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!