Summer Daze

Even though astronomical summer doesn't begin until the 20th, it's already feeling like summer here. It's making us want to expand Clara's collection of short-sleeved shirts, but we haven't made any progress on that yet, thanks to everything else going on in-game right now.

Out at Farah's workshop in Valedale, we dilligently crafted our first complete set of tack and clothing, though. Behold the Able Artisan set! (Fox not included, but he looks great with it.) Panda got to wear the tack first because she was Clara's mount on crafting day, but we put it on Willow next - it looks especially nice on her, plus she can wear the boots. I don't love that the pants are capris, but other than that I feel like the tedious collecting and crafting was worth the effort.

Also note the Riverrock look-alike about to canter out of frame! He or she looks great in that tack.

We plan to craft the other available sets as well, but we need to restock our supplies of gatherables first, which takes a while. Rubia seems to be the hardest for us to find, for whatever reason.

Our next piece of exciting news: Star Stable gave us another horse bazaar! This time, it featured 3 breeds that were just retrofitted to be able to wear all the new tack: the Belgian Warmblood, the Gotland Pony, and the Irish Cob. This retrofitting is great news for our beautiful Irish Cob, Panda! Though, obviously, due to her extreme feathering, she'll still never be able to wear boots.

Belgians sure have shown up in bazaars a lot lately! We hard passed on them yet again, but we could not resist the Gotland's cuteness any longer. The three frontrunners: chestnut pinto, mealy bay, and buckskin.

We deliberated until the final day of the bazaar before finally choosing this one. I fought pretty hard for her, as you can imagine.

Meet Vanillavalley, our 18th equine but only our second pony!

So much cuteness! <3

Ponies are so useful on this game, since they can do everything the bigger equines can do, plus they can participate in the pony-specific activities. She's been flying through her experience levels.

The week before the promised Summer Daze event on Fort Pinta beach, Star Stable "redid" the bridge to the fort. It was a railing-less natural rock bridge before - easy to accidently ride off of if you're not paying attention or something goes wrong with the controls. That won't be an issue any longer!

We also got to take part in a limited-time quest: a treasure hunt that started on Fort Pinta beach. It took us to various beaches around Jorvik, and we had to retrieve items from thieving crabs at several points.

Eventually, Clara and Evie tracked down the "booty," a chest of enormous, iridescent pearls!

The pirates claimed the treasure and left her with this ostentatious pirate hat. Typical. XD

Oh well, we should be able to piece together a decent pirate outfit now if the opportunity ever arises.

The Summer Daze beach area looks great! 

We have some new activities to do to earn summer tokens, and some new items to spend them on too. I'm not thrilled that it's all pink-themed, but I guess that's better for Clara's skin tone than pale yellow...

The star attraction - for us anyway - is Bruce the shark.

We get to play a memory game with Ben and Bruce daily, where we have to pick out the item that Bruce has eaten.

Bruce then proceeds to regurgitate the item, and we're rewarded if we've guessed correctly. Fun times. XD

Bruce also makes appearances in a Summer Daze-exclusive race, which has sections where we get to magically gallop on water.

At some points, seahorses are visible in the water beneath us. <3 

We also have gotten to try out a revamped fishing activity, which goes way faster than the old version once you get the hang of it. 

Just as well, because the old version sure has had its share of issues. There is currently a bug where the bobber is sideways and bobbs horizontally instead of vertically. XD

Finally, we have another series of championship ribbons to try to earn. We have backed off a bit this time around, figuring we'll do the bulk of our competing more towards the end of it, when competition tends to be less fierce. We already have the ribbon we were most excited for, the rainbow. =)

Below is a screenshot from a random championship pre-festival, where we went up against - coincidentally - three Vanilla look-alikes. My guess is that the this might be the club's official pony or something, though this doesn't make great sense when the club name has "Mustang" in it....

At any rate, we are not the only ones who love the chestnut pinto variation of the Gotland. =)

And now, for comparison, here are two screenshots from two champs we've participated in during the first weekend of the championship ranks event. So much company!

Vanilla has not had much success yet at the champs, but being slower isn't all bad: we can more easily observe how the other players are doing the courses and better ingrain the various shortcuts in our minds.

Soon enough, she'll be level 15 like everyone else, and the experience sparkling will stop, so we're enjoying our training time with her while it lasts.

Welcome to the herd, Vanillavalley! <3

Spring Star Stable Hodgepodge

As May made its graceful exit and June drifted in, Canadian wildfire smoke drifted into Michigan too. Consequently, we've been mostly staying inside this weekend, even though it's beautiful out otherwise. This inspired me to write this now rather than putting it off another week or two, so here we go!

On Star Stable, we're still riding a welcome lull between any time-consuming special events. Camp Western was going on around this time last year, but I'm assuming it is moving to sometime in mid to late summer. (Knowing our luck, part of it will fall during our week of camping in July...) Next on the horizon is a festival called "Summer Daze." Per Star Stable's blog, it's going to feature Fort Pinta beach and a shark named Bruce. Fingers crossed that there will be more to do at this one than just a short one-time quest and shopping. 

Our club on Star Stable is also pretty much dormant right now, since the leaders continue to be MIA. On many Monday nights, though, we still sometimes hang out with one or two other holdout club mates for a short dressage practice. This could for sure use more participants, and maybe we'll get there someday. For now, it's nice to have some fellow players to talk to and not have anybody causing drama or chaos, which tends to surface in larger group settings. ;)

That's Wichapi (Whinny) and her Pintabian Ashy on the far left.

Then Clara on Des, obviously.

Amelia is the instructor. She's riding her Arabian Teddy here but also has a Pintabian.

Once, we had a twin day dressage lesson, where Whinny and Clara went all out! It had to have been confusing for Amelia, ha ha. 

One fun quest we participated in recently involved going on a trail ride with NPC friends. We rode east from Silverglade, crossed the bridge, met up with Emma and Muddy, and then headed north to for the main event, riding the Red String Trail. 

It's interesting because Luciana (rider of the black Lusitano, Sirio) has had an appearance revamp like Clara's. Emma and Sonja (rider of the pale dun Fjord, Kasper) have not and are still very slim and more cartoony.

Thanks to a rock slide, in order to finish the trail, we had to cross that big log over the chasm one by one. Luciana and Emma had no trouble. 

Clara's had plenty of experience with this already - it was a piece of cake for her and Tigertin. It was super daunting for Sonja, though, since she has a fear of heights. With encouragement, she and Kasper eventually made it across too.

I found it kind of sad that Clara was only granted "honorary membership" in the club that these girls forged, the Flying Foxes. (We even had brought along one of our fox pets, totally by coincidence...) But I guess Clara is kind of a drifter and has too much going on to commit her allegiance to just one club. 

We are happy spending most of our time with just our horses and assorted pets, though of course it's always interesting observing what other players are doing. Here you can see a persistent anomaly we see from time to time when another player walks away from her horse, elasta-reins. 

We finally completed all 12 levels of crafting/delivering crafted items for Farah in Valedale! The prize well-worth all the deliveries: we were entrusted with a young owl, the offspring of Farah's owl, Toby.  

We love him! <3 It's super fun having another flying pet. When he doesn't feel like flying, he perches on the saddle bag, as you see here. So cute!

We continue to participate in championships from time to time, both for the practice and the shilling rewards. Tigertin went up against a quartet of Welshies in this particular Pony championship...

...and showed them she can hold her own!

Finally, we had willpower of steel when the latest bazaar set up shop in that familiar grassy expanse near Moorland.

Okay, not really. The only one we had to resist was the Dartmoor Pony, since we already have our dream Paso Fino and Icelandic. 

All of them were quite good deals! The Dartmoor is Star Stable's newest pony and super cute....

...but we just don't care for the frequent lip curling. So, it was pretty easy to say no.

Hence, we still haven't filled the final empty stall in our stable. 

I'm not sure what we're going to do once we have more than 18 horses. (Because let's face it: we all know we're going to get there within a month or two.) Even though it's not totally fair, we think we might let the original 3 keep their stalls permanently and rotate everybody else. 

It would be sad not to have our faithful first horse, Frosty, there to greet us every time we enter our stable, Tiger is our go-to for the pony championships, and Des is our club dressage horse. 

May Flowers and May Mules

May has been a month of some chilly, rainy days where all we want to do is cocoon on the couch...

...but also a month with some glorious mild or warm days with spring beauty in spades.

Star Stable's Jorvik is as beautiful as ever and also continues to change week to week. As much as we enjoyed the Equestrian Festival, it has been a relief to play less and at a slower pace in the weeks that have followed. Another Trailblazer Track is going on now, giving us good incentive to log on daily. The outfit will likely sit collecting dust in our closet (not Clara's style), but the free stable care tickets certainly will not! 

Star Stable introduced mules to the game in mid-May! 

We confess we did not vote for them a year or so ago when there was this "which breeds would you like to be added next?" poll, but apparently a lot of players did. The game was abuzz with mule chat in the weeks leading up to their release. We think Star Stable did a fantastic job on them - they turned out super cute! Not only do we love their color choices, but they also look great whether idling or in motion. 

In addition to the regular gaits, they have two special moves:

"Floppy Groove" is aptly named: a happy walk with lots of ear flopping

"Hee-Haw"means lots of donkey-like braying, of course.

The other equines in Star Stable rear if you press "X" while walking or trotting. Mules buck instead! Not sure how I feel about this, but it has been entertaining to watch.

If/when we get one of these in a bazaar someday, it's going to be so hard choosing just one! Both the appys and the duns are so cool! Other players think so too, clearly.

Here are a few other fun screenshots from our recent wanderings:

Another 1-player championship! (We won.) 

Wow, cartoon forest fire! 

Don't worry: Clara and Tigertin quickly put it out.

An APH and rider chilling Lion King style. XD

We finally spent some Jorvik shillings to give our stable a more cohesive look. 

Since we like the stone floor and Blue Oaks banners, we gave it a somewhat medieval look, but without the darker, more gothic look of the medieval default.

It was Mom's birthday last Sunday! (Hooray for weekend birthdays!) Des was Clara's mount that day, and he won first place in the one championship they entered. 

Thank you, Des! <3 What a good boy!

Here are her gifts!

Before opening...

...and after!

The backpack and suitcase were not actually wrapped above, if you were wondering, just notes about them. XD We're most excited for Mom to sew together the little sloth, though we're also eager to watch Wicked. =)