The Winterbourne Legacy

Purebred Arabians unfortunately don't have a lot of allowed colours, which means that eventually I may branch out to breed Arabian Horses (which allows up to 39% blood to be non-Arabian, and a lot more colors). But I think I want my first generation to be Purebred Arabians. Purebred Arabians are also more popular in the game than Arabian Horses, which means it's easier to find great studs.

I went through eight stallions, looking for the ones with best personality. In my experience, it's easier to breed for good conformation than personality, so it's best to focus on personality from the start. Personality also affects competitions a lot, giving various buffs on good horses and debuffs on bad horses.

I narrowed down my selection to three horses:

Franz is only a 2-year-old, so he doesn't yet have a big, lushy mane and tail of an adult horse, but (hopefully) he will grow them as soon as he turns three... because ultimately, I decided to pick him! He has a great personality, and he's the only stallion out of these three with Very Good Intelligence. It's a trait I especially like, because as horses' skills get higher and higher, it takes longer to train them up to their potential. With Very Good Intelligence, each training session gives double the experience.

Here's Franz's info!

We've got 10 points in Endurance, but no earnings yet. As the end of the year is so close, I'd guess we will be stuck in CL1 for the next year as well.

Big reason why we haven't won anything yet in Competitions is because my shared horses lack experience.

Check In:

Abbott:

Cinderella:

Even though they have skills trained to compete in CL1, they are still getting various debuffs because of low teamwork and low competition experience, and therefore lower than perfect 10/10 marks in shows. Only time and more experience will fix this.

Moneywise, we've still been doing alright. I've been logging in daily, and doing extra jobs on top of my automated 8h shift. Daily gaming looks like: Train Cinderella -> Take Care & Train Check In & Abbott -> Do some extra jobs -> With left over time, train character skills up.

Not the most exciting gameplay loop, but I know that the game will reward this grind eventually, and this takes only a few minutes every day :)

17k in savings is starting to look like a good chunk of money. I've been pondering what to do with it. I'm leaning towards saving it to build my own stable, but that will take a lot of money:

10,000 to buy the land

25,000 to build 5 stalls

10,000 to build hay field

5,000 to build hay barn

20,000 to build a horse walker

10,000 to build Endurance arena

2,500 per CL1 level to upgrade the arena

50,000 to upgrade Endurance arena for year-round use

Granted, not all of these are immediately needed. I have soon trained my horses up to their maximum potential, so arena could be saved until later. I could buy my hay instead of growing it, and just store it in the barn. I'm logging daily to take care of the horses, so I could postpone horse walker as well.

Still, at minimum, I would need 40,000 for land, 5 stalls, and hay barn, to have a functional stable where I could keep my horses. That's a lot of money.

For now, I'll keep working towards that goal. I'm tempted to buy more horses, but any extra horse would mean extra monthly costs, and slower the progress to become more economically sustainable stable in the long run...

Starter mares all share the same skill level (125; meaning 25/100 on their main discipline), and same conformation and personality grade (5/10 on both). But to my great pleasure... she's got some shade! Horses in the game are of varying shade, and I really love the more extreme ends.

Her conformation may look horrible, but it's as expected for starter mares. "Too large" doesn't mean a real fault yet: that would be "The head is WAY too large." With that kind of faults, she would be doing worse in Endurance competitions.

During the first week, I've got all her test results, started her training, got her mare inspection grade (needed to breed to other players' studs; as I don't yet have money to own my own stallions, that's critical to breed her). Because I started the account during the game's autumn, I haven't bred her yet. The best time of the year is to breed on Beginning of February; that way, the foals will be born on Beginning of January (11 month pregnancy), and they will have best shots to be ready to participate in some big events and competitions.

I've also been training my and my geldings' skills up! We haven't yet participated in competitions, but we are ready very soon!

My character on Day 7:

Abbott on Day 7:

Check In on Day 7:

Cinderella is a bit behind the boys, since she arrived with only 60min stamina (she needs exercise to get to 90min) and later than them.

Cinderella on Day 7:

Also, I've now completed the Tutorial! At the end of the tutorial, game gave me some extra money: 10,000EE. I had forgotten how little the game gives out at the start, but I think it's a good thing. I know that balancing the mone is important part of the game, and sometimes the game forces you to make tough choices on which horses to keep and which to sell.

This is how my budget and savings are looking on Day 7:

I have monthly fees now because of Cinderella: because I own her, I pay for her stall, feed, vet visits, and farrier. I found a nice stall for her from a player owned' stable. The stable has Endurance arena to train in, and a groom takes care of all of her needs automatically. I could have found a cheaper stall if I didn't want to train her to competition or if I wanted to do all the manual tasks myself... but eh, I'll rather spend a little of money for her :D

I do have enough money that I could potentially buy a second horse. However, 13k isn't enough for a good horse (unless I found a forced Auction by luck), and a second horse would up my montly expenses. I'm planning currently to first invest on building up my own infrastructure: my own stable, stalls, horse walker, hay barns, hay fields, and Endurance arena. That will all cost a lot of money, but we'll get there!

Competitions are coming, and hopefully some extra money from them too! In the game, competitions happen every End of Month:

I think of my first Main Character, Elizabeth Winterbourne, as someone coming from old money. She is young and determined to make a name of herself. With quite a big chunk of money from her family, she's bought some lands and an old house to renovate. As she's a beginner in all her skills, I'd like to think that perhaps her parents were afraid of horses and never let her to ride; but her grandparents' legacy as great horse trainers has never left her imagination, and she is set on reclaiming that legacy. She wants to build a stable full of great horses, win all the prizes, and establish famous Arabian lines!

That said, the route to a great Arabian stable will be a long one. We don't even get our first horse in the game yet; only "shared horses", owned by the game itself, that we can care for, train and compete with until we have enough money to buy more horses. We do get one mare, but she will arrive tomorrow. I'll introduce you all to her in the next blog post.

Meanwhile, meet my two shared horses: Abbott and Check In!

I'll have an access to them for one in-game year; after that, they will be sold, and I have a chance to buy them for myself if I wish. (Each month in the game is split into three IRL days (Beginning of Month, Middle of Month, End of Month), so one in-game year is 3 x 12 = 36 IRL days, a little over one IRL month.)

For now, I won't worry whether or not I want to buy these two geldings at the end of the first year. My character has no experience, and these two will provide me with some - that's the important part!

This game is more about resource management than mundane tasks. To get experience, I need to train these horses. To train these horses, my character first has to pay to learn skills. To pay for skills, my character needs money. To have money, my character can work.

So, first things first, I get myself an automated 8h/day job. It will pay 500EE per day (EE= EquineEuro, in-game currency), or 1,500EE per month (remember, month is three days in the game).

Luckily, I don't have to do anything else for that. My character's days in the game will start 8h later now than usual, but otherwise, everything about her job is automated. (Oh yes, tasks like training, working, competing, caring for horses- they all take time out of my character's day. Remember that mention I made about resource management?)

Now that my income is secured (wish it was as easy in the real life!), next stop is getting some training for my character.

Nice! Competitions in EquinePassion are split into "CLs" or Competition Levels. I want to get my Endurance skills up to 10/100, so I am fully skilled to compete in CL1. If I get enough points during a year in Endurance CL1, I will move up to compete in Endurance CL2 next year. Higher levels give higher rewards for winners, so that will mean more money!

With some skills, I go to train my geldings, who both have 90min of stamina per day.

As money is an important part of the game, the game luckily provides a nice, simpliefied budgeting page for you.

Looking good! Somehow, I'm not paying for any rent for myself, nor for my meals... But hey, that's okay for me!

At the end of the day, at 10pm as my character's day has gone by, I do one final thing. I open a savings account and dump all my money there. They game gives you 0.001% interest on Savings account per day, so I'll try to get into the habit of making any and all passive income I can make.

I've played quite a few animal breeding sims over the years: Furry Paws, PureFelinity, Sims, Niche, Lioden, K9-the-canine, and many others. All of them have something I love, and something I don't. At the moment, EquinePassion is holding my interest. It's low maintenance yet deep enough with many features.