HGG Community Forums

Hi, and welcome to the game. It is a complex game, but well worth taking the time to learn about it. Here's a quick run down of a few topics, but please don't hesitate to ask more specific questions. I've been working on updating the new players' guide, and it runs to many, many pages in Microsoft Word. It's easier to address pieces of the information in a forum post than to try to summarize the whole thing, but I'll give you a few pointers to get you started.

The game is all about breeding and showing horses in the hunting and jumping show field. One of it's major factors is a very life-like and up-to-date inclusion of what is known about horse color genetics--how horses get to have all the many colors and patterns they do. If you are interested in that at all, this game is the best way to learn it, because it's built on the very best information available, not old theories and folk-tales. It also allows each player to set personal goals for a breeding program, including whether to breed horses of a specific color (or many of them), how strict to be in keeping the results of the breeding, when and how to show them, and so forth. There are definite aspects of the game culture that are not defined by the hard "rules" of the game, but you will learn those over time. This is a very welcoming and helpful community, one of the best I've found on the Internet, so don't be afraid to ask those inevitable questions.

You stock your stable by buying horses, creating them, and, once you've begun, breeding them. The best place to start is to look on the left side of the barn pages for "Community" and then click on "Search Horses." Once there you'll find a page where you can specify exactly what you're looking for. Start out simply by typing "13" in the box for "Owner," selecting "Mare" under "Gender", and starting the search. This takes you to the Foundation Rescue. A foundation horse is one with no named ancestors and can be the start of your own line of horses of succeeding generations. The Foundation Rescue contains horses that have 100% foundational breeding ability, 100% foundations showing ability, and 100% consistent results when they are shown--their score will be the same each time they are shown in a week. There will be lots to choose from, so have fun shopping. Don't buy too many to start with. You can probably afford up to five, starting out. You can also buy foundation stallions, but you can also use stallions that are up for public stud during the breeding season. Name your new horses and explore the tabs on their pages.

Horses can be trained once each week. You do this by finding "Showing" on the left side of the barn page. Select "Train My Horses." This takes you to a page where you will find a list of any untrained horses you have in three sections. Behind each name you will find a J for horses that are jumpers and H for horses that are hunters. Make sure that you select the proper discipline before clicking the training button. I believe that the Foundation Rescue trains the horses there, so you may not see any names right away. The new game week starts at midnight roll-over between Saturday and Sunday, so you will always need to train your horses at the beginning of a new week.

Once you have your horses trained, you can enter them in two shows per week. There are two ways to do this, but start out doing it from the barn page. You will find a list of every horse in your barn, with a row of various information to the right of it, including Age, Era (information about the time when the line the horse belongs to started), Gender, Size (warmblood or sport pony), Training Level, PT (results of the Showing Aptitude Test, how quickly it trains), Profit (how much profit or loss it has from showing since you got it), Enter (an orange arrow that lets you enter a show), Move (how to move it from one barn to another, when you have more than one), and Status (up for breeding, up for auction, up for sale, entered in a show). So, click on that little orange arrow. This takes you to a page with information about the various levels and grades of shows for all horses, the entry fees for those classes, and the maximum number of horses that can be entered. All of this is interesting but not urgent to memorize right away. Below the information is a list of the current classes available for the horse in question. Select one, any one, and click "Enter." In the lower level classes there are very few horses entered, so luck will play a huge roll in how a horse does. In higher levels, there are more horses, so there are more chances for a horse to place somewhere and begin collecting points based on where it places in a class. These points are very important, because they will determine your weekly "Showing Bonus," an income that is currently 50% of the total number of points your horses gave gathered. Not much when you're starting out, but it can become quite sizeable over time.

Then, start reading all the posts here in the "Help Me Out" category. You'll find lots of answers to questions people have asked before that will give you a basis for understanding the fascinating game. I have to leave the computer now, but I'll come back and add some more information later.