," but "Tigertin" ended up winning the vote. Strange, maybe, but it makes us think of a fancy tin with a picture of tigers on the outside and striped cookies on the inside, which seemed appropriate.