HGG Community Forums

Part of the problem is that you have multiple accounts. When you do that, your weekly pay gets split between the accounts. Since you have two open accounts, each gets half of the weekly pay.

The other thing is that you are a new stable. Show horses take time to age up/train up and collect points.

I wouldn't stress about selling horses to get money - that's just a band aid "quick fix" that won't help you in the long run. Breeding and selling is just chump change here - it's the show horses that will make or break your bank account.

Try to adopt a long-term view and be patient, this is a game that really rewards patience. Over time, your well bred horses will start collecting points in the shows and those points will bring you more money. Which you can use to invest in more barns for more horses that make even more money. Your show horses will eventually support your stable quite well. (Impatient people frequently buy infusions to help them get there quicker, but you can get there the slow way too.) Looking at your horses I do think you need more showing stock; you appear to be heavy on breeding stock. I'd recommend about 50% spayed/gelded. It's a fairly common new player error to disregard the non-breeding animals, but they do have a purpose in this game and do have good value.

If you need it, here's an excellent write up on show horses, how they earn you money and how to judge them: http://www.huntandjump.com/forum/discussion/12396/hj-showing-points-vs-profits#Item_2

It's always useful to have show horses. ;) I have just under half of my stock in geldings and spayed. It's possible to play with more breeding stock and less show stock, but your earnings will rise slower and you'll make less overall. You can always find stallions up for stud, so you don't need to have tons of your own to start with.

You may want to check some of the "adoptable for new players" threads, see if anyone has some aged show horses with some points they are offering.

You absolutely can - and should - show your intact mares, unless they're in a pasture and can't be shown. Over the long haul (I'm talking years of game) spays and geldings are indeed better show horses: my top point earner for intact horses is an 18 year old mare with 4910 points, while my top earning 18 year old, period, is a gelding with 6955 points.

There are a couple of things that factor into that (spays and geldings get a training boost, generally keep training longer, and frequently but do not always have higher PT scores which reflect that) but it's a big part of the reason why a healthy show string is 50% or more spays/geldings.

Intact mares are not by default poor show horses though, and since you are going to have them, you really ought to show them. Remember that the points they collect you turn directly into profit every week, so even a handful of points = some money while zero points = zero money.

Rank Special horses are about as good as you can find for foundation breeders, short of paying to have them boosted. So yes, on that count, keeping them intact is not a bad idea.

That said there isn't necessarily a huge market for them; sometimes people will be working on special projects and offer large sums of HBs for specific titles (Freaky Friday, Out With A Bang, etc) but that is generally paid for young (3-4 year old) unbred mares. Sometimes you can put them up for public brood for more than the regular low, low price of foundation broodmares, but if you do that, you can't use them yourself.

Being interested in cool colors is not, by itself, a bad thing either. Having a particular goal in mind can help you keep your breeding tightly focused.... BUT for a new player this can rapidly get VERY costly. Show horses is where the money is. Breeding is fun and entertaining and educational, but it's basically impossible to fund your stable that way.

One of our long-time players (hi Cliche!) put a very colorful stallion with rare genes up for public breeding this year for the low, low sum of 50,000 hbs... per use. As a new player that's a HUGE sum of money to gamble with, especially since you're very likely to end up with a gelding or spayed mare. Looks like he's been bred to 12 times at that rate, which means his owner has made 600,000 hbs. Not bad, not bad.....

Now, you're probably thinking, hey: no problem, I'll just make one of those! Well, no. The stallion in question is an A-papered foundation, which means they started with an exceptional stallion (B-papered) and then gave him a 5% breeding boost. You can buy those with real money (which Ammit appreciates!) for the low, low price of $40. You can also buy one with IVs, which you can buy with game money. They only cost 50 IVs! But one IV is 12,500 hbs... which is 625,000 hbs. Then there's all his special genes. Even if you started with the right color, he's got 2 copies of the Kit Promoter gene (runs 5 gene mod tokens per copy), two copies of Sooty+ (20 gene mod tokens per copy), and... well, this model has two copies of Sabino 1 ('only' 4 gene mod tokens per copy). That's 58 gene mod tokens, minimum, for the rare genes. You can also buy THOSE with real money ($200 will buy you a pack of 50; 10 more will run you another $45) or, again, with IVs: one GMT is 20 IVs, or 250,000 hbs.... so 20 IVs x 58 gene mod tokens = 1160 IVs x 250,000 IVs is... 14,500,000 hbs.

On Sunday I'm going to pull in 5,043,000 hbs in pure show bonus money. No, you didn't read that wrong; that's five million this week and I didn't even have to do anything to get it.

Showing is definitely the way to go!

The only problem with that is the fact that brindle is very, very hard to get, even if both parents have it. Sometimes we get surprised when one spontaneously pops up, but breeding for brindle specifically is notoriously frustrating. For any other gene, if a mare or stallion is heterozygous for it, there is a 50% chance that it will be passed down for every breeding. Of course there is also a 50% chance that it won't be passed on, too, which is why we like to have parents that are homozygous for the desired gene. There is no such certainty with brindle. It is an outlier, a sport, totally outside the normal two allele per gene pattern in reality as well as in the game.

Wow, good to know about the brindles. Unfortunate, but useful. ;)
I understand ammit would appreciate real money, this game is obviously a huge undertaking. Before I commit though, I want to make sure I have a decent understanding of how the game works and my goals. At this point I'm neither here nor there as to whether or not I have to commitment level to pursue this, especially with some life changes coming up in the near future. At the very least I think what I'm going to do is just what I am doing now-- logging in to show the horses I have and keeping my mares available to others to breed to if they they are interested. Thanks again for the help, this is most definitely one of the best games I've played online. The work and dedication of the administrators and players is incredible.