[UPDATED] Devs' Corner: February 2026

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HellOw,

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The Howrse Team
 
Ow
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I feel like the energy thing was a lie lol

This is horrible, the fact I can have 3 fully leveled up 5* cards and still lose with only odds of 90-95 is bogus (which I did, by the way, because they didn't fix the hideousness of losing at such high odds with such regularity)

Nobody wanted it harder, I have no idea where they got that ridiculous notion from
jsniper
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Sickening they even rolled the ascent update out.....I did not see ANY positive feedback about it on preprod, so it's very telling how much howrse doesn't care about the players or the feedback provided by them.

How does making it harder fix it for the people who were complaining about the old ascent? Genuinely asking as pretty much all you've gotten now is more negative feedback.
I would LOVE to get opinions from those people who complained about the old version of ascent. Is this one better? Are you winning more? Not getting as frustrated? Not getting as bored?

Congrats, you made a part of the game that a lot of people enjoyed into something that the smallest handful of people can now enjoy. Thank you for ruining yet another part of this game.
12daughter34
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Dr Zig wrote:

Just did my first attempt at the new Olympus.

Good ... grief... are... you... kidding... me?

As too-frequently happens, I got booted out with 93.8% chance of success. No surprise there.

But the amount of points required per level is now utterly ridiculous default smiley :o

You'd pretty much have to have a complete set of maxed-out 5* cards by the end of Level 2, and even then there's no guarantee default smiley :s

This is not a fun customer experience default smiley :'(

I need chocolate default smiley :(


I totally understand this.I just attempted it too with three of my ascent of olympus gods that I specifically curated to be perfect in every skill.So that they would max out each other by the end, and even I almost lost by the end of it.That shouldn't be possible.They're all five stars.They all have the perfect amount of skills where that when they are fully leveled up, they should be able to a hundred percent everything.And they used to I used to be able to use 22 a hundred percent.All the levels, but this is crazy.I wasn't even able to a hundred percent.The last area with boost!
Princess Rhiannon
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I am truly disappointed in how the critique from the test server was ignored. I feel like it's completely counter productive to decrease the success rate while still complaining that the participation in the Ascent is getting lower. Maybe increase the chance of winning and decrease the amount of fragments if you want us to actually play?

When the Ascent was first introduced it had so much promise, it was a simple and fun way to get divines. I have spent a lot of passes getting divines through the Ascent, but now that you've made it harder to reach the final room even with Drachmas, I see no point in playing it. At least the Drachmas was a guaranteed win 99% of the times before. To me it just seems like another way to get people to spend more passes.

The increased chance of energy card is a complete joke, I lost my last round due to not getting energy in the last 5 rooms default smiley (d)
Oʙʟɪᴠɪoɴ
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Literally didn’t ask for any of this. This is the opposite of what I wanted. Put it back.
Wildmage
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I think that the only really positive change is the slightly increased boss frag drop rate per Drachma. Unfortunately, it is diminished by the decreased drop rate per Obol. In the old Ascent, I used to win roughly 50% Obol games, which gives 25 boss frags per Obol, and about 90% Drachma games, which translates to 45 frags per Drachma. In the new Ascent, my stats were such that I won ~9.7 frags per Obol and ~56.3 frags per Drachma. This means that in 4 days (which it takes to replenish 1 Drachma by playing daily), you could get 145 frags in the old Ascent vs. 95 frags in the new Ascent. In other words, we have been shamelessly robbed
Comet Pursuer
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^ by 4 days, I meant 4 Obol games + 1 Drachma game
Comet Pursuer
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The issue I have with drachmas is that they're no longer a guaranteed 100 in the final rooms with three fully leveled 5 star cards. You need boosters due to the stat increase, and I'm just not able to get those needed boosters since I have to scramble to get energy or level ups.

I lost 2 of the 6 drachmas I played today, when in passed seasons I'd maybe lose 1 or 2 out of 30 something. Both of today's losses were at 62 and 92. In both cases I ran out of energy. In the drachmas I won, it was just pure luck, as none of those had 100 since I didn't get the necessary boosters
Legacy Ann
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You make it harder, and we *still* lose at 90 and 94%. What an exercise in frustration
Nalu93
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Having just tried a couple of rounds of Ascent, this is my opinion:
Awful, just awful. I have no other words, and others have expressed it far better above.

Before there was some strategy and I could progress well enough. Now it feels like purely luck and my time would be better spent just having a single win/lose coin toss and be done with it.
I will consider myself lucky to get anywhere near filling the meter for Nyx in 21 days, never mind any other divines. And no, I see no point spending passes on this now when they're just going to be tossed into the void with zero return.


What were you thinking?

People weren't finding it boring because it was too easy, they were finding it boring because they kept losing and were wasting their time.
sleepingrose
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needed to beat 15/15/15 at level TWO, got like three one-level upgrades and one single purple card in that time (which I could only level twice). every single result for level two I could only get a whopping 70-80% chance at best (if my horses weren't dead from constantly being required for the insane level requirements!) and that was before I even reached the 3rd level!
answrs
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A *dracma* run cannot equate 5 fragments.

I'll repeat.

A DRACMA run cannot equate a mere 5 fragments. I'm sorry. It can't.
Nalu93
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Not really impressed with this at all. I can not get passed the first page at all, because even when I have 90% I am still losing. Please just get rid of this. default smiley :k
CowboyCrazyGirl
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I didn't have many coins saved for this round, but here's my summary after 5 of each type. I actually somehow won an obal round default smiley :o can't see that happening very often though!

Overall I have 370 Nyx fragments, which isn't that bad actually, and 60 for Orpheus, whom I also need and would under usual circumstances be going after this round too. I simply won't have the resources, and not inclined to spend passes on the ascent anymore though.

haffyfan
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This change isn't fun at all. In fact, it's extremely stressful. I've won two out of three drachmas so far, and that was only because I had to play risky. Purposely having to use fewer cards each time to keep energy on my cards. It wouldn't have been as bad if you just had the higher amounts for the boss levels, but it shouldn't be so high from the second set of levels. It's too much and makes for a very stressful experience.
Argorok
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I foolishly hoped it wouldn't be as bad as testers had reported, but I've just done a couple of runs and haven't won a single one as energy or levels stopped showing up in the middle of all of them. Before the change Ascent could sometimes feel malicious; like you were playing against a developer who didn't want you to win; but now it feels like that all the time. The results of my drachma runs were actively worse than my obol runs.
It feels like this change was targeted at players like me who had good strategies and were doing really well in gaining divines and not at encouraging more users to be more active Ascent players.
Ascent was the method of acquiring divines that I used the most because I at least had some control over the results, unlike luck items which I use very rarely. I hoard my luck items until a divine I actually want is available and use my stores rather than buy passes (I'm tempted to count just how many divines I've won from luck items since 2010 compared to divines I've won from Ascent.)
I will not be spending any more passes on Ascent like I was doing before. If there were multiple divines in Ascent that I wanted I could get one or two free with my stored obols/drachma, but if there were three or more I would spend passes or buy the most advantageous fragment pack. I will be probably holding the obols and drachma I do have and wait for further changes until the Ascent is worth it again.
Springtalon
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Also is there a reason the affixes are completely the wrong colour right now?? default smiley (o)
jsniper
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jsniper wrote:

Also is there a reason the affixes are completely the wrong colour right now?? default smiley (o)


Yes, this isn’t a bug. It is to prevent false clicks on the Affix. Especially when you play classic mode on a hand held device like a smartphone or a tablet, this is a great feature.
Miruna
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Can a Howrse dev/person who makes decisions please explain to me how this progression of events was meant to *increase* player involvement??

1. Introduce a new *permanent* game mode with win rates which are not unreasonable - to the point where I could win some of the bosses for free if I focussed

2. Silently make it harder to win (I say silently because I don’t remember an announcement about difficulty adjustments default smiley (o)) - I suddenly stopped being able to get enough wins to think about getting the boss so I *significantly reduced playing*

3. Announce that the *permanent* game mode is going to be rotating and having periods of time where it is not available (making it no different to literally all events which do the same thing soooo, all events are “permanent game modes” by this definition default smiley xd)

4. Announce that the game mode has been revamped to give better rewards but at the same time, increase the points needed to get through each level. That’s an overall *increase* in difficulty - again making me play less frequently default smiley (d)

I can see how this would increase the number of people who *PAY* but not *PLAY*. I get the words are similar but that ‘L’ makes a big difference default smiley :k
clancy303
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So they took something that had promise and ruined it. Yep that makes sense. That's what they always do. And of course ignore any and all player feedback.


No the ascent wasn't perfect before the changes. Now, it's downright terrible. I will not dump passes or time into it. Even if there is a divine that I want.


I played 12 obol rounds this morning. I made it to Nyx and won twice. I have a total of 210 fragments for Nyx. Some of those rounds didn't even get any fragments. I haven't even tried a Drachma but at this point I've lost interest in playing. It's a waste of my time
Nemesis.
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Here's my data
I won 4/7 Drachma rounds and 1/9 Obol rounds.
Outta that i ended up with 525 fragments for Nyx
What i've learned from these statistics is that ascent of olympus has gotten two times harder.
Which means, unfortunately, it used to cost me about 1k passes to win the god and will probably now cost me 2k and to get the four horses on rotation. It will cost me about 2k as well as it used to cost me 1k to get all four.

And this is only because of how good I've gotten at this game, which means I'm in one of the top percentiles of people that know how to play it in almost when every single time. And this is how hard it's been for me. So I can almost guarantee that normal casual players who don't spend money and don't spend hours upon hours. Playing will end up just completely abandoning this. It used to take me about 12 hours to win all 5 divines and then about 8 hours to collect all 4 divines in the next couple of rotations. And that was nonstop constant playing for that long, so i'm looking forward to about twenty four hours of nonstop, consistent playing just to get these horses.And over four thousand passes, double what I used to pay.
Princess Rhiannon
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Well I did not play regularly before and did not spend passes on it BUT I was starting to Understand it a bit better so thought I may spend a bit of time on Olympus and try to get some fragments! After this change it wont be happening. How in the world did anyone with half a brain think these changes mde it better. It truly sucks now!default smiley (n)
Caz
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With my drachma I would get to 100% for the Greek divine if I had gotten enough stars to have them all at 5 stars. Same cards, same 5 stars, not 100%. That alone tells me it’s gotten much harder. Also don’t see a way to get any divine fragments worth something without getting the Greek god first…

With like most changes, it’s slowly pushing me out of playing it…
Celeana
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I played 5 Obol rounds, and I only made it to Threshold 3 once. In contrast, on my last 5 Obol rounds last season, I made it to the final room every time.
This seems to be a lot harder a lot sooner, and I'm still doing rounds where I'm getting basically no higher tier cards until mid-second threshold, by which point it is too late because I'm already getting asked for far too high numbers.
I don't have the divines to win Drachma runs.
I was excited for the Ascent when I returned, but I don't think there is any point in playing now. I would have played, maybe even spent passes, if you'd kept it as it was. But now I will not be playing anymore as there is nothing in it for me.
arasteia
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I'm just going to repeat what I said in the ascent thread, because maybe someone *might* actually see it in here, and it feels more relevant to the tone of the announcement than the other thread:

honestly staff should be ashamed of themselves for pushing this out and treating it like some celebratory improvement to the game. I don't think they didn't playtest it, I think they purposefully did playtest it for once so to make it almost entirely impossible to win without dumping money in it (which was obvious before what they wanted to do, "uwu more people will play it now!" was the flimsiest and most nonsense excuse if you thought about it for more than like 0.3 seconds), and the final release just confirms it with how obvious it is to even players like me who were (mistakenly) giving you the benefit of the doubt on these changes. default smiley (d)
answrs
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