Seriously Spooky

It wasn't easy, but in the end, we did come to an agreement and picked our sixth horse! Meet Riverrock the Paso Fino! We brought him home on the last day of the bazaar.

We all love him! He is every bit as happy and baroque-like as we'd hoped, and it's been great fun riding around a dark, spider-webbed, flowing-maned horse during the Halloween event. The other horses are getting a well-deserved rest in our spooky stable while River takes advantage of all the horsey experience from the Halloween-themed games.

Every time we enter our stable right now, this ghost mare and foal slowly walk through. This took us by surprise the first time, that's for sure!

The Halloween-themed festivities center around Galloper's Keep, spooky floating islands that can be accessed via various portals throughout Jorvik.

A few take place in Goldenhills Valley, including our least favorite, a daily magic pumpkin-themed hide-and-seek game. First you have to find the big pumpkin, which is challenging enough, and then you have to find all three well-camouflaged little gourds somewhere vaguely nearby, which we find nearly impossible. We successfully completed it once and fortunately got the sought-after reward, a pale green gourd pet, on our first try. We haven't been able to find the third gourd every time we've attempted it since, so we've stopped bothering.

We can also throw various ingredients into a huge, bubbling cauldron and be rewarded with gifts. It's usually random items from "the haunted dressage set" or temporary special effect potions for your starter horse. The rarest gift is a cute tabby cat wearing a witch's hat. (Can you imagine tack, clothing, or a cat popping out of this green soup? XD Maybe I'm over-thinking this.) 

After brewing quite a few potions, we were super excited to finally find the cat this morning!

Some of the other daily games include:

A race through memory fragments of Galloper, the headless horseman

(You are temporarily the headless horseman on his scary fire horse.)

My favorite memory is of this one, which contains a giant dog head that makes deep noises.

a race up Scarecrow Hill, where we are frequently struck by electric-charged ravens

a pac-man style game where you collect all the pumpkins while avoiding the ghosts

and last but not least, The Haunted Trail Ride

It starts out similar to the Red String Trail Ride: go at your own pace, follow the torches, take your time to explore. We found it much easier to go astray and get lost, however.

probably our favorite Halloween-themed special horse spotted "in the wild"

These funji-inspired ones are also pretty cool, though

My favorite part is the ghostly animals you can "cuddle" along the way.

The donkey is my favorite because it will offer to accompany you on the rest of the ride, which we always take it up on.

Not so cute are the dangerous animals that chase you through a winding mountain pass. (If they catch you, you're spit back out at the entrance to the pass and have to try again.)

giant black cat

giant spider

giant snake

very large wolf (not as giant as the others, but every bit as effective)

We're still working on collecting all the materials needed for the remaining 2 free Halloween pets, a white raven and a black raven with a skull-like face. (We'd have preferred no skull, but whatever, we're not going to pass up a free pet!)

Ghost ravens helped us out with locating the special stones we'll need. We're just trying to gather sufficient "unbroken bones" now.

It's been pretty fun overall, despite having to deal with the ever-present lag and Milton's fan whirring away on turbo most of the time. We're very grateful again for YouTubers' guides - we'd probably not have gotten any of the free pets without them!

Like Star Stable, nature has been getting into the Halloween spirit here: chilly air, lots of rain and gloom, and dramatically changing leaves. Our sassafras trees are currently looking as neon as our gourd pet!

We're getting into the Halloween spirit ourselves as well: here we are trying on our Hogwarts student costumes in anticipation of the big night. 

We love having an excuse to bring our owl and cat pets along to our Dolloween party. <3

Have a great end of October, everybody!

Should we roll a dice?

After a lovely if unexpected stretch of summer in October (sunny, 80's), it's back to reality here. We took an abrupt nosedive into lots of rain and 50's. Mom seems to think our roller coaster is done with the big uphills, because she's swapped out the warm weather apparel in her closet for cold weather apparel: so many sweaters! 

Star Stable's birthday event is over. We never did shoot off any of the fireworks we were given, but we did make out with some nice lavender-themed tack and clothing, some of which is below:

We usually save the purples and pinks for the mares, but occasionally Des and Frosty get to rock them too. =)

We were expecting Star Stable to roll immediately into a Halloween-themed event afterwards, but we're getting a week of the traveling bazaar instead.

It looks like there will be no ghostly Lipizzaner in our near future after all. Sorry, you big baroque chunkers! 

So, instead of facing the conundrum of light gray Lipizzaner vs fleabitten gray Lipizzaner, we're faced with a way more difficult decision. Four breeds are being offered at steep discounts at the bazaar for one week only, and all of them are fantastic! We would've been excited for any one of them to be on sale. How are we going to choose just one?

The contenders, from left to right, are: Paso Fino, Gotland Pony, Tennessee Walker, and Finnhorse. 

We seriously considered buying a Paso Fino as our second equine, as there was a sale on them at the time. They have gorgeous manes that flow very pleasingly at high speeds. Our favorite of all the color options is the lacy seal brown. 

They have both a special gait, the paso largo:

and a special trick, the classic fino, which looks like rapid stepping in place.

They were also released recently enough to be able to wear pretty much all of the types of tack on the game.

This would be an appropriate Halloween horse, since the lacing looks a bit like cobwebs. However, I'm not sure how much of it "shows" once the horse has a saddle blanket on. (Excuse to ride bareback?)

We remember being tempted by a sale on the adorable Gotland Pony early on in our Star Stable adventure as well. Our favorite, the mealy bay, is probably the most popular Gotland color on game, but it's just so cute that we'd be a little sad getting any other color. 

This one would be Tigertin's pick, so she would have somebody her size in the stable. Though, it would probably make us less likely to add Vega, the other magical zony, to the herd anytime soon. The new player characters are larger than the old ones, and while Star Stable did a pretty good job of not making them look ridiculous on the ponies, we still feel like Clara's a bit big for them.

This is the only one of the 4 breeds that does not have a special move, but it's also the least expensive.

If you'd asked me when we first learned which 4 breeds would be on sale which one we'd pick, I'd probably have told you the Tennessee Walker was a shoo in. These guys are big, lanky, and come in some awesome colors, especially the red roan pinto.

Their regular gaits are lovely, and they also have a special gait, the running walk:

Like the Paso Fino, they were added recently enough to the game that I think pretty much everything will fit them. Unlike the Paso Fino, they have not ever been on sale before while we've been playing, which sort of makes it more exciting. 

The only thing that makes us hesitate on the breed is that they spend some time looking tired/yawning when idle, which is preferable to all-out dozing like the Appaloosa but still isn't our fave. (Brighty already is a big yawner.)

The last in the lineup is the unlikely Finnhorse. It is older than the Paso Fino and Tennessee Walker on the game and so is likely in the same boat as Frosty and Tiger when it comes to tack limitations. 

It's not as elegant or cute as the others. At first glance, I found them somewhat unimpressive and chunky-looking. As we were going down the line of color options, none of us were sold. (Cute but nothing special.) Then we came to the last option, a super fun black/chestnut mosaic, and the breed entered the running after all. 

The Finnhorse's special trick is lying down, like MagicMirror.

So, which one should we choose? (Because Lily is definitely NOT going to let us blow a bunch of star coins on more than one equine in the same week, as fun as that would be...)

Paso Fino and Tennessee Walker: normally 950 star coins, on sale for 570 star coins, 380 star coins saved

Gotland Pony: normally 750 star coins, on sale for 450 star coins, 300 star coins saved

Finnhorse: normally 850 star coins, on sale for 510 star coins, 340 star coins saved

Do we go with the best discount, cheapest, or middle of the road? We'll let you know next time!