Author: Rohvannyn

Rohvannyn Shaw, an Arizona author and illustrator, runs the blog Mindflight and also the art site, rohvannynshaw.com. Educated at the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Visual arts degree, she comes from a family of writers. She has edited several books, both fiction and non fiction, collaborated on three poetry chapbooks, and illustrates stories and poetry as a sideline. Her recent novels, Rageth and The Dice of Fate, are available on Amazon.com. Her ebook, Quests of the Avatar, is available free on Mind-flight.org. Her new book of comedy, How to P!ss Off The Customers, is out now and available. More to come!

Horse Isle 3 – Sailing

Horse Isle 3

I’ve promised to write about this for a while, and now I’m doing it. Sometime back there was a huge update where sailing was introduced. If you’re still unsure about whether it’s worth it to spend 10,000 Esssence, or maybe have a little trouble doing it, or are unaware of the feature, read on.

Sailing is really handy for crossing the huge oceans in Horse Isle 3. The speed will vary depending on wind direction and how you set your sail, and it can be a lot of fun trying to sail as fast as possible. Some players have even created ocean courses that have to be completed in a sailboat.

Your sailboat requires Essence to unlock. You’ll need 10,000 of it. The colors are based on the ones you’ve picked in your appearance settings. If you decide to do a Ride-Along, up to four players can travel together in one sailboat, including the owner. The owner is always Captain.

J is the shortcut key to activate the Sailboat, and X or J puts it away. How fast you go depends on the wind direction, which is represented by a blue arrow on your Compass.

There are two components to moving the sailboat – the sail, and the rudder. The rudder helps you turn and the sail can be moved to catch more wind. Arrows superimposed on the water show you your current speed and direction, generally the longer the arrow the faster you are going.

Sailboat 3 — Arrows show wind direction and speed.

Controlling the sail is done with Shift plus A and D, or Shift plus left arrow and right arrow, so you can use either hand. The rudder is handled with the same keys without shift, and W or up arrow is used to centralize it. You want to do that when you’re going in the proper direction. Without centralizing the rudder, you’ll just keep turning.

For those times when the wind is in the exactly wrong direction, you can either try tacking, or do what I do – put the boat away and use either swimming or a kayak! Be aware, the sailboat will run aground if you are in water that’s too shallow. Like so:

Here are some images showing various views of the Sailboat!

Sailboat 5 — Note the arrows and little blue arrow on the compass, near South.

(If you’d like to join this awesome game, make sure and use this link or place my ID, 1023, in the box when you join.

That way, if you ever decide to buy a subscription, even for one month, you’ll get a bonus 1000 essence, plus 10 Esroh Essence to help you get started. A subscription costs 500 Mobia per month and you can buy Mobia from other players in-game if you don’t have cash to spend.)

Horse Isle 3 Update – Holiday Frolic!

Horse Isle 3

The holidays have reached the Infinite Wilds. Along with some great updates, like being able to catch rare purebreds in the Wilds, and those long awaited pony carts, now we have a holiday tree and Santa hats!

The Santa hats can be had for 1,000 Mobia. This price is designed to keep them relatively rare. They look like your standard Santa hat, except that the red part can be redyed to any color you want. Once you own one, it’s yours forever unless you give or trade it away.

The Club holiday trees are a bit more transitory. They take up one decor spot at a club, must be built on flat ground, and will disappear on their own sometime after January 1. They are quite large and impressive looking, and lack any particular religious imagery as they are meant to include all players in the fun. They also react when someone plays an in-game musical instrument near them!

Under the tree you may find presents, they are to be opened on December 25th. Buying a present for the Tree costs 50 Mobia, but the great thing about them is all club members get to open them on the big day. So if you have 20 presents under the tree, every single club member gets 20 for their own.

The presents are similar to what you’d get by dropping a Wishing Coin into a Fountain, with the added possibility of getting Coal or an Esroh Essence. It’s not established exactly what Coal is good for yet. I’ll be saving mine, just in case!

Here are a couple pictures of what the Tree looks like, as well as a few new pictures of local wildlife.

(If you’d like to join this awesome game, make sure and use this link or place my ID, 1023, in the box when you join.

Holiday tree day 1 — Tree on first day at night

Holiday Tree Club TigerTon — Tree with lots of presents!

Concordia station — Chronicles from Concordia

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Concordia station – a French-Italian base at the heart of Antarctica. This new video made by the French Polar Institute features some great images of life and work in one of the remotest places on Earth (French audio):

via Concordia station — Chronicles from Concordia

Horse Isle 3 Update – Wild Animals

Horse Isle 3

Infinite Wilds just had a really cool update, just in time for the holidays. Wild animals are now roaming the lands, and not just rabbits! There are various kinds of deer, bear, wolves, big cats, foxes, boars, and more. In the Wonderland biome you can see them in their baby forms.

Each biome has its own unique creatures. I’m particularly happy to report that black panthers can be found in the Jungle biome, where my club is related!

At the moment the creatures will wander around, paw at the ground, appear to eat things or somtimes scratch an itch, and occasionally run away from you. You can’t interact with them but you can usually walk right up and take a close look. The devs have said that they might create some kind of photography feature in the future, but in the meantime I’ve taken plenty of screen cap snapshots.

One of the really neat parts about this is all the animals will actually go to sleep during Horse Isle’s short night cycle! It’s pretty cool to come along and see a sleeping panther or wolf.

If you want a full list of critters and where they can be found, check out the Library for a new book devoted to them. I’m sure more is to come, however this is a really great and fun update!

Photography Tip: If you really want to take great pictures, turn off the GUI up in Settings at the upper right of the game screen. It looks like a wrench. Also, if you take pictures from a distance with a Telescope, the critters will look more natural. Get too close, and they will tend to face you all the time.

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!

White Wolf Satl Flats — White Wolf on Salt Flats

White Tiger Black Sands — White Tiger on Black Sands

SandTiger and Friend — My new friend and I

Puma on Mesa Top — My horse faces off with a panther on a mesa top

Jungle Panther — Black Panther in Open Jungle

Deer in fall forest — Doe in Fall Forest

buck in fall forest — Buck in Fall Forest

Black Wolf Dark Forest — Black Wolf in Dark Forest

Bear cub and deer — Bear Cub in Wonderland

The ‘Raid’ to supply Concordia – new video — Chronicles from Concordia

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Generally when you raid supplies, you are taking stock and using them for yourself. The Antarctic ‘Raid’ however is the opposite: traverses are used to transport heavy items and the trip across Antarctica takes ten days to complete, climbing over 3000 m from the coast to reach the plateau where Concordia was built. Pulled by…

via The ‘Raid’ to supply Concordia – new video — Chronicles from Concordia

Horse Isle 3 Update – Pony Carts!

Horse Isle 3

At long last, Horse Isle players can have a use for the horses that are too small to ride. For the quite reasonable unlock cost of 2,000 Essence with 250 of that needing to be Mesa Essence, you can have a cart that automatically appears when you try to mount a horse that is too small to ride, but over .41 in their Strength stat. This can be trained, by the way.

The Pony Cart uses the equipment colors you set in your profile, and you can change those by going to “Myself” and then “Change My Appearance” and then selecting your two equipment colors.

Speed of your majestic pony cart varies depending on how strong your pony is as well as how fast it is, and it can only be used by horses 12 hands and below. Now, here are some pictures!

Just the pony this time — Pony wants a portrait too!

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!

7.47 litres of blood and a cabbage dream — Chronicles from Concordia

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Dr. Nadja Albertsen is the ESA-sponsored medical doctor spending 12 months at Concordia research station in Antarctica. She facilitates a number of experiments on the effects of isolation, light deprivation, and extreme temperatures on the human body and mind. This blog entry is translated from her original in Danish. Red cabbage, glistening fresh – so fresh that…

via 7.47 litres of blood and a cabbage dream — Chronicles from Concordia

Free Printable: Ink-Painting Themed Day Planner

Classic Skills

Hi all!

I wanted to give you a gift at the start of the holidays, in thanks for reading my blog.

At my job, when I got into leadership, I found I needed a dayplanner. However, the ones I saw in stores are either ridiculously expensive, don’t really meet my needs, or both. Also I wanted something unique. I opted for a bamboo and ink painting theme, something that looks good when printed in black and white.

So I created one in Publisher, using royalty-free art. If you print it double sided, you can then use a three-hole-punch and put the pages in a binder of your choice. I made it weekly so you can fill in your own dates. There are three different images in this planner, so you can either choose a theme or have a variety.

I’ve found this to be a nice and simple layout and I hope you like it!

More pictures of the actual planner, in binder, will be forthcoming.

Roh Shaw Bamboo Planner

Horse Isle 3: Guide to Tack Imbuement

Horse Isle 3

So… you may be wondering, what in the heck is tack imbuement?

Well, it’s the way you can add special crystals to your tack so it now gives bonuses!

The bonuses are added in levels. Level 1 takes 1 crystal and 1500 gold dust. Level 2 takes 3 crystals, level 3 takes 6 crystals, level 4 takes 16 crystals, and you can have up to 7 levels.

So, each time you raise a stat a level, it takes more crystals, but each time it also costs more gold dust. You can choose to raise one stat several levels, or spread it around in multiple stats. The main limitation is how much money you want to spend and how many crystals you have.

Each stat has its own color, and you can Imbue not only the saddle but also the bridle and saddle pad, and the bonuses stack!

Your saddle pad, if Imbued, will get a nice little crystal symbol on it, and there is also a subtle edge glow on the saddle that corresponds to the color of your crystals.

Blue is Agility,

Green is Endurance,

Purple is Intelligence,

Yellow is Speed,

Red is Strength.

Where’s that Imbuer place again?

It’s a building that appears in clubs that have built one. TigerTon has one but I know quite a few other clubs do too. It looks like this:

Great! Now, how do I get crystals?

Right now there are basically three ways to get them. Well, four, but the fourth way is to buy them from other players.

They are sold for 1,000 gold dust each at an Import Store, if it has been set up to sell them. (TigerTon has all five varieties of crystals, of course.) An Import Store looks like this:

You can also get them by using a Wishing Coin at a Fountain, if you are very lucky. I wouldn’t count on that though, it’s only happened to me once. When it DID happen, though, it gave me six crystals!

The third way to get crystals, which is also my favorite, is to go out into a swamp and find Pitcher Plants. They give all kinds of crazy random items, including crystals. The ones with the “lids” open are ready to be gathered. If you are lucky enough to get a crystal, you can get one to three at a shot.

Now, here’s what a saddle and saddle pad look like with some Imbuement done to them. The effect is somewhat subtle. This saddle is one of the new Monotone Saddles, dyed my favorite color.

Imbuement does give bonuses to a horse’s stats, but those effects are somewhat subtle. Unless you put a fair amount of money and time into Imbuement, you aren’t going to create any Monster Horses, which is kind of a good thing. As with the rest of Horse Isle 3, the creators set things up so you need to earn the bonuses you get, but at the same time, once you make something great, you can be proud of it!

I hope this guide was useful and if there are questions, please ask in the comments or drop me a line in-game. I’m SandTiger.

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!

Horse Isle 3 Updates

Horse Isle 3

We’ve had a number of updates lately and here are a few of the neatest things!

We have a wider variety of clothes for our players, as well as new hair and also wider color choices.

Some of you may yet be unaware of the almighty sailboat – which is great because you actually can go pretty fast in it! Let me know if you want a Sailing Guide, or perhaps a Modes of Tranpsort Guide.

We have some new saddles, including an Ornate version and a monotone version, so we don’t have to deal with two tone saddles anymore.

We can also upgrade our tack using crystals! A guide for that is also in the works.

And we have a hot air balloon!

We have some new horse animations, with cool reactions to things. Wild horses also will now react to your presence and occasionally wander away.

And, along with some cool old ruins scattered around the center of the world, we also have some neat journey quests! It’s a great way to make money, Essence, and quest points, all while getting to see more of the area. Here’s the endpoint of the quest that leads you to the top of a Candy Mountain:

So if you haven’t played Horse Isle 3 in a while, there’s a good reason to come back. Let me know in the comments if there’s a guide you’d like me to make.

Happy gaming!

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!