Festival Fun

Felicity was the birthday girl this past Friday! It was a chilly April 21 here, but our flowering tree was in full bloom to help celebrate, thanks to a stretch of abnormally warm weather the previous week.

On Star Stable, no, we did not go rouge and buy a 4th horse, even though Desertdash reached level 15 at lightning speed thanks to the Equestrian Festival that's been going on. The payouts for completing its daily tasks are quite generous relative to usual day-to-day activities, so we've been staying up past our bedtime to do them on weeknights. We've even taken part in a couple of championship races, which are not our favorites. 

Generally, we finish near the bottom, but we got a 6th place once, which we were quite proud of, ha ha.

An updated version of the Lippizaner was introduced during week 2 of the festival, and boy are we tempted to buy one! If they'd been limited edition or on sale, we'd likely have fallen for it. So far, as I said, we've been sticking to our resolve to wait until May. It's tough, though, admiring so many players riding around on their decked-out chunky Lippizaners. And riding all these courses where we could be racking up horsey experience...

We do really want one of these eventually! Lippizaners have a special place in our hearts due to their incredible airs above the ground. Mom saw them perform in person when she was little and was highly impressed. Horse #4? We're thinking maybe the fleabitten one, since there's something so special about a big, pale Baroque, but we love them all so much!

Along with the Lippizaner, a daily dressage test was introduced on the game for what is apparently the first time. This test was super stressful for us initially - so bad we had to throw in the towel on several evenings. You originally train with arrows guiding the way on the ground throughout, but for the actual test, all you get are periodic markers indicating a gait and/or pattern change. The test is fairly simple and stays the same day-to-day, so theoretically it should have been do-able, but the circles... It's 3 strikes, you're out, and we could not ride acceptable circles to save our lives. I don't know if Star Stable worked out some glitches, or lowered the difficulty, or if the YouTube tutorial video we watched was a game-changer, or it it's some combo of these things, but we're consistently making it through the circles now. Whew! Tigertin even has achieved a perfect score twice now.

It seemed highly appropriate that when we'd finally completed enough festival activities to impress the Baroness, Tigertin was Clara's mount.

They were all quite excited about it, as you can see. (Well, maybe not Scout. It's hard to tell, as well as he blends into the sand...)

Yay, participation ribbon! We'll take it.

There is a wagon to whisk you quickly between the Moorland festival grounds and the Jorvik festival grounds, where the bulk of the events go on. Some player managed to get their horse into the wagon, which we found impressive.

 

Much more impressive than us accidentally herding a cow through the solid walls of that barn over there. Needless to say, we had to start that task over.

We've been more careful since.

There is also a trailer to quickly transport you from the Moorland festival grounds to a relaxed, go-at-your-own-pace mountainous trail ride in Firgrove. 

You follow the posts, which spontaneously torch when you ride close, then tie the red string to a line at the end. It's advertised as being different each day, which has been the case for us so far. On our first day, we saw a tree fall in the woods and walked part of the trail with the circus dude, Ydris. Yesterday, we saw a wolf. We rode close to it hoping to get a good screenshot, thinking it would be like the nice, do-nothing predators on HI3. Instead, we got this warning message about it attacking us and to be more careful. Oops. Sorry, Desertdash! Random objects have fallen from the sky each day as well. On today's ride, it was a potato. XD

A second non-usual Arabian also showed up at the festival for purchase:

The camera angle on this is not good - we promise it's a normal sized Arabian, but you get the idea. Oof, Desertdash, you're lucky we didn't know about this one when we were Arabian shopping! So pretty!

We're excited to spend our festival tokens on fun gear, but we're waiting until closer to the end of the festival, when we have a better idea how much we can afford. Unfortunately, a lot of the festival tack doesn't fit Frostflight or Tigertin, and there are a few saddle pads that don't even fit Desertdash (who do they fit, I wonder?) We'll still probably get most of it for Desertdash and future horses, as cool as it is!

A few samplings:

There are also 2 cute terriers for sale for star coins (the same currency used to buy horses). <3 Also super tempting - so much cuteness! Good thing neither of these guys had a magenta bandana (to go with Tigertin's glow), or we'd likely have blown some serious star coins! The white one would go fairly well, though...

Clearly, Scout is not impressed.