Rainbows and Nightdust

Pandapie made it to level 15 on the final day of Camp Western!

No downtime between events this time: Star Stable launched into its Rainbow Festival the following day.

As you can see, the festival is based in Fort Pinta this year rather than the grassy expanses outside Moorland. The decorations are fun, but we've found the festival underwhelming otherwise: no Cloud Kingdom or rainbows to chase like last year. Instead, all we got were some very short intro quests, and nothing much since. There are many fun rainbow-themed items for sale, but with no token system, special races, or other special daily tasks, they're too expensive for us to reasonably purchase very many. 

One other fun thing is the "parade route" on the road between Moorland and Fort Pinta, where there are decorative trellises, some happy NPC bystanders, and small celebratory fireworks every hour. The highlight of this so far for me has been this random levitating bystander. XD

It's fun having an excuse to bring out the rainbow tack too: both in celebration of Pride Month and also just because I've always liked rainbows. 

We're doing what we can to make shillings quickly in the short periods we're able to play, such as: 

Stable chores at whichever settlements we pass through

Boogying at the revamped Fort Pinta disco. (25 shillings for just a brief period of dancing, and you can repeat it as many times as you want! However, it's pretty repetitive, so we don't linger that long.)

Daily fishing. 

We're much better at clicking at the right time now than when we started.

Running the relatively new Tumbleweed Rodeo and Dances with Chickens training races at Starshine Ranch. You can do these as many times as you want for 50 and 75 Jorvik shillings, respectively. They definitely take more brainpower than the disco, but again, we do not excessively repeat them to keep things from getting dull.

And yes, we still steel ourselves and compete in championships occasionally. Lately we seem to be getting fourth place quite a bit, which is always a little sad but better for our egos than dead last. We've also lucked out twice and stumbled into championships with only two other entrants, guaranteeing ourselves a ribbon so long as we don't go off course and/or take too long.

Hence, Tigertin came in last (we hit so many moving obstacles!) but still was awarded a bronze at New Hillcrest:

And Brightbeam galloped her way to silver at Silverglade against two lower-level horses:

As you've seen in many of the previous screenshots, we've already bought Clara a rainbow-themed t-shirt to go with the rainbow tack we bought last year. We're hoping we'll scrounge together enough shillings for a rainbow halter for Panda and the new striped pastel saddle pad and matching sweater. Realistically, that's probably all we're going to manage, but we'd really like the white and rainbow saddle pad too! Too bad it's so expensive.

You got a little sneak peak in Brighty's silver screenshot of one of the two new rainbow-themed horses available for purchase now, but here they are closer up. 

On the far left is Bronte, and on the far right is Serenus. They are sister and brother with a sad backstory: Bronte is indirectly responsible for poor Serenus's damaged, no longer functional wings. In the background are the rainbow-themed horses we remember from last year, Tenebri and Prisma. All four are cool, but none of them particularly speak to us. Tiger and Artie will remain our only magical equines for now.

In other Star Stable news, we finally worked up the resolve to finish the "save Nightdust" quest. To our relief, we did not do any more perpetual falling through solid ground. It took a few redos, but we did eventually lead the rampaging bad-man-turned-monster away from the ice cream parlor and out to the harbor. 

At the harbor, we found a convenient cage to lure him into. This part took us many painful attempts. Painful because if we failed and he caught us, we couldn't simply try again right away. Instead, we'd be taken to a screen with Tigertin in a random stall with no way out. This forced us to log off and log back in, where we'd find ourselves back at the bus stop with Tigertin. We'd then have to take the bus to the harbor and run on foot all the way back to the scene of the action. 

Annoying, but we persisted, and eventually...

Success!

Ours either, Erik. 

Clara guided the horses onto the waiting ferry...

...and away they all went, escaping in the nick of time...

...just before someone even worse arrived on the scene, "Darko."

I'm sure we'll see more of him - and monster Mr. Anwir - in the future. *Sighs*

For now, though, the horses and ponies are safe back on South Hoof. 

This includes Nightdust, though something strange happened to him upon his return...

Madison and Clara brought him to the hermit, who was surprised but not unduly alarmed.

So, if I'm connecting the dots correctly, Nightdust is magical, which would explain why he could survive and overcome the serum when other equines hadn't. However, the serum seemed to damage his "cloaking ability," so now he will be blue and shimmery all the time. That's not so bad - I think he's even cuter this way. <3 Madison is a lucky kid.