Horse ranch

The Horse ranch is a special farm that I don't unlock with a building on the Main farm but with a one-off fee. Over time it opens up the mine, the stable, the tournament transporter and the horse market, and everything there revolves around them - keeping, training and breeding horses as well as crafting equipment from my own resources. Mining, the three processing workshops and the saddlery all feed into each other, so the ranch gets going best step by step rather than all at once.

I see the Horse ranch as a worthwhile side track rather than an obligation - once I can afford the entry fee, it's worth unlocking for the keeping and breeding, and crafting horse equipment is then a bonus on top for anyone who enjoys following the whole chain from the tree to the finished gear.

The Horse ranch is unlocked with a one-off fee, not a building

I get the Horse ranch by paying a one-off price of 50 000 Dollars and 5 900 Gold, not by putting up an ordinary building on the farm. After unlocking it, the four special ranch buildings open up gradually according to my farmer level.

The mine itself can also bring in ordinary Dollars and Gold - for that I need a mining permit, which I get by producing it in the mill or during Prime Day events. There's a bit of story tied to the ranch too - once I load the ship, Rose McLundy shows up here with her horse from level 16.

The stable tracks your horses and their breeding quality

The stable is the main building on the ranch - it holds an overview of all my horses and their family tree, and it lets me rename a horse. Upgrading the stable (up to level 12) increases how many horses I can stable at once.

Every horse belongs to one of six breeding quality levels.

Besides breeding quality, I also keep an eye on a horse's breeding value, which is set by its attributes and decides how good the horse is for further breeding - the higher the breeding quality, the better the breeding effects a horse can pass on. If I want to get rid of a horse, I can set it free, but that's permanent - I'll never get that horse back.

Breeding combines two horses and can add an extra effect

For breeding I need two horses available at the same time - a horse that's currently in training can't be bred. In the breeding window I then pick which breeding effects I want for the new horse - I can choose from both parents' effects as well as new combinations that only come about through the breeding itself.

The deciding number is a breeding value of 10. Once both parents have it, the game shows me the chance of a higher breeding quality level for the foal, plus a randomly chosen extra breeding effect on top - without a breeding value of 10 on both parents I get no extra effect. Bred horses have one more advantage over ordinary ones - they're cheaper to train.

Before I close the breeding window, I have to fill every effect slot - if I close it sooner, the game fills in the remaining breeding effects at random by itself.

Training raises a horse's attributes, but I can only handle one at a time

Training moves a horse up to a higher training level and lifts its attributes along with it - each step up needs a certain number of training points, and every attribute has a cap it can't be trained past. The ranch also lets me train only one horse at a time - until the training finishes, I can't send a second one in.

That limit is exactly why breeding pays off for me - a bred horse costs less to train, so I can shorten the training queue by sending cheaper, bred horses through it.

Horse equipment comes from ore and resources off the ranch trees

Trees grow on the ranch and I gather resources from them for three processing workshops, and on top of that there's a metal mine in the paddock. From level 60 I mine copper and tin ore there, meant specifically for upgrading horse equipment; the smelter then turns it into copper and tin ingots, or into a composite ingot.

• The spinning factory makes fibers - composite fiber, kapok fiber (from kapok pods) and nutlet fiber (from the nutlets on the wingnut tree).
• The dye works makes dyes - red (from hibiscus flowers), yellow (from birch leaves) and blue (from the blue beetles on the exotic trees).
• The tannery makes vegan leathers - mushroom leather (from the leathery mushrooms on the beech), cork leather (from the natural cork on the cork oak) and composite leather.

The fibers, dyes, leathers and ingots all end up in the saddlery with the old saddler, who uses them to craft and decorate horse equipment. Production in each workshop runs non-stop until the resources run out or the storage fills up, and I can switch the type of production at any time - the switch only takes effect once the batch already underway is finished.

Tournaments and the horse market round out horse care on the cooperative pasture

The tournament transporter opens up access to competitions right on the ranch - winning a tournament on the Horse ranch is rewarded with tournament horseshoes. For defense in competitions I can also have the best horse picked automatically for each discipline, which saves a lot of shuffling the team around before an opponent attacks.

At the horse market, available from level 20, an offer of new horses for sale turns up from time to time.

Horses can also be looked after away from the ranch, on the cooperative horse pasture, where items like these come in handy

• Hoof pick
• Soft brush
• Horse treats
• Honey balls
• Horse blanket
• Show jump
• Bamboo flute

Buildings on this farm

MineHorse ranch · from level 7 · 11 × 8StableHorse ranch · from level 15 · 4 × 14Competition transporterHorse ranch · from level 15 · 1 × 1Horse marketHorse ranch · from level 20 · 1 × 1WorkshopMain farm · from level 19 · 4 × 5Spinning factoryGourmet farm · from level 19 · 7 × 6HoneyBasic product · Main farm