Horse equipment and the horse workshop
The horse workshop, officially called the Saddlery, is the place where the old saddler crafts equipment for your horses. This gear isn't just cosmetic – it directly affects how a horse performs in competitions against other players, what rewards it takes home from wins and which breeding effects it can use. Inside you'll find equipment production, equipment storage and equipment upgrades, and before you start crafting anything, it pays to understand how the individual item categories tie together.
I treat horse equipment as an investment that pays off for anyone who takes horse competitions seriously – without a properly assembled set you simply lose to opponents who have kitted their horses out. I spend my crafting and upgrading time first where a horse is missing a free effect slot or where it carries an unsuitable negative effect, because that's where the improvement shows the most.
The Saddlery crafts equipment that helps horses in competitions
The Saddlery belongs to the old saddler, a master of his craft who makes horse equipment built specifically for competing against other players. The workshop is split into three parts that you switch between using tabs.
- Equipment production – here you pick which item to have crafted, as long as you have the materials for it.
- Equipment storage – here you see your finished pieces, and selecting an item tells you every detail about its effects.
- Equipment upgrade – here you raise the rarity of pieces you've already crafted.
Not every piece of equipment can be made straight away – for some items the game says outright that the item can't currently be crafted, typically because you're short of materials or have no free slot in storage.
Five equipment categories cover five different parts of a horse competition
Equipment is split into five categories and each one targets a different part of your horse's performance.
- Saddles improve how the horse behaves when clearing obstacles or completing tasks.
- Saddle pads give the horse completely new breeding effects for a better chance of clearing an obstacle or task at a gallop – but only if the horse has a free slot for a new effect.
- Riding helmets don't improve performance itself, but they increase the challenge reward the horse earns for clearing an obstacle or task at a gallop, and you only get that reward if you win the challenge.
- Riding boots improve breeding effects the horse already has – they won't give it a new one.
- Gaiters replace negative breeding effects the horse already carries with something better.
From my own experience this order of priorities makes sense – gaiters first to fix a negative effect, then boots to strengthen the good effects the horse has, and saddle pads only once the horse still has a free slot for a new effect.
Every piece of equipment has its own requirements and fires its effect when an obstacle is cleared
Every item comes with its own conditions the horse has to meet before you can even put it on. The game lists them under the heading "Horse requires" and they are usually one of these types of restriction.
- A minimum or maximum horse level.
- A free slot for a breeding effect.
- The horse must not already have that breeding effect at a certain strength or higher.
Equipment effects then work on a condition-and-reward principle – when the horse clears a particular obstacle in a particular way, the bonus kicks in. Depending on the type of item that means adding a new breeding effect, strengthening or weakening it, replacing it with a different effect, shortening or lengthening the time needed to reach the first obstacle, adding or removing time for clearing an obstacle in a given way, or an extra bonus item on a win. Equipment is also tied to a specific discipline – racing, show jumping or dressage – and an item from one discipline simply can't be used in another.
Upgrading pushes equipment to higher rarity all the way to epic
Equipment comes in three rarity levels – common, rare and epic. Through equipment upgrades you can raise the rarity of a piece you've already crafted until it reaches epic, the rarest quality the game offers – after that no further upgrades are possible and the game tells you so right away.
What works for me is upgrading the equipment I use for my main discipline first and leaving the common pieces from the other categories as they are until I have materials to spare.
Storage has limited slots, so equipment sets and quick assign pay off
Equipment storage has a limited number of slots. When an equipment slot is full, production stops and the game offers you another slot to buy so the crafting process can carry on. In the same way you can delete every item stored in one slot in a single action, which comes in handy when you want to free up space for a new batch of equipment.
Equipment sets are a handy tool – you save a named combination of items on a horse and load it back whenever you like. You can only save a set with at least one item equipped, and some saved set slots only unlock for gold or with a subscription. If you use up or sell one of the items from a set in the meantime, the game warns you when loading that something is missing from it.
Before a race it pays to use quick assign – the game recommends how many pieces of a given equipment type to gear up with based on the upcoming obstacles or courses, and warns you if an item couldn't be used on the horse at all, whether because of the discipline, the horse's level or the wrong breeding effects.
