A Snowy St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day! It gave us an excuse to finally have Clara wear the green pants and beanie from the free Celtic set, which haven't seen the light of day before, ha ha. Not only has Clara been riding Snowy today, but it's also snowed a bit here in real life. 

Snowsecret has been getting quite the workout. He's seen most of Jorvik now, including this especially pretty spot on Paddock Island. 

He soared through his experience levels and celebrated each with his trademark levade.

 

Fittingly, he reached his max experience level this weekend: the final weekend of winter. (Vacation over, other horses! Everybody's back in the rotation.)

Some of our questing brought Clara by bus into Jorvik City, where horses can't go. We don't generally plan this ahead of time, hence Clara shows up still in full riding gear. We've discovered that while horses are not allowed, pets are. Here's Icy the fox making her way up the escalator at the mall, ha ha.

Another quest had Clara trying to help a couple get their couch into their upstairs apartment. All efforts failed, so they gave up and gave Clara the couch. It's now sitting pointlessly in our inventory. Hopefully someday it will be of use.

Clara hung out with Alex to help her record an audio tour of some noteworthy sites in the city. We found this one the most entertaining.

I know I've said it before, but I'm so glad it's Alex and Linda we are getting to know first. Maybe the other two currently missing soul riders, Lisa and Anne, won't be as annoying as they seem, but I'm not holding my breath.

Oh, so that's what she looks like without a helmet. We'd almost forgotten. XD

We worked up the nerve to finally go through the gates to Scarecrow Hill. (Linda did not come with us. Smart girl.) Then, we were promptly caught by one of the beings on brooms (turns out they're scarecrows, not witches) and dumped back outside the gates. Anticlimactic. 

So, off we galloped, Linda looking like she could slip off Snowy's rump the whole way.

We dropped her off at Silverglade's library and then galloped out to Valedale to talk to Elizabeth.

We did dig up 3 helpful book passages. Sounds like we're going to need 4 keys to get into that tomb, and I'm sure they won't be easy to find. Until next time...

In other less epic news, Star Stable introduced a new horse breed this week, the Selle Francais. All of them are quite good looking, but of course I'm most drawn to the two pintos.

Maybe they'll grow on me, but I'm still partial to the other recently-added warmblood breed, the Dutch Warmblood. The Selles spend a lot of time with their ears back while idling and do a lot of head tossing, whereas the Dutchies seem more happy and chill. I especially like the dapple gray one below.

Along with the release of the Selle Francais came a limited-time show jumping competition with new, more realistic rules. Penalties are added for knocked poles, refusals, hooves touching water in water jumps, and going over the allotted time.

I remember back when we started playing Star Stable, it came as a surprise to us that hitting jumps did not affect the end result, since it does on other horsey games we've played. So, it's not earth-shattering they want to implement realistic rules, and we'll roll with it if need be. We were also fine with it the way it was. The flashes of red and sounds of the jumps being hit were enough motivation for us to try to improve. Interestingly, the first time we tried out the new course, we jumped it totally clear. We haven't been able to do that since: always hit at least one bar. Oh well, we'll keep trying!

Our New Noble Steed

Julie was right: we could not resist the noble Lipizzaner. I saw that coming as soon as we learned Lipizzaners were being discounted. Even though this came sooner than I'd have liked, I'll admit it is good for Artie that we didn't remain a 7-horse stable for long. He was off by himself across an aisle before, and I think he's much happier now that he has a buddy in the next stall.

We ended up choosing the light gray over the fleabitten light gray. As much as we like fleabitten grays, we just couldn't say no to the classic, white marble-like baroque. 

The winning name: Snowsecret. We liked its punniness, and it seemed appropriate for a horse we took home in winter, even if we haven't been seeing much accumulating snow lately.

That heartwarming girl-meets-horse screenshot

the first ride: heading back to the stable to meet everybody

Oddly, when we entered the stable for the first time, there was no stall nameplate anywhere for Snowsecret. We were concerned and a bit afraid to log off: what if he disappeared? We took him back outside to do a few training runs, and when we re-entered the stable later, he did have a stall nameplate. Whew!

Snowsecret has been Clara's mount exclusively since his arrival, giving the other horses a vacation while we focus on getting him trained.

Here he is during a lunging session - it's been added permanently to the game now, which gets the thumbs up from us. We think it's so cute how the horses have minds of their own and sometimes choose to do things we did not ask for.

On our Saturday morning playing session, Scout stayed out of the saddlebag nearly the entire time. He must've had lots of pent-up energy!

He sure keeps up well despite those short little legs!

He even chose to stay out for many training sessions, but not this one, ha ha.

When Snowy makes it to a new experience level, he does this dressage move called a levade (standing sort of crouched on his hind legs.) So fancy!

Snowy got to see a lot of Goldenleaf Forest and Cape West Fishing Village while on quests. Here he is guiding a horse down a long dock - said horse is going to be shipped elsewhere on a boat.

We also retrieved and carefully transported a fragile box of china... only to have somebody heave it unceremoniously onto the boat.

The same chick we transported earlier wanted to tag along when we first tried out a jumping course she'd built. "Wiiii" on every jump. =) 

We've finally managed to get through the gate to Scarecrow Hill (had to borrow bolt cutters from two smugglers), but we're kind of reluctant to go in. Looks like it's going to be a real challenge getting past the witches on brooms, so we distracted ourselves with less daunting side quests instead.

Most notable was this one, where one of the previously-mentioned smugglers with a wooden leg and eyepatch (total pirate, right?) fell into the water and ran into misfortune after misfortune. First a current swept him out to sea, then he was pursued by a shark! Clara had to throw the wooden leg at the shark's nose to get him to leave. 

The misfortunes have continued. He's still currently out at sea... and apparently a very strong water treader.

Hopefully soon we work up the nerve to face Scarecrow Hill. Until then!