The week before Star Stable's Halloween event was set to begin, they tempted us with another horse bazaar. The breeds on discount this time: the Halflinger, the Mustang, the Trakehner, and the Arabian.
Eveningecho was barely done with her training, and already another one of these...
Lily tried to rein us in, but her efforts were futile.
It wasn't the Mustang that did us in. As much as we love their coats, the bucking and lip curling animations aren't our faves. The Trakehner is cute but reminds us of the Jorvik Warmblood, and we already have one of those. We're all set on the Arabian front (love you, Des!)
Our downfall was the Haflinger: fluffy, pony-like cuteness in an always flaxen chestnut package. All of the variations are great, from the light chestnut to the liver chestnuts. We had our hearts set on it being named Carrotcake, though, and for that, the medium chestnuts made the most sense. Eventually, we narrowed it down to two:
These were the most pangare (mealy) of the of the options. The one on the left was more dappled pangare, while the one on the right was more roan-like pangare. I personally thought the one on the left looked cuter from the front (love its blaze), while the one on the right looked cuter from the back (white speckles rather than super light all over.)
One of our best girl-meets-horse screenshots:
The first ride!
In real life, Haflingers are considered horses, despite the fact that they are frequently pony-sized. (The acceptable Haflinger height range is 13.2 - 15.0 hands, and technically 14.2 hands and under is considered "pony.") I assume they can still be considered horses because of their build, but it's very confusing. On Star Stable, they compromised by keeping them on the small side but a little taller than the ponies. Interestingly, they can't compete in the ponies-only daily training race, but they can compete in the Silversong Pony Championship. Fluke? Perhaps, but we see other Haflingers (and Norwegian Fjords, for that matter) competing in it all the time.
The Halloween event is in full swing now. Jorvik is appropriately decorated, including our home stable, and I like the effect on the new Brickhaven stable theme we're trying out. The portals to Galloper's Keep have reopened, bringing back all the fun (and not so fun) spooky-themed features we remember from last year.
The big, violently green cauldron has blubbed out a full set of tack and clothing already, and it doesn't seem inclined to give any duplicates this year. Instead, we've been getting tons of temporary appearance change potions to use on your starter horse, and quite a few more of the necromeowncer cat pets first offered last year.
It's possible to take home three new free pets as well, which we were all over, of course.
The first is this dark, red-eyed gourd. I preferred the pale neon one from last year, but we gladly took this one as a reward after several days of completing The Pumpkin Hunt. I especially like pairing it with Tigertin. This hunt is still not our fave - it's a pain to find the big pumpkin to begin with, and then tracking down the 3 well-hidden, camouflaged little gourds can take us ages. At least we know now, thanks to online guides, the 5 locations to check for the big pumpkins. We've been writing down the coordinates where we find the gourds too, but unfortunately these seem to vary a bit more, so it hasn't helped us much yet.
The other two new pets need to be "reanimated" by a creepy dude named Igor on the Haunted Trail Ride. This took us longer because of all the materials necessary to the reanimations.
The keys weren't hard to come by, and it's easy to barter other items for bones. We found the bunny's collar pretty quickly. Even finding and leaping for the kites in the air wasn't so bad, once we'd found one and knew what to look for. The cat's collar took by far the longest, but we finally found one this weekend and returned to Igor.
Meet Stitches:
And Patches:
Nice pumpkin placement here. XD
Rather creepy, but Star Stable gets points for creativity. They probably won't come out much when it's not October.
Two other new experiences for us on the Haunted Trail Ride this year:
a giant jackalope has joined the rotation of monsters that chase you through a mountain pass
we briefly rode a Songsorrow
Despite our efforts to steer her elsewhere, she quickly veered into the ocean, with us (and our raven) still on board.
The new Halloween horses, Bolt the robotic horse and Calliope the carousel horse, are so creative!
If they weren't based off the Mustang, we'd probably have Calliope on our wish list.
My favorite is Duskgrim, since he isn't at all sinister to me in either of his forms, and he doesn't have antlers. (Antlers on an equine aren't my thing.)
Maybe next year, assuming he's still available then?
For now, we are content with our even dozen equines. Carrotcake spent his first weekend with us in Halloween overload. It doesn't take that incredibly long to complete the daily Halloween tasks. What had us signing in so much was that Star Stable has another championship ribbon event going on. The championships happen every half hour, on the half hour.
So... yeah, we challenged ourselves to earn them all this time, because aside from the skull, they're pretty cute. We also didn't want it to take the whole event to get them, since now (October) is the time to be wearing them. This meant competing like it was our job over the first weekend, ha ha. Poor Carrot was already fully trained by the end of the weekend - he must've been exhausted!
We've had our highs and lows. A few placings, a few close calls, and a few epic fails. (There's this one big log on the Valedale course that seems to be our nemesis...) Overall, I think we are slowly improving with practice, but we still feel like we're the comic relief competitor a lot of the time. You can earn anywhere from 1-5 points per completed championship, and we're most likely to get 3 or 4. That meant participating in somewhere around 70 championships to earn all of the ribbons. As of Friday night, 10/18, we earned the final Carousel Horse ribbon! High fives all around, everybody!
As the above hints at, it wasn't just Carrot who helped us persevere through all those competitions: Frosty, Tiger, Des, and Magic did their parts as well. Whew, truly a team effort! The other horses will get to enjoy the event at a more relaxed pace now, though we still like to compete at least once a day for the token reward.
In real life news, we had a double surprise come our way this weekend.
First surprise: at long last, our Hogwarts fantasies can be fully realized!
Apparently, the Hogwarts uniforms (with the pants) were finally on sale a few months back, and Mom took advantage. Mom hid them away and gave them to us this weekend. =) They work great with our Hogwarts sweater, tie, and scarf sets.
Second surprise: in order to get free shipping, Mom added...
She comes with the name "Mighty Mae," and she's supposed to go with the current Girl of the Year, Lila.
No Lila or her Barbie-like horse for us, but we'll gladly take the dog! We've changed her name to just "May." She's a happy, gets along with everybody type of dog, so fortunately she hasn't caused any drama among the other pets. We think we may give in and let her technically be Bethany's second dog, since Scampy especially likes her.
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