Care for Your Mare, Train, and Earn
You progress in Horses of Hoofprint Bay by caring for your starter mare, training her strength and confidence, and earning money through lessons and suitable competitions. Use that income to support horse care and improve your yard, while raising Prestige to access better horses from the breeder, more tack choices, and additional trails.
From Your Starter Mare to Your First Upgrades
- Groom your starter mare with the brush to help prevent saddle sores. Make this a regular care checkpoint before turning your attention to training, lessons, or competition plans.
- Clean her hooves with the hoofpick to help prevent abscesses. Keep hoof care in your routine alongside feeding and appropriate treatment for scrapes or injuries.
- Complete training exercises to build your mare’s strength for suitable competitions. Plan the work around her available exercise energy, leaving room for training rather than filling your routine entirely with paid lessons.
- Practice Desensitization training to develop confidence. Approach the scary object while watching your horse’s reactions, praising curiosity and giving her space and time when she becomes worried.
- Enter a suitable Caprilli-style test to begin competing for income. These beginner opportunities combine precise gait changes with low jumping obstacles, providing an entry point for the rebalanced starter horses.
- Give suitable riding lessons to earn money for your yard. Check your horse’s available exercise energy and training statistics when deciding how lessons fit around the training you still want to do.
- Upgrade a building once you have saved enough while keeping money available for ongoing expenses. Building improvements create room for more horses and help meet their needs, giving your earnings a practical progression goal.
Keep Food and Spending Under Control
Lessons and competitions bring in money, while supplies, upgrades, new horses, breeding, and staffing create expenses. Check your office expenses before committing your savings to another improvement. Keep a reserve for running the yard so that a building purchase does not leave you struggling to cover everyday needs.
Buy more food at the shop in town. Select the city on the home map, open the building on the right with the saddle sign, and select the hay and food behind the clerk to purchase supplies. Include restocking in your spending plans before taking on more horses.
Handle Confidence During Rides
Watch for the warning icon before an unprompted gait change, which gives you a chance to correct your horse before she speeds up or slows down. Praising immediately after a gait change you requested can also raise confidence. The Horse Stats & Training Book explains this interaction. Personality traits can still cause some horses to change gait independently even at full confidence, so keep watching their behavior as they improve.
What Opens Up as Your Yard Improves
Prestige connects your everyday results to wider progression. Building upgrades, competition wins, good care for boarders, and high-quality horses can raise it. Your current Prestige determines the quality of horses offered by the breeder, the variety of tack available in the shop, and which trail rides are available to unlock.
Advanced building stages unlock new training courses and staff applications, while the breeding station lab lets you preview possible foals and sell more stud services. As your herd grows, hire staff and assign horses to care, training, or lessons through staff management. Breeding then becomes a longer-term way to improve your stock, with foals inheriting a mixture of their parents’ coloring, white patterns, and personality traits.
Recognize Setbacks Before They Grow
- If your horse becomes Explosive, review whether she has had enough movement. Inadequate exercise can cause this problem, so plan appropriate activity around her available energy.
- If exercise energy is becoming a problem, reconsider how much work you are scheduling. Overworking a horse can reduce the energy available the following day; repeatedly adding activities can undermine the routine you are trying to establish.
- If Prestige falls, check competition results, horse cleanliness, riding clothing, and health. Failed competitions, competing on dirty horses or without appropriate clothing, and serious illness can all reduce Prestige.
- If you find scrapes or injuries, make treatment your next care priority. Regular brushing and hoof picking help prevent saddle sores and abscesses, but injuries still need appropriate attention when they occur.
- Neglect can cost you a horse: animal welfare can confiscate neglected horses, and confiscated horses are effectively out of the game. Put care ahead of optional expansion when your current routine is becoming difficult to maintain.
- If competitions or jumping feel too difficult, adjust the difficulty settings. Easier competitions, increased Prestige gain, and the auto-jump accessibility setting are available ways to make progression more manageable.
Lessons and Starter Horse Questions
- Why does my horse lose strength and endurance after earning money from lessons?
- Paid lessons can earn money while reducing a horse’s training statistics. Balance lesson work with appropriate training, such as Cavaletti work, and monitor the exercise energy available. Treat the income and the horse’s training progress as separate things to manage when choosing your next activity.
- Why is my starter horse weaker than it was in the demo?
- The developers reduced starting-horse statistics and rebalanced progression for the full release, making higher-potential breeding a longer-term objective. A fully trained starter horse is outside the ability range of the first ordinary show-jumping competition. Begin with the easier Caprilli-style tests, which were added to provide a suitable starting point.