New features

I think I hate the VA more than just dislike as an item. It just makes me quite annoyed looking at all the old coats, a lot of which were so much better than the ones we have now. Just looking at the old Vanner coats hurts, they were the prettiest ever and they're so ugly now

THANK you for the affix change. I appreciate it so much. I've been asking for this for years!

Thank you so much for the affix change! Now all we need is mass renaming.

...Did they really just add some of the cheapest items from the game to the star rain and call it an "improvement"...

I really wish they'd do away with the constant VA's as a prize. I hate the VA's and never use them.
Even at the highest percentage (5%) as my personal UFO, they dont go fast enough!! I wish we could just outright sell them.
When the game changed graphics from V1 to what are now VA coats, I was so mad because my horses were so ugly.

Please do this. It needs to happen badly!

Still haven’t got any star rain and I’ve been on almost constantly since game update :/

I thought it said join us on the 11th to celebrate?

Assuming it will appear then...

"See you on 11th January to celebrate the anniversary of the British, Australian, Canadian and US servers.
Weather forecast for the occasion: Star Rain on all Howrse versions!"

It starts on the 11th.

I also agree about the smaller "prizes" like the mash and single aging points, they don't belong in a celebration event, unless they happen to be in big amounts.

I'm so excited about star rain! It will show up to celebrate the lag being fixed, correct?

I think it's more interesting. especially happy about the pass seeds.

nice to see people saying the game isnt lagging as much. I had a horse die on me as I aged it before the feed I gave it kicked in and its health plummeted fast without me noticing. Worst part was that it was an iris coat.

Nyx Pack UFO. Hera’s Pack UFO. Yesss!!! Also super happy about the bulk affix changes

So happy about the affix change! Now if we could get a mass renaming and multiple horses to team sales.

I may be one of the few happy about the VA in the star rain. I like the VA coats and am collecting them so it is good for me.

My prediction for the star rain is I will get pass seeds because I have no use for them to the point I make them my UFO just to get rid of them. So I'm sure Howrse will give me one.

I also must say - I don't think the Vintage Apple is as valuable of a prize as Howrse seems to think it is. It's a prize in almost every promo, every time we get a "to celebrate X you get ___" email, and I have absolutely no use for them. It seems others agree as well. I wish I could trade mine, then at least those who do like them could have more of them.

Not specifically relevant to this week's updates, but I'd like to pitch an idea for a potential future change regarding contests.

Whenever we are presented with contests or minigames (which is practically every week nowadays), the "Grand Prize" is always a Divine of some variety. Some new, some recycled, some that offer gifts, and many more that just... Sit there and look pretty.

However, Divines seem to be becoming increasingly undesirable due to their sheer overabundance on the game and the often negligible amount of practical benefit that they provide to the player (though there are some exceptions to this, of course). But with no way to sell, trade, donate, kill, or Safe Haven them, players are ultimately left stuck with a gaggle of useless shiny horses.

To both drive demand for Divines (i.e., pass buying during contests), and to offer players a way to dispose of unwanted copies, could the Howrse team perhaps implement a contest that allows players to sacrifice their Divines as means of progression?

There are many ways that this could be arranged, but here are some examples:

1. X-number of Divines could be sacrificed in order to attain an "extra special" Divine, bonus, item or tack.

2. X-number of Divines *from a specific family* (say, Prehistoric, Solar System, Chimera, etc.) could be sacrificed to attain an "extra special" Divine, bonus, item or tack *exclusive to that specific family*.

3. Divines could be donated to Ow during ordinary contests. Perhaps they could offer the player a slightly higher progress boost than the donation of regular horses?

4. Though this final suggestion is likely too complex to be viable, it would be interesting for players to be given the option to build a custom special horse or item via combining their Divines; A "Frankenstein's monster" sort of thing, attainable though a Black Market item and with the ability to reshuffle Divines' bonuses into something new.

Ultimately, I'm to the point where I'd pay to *get rid* of Divines, and many players with whom I'm spoken share a similar sentiment. By providing players with the option to utilize their Divines for something other than AP farming, I believe that the overall demand for them would increase, as would the pass purchases intended to acquire them.

Of course, sacrificing Divines should be entirely optional. I'm aware that there are still many other players who do enjoy specific game play benefits from their Divines. However, while a Divine such as, say, Hyracotherium may be valuable to a donkey breeder, a non-donkey breeder will be far less keen on watching him waste away in their breeding farm indefinitely.

Constructive criticism is always welcome.

(P.S., Yggdrasil definitely needs to be included in this. Practically nobody cares to have him.)

Knew they'd add new features instead of fixing the glitch. Rather fix the glitch not gonna lie, this update could have waited in my opinion.

+1 for this. I think pass seeds need to be buffed a little bit, either in terms of the number of seeds necessary or how many passes they give. For all their rarity, they give only 100 passes for 30 days of waiting. Considering we get 30p per day for objectives and less fields available for our crops/cows for a month, it doesn't really feel worth it to plant pass seeds or get too excited about them. Even a small bump like having them give 150p or only 20 seeds needed would be a nice change.

I agree.

I've never found them useful at all. It's much more profitable for me to grow cows instead in my meadows and make millions of equus crafting the leather into items for resale.

I'm still waiting with baited breath for our lag to be resolved! Every day for the past 9-some months, I've logged in and thought, "maybe today will be the day". Then, I see how long it takes to even load my home page and I think about all the other things I can do with my time.

In all seriousness? We've had 6-12 hours of lag that affects all players every day for about 9 months now. Maybe we could prioritize making the game playable over the next exciting promotion.

Re pass seeds. It would be good if we could plant them in an extra field, so we still had 6 for crops....

The affix change is super cool! It would be cool to have a mass renaming one as well, but for now this is an improvement that i agree with!

Oh by the way, for those that don't know, the thing that's gone wrong with this update is... there's a problem with submitting via the Black Pearl. So there may be less creations to vote on this month.

Wouldn't be an update without something going wrong