#botw guide

I. TAMING AND REGISTERING A HORSE

First things first- you need a horse. The rest of this guide is pretty useless if you don’t have one. BOTW pretty much plops you into the open world without explaining a majority of the mechanics, so capturing your first horse without looking up how might be confusing.

There are two ways to capture a horse- Steal one from a bokoblin, or sneak up on a wild one. I highly recommend capturing your own horse, as bokoblin horses, while easier to tame, have worse stats.

STEP 1- FIND AND PICK A HORSE

So you’ve located a herd of wild horses. Pick out the one you want to target. A universal fact is that appaloosa (spotty butt/flank) and paint (patchy flank) horses are easier to tame but weaker. Solid color horses of any color are harder to tame but stronger.

Essentially

Spotty horse = easy to tame but weak

Solid horse= harder to tame but stronger

After you’ve picked out the horse you want, its time to actually get after it.

STEP 2- CATCHING A HORSE

To catch a horse you’ll need to sneak up behind her while crouching. It sounds simple enough, but stealth in BOTW is calculated by several things.

Rule 1 is to keep out of the horse’s line of sight. This also includes all the other horses with it, as they will react if one of their herd members gets spooked. Its often easier to separate the horse you want from its herd and then head after it.

Rule 2 is to check your stat boosts. Armor and food can increase your stealth. The sheikah armor is a set of stealth armor found in Karakiro Village that I highly recommend you grab, because it makes horse taming about 50 times easier. But if you can’t afford that, I would highly recommend you cook up some sneak boosting meals.

Rule 3 is to keep the weather and time in mind. Rainy weather actually makes it easier to sneak up on things. Night time does NOT make you stealthier, but skeletons have an annoying habit of popping out of the ground and scaring horses away, so I’d save your horse taming adventures for daytime.

So you’ve managed to sneak up on that horse. Here’s how you actually tame the darn thing.

1. Click A once you are close enough for the prompt to appear

2. Once on, jam the L button (at least on the Switch, I’m unsure about the WII U) to soothe the horse. Soothing takes stamina. If you haven’t upgraded your stamina, make sure to bring STAMINA POTIONS. Take them BEFORE you run out of stamina and get bucked off. Generally, the longer it takes to soothe a horse, the better its stats.

If all goes well, the horse will have pink hearts appear around it, signaling that it is tame. HOWEVER, there is still one more step to complete before the horse is truly yours- register it!

To REGISTER a horse, ride it to the nearest stable and speak with the man at the desk. You will be charged 20 rupees for a saddle and bridle, and prompted to name the horse. Horses CANNOT be renamed, so pick something you like. This is also where you’ll first be able to check the horses stats, which brings us into the next part of this guide.

II. HORSE STATS AND WHAT THEY MEAN

So you have your trusty steed saddled and named. Or about that. Maybe you’ve noticed while registering your horse is has these strange 3 qualities, with a number of stars after each.

Every horse has innate stats that cannot be altered. These stats can range from 1 star (worst) to 5 stars (best). Better horses tend to be in more dangerous places.

But what do each of these stats do?

STRENGTH determines the amount of charging damage your horse will do to an enemy. It may also determine your horses HP (yes, horses can die) but I’m unsure about this.

SPEED determines your horses movement speed. A horse with a higher movement speed dashes faster.

STAMINA determines how long your horse can dash for. This stat can be checked right after you tame your horse by spurring it into a gallop. The orange icons that pop up at the bottom of your screen indicate how many stars in stamina that horse will have.

The bottom bar will tell you your horses TEMPERAMENT. Horses can either have gentle or wild temperaments. 99% of the time, spotted horses will be gentle, while solid colored horses wild. Temperament isn’t all that important, as maxing out your bond with your horses will (mostly) negate the ill effects of a wild tempered horse.

Finally, BOND will show you how much your horse loves you. Bonding with your horse is incredibly simple. Soothe it while it is acting up, or when it does something good like jumping or dashing. If you soothe your horse lots, it will be max bonded in no time. You can also feed your horse apples to improve your bond quickly.

Hooray, your horse now loves you. But maybe you’ve gotten bored of your horses basic looks? Fear not, because BOTW has you covered on that front.

III. HORSE CUSTOMIZATION

BOTW even lets you customize your horse. How cool is that!!! Very. My inner horse girl squealed with joy when I learned of this feature, which for some reason the game completely neglects to tell you about.

First things first, only a MAX BONDED horse can be customized. Get that bonding out of the way so you can spruce up your equine pal all nice. Once you’ve got that bond, head on over to Outskirts Stable. Only certain stables will let you customize your horse, oddly enough, and Outskirts Stable is the only one I can name off the top of my mind.

Once you get to the stable, walk your horse (it has to be in the general vicinity) over to this girl.

A small conversation will always play about how she will check your horse’s bond, etc. If you’ve maxed out your bond, a customization menu will appear.

You can change 3 things about your horse- MANE, BRIDLE, and SADDLE.

You will automatically have every mane style unlocked. They are as following:

THE NORMAL MANE

THE LONG MANE

THE MOHAWK MANE

THE FRENCH-BRAIDED MANE

THE FLORAL MANE

THE BRAIDED MANE

There are also color-dyed variants of the long mane in orange, blue, green, and purple.

But you don’t start out with every saddle or bridle. These have to be bought or won by various means. There are 4 sets of saddles & bridles I know of, and I’ll detail how to get them (and show off pictures of them) below.

THE BASIC SADDLE & BRIDLE are the ones you get with every new horse. Hence, basic.

THE ROYAL SADDLE & BRIDLE

These require the completion of the quest The Royal White Stallion (which will also net you one of the 3 unique horses in the game, which I will touch on later). Luckily, The Royal White Stallion quest can be started by speaking to an old man right at Outskirts Stable. There’s more info on this quest in the special horses section later in this guide.

THE EXTRAVAGANT SADDLE & BRIDLE

These require you to head to the Highland Stable in the Faron region (far mid south) and speak to a man there about a horse jumping course. Completing the course in under 1:30 seconds nets you the bridle, and under 1:15 seconds will get you the saddle. Here is the map location of Highland Stable.

THE MONSTER SADDLE & BRIDLE

These can be purchased from Kilton at Fang & Bone for mon. To activate Kilton, head over to Skull Lake at night time and talk to him. From then on, he will appear at various places during the night time only to sell you special items and apparel. You can find him every night on the beach below Tarrey Town. Note that Kilton doesn’t accept rupees, so make sure you bring monster parts to exchange for his own special currency in order to be able to buy this set. Kilton can first be found right around here.

UPDATE- THE KNIGHTS SADDLE AND BRIDLE

You get this set by completing the mounted archery minigame, found at the Mounted Archery Camp (the same place you activate the Giant Horse quest as well). This minigame is... frustrating to say the least. You’ll need to hit 20 targets for the bridle and 23 for the saddle.

The Mounted Archery Camp is found here

These are all the tack sets that I’ve found throughout my adventures. I know there is also a set available with the rider amiibo, but I don’t own that and have no screenshots of it.

IV. SPECIAL HORSES

There are three special horses in BOTW, two of which you can get within the game and one you need an amiibo for.

EPONA

Strength- 4 stars

Speed- 4 stars

Stamina- 4 stars

Temperament- Gentle

Nameable- No

Customization- No

The first of these special horses is the one and only Epona. To get Epona you need the basic Link amiibo. If you have that, you can summon her one time only around the Riverside Stable. Once summoned, just hop on her and she will be instantly tamed and register-able. Don’t forget to register her right away or she will disappear forever.

Epona comes with a solid 4 stars in each stat, and a unique gentle personality that wont be found in a solid colored horse anywhere else. She also comes max bonded and with her own special saddle & bridle. She cannot be renamed or customized in any way (she is perfect as is).

THE ROYAL WHITE HORSE

Strength- 4 stars

Speed- 3 stars

Stamina- 5 stars

Temperament- Wild

Nameable- Yes

Customization- Yes

This horse is part of the same quest that gets you the royal saddle and bridle. Speak to the old man t Outskirt’s stable to trigger this quest. He will request you find a descendant of Zelda’s white stallion because he has always wanted to see such a majestic horse.

To find this horse, head here.

You will spot it all alone, and as the name implies it is uniquely white colored with a tan mane. This horse requires a lot of stamina to tame, so make sure to bring stamina potions if you aren’t upgraded several times. Sneak up on it like any other horse, and tame it.

(On a somewhat related note, if you head slightly north of where the stamp is, you’ll encounter a ruined park with a horse statue where one of the 12 memories are located. This memory has something to do with Zelda’s old white stallion, go figure.)

Once you have the horse tamed, ride it back to Outskirts stable and register it. Have it taken out and ride it over to the old man to complete the quest and also earn the royal saddle and bridle. You can customize this horse like any other horse, unlike Epona and the third special horse. Here’s a bad screenshot of my white horse.

THE GIANT HORSE

Strength- 5 stars

Speed- 3 stars

Stamina- 0 stars, this horse is unique in the fact that it cannot dash

Temperament- Wild

Nameable- Yes

Customization- No

The third special horse is another horse triggered by questing. Head down to the Faron region and if you stick to the main road you’ll come across a place called the Mounted Archery Camp. Speak to a man there and he will give you a quest about a giant horse.

Once you’ve activated the quest, head to this area. (Make sure you ride a good horse here, you’ll have to zip past two Lynel to get to this place)

Like the royal white horse, this horse is tamed like your average horse. It also requires a good amount of stamina so make sure to bring potions. Once tame, walk it over to the Mounted Archery Camp to complete the quest, then to the nearest stable to register it. This horse can be named, but its mane is not changeable and it has its own unique tack. It’s also very large and Ganondorf colored.

There are other special mounts in the game, but these are the only 3 register-able ones. There are skeletal horses and a special ethereal horse goat thingy called The Lord of The Mountain. You can even ride deer and bear if you’re sneaky enough, but these creatures will dash off as soon as you dismount.

PART V. OTHER HORSE MECHANICS

So that about covers most of the horse guide. But here are a few extra things that might help you utilize your horse a little better.

1. Horses can path on roads. This one is pretty well-known, but I’ll point it out anyway. if you steer your horse onto a road and then stop fiddling with the controls, your horse will follow the road on its own until it no longer can. You can also use this trick to sometimes let your horse path its way out of a stuck position, or up a rocky cliff-side. This doesn’t always work though.

2. If your horse gets stuck, hit it with something to move it forwards. Lets say your horse is like REALLY stuck. Or you really want it to go down a mountainside, but it just wont. You can fix this. Take out a weapon (I recommend a Korok Leaf- you can kill your horse if you hit it too much or too hard) and slap it in the butt. Your horse will charge forward regardless if there’s a steep cliff in front of it or not. Horses don’t seem to take fall damage, so don’t worry about that.

3. Drop apples in front of your horse to bond with it quicker. A pretty simple mechanic, just hold and drop an apple in front of your horse in order to feed it. This will boost your bond a bunch.

4. Jump off your horse to grab high up fruits. This one’s a little silly, but if there’s a tree full of apples and you cant seem to reach some of them, you can hop off your horse and launch yourself upwards to grab them. If you land on your horses back, you wind up automatically mounted once more.

5. @ the-vanilluxe-treatment  pointed out that you can feed your horse an endura carrot for three extra spurs! This resets once you board your horse or expend them, but it’s still a neat thing to know and be able to do.