Melanta's Stables [Show jumpers out of AC stock]

[melanta]

Welcome!

In this topic, I keep track of my breeding projects, feature some horses, post ads, and just put down my thoughts on the breeding process. Some information on what I do:

• • I've been mostly breeding for competitive purposes.
  • A couple years ago, I focused on Quarter Horses, Thoroughbreds, and crosses between the two.
  • Some of my best horses are SL Samson, SL Relic, and RL Pepper Poison.
  • For most of my time on HWO, I've been breeding rather intuitively, without looking much into game mechanics. The understanding of the mechanics came from an ambitious (and abandoned) project that left me with a couple-hundred-page google doc (logs), dozens of rehomed horses, and a twitching eye. Something about getting a very rare breed from scratch and then making it competitive.
  • I'm now focusing on a different project that's maybe not so ambitious and quirky but definitely more enjoyable.

Current project

Breeding show jumping athletes from AC horses. The only focus is show jumping stats and resulting competitive value

Please find detailed updates on my projects below. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to post them here.

Otherwise, enjoy!

[mln11]

Can other people sell to you and breed for you?

[melanta]

Thoroughbreds — Entry #1 | Project on indefinite hold

I will probably begin with the project that excites me the most at the moment. Well, calling it "Thoroughbreds" is kind of an overkill, as right now, I only have one purebred Thoroughbred. On the other hand, all my projects rather include mixes and not purebred horses.

To be honest, Thoroughbreds didn't interest me that much in the beginning. Many people were breeding them and had pretty good results. Besides, the efficient conformation for Thoroughbreds was kind of already widely known — those chiseled looks with downhill conformation, long neck, and so on.

I wanted to get in there just for money (: Some racing competitions have rather big prizes, and I thought this way I would sponsor my other projects. Therefore, I haven't tried that hard with Thoroughbreds until recently. To be precise, until this guy popped up:

RL Pepper Poison


He is the first 100% Thoroughbred that came up in this line. He is the progeny of my mare RL Royalty Poison and stallion Peppermint Ruler owned by [Stella D]. By the way, this stallion is amazing and I think can improve anyone's breeding lines — check him out, he's still at public stud (:

So, I expected Pepper Poison to excel in Sprint Racing, as his mother showed a decent result of 69.1% of wins within 162 starts (PPS level 7), earning herself the MGCh. status. However, he only got 50% of wins, and I was utterly disappointed — until I decided to try him in other disciplines just out of curiosity. But before we go into it, I should explain a little about how it all started.

History

For starters, what does the prefix RL stand for? It's Roulette's line — that way I keep track of the descendants of Roulette, a Turkmene mare that was my very first horse and that I got from the AC.

Roulette


She was actually also supposed to be the foundation for another project — "RL Grade Horse", or something like that, but it didn't work out. Although, I remember one Arabian x Thoroughbred colt from that line that had pretty high winning percentage in Endurance, and I was stupid enough to sell him, and he got rehomed a few days after. Pretty sad.

Anyway, what I did for the Thoroughbred project was adding new TB blood from the stud market to every descendant of Roulette's. The problem was, I didn't know a thing about conformation, COI, or generally breeding at that time, so I just used any stallion (luckily, I mostly had mares in this line) that had "TB" on its page and was affordable.

The second generation:

RL Raki


Raki was half TB half Turkmene and still had that downhill build, although her neck turned out visibly shorter... I think her flank was a bit wider and profile longer, though, which was good.

Then it all came down to nothing with the 3rd generation:

RL Rapsody


I loved how that mare looked, no doubt. That colour with some fancy dilution, dark mane and tail, her overall shape. But she was just no use for any kind of competition, although her sire had good results in Endurance. The downhill build, the long neck — all was lost. Although, I want to believe that mighty croup is still preserved somewhere among the offspring... Anyway, Raki's speed was 46, and Rapsody's was 30, which was no good at all.

Then I bred Rapsody to Sand Storm, a beautiful stallion owned by [StellaD] (again, just realized it...), which had amazing bloodlines and was a MCh in Racing. That was the first colt I got in that project:

RL Radical


Radical's speed was 46, so we returned to the previous state. However, he had some knack for competition: 61.2% in Cross Country (49 starts), 52.8% in Racing (36 starts), 49.1% in Sprint Racing (55 starts). Still, he had a flat and long spine as well as even shorter profile.

For Radical, I (for some reason) bought a TB x Deliboz mare, which didn't really had any success in Racing... I guess her sire looked really good to me. The problem was, her dam had exceedingly low body size, and, from my experience, it can spoil even very good conformation competition-wise. I'm afraid that low percentage still lurks somewhere in the line.

Anyways, I got the 5th generation:

RL Radical Poison


Radical Poison inherited that low body size percentage, and generally had very strange shape. It didn't really make sense to enter him into racing, so I got the next generation and sold him. That was the first time I tried to get two offspring.

Present

RL Royalty Poison


With the older one, Royalty Poison, I finally started to get some results.

I bought her purebred TB dam Royalty JLNZ bred by [Jemmaatkins985] from the market, trained her and competed in Cross Country (Ch.title). She had speed 59, and what's even more important, a good bulk to compensate for the Deliboz part of my breeding... After breeding, I sold her to another player, as I believed she deserved more attention than I could give her. From what I could see, she was a successful broodmare after that.

Back to the offspring — Royalty Radical finally featured the approximal shape I aimed for. Downhil build with relatively short spine, sloped strong haunches.
What's interesting, her TB evaluation is 4* exactly because her body size is just 7.2%... However, most of her stats is over 30 (speed is still only 47), so maybe that compensates. She is MGCh. in Sprint Racing and Champion in XC with winning rates 69.1% and 70.7% respectively.

The second offspring from RL Radical Posion and Royalty JLNZ:

RL Royalty Radical


This one looks completely different from her sister... I guess that's the fun of breeding. Royalty Radical is the first horse with speed 60 in my project — in spite of that, out of 19 starts, she only had 42.1% rate of winning. Supposedly, her strength and stamina is way lower than her speed, and she only has 3*.

For that reason, I didn't try much with her and proceeded to breeding. So far, I had two offspring out of her:

RLSL Royalty Eclipse


This TB x Quarter Horse filly is an experimental cross with my other project. She is currently in training, and I look forward to competing her.

RL Venom In Our Royalty


The second offspring is a 100% TB filly out of RL Pepper Poison and RL Royalty Radical, so completely homebred, so to say. I can already see that she has a somewhat funny conformation (especially with 96% of horse-type), but we will see what comes out.

Future

And, finally, returning to my current pride, RL Pepper Poison out of RL Roalty Poison.

RL Pepper Poison


So, after seeing no success in racing, I entered him into some other events, and it was a total surprise for me how high a winning rate he got in Show Jumping. It puzzled me so much I even got a premium account to look at his stats. As it turned out, he doesn't have anything outstanding, but he has pretty decent Balance, Strength and his high Speed compensates for a bit lacking Agility.

At the moment, he has a 87.5% winning rate out of 99 starts (I swear it was higher than 90% a few days ago, but I guess general breeding and improvement in the game goes ahead, which is really good, to be honest...), winning him the title of SCh.

He is also surprisingly versatile and shows good results in Cross Country, Harness Racing, Racing, Steeplechasing, Pole Bending and Barrel Racing.

So, what comes next?

To be honest, I am a bit at a loss. I never expected to produce eventing TBs, and Pepper Poison is currently the only one with such achievements. On the other hand, I didn't really strived after racing career that much, so might as well give it a try. You know, in reality, many TBs get retrained for eventing, as they are generally great athletes (:

I have some vague plans (although, in my experience, such things are hard to predict):
• get a TB mare for RL Pepper Poison with high Balance, Strength and preferably Speed and Agility;
• breed another foal from RL Royalty Poison, preferably a mare;
• inbreed my TB line a bit to preserve some characteristics.

That's it for now. If you somehow got through this extremely long report, thank you for your attention! Also, if you enjoyed it, stay tuned for further updates.

[melanta]

Can other people sell to you and breed for you?

It's possible, although I imagine I would ask for something specific then (:

[melanta]

Thoroughbreds — Entry #2 | Project on indefinite hold

RL Royalty Radical


After the previous entry, I decided to enter Royalty Radical in some competitions — in the end, why not? Although, because of her poor performance in Racing, I had previously assumed that she just won't be good at any kind of racing competitions.
She actually showed some decent results in Harness Racing and Steeplechasing, earning herself the Ch.+ title. I am satisfied with such results, but I decided not to compete her further, as I have other tasks at hand.

RL Midnight Poison


To widen the population of TBs I have, I decided to have a few more foals from RL Roalty Poison. So, Midnight Poison is out of *Roses* Midnight Hope owned by [Blood Red Roses] and bred by [Willows]. Her conformation is pretty decent, although sadly this filly didn't get a good balance — only 18, so we'll have to see about her future career.

RL Spice


Spice is out of my stallion Pepper Poison. The filly has her father's white markings and pretty evenly distributed stats. Her speed is exactly like her half-sister's — 52. I also suspect her shape will be much like her father's when she grows older — which is desirable for me.

Anyways, I'm excited about this new generation. I will also probably have one or two more foals our of Royalty Poison.

[melanta]

Showjumpers – Entry #1

After inspecting AC breeds for stats, I decided on Przewalski Horses (PHs) and Caspians as foundation breeds. PHs have the best balance among AC horses, medium strength, and low agility and speed:



As for the second breed, while there were better choices to compensate for PHs' low agility and speed (such as Shetlands and Turkmenes), I needed the second breed to still have decent balance. I chose Caspians:



Also, both PHs and Caspians are small horses, and height being a concern, Shetlands would be a no-go anyway.

All that said, the foundation horses are:

Kingdom | M


HGP 31,013
Bal 48.6 | Str 44.7 | Ag 30.3 | Sp 34.0
Looks very uhhh.. safari. I like his mohawk, and his overall size is not small for a PH.

NOTE: I use this spreadsheet to estimate conformation scores by breeder's report comments. Don't know who to credit for it but they've done an amazing job.

Heartbeat | F


HGP 34,457
Bal 20.0 | Str 23.7 | Ag 39.4 | Sp 46.8

Sahara | M


HGP 34,423
Bal 28.6 | Str 26.3 | Ag 42.4 | Sp 27.7
This stallion has a green intelligence stat which he passes to offspring as is seen later. I think his neck and head are quite nice, not necessarily from a functional standpoint but from an aesthetic one.

Calibre| F


HGP 32,393
B 62.9 | S 44.7 | A 21.2 | Sp 34.0
While Caliber has red movement stat she also has green balance so I decided to risk it. I should expect trouble with movement anyway as both PHs and Caspians are weak on this stat.

Generation 1

Kingdom x Heartbeat
Out of this combination, I decided to keep three foals out of five:

Flicker | M


HGP: 35,227
B 42.9 | S 28.9 | A 33.3 | Sp 42.6
His balance and speed turned out good, with speed being the lowest of the four stats. Red movement, though. Most of the horses in the first generation have red movement, which I expected.

Maverick | M


HGP: 36,396
B 42.9 | S 34.2 | A 33.3 | Sp 31.9
This one is the best out of this pair I think. Although his strength, agility, and speed are not as good as his balance, his HGP has a significant upward trend (and this will show in his progeny), and his movement is not colored. He's also bigger in size then his siblings.

Tulip Glow | F


HGP: 34,965
B 40.0 | S 44.7 | A 36.4 | Sp 27.7
This pair produced only one filly which thankfully turned out good. Her balance and strength are good; it's nice that there's variety in which stats turn out good in the progeny, with balance being the common denominator (e.g. balance and speed in Flicker, balance and strength in Tulip Glow). This is generally what I go for at this stage. Also, her movement is not colored. Very smol though, barely above 11hh.

Sahara x Calibre
This combination was not as productive as the first one and gave me two good foals:

Berserk| M


HGP: 34,345
B 42.9 | S 31.6 | A 33.3 | Sp 40.4
His balance and speed are good, similar to Flicker, with agility and strength not going lower than 30.

Magical Sketch| F


HGP: 32,994
B 42.9 | S 34.2 | A 39.4 | Sp 31.9
Luckily I had another filly with good balance, and I actually quite like her. I think she is the only one who got her sire's long neck, and overall she looks a little more like a sport horse than a wild chunky pony. No red movement.

Attempt to breed to Forest Horses
After the first generation, I tried to cross with Forest Horses in an attempt to secure a little better movement stat. This failed almost completely though, as for some reason HGP consistently went down in all progeny, and what's even more important – balance, strength, and even agility and speed plummeted. Movement did improve but not at the level that would justify sacrificing the main showjumping stats.

So I decided to cross my fingers, scratch the attempt with Forest Horses, and just go on to generation 2 with the existing PH x Caspian stock in hopes some would have bearable movement. In hindsight, I think it was the right call.

Although it's possible that, had I a little more patience with Forest Horse crosses and wished to wait a couple generations more, I would encounter less problems with movement in the long run. Well.. after the recent tedious and harrowing project that I eventually scratched, I don't. I don't have the patience.

Generation 2 is turning out pretty exciting. I'll post as soon as I'm done with the selection.