Mounts

Mounts

A horse is a tool for the road. It is worn in a slot of its own, beside the pickaxe and the rod, and does for walking what a pickaxe does for mining: +12% speed on a plain one, more for a rarer horse, more again for every + the enhancer puts on it. Every trip is shorter: the walk out to a rock, the errand to the depot when the pack is full, the run to a fight. It changes nothing but the walking, so nobody's hour of work is worth more xp than yours.

How fast. The horse climbs a steeper ladder than a pickaxe: a rarer one is 1.5×, 2.25×, 3.5×, 5× the plain bonus by tier, and every + adds 15% of that. There is no cap. A legendary +10 is +150%: two and a half tiles a tick.

Getting one. Three ways, and not one of them is gems or real money -- a horse is earned with coins and time, never bought from the shop. The stable is the vendor at the depot counter: a plain horse for 20,000 coins, sold to a character of total level 150 or more (your levels added up, on the Skills panel). The road: every kind of work has a chance of turning a horse up on its own -- a swing at copper, a cast, a chop, a craft, a harvest, a blow in a fight -- and the chance is in proportion to how long the action took (a harvest counts the time the plot really stood, shared over your fields), so it comes to about one horse in 50 hours of work whatever the work is. A found horse goes straight to storage at the depot, never the bag, so a route that drops what it gathers cannot drop it; a rare one or better is told to the whole room in chat. An ironman never finds one: it rides what the stable sells. The market: any horse can be bought and sold like any other tool.

What rarity a found horse is. A found horse rolls on a ladder of its own, far flatter than the one ore and fish roll on: 25.0% is Uncommon or better, 5.0% Rare or better, 1.0% Epic or better, 1 in 500 Legendary. An amulet's luck lifts all of these, the way it lifts a kill's drop. The stable sells plain horses only.

The stable keeps the best of 10. Tap a horse in storage at the counter and choose Breed: 10 horses of one rarity become one of the next, all the way to Legendary. Only plain +0 horses breed -- an enhanced one is a different thing and is never taken by mistake -- so ten plain horses from the stable are one Uncommon, and ten Uncommon one Rare.

Enhancing. A horse goes through the Enhance window like any tool, worn or from storage: coins and Voidshards for each +, the coin cost a fixed price by tier and rarity (the same the enhancer asks of any piece) times each step, so a rarer horse costs more to raise. The window calls its bonus the walking bonus.

Skins. The shop sells looks for the horse, under Looks: Wightmare (2,600 gems), Cinder drake (2,600 gems), Pegasus (2,600 gems), Nightmare (5,000 gems), Voidshard (2,600 gems), Ember colossus (2,600 gems), Koi of Fortune (3,188 gems), Lion Dance (2,288 gems), God of Wealth (1,188 gems), Moon Lantern (1,188 gems), Jack-o’-Lantern (5,000 gems), Hallow Steed (1,188 gems), Nightwing (2,288 gems), Black Cat (3,188 gems), White River Dragon (0 gems), Soul Dragon (0 gems), Frenzied Wyrm (0 gems), Dark Flame Throne (0 gems), Night Dragon (0 gems), Yinglong (0 gems), Gold-armoured Shark (0 gems), Rocket Launcher (0 gems), Witch’s Broom (0 gems), Somersault Cloud (0 gems), Azure Qilin (0 gems), Sky Whale (0 gems), Ashen Grey (0 gems), Thunder frog (0 gems), Azure Tiger (0 gems), Paddy Kitsune (0 gems). A skin changes what everyone sees and not one number, and it shows on whichever horse you ride, a plain one or a legendary. Tap your horse -- worn, in the bag or in storage -- and choose Change skin to see them moving, buy one, or switch between the ones you own; "The horse as it is" takes a skin off again.

On the road only. You are seen riding while you walk, from the front, from behind and in profile as the road turns. Standing still, at a rock, at the counter or in a fight you are on foot; the horse is the walk's picture and nothing else.