Our epic treasure hunt continued with a search for the remaining three special stones.
Tigertin was Clara's mount for the Earth Stone search.
It was appropriate they were decked out in purple that day!
Eveningecho arrived in time to be Clara's mount for the Moss Stone:
And my favorite, the Star Stone:
They were sent back to the rune stone circle near Silverglade to complete the mountain opening ritual with the special stones.
Clara followed the instructions, though it took some trial and error to determine which stone holders were closer than others. (Fortunately, the game was forgiving and let her have redos.)
They sure had a lot to tell James!
Clara didn't bother arguing with him.
Evie got so much exercise this day! One long gallop out to Firgrove later...
Ha ha, this serves James right!
My goodness, what a lot of effort for a hat! Oh well, it was a fun adventure, and we got some Jorvik shillings out of it too.
Eveningecho continued to tour Jorvik in the weeks that have followed. She slowly, steadily made her sparkling way through the the experience levels.
One weekend evening, we interacted with other players for once in the Moorland and Fort Pinta areas. We went on several trail rides and even participated in a brief show. It gave us a glimpse into how fun being more social on the game can be. Usually we don't have long to play and/or are very focused on whatever it is we're doing, so we don't really make an effort to talk to anybody, and nobody talks to us either. It was cool to be included for once.
Evie got to try out most of the championship courses during her training, and she even won a couple of bronze and silver ribbons.
She also spent considerable time dozing dockside while Clara went fishing. (We have still definitely not mastered the fine art of clicking at just the right moment to catch the fish.)
One other noteworthy development: we "bought" Clara a new hairstyle after noticing it in one of the barber shops. As nice as her hair looks down, who doesn't want the option to put it up? We're probably going to invest in a few other hairstyles in the near future to add more variety to her life.
Star Stable's big birthday event last year involved cake baking and a few races, as we recall. We got something totally different this year, for Star Stable's 13th birthday: the intro of a Medieval Fair-themed area to the Forgotten Fields. It's a cool little area: colorful tents, NPC's standing and walking around in medieval garb, and of course a jousting arena.
We're with you there, Big Bonnie.
Love the idea. I was somewhat disappointed by the houses themselves, though.
Unicorns are the coolest, so at first glance, we figured we'd have Clara choose this house. However, they seem rather hoity-toity, and we are pretty sure all that scent would give us a headache. So, no Cerise Unicorns for us.
Nope. So not Clara, and the snarly wolf crest is not doing anything for us either. Also, why do the unicorns get to be "cerise" while the wolves and oaks are saddled with generic color names?
Well, this suits Clara better than either of the others. We're bummed they get a plant (while the other two get animals), but at least the crest is pleasant to look at.
Felicity was rooting for us to choose this one, since we're not huge fans of any of the houses. It seems rather lonely, though, and we like some structure, not to mention color.
The new jousting-themed armor and tack looks cool but is super expensive, plus many of our horses, including Evie, can't even wear most of the tack.
So, that isn't happening for us anytime soon. Instead, we put together a somewhat Robinhood-esque costume from what we already had in our closet. It isn't blue, but at least it's not red or yellow.
Also, note Evie's look-alike in this screenshot! We've seen at least one other around - clearly, we're not the only ones who thought this coat was really cool.
Each day for a week, Clara and Evie dutifully showed up to the jousting arena and hit the wooden targets as best they could with the lance. We could practice as many times as we wanted with no time limit, which was great. The part we did not like one bit was that we could only do the run that counted towards knighthood, the timed daily challenge run, once, and we had no idea going in what the time limit actually was. Fail and you're screwed for the day. Fortunately, we always squeaked by, despite getting dangerously close to the time limit at least one day.
Evie sure had an action-packed training period! She will now get some much-deserved rest while everybody else gets back in the riding rotation.
We don't get to keep the lance in our closet (maybe for the best?), but we can pick it up or put it down anytime we want when we visit its holder near the jousting arena. It comes with a matching shield.
...and now we get this message every time we go to joust.
We did not know it at the time we were working towards the lance, but apparently there was no time crunch to obtain it and get knighted: the Fair is going to remain in the Forgotten Fields permanently. Hopefully Star Stable adds more "stuff to do" there in the future. One jousting race a day will not be enough incentive to get us to make our way all the way out there often.
One last championship race before heading back to the stable. Appropriately, 2 of the other entrants were Appaloosas too. A lot of players seem to have shelled out extra star coins to give their Appys different manes, which is fun to see. We didn't mind the chunky, messy default, ha ha, so that's what Evie got.
