Festival Fun

Felicity was the birthday girl this past Friday! It was a chilly April 21 here, but our flowering tree was in full bloom to help celebrate, thanks to a stretch of abnormally warm weather the previous week.

On Star Stable, no, we did not go rouge and buy a 4th horse, even though Desertdash reached level 15 at lightning speed thanks to the Equestrian Festival that's been going on. The payouts for completing its daily tasks are quite generous relative to usual day-to-day activities, so we've been staying up past our bedtime to do them on weeknights. We've even taken part in a couple of championship races, which are not our favorites. 

Generally, we finish near the bottom, but we got a 6th place once, which we were quite proud of, ha ha.

An updated version of the Lippizaner was introduced during week 2 of the festival, and boy are we tempted to buy one! If they'd been limited edition or on sale, we'd likely have fallen for it. So far, as I said, we've been sticking to our resolve to wait until May. It's tough, though, admiring so many players riding around on their decked-out chunky Lippizaners. And riding all these courses where we could be racking up horsey experience...

We do really want one of these eventually! Lippizaners have a special place in our hearts due to their incredible airs above the ground. Mom saw them perform in person when she was little and was highly impressed. Horse #4? We're thinking maybe the fleabitten one, since there's something so special about a big, pale Baroque, but we love them all so much!

Along with the Lippizaner, a daily dressage test was introduced on the game for what is apparently the first time. This test was super stressful for us initially - so bad we had to throw in the towel on several evenings. You originally train with arrows guiding the way on the ground throughout, but for the actual test, all you get are periodic markers indicating a gait and/or pattern change. The test is fairly simple and stays the same day-to-day, so theoretically it should have been do-able, but the circles... It's 3 strikes, you're out, and we could not ride acceptable circles to save our lives. I don't know if Star Stable worked out some glitches, or lowered the difficulty, or if the YouTube tutorial video we watched was a game-changer, or it it's some combo of these things, but we're consistently making it through the circles now. Whew! Tigertin even has achieved a perfect score twice now.

It seemed highly appropriate that when we'd finally completed enough festival activities to impress the Baroness, Tigertin was Clara's mount.

They were all quite excited about it, as you can see. (Well, maybe not Scout. It's hard to tell, as well as he blends into the sand...)

Yay, participation ribbon! We'll take it.

There is a wagon to whisk you quickly between the Moorland festival grounds and the Jorvik festival grounds, where the bulk of the events go on. Some player managed to get their horse into the wagon, which we found impressive.

 

Much more impressive than us accidentally herding a cow through the solid walls of that barn over there. Needless to say, we had to start that task over.

We've been more careful since.

There is also a trailer to quickly transport you from the Moorland festival grounds to a relaxed, go-at-your-own-pace mountainous trail ride in Firgrove. 

You follow the posts, which spontaneously torch when you ride close, then tie the red string to a line at the end. It's advertised as being different each day, which has been the case for us so far. On our first day, we saw a tree fall in the woods and walked part of the trail with the circus dude, Ydris. Yesterday, we saw a wolf. We rode close to it hoping to get a good screenshot, thinking it would be like the nice, do-nothing predators on HI3. Instead, we got this warning message about it attacking us and to be more careful. Oops. Sorry, Desertdash! Random objects have fallen from the sky each day as well. On today's ride, it was a potato. XD

A second non-usual Arabian also showed up at the festival for purchase:

The camera angle on this is not good - we promise it's a normal sized Arabian, but you get the idea. Oof, Desertdash, you're lucky we didn't know about this one when we were Arabian shopping! So pretty!

We're excited to spend our festival tokens on fun gear, but we're waiting until closer to the end of the festival, when we have a better idea how much we can afford. Unfortunately, a lot of the festival tack doesn't fit Frostflight or Tigertin, and there are a few saddle pads that don't even fit Desertdash (who do they fit, I wonder?) We'll still probably get most of it for Desertdash and future horses, as cool as it is!

A few samplings:

There are also 2 cute terriers for sale for star coins (the same currency used to buy horses). <3 Also super tempting - so much cuteness! Good thing neither of these guys had a magenta bandana (to go with Tigertin's glow), or we'd likely have blown some serious star coins! The white one would go fairly well, though...

Clearly, Scout is not impressed.

Easter, Huskies, and Equine #3!

 Happy Easter from the four of us!

It was in the lower 40's as we were taking this picture on Saturday morning. Brr!

Back in the warmth of Mom's bedroom with some bunny stuffies

There were no flowers to pose by in the yard yet, but it is finally starting to feel more like spring around here. No severe spring storms have impacted us, fortunately, though Mom did bring us down to basement one day last week before leaving for work when our area was deemed "high risk."

This little plant that lives in Mom's home office (aka the laundry room) has bloomed, though! 

We don't know what kind of plant it is and had no idea it would get flowers, so this was a fun Easter surprise!

Another totally unexpected fun surprise: Mom sort-of tied for first place in her extended family's March Madness basketball pool this year! Go UConn Huskies!

There were 38 brackets total (2 max per person.) Mom didn't expend much effort here - didn't even name the brackets or watch any games - so it was quite entertaining that she and her aunt's greyhound, Hawk, came out on top.

Hawk and Mom had the exact same number of points at the end - the first time this has happened in our family. Technically, due to tie-breaking rules, Hawk wins because his predicted championship game score was closer, but as you can see, the site showed both as co-winners.

Mom may not get the trophy (Hoops the Beanie Baby bear), but she sure came close! We think that another Beanie Baby husky is in order to commemorate the occasion. He would join the other husky (2011, UConn) and the ram (2017, UNC) from when Mom won solo previously, ha ha. 

And now on to some Star Stable news. 

Tigertin seemed to reach level 15 way faster than Frostflight did - no doubt because we have unlocked so many more daily training options. Since we didn't really like having to leave Frostflight all by himself in the stable, we were really eager to pick out equine #3.

The Baroque-specific competition was apparently a limited-time thing. Its current short-term replacement is an endurance race limited to Akhal Tekes, Arabians, and Marwaris. 

We seriously considered buying an Appaloosa or a Paint to be equine #3: even rode out to Starshine Ranch and risked the game booting us. (It didn't this time, thank goodness!)

two frontrunner Appaloosas

two frontrunner Paints

We couldn't come to an agreement, though, so Lily suggested we purchase an on-sale desert breed instead. Akhal Tekes and Marwaris are cool, but our clear favorite of the 3 is the elegant Arabian. So, off we traveled to Goldspur Farm. 

All of the Arabians on Star Stable are very good looking, which made our decision really tough! 

The horse Mom rode the most back when she was taking lessons was a fleabitten gray Arabian, so this one had major sentimental appeal. The real-life one had no facial markings and was not nearly so fleabitten, however.

The fanciest is definitely the flaxen chestnut rabicano, though the light gray also stands out from a crowd. The solid black makes us think fondly of The Black Stallion. However, we decided against all 4 of the ones already mentioned because we've seen multiples of them being ridden around. We also decided against bay because there's a bay Pintabian NPC that gets ridden around Moorland Stables constantly.

That left the light flaxen chestnut, the dapple gray, and the liver chestnut. Light flaxen chestnut is lovely but reminds us so much of Barbie's typical mounts that we just couldn't commit. We love dapple grays, but it didn't make much sense to us for this one to have blue eyes.

So, liver chestnut won!

As you may have noticed from the above screenshots, we have kept the alliteration trend alive and named him Desertdash.

He's been our trusty steed ever since, including for the limited-time endurance race on South Hoof beach:

...and at the Equestrian Festival that is currently going on.

Coincidentally, a full-priced chestnut Arabian is for sale at the Moorland hub of the festival. It's quite nice too, but we still prefer Desertdash's chocolatey hue and more extensive markings. <3

The plan now, which I'm hoping to get my sisters to stick to, is to keep it to three equines until at least May. Once Desertdash is fully trained, we will alternate riding each of the three, and change up our tack and clothing as we feel so inspired. We can do it, guys!

Tigertin's Travels

Mom may have swapped out the teddy bears in her room for the bunnies, chicks, and lambs, but it still feels like winter here. *Sighs* 

Winter is totally over in Star Stable, though: ever since the calendar turned to March, no more snow toggle. Fortunately, our winter welcome terrier did not disappear like the snow (or Frostflight's polo wraps). We had a moment of panic when we took the saddle and bridle off Frostflight and he disappeared. To our relief, we discovered that he and the saddlebag were still equipped on Frostflight - just presumably invisible due to the lack of saddle. They've now been safely transferred over to Tigertin.

Here they all are hanging out with the rehabilitating Welshie foal. 

He was quite a needy little guy.

Mom showed up right on cue once he'd fully recovered.

Happy trails! No more eating poisonous plants, either of you.

Clara may not have a foal to take care of anymore, but she's stayed busy. Here she is herding a horse back to the stables at Silverglade Manor. (Not sure why none of the communal stables have doors on the stalls...)

Here they are rescuing one of several ducks from the Silverglade Village fountain that ended up at the GED oil drilling site covered in oil.

With help from various NPC's, Clara could eventually return pristine ducks to the fountain.

And here they are searching Fort Pinta for kittens that escaped from the pet shop.

All the equines on this game ascend and descend staircases with ease. =)

Clara's progressed a little in the main quest line as well. We've wondered for some time about the imposing black horse that was in the Silverglade Manor stable, as well as the buff chick who was striding purposefully around the area. They are the same bad-news horse and rider from earlier in the story, who galloped off with stolen documents.

Bad news, clearly.

Then she made an attempt to start over with Clara and wheedled her into delivering a letter for her.

Justin Moorland freaked out, said he had to leave, and mentioned his grandfather...

Clara met up with Alex and her pony Tin-Can again. (Alex and her now-missing friend Linda blew Clara off earlier by some glowing rocks.) As predicted, Sabine is bad news.

They followed Khaan's flaming hoof prints down to the beach...

...just in time to see Justin, Sabine, and Khaan departing on an ugly steamer. 

Alex was not pleased and seems to know more than what she's telling Clara.

The investigation continued. Clara eventually found marriage documents in building ruins possibly linking the Moorlands biologically to the Baroness (the snooty old rich lady who owns Silverglade Manor.) Seems plausible, but it's still just a theory, and nobody knows yet how Sabine fits into everything.

Meanwhile, Linda is missing and possibly being held hostage in the Silverglade castle? So much drama!

All of Clara's efforts questing, training, and doing stable chores have been paying off - we've been able to shell out big virtual bucks on tack. The brown starter set didn't do a whole lot for Tigertin, so we tried to find an inexpensive matching black saddle and bridle.

We perused the global store, found a fairly basic black bridle, and bought that first. Then we bought a mid-priced "pitch black" saddle... but immediately regretted it. It appears dark brown compared to the bridle, and we also had silver vs. gold metal hardware mismatch. (You can sort-of try on tack before buying it, but it's in such a small window it's hard to tell, and we haven't been able to make the rotate feature work on our laptop...)

So, we continued saving until we had enough for one of the expensive black jumping saddles. We had a choice of what appeared to be "black shiny" and "black matte" for the same steep price. For better or for worse, we chose "black shiny." That really cleaned us out last weekend, but we think it was worth it. No more distracting "the blacks don't match" issues when already none of our pinks and purples are perfect matches, ha ha.

As you can see, we have also since splurged on some polo wraps. Again, not a perfect color match, but oh well. Tigertin might end up with multiple sets of polos to alternate between, the lucky pony.

And maybe we'll get some blue ones for Frostflight too... <3