Hey hey, you can call me Maji.
I am an adult player, and have been playing on-and-off since 2008! Needless to say, I've been around the block a few times, and life events were the only reason I have ever stopped playing. I used to go by CanadaShay, if that rings a bell to anyone at all; I used to be a relatively prolific thoroughbred breeder back in the day!
Nowadays I pretty casually breed Mangalarga Marchadors... a breed that has been added since the last time I played consistently, there's so many breeds now!
Luckily, BLUPing hasn't changed too much, so my quick tips for those without easy access to passes would be:
- The requirements for 100 BLUP remain the same as I remember: 20 victories, 10 years old, and top three stats maxed (shown in-game by the skill's name turning bold in the "skills" box).
- Turn off simplified training. Manually choosing how long to train will always end up better for speeding BLUPing.
- Stroking gives more energy the lower your horse's energy is!! Feeding gives more energy the higher your horse's energy is!! Order in which you do these things is actually incredibly important!
My typical horse training regime will go like this, and for this I am using Mangalarga Marchadors as a reference for simplicity's sake, but note your own horse's top skills and adjust accordingly:
0 months to 6 months:
- Groom, drink, nurse, sleep
- At six months, choose a EC with shower and water, and preferably 3*** Western saddles
- If at all possible, obtain Achille's Heel. Not mandatory but will speed things along noticeably.
8 months to 1 year 4 months:
- Check morale. If not 100%, always groom first.
- Play for max time available.
- Stroke
- Water
- Carrot
- Feed
- Bed
- If has Achilles Heel, play again for max time available
1 year 6 months to 1 year 10 months:
- Check morale. If not 100%, always groom first.
- Mountain Ride for max time available
- Stroke
- Water
- Carrot
- Feed & Oats
- Bed
- If has Achilles Heel, ride again for max time available
- Update oats given
2 years until top skills maxed out:
- Check morale. If not 100%, always groom first.
- Train for max time in ONE skill at a time (I tend to train in the order of Dressage, Speed, Stamina, but one way or another you gotta get all three top skills fully trained)
- Stroke
- Water
- Carrot
- Feed & Oats
- Bed
- If has Achilles Heel, train again for max time available
- Update oats given
Once top skills are maxed out, it's Competition time! For Mangalarga Marchadors, I actually choose to compete in Reining.
Due to the way Howrse now determines entry into competitions, you can enter a Mangalarga Marchador with an incredibly low Gallop skill in Reining while blowing the competition out of the water in Dressage and Stamina, usually tipping the scales in your favor and winning.
For example, I had a horse gain 20 victories in a very quick time because their Gallop was around 600... while their Dressage and Stamina were both over 4000, which is not considered when entry requirements are made for competitions, making them easily outclass the rest of the competitors. We love a loophole.
Once you've noticed that the "skills gained" notices disappear, you'll know you've gotten the max amount of skills you can get from competitions. If you have 20 victories by this point, you'll probably have to do some cutting or barrel racing to fill out your Speed skill, which shouldn't take too long and you can just do repetitively provided you have the aging points for it. Or you can wait it out, like I tend to do.
Now it's time to start Mountain riding again until the "skills gained" notification disappears once again, and then do Forest rides until the same thing happens.
Now, provided you've done everything correctly, you should now have a horse with maxed skills and 20 victories. Hopefully by now your horse is older than 10 years, but if it isn't, now you literally just have to wait until they get there, and boom, check your BLUP and it'll be 100. Now you're ready to breed!!
Hope this helps someone!