March in the Mitten has been a wild rollercoaster ride of weather so far. Thunderstorms, hail, rain, snow, flooding, high winds, summer-like warmth and sunshine... we've seen it all, and we're only halfway through! We're currently chilling in an armchair in the basement: Mom has yet to move us back to her room after the severe weather threat last week. (No tornados in our area, but the area to the south of us was not so fortunate.) We're supposed to get more storms tonight, so we're staying put for now.
A welcome distraction from the weather chaos: Star Stable added a shiny new horse breed to the game this week: the Swedish Warmblood! We didn't make it out to Jorvik Stables to see them until a few days after their big debut, but even so, we came across a few other players checking them out at the same time we were. They are certainly worth a visit!
Here are 4 of the 7 color variations (disregard the bay Hanoverian on the far right):
and here are the remaining 3 (on the left):
A+ from us, Star Stable! We love these guys and are going to have a really tough time choosing just one when the time eventually comes.
They have two special animations, likely contributing to their hefty 950-star-coin price tag. The first is tempi changes, a series of flying lead changes. It will be fun to see this in-game! We haven't yet.
The second: a super cute bow. <3
So much better than bucking, yay!
Here's a look at a Swedish Warmblood next to two Hanoverians. It's got to be challenging to make different warmblood breeds look different from each other - we sure can't tell in real life - but Star Stable did a great job: different faces and builds while both still very recognizable as warmbloods.
We are thrilled to report that the Swedish warmbloods do not do anything annoying while idling: no head tossing, lip curling, nervous side-stepping, or dozing off. *Throws confetti.*
Even though there are no big new developments out in Marchenghast, we've kept our home stable location there for now. We're enjoying the ambience and the beasts, plus by doing the daily activities, we're earning points towards a "blight" set and earning decent shillings.
Jollyjoust, our dragon horse, seems especially at home here.
Julie's interest in Valedale gardening has gotten us out there more often too. We have yet to get to the point where it's sustainable - right now we are close to running out of seeds - but we're hoping that changes as we slowly progress further in the Path of Terra.
We've learned some side-by-side planting combinations that occasionally yield a bonus rare plant, which is cool. Also worth noting, we're now able to craft hay from flax. It takes a lot of flax bunches (8) to make a single serving of hay, so we'll probably mostly be planting flax if/when the seed scarcity issue resolves.
We've made a few visits to Mario and his observatory too, and progressed to a quest where we helped him declutter the inside.
Only in Star Stable
Too bad we couldn't keep this.
We finally got around to closing those pink cracks in the Silverglade area.
...we probably should've taken care of that a long time ago. Oh well. XD
Closing them with a combination of our vacuum and lighting magic didn't take long at all.
...and then the quest line came to a screeching halt. We'll see what happens next!
Our last bit of exciting news: we did decide to buy our big, black baroque before the end of the bazaar. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the alliteration.) As Julie told you last time, we were torn between the brown-black with a little star and the marking-less blue-black.
The name was such a challenge, not because we didn't have ideas, but because we had so many!
We all agreed on "Onyxsaga" in the end - it seemed to best fit a jet-black horse who would start out his virtual life immersed in the Marchenghast story.
Well, technically he started his virtual life in the Moorland bazaar area, but his time there was fleeting.
We forgot to take the tack off the horse we were riding (Nightnimbus) before buying Onyx, so the entire first ride on him was bareback. =)
Ours at last!
We actually haven't ridden him that much yet because we wanted to finish cycling through the other horses first, then train him, then start a "new cycle" beginning with Frostflight. It was finally his turn this weekend, so he got the grand tour of Marchenghast and Valedale.
Hold on, Clara!
There is one area of the witches' hamlet where players seem to idle frequently, and we've gotten to admire some new Swedish Warmbloods that way, including this handsome grey named Domino.
He's spent the majority of his time at high speed:
But we also had to try out his special animations, which are now unlocked. He does a stunning extended trot:
...and a top-notch pirouette:
Ha ha, his forelock makes him looks like a unicorn in this screenshot.
We hear another bazaar is coming to Star Stable already next Wednesday. Oh dear, for the sake of our star coins, we hope it will feature only breeds we already have, but we will see! Whatever happens, Onyx will now be getting our undivided riding attention until fully trained.
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