With the game getting close to Live, I wanted to share more updates about ranches and things you can do with them, as well as give tips on finding gatherables to do all that building.
One of my favorite parts about Horse Isle 3 is the ability to go out into the great wilderness, find pretty much any kind of land, and stake a claim then build a ranch in almost any configuration you want. Yesterday I was thinking about going into the foggy Spooky Forest biome and making a mysterious home among one of their creepy areas – like one of the new Ancient Graveyards – to surprise unsuspecting passerby. I could even write a short and spooky story on a series of signs for people to read. I’m still torn, though, between a ranch in a fertile valley on top of a mesa, or maybe a ranch near red rock cliffs by a saguaro forest. Now that the desert plants have been vastly expanded, both are pretty tempting. Or I could go nuts and find a sunny atoll and claim that…
This runthrough of Beta, though, I decided to have my ranch spread out on a small chain of islands, close enough to a Fall Forest biome that there are pretty red leaves drifting through. Now that we have Planters to place plants and trees of our liking, I added some red maples to to go with the drifting leaves. I also made a bridge over a waterway that was on one of the islands, and with the new Shedrow style of barns, I built a nice unified looking little barn near my stand of maples. Here are some pictures:
Here are some of the maples, the bridge, my house, hay barn, water tower, and beyond that you can get a glimpse of my storage barns.
Here’s one of those epic barns – consisting of 2 straight sections and 2 corner pieces. Tip: until this is updated, you need to place the barns on the flattest ground you can find.
At night, so you can see the lights working
My crafting sheds – crafting, textiles, and my furnace – and two storage sheds. On the left you can see a planter with a maple in it, on the right, you can see a naturally occurring coconut tree. You can collect a coconut from it every couple of days, or cut it down for wood, and it’ll eventually regrow. Beyond is a beach.
One of my favorite new features is the Pastures. They are like the Show Pens, except the horse can be petted and such while standing in them. I like how they keep the horse fed and watered while in them. I typically use them for displaying my foals while they are growing up and I can’t do much for them.
Garden plots near yet another tree. I wanted to create the effect of having sparse trees all over the island, to explain why there are red leaves floating in the air, and to add some color.
Here I am on my horse, and you can see roughly how spread out this ranch is. It actually takes a while to cross, just as it would in real life. According to game size, I have four hectares in a rough L shape, but there is a hectare of protected land between each plot where only I can gather things, so if I had this in a forest for example I wouldn’t have to worry about my surroundings being denuded.
New Updates and enhancements:
Storage sheds that increase your inventory by 100 each
Pastures so you can now display horses out in the open on your ranch
Planters for putting trees and plants
Barns that come in shedrow versions so you can make courtyards and rows
Lamp posts to light up areas, that can be turned on and off
The game devs say that more ranch and club decorations and features are going to be coming out for quite a while. In Horse Isle 2 you can have everything from castles to tipis, so I’m confident that there will be some great options in the future.
Time Update:
There was recently a big update to the way horses grow up. Because of the fact that a horse takes so long to grow up in game, it was decided that they would grow two times as fast until they reached the age of 4, which is breeding age, then slow down after that. So a favorite horse, even without having their age slowed or anything like that, should have a natural lifespan of at least a year real time. There are also amulets you can get that will slow down, speed up, or even stop the aging of a a horse. The only caveat is, if you stop the aging of a horse with an amulet, it can never breed again. But you don’t have to lose that favorite horse, you can keep training them, competing with them, traveling with them, and doing everything else.
Horse Injuries:
There has also been an update that allows you get a preventive check at the vet, that will prevent one injury while out in the field. This is helpful if you only have one fast horse (or one horse for that matter) because that way you can ride longer before having to go back. Injuries don’t happen all that often but are more common when riding on lava rock, ice crusts, or near cacti.
Biomes:
There are some more neat sub biomes now, like Winter Wonderland near Snow, Spooky Graveyards in Dark Forest, Beaver Chewed Trees in Bamboo Forest, and others. You can also now collect driftwood on beaches to add to your stock of wood. So it’s entirely possible to build a ranch without cutting down any trees at all. Trees grow back pretty fast, but it’s a nice addition.
There are lots of new plants to discover too, like tea and coffee plants, sugar cane, different flowers, mushrooms, and much more. I hope you decide to check out the game and see just how awesome this is. Soon, little critters will also start populating the land, and not just rabbits.
If you are new and want a hand, feel free to contact me in or out of game. My username is SandTiger and I’ll be maintaining a club in one of the new Jungle Biomes, so if you want some in game help, I’m there.
See you in the Infinite Wilds!
Interested in joining?
Click HERE or go to the HI3 site and put in my user ID, 1023. You’ll be rewarded with 10 Esroh Essence (good for more energy) and 1000 gold dust to help you get started!
Mindflight 