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 – Unwritten Rules of Politeness

Horse Isle 3

We all know about the Site Terms of Service, but if you’re new to a community it’s also nice to know about the customs and best practices that keep it running smoothly. You know, those rules that aren’t written down anywhere but if you run afoul of them you’re pissing people off without knowing it. Since I like to know about that kind of thing, I figured I’d share what I’ve noticed about them here, too. Knowing some of these can save you time and Essence, too!

Basic Chat Guidelines

Help Chat is great for asking questions and doesn’t use up your Essence. People are pretty friendly and helpful too.

When getting started, lots of answers are found by looking at the “Beginner Bird” information, found under the blue question mark to the upper right.

Also, lots of great information about where to find wilds, and where to find gatherable resources, is in the Library. You can find those in most clubs.

Use the right chat for the right reason. If selling, use Ads. If asking questions about riddle boxes and such, use Help.

Keep Global conversation light. Lots of people come to Horse Isle to get away from their troubles, so discussion of heavy topics is best left to PM or some kind of group chat.

Logging

Logging in and around a club, or around someone else’s ranch, usually irritates people. Sure, trees grow back, but it takes a while and looks ugly in the meantime. Many clubs (like TigerTon, Where The Drafts Go, and Zoo for example) have designated gathering areas linked to their wagons. Those are spots meant for people to go and log to their hearts content.

Gathering

Similarly, when you are gathering resources in a place you haven’t discovered yourself, it’s best to take only what you need for a quest or whatever. Some clubs have gathering quests where they ask you to gather in a particular spot, this is especially important in situations like this.

Other people’s gathering spots

If you are looking for a rare resource and someone kindly shares a spot with you, again, only take what you need. You can also save your own secret gathering spots but again it’s best to save only those that you’ve discovered yourself, whenever possible.

Catching Wilds

Generally if you see someone else trying to catch a wild, it’s polite to move along. There are infinite wild horses after all. And if that wild was one you really wanted for some reason, you can totally ask them (politely) in PM after they catch it.

Placing Ranches

Since creating a ranch means you own that land and can do whatever you want with it, it’s best to only place your ranches in spots you discovered yourself. I recently heard about someone who had shared a prime location for gathering almonds and plums (a pretty rare biome called an Almond Isle) and later they came back and found someone had built a ranch there so they could no longer gather. Now, there’s no actual rule against this but it’s basic courtesy. To be sure, you could always pick Undiscovered areas just to be sure.

Crowds

If there’s a huge crowd, it’s best to avoid using torches or campfires. Those suck system resources and make slower computers lag badly. I learned this one the hard way!

Anyway, I hope you all found this useful. This isn’t meant to be some hardcore list of guidelines set in stone, but more a way to help everyone get along better. Follow these and you’ll never look like a Newb.

Interested in joining?

Click HERE or go to the HI3 site and put in my user ID, 1023. Whenever you buy your first subscription, you’ll be rewarded with 10 Esroh Essence (good for more energy) and 1000 gold dust to help you along!

Horse Isle 3 – Animal Shapeshifting!

Horse Isle 3

There are so many fun updates right now and this is actually one of my favorites. Okay, I really love deep sea diving and photography too, but this one is just cute and fun.

Basically it’s a new server event that allows you to shapeshift into a random member of the wildlife population. It pops up on the right side of your screen, and will ask you if you want to transform. If you click the button you get to be a wild creature for five minutes.

There are limitations to what you can do. You can walk, swim, collect items including lucky finds and teleport, but you can’t use tools or ride your horse. That said, it’s a lot of fun to run around as a random critter! You “de-animalize” automatically at the end of the time. Also, what you become doesn’t have anything to do with what biome you’re in, it’s completely random.

Here are some of the creatures I’ve transformed into:

Baby Rabbit — Baby bunny tries to figure out how to catch a horse

A black raccoon discovers a meteor crater

Doe a deer a female deer — Doe… a deer… a female deer…

grey wolf running — Players Who Run With The Wolves

Irony — I do my best impression of Prongs

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 – the Essence Anomaly – Updated — Mindflight

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A recent update introduced something called an Essence Anomaly. Anyone who plays Horse Isle will know that Essence buys equipment and various account perks like the kayak, the pony cart, the chariot, the ability to sense wild horses, the sailboat, the hot air balloon and even musical instruments. You can run around all over the map […]

via Horse Isle 3 – the Essence Anomaly – Updated — Mindflight

Working from Home Version 2

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So… yeah. I’m working from home for the first time in my life. I’m very grateful to be able to do so, so I am most emphatically not complaining, but it’s definitely an adjustment. I decided to start working on my cartooning a bit now that I have a second monitor on my desktop. (I needed that for greater ability to do my job from my home computer. I also got a cheap graphics card so ultimately I’ll be much better off than I was.) Anyway, I have this problem where I am too much of a perfectionist with my cartooning, so I hardly ever do any, so I decided to just let it all hang out and get sloppy with it. I’m going for expressiveness over prettiness.

The below comic (now colorized) is somewhat inspired by Matt Inman’s comic about working from home, linked below.

Why Working from Home is both Awesome and Horrible

Over the next few days I intend to continue posting lighthearted content, and also more Horse Isle 3 content, to help give everyone something else to think about while they are also stuck at home.

Hang in there everybody!

working from home in color

Things to do

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Here. My first comic in I don’t know how long.

things to do - reduced

Horse Isle 3 Update: Jousting and Chariots!

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Can anyone say…. chariot race? I may have to build one sometime, if I figure out a way to do it. Spinning spikes affixed to the wheels won’t be mandatory.

Most of you are probably familiar with the Pony Cart. The chariot is made for full sized horses and costs 10,000 Essence. Up to 2 friends can ride in it with you! Here’s what it looks like:

There is now also a Horse Cart, unlockable for 2,500 Essence, so you can roll in style with your larger horses.

Additionally, the strength requirement for the Pony Cart was recently reduced, so your little guys only need a .2 Pull Strength instead of .4. This is great, since weaker minis can now pull, and those who already could will be faster.

And now, for Jousting. For a very reasonable 1,000 Essence, you can unlock a proper lance! In-game, the lance is made of foam and will only knock a rider off a horse if they also have the lance equipped. A couple clubs have made arenas for jousting, TigerTon being one of them.

I anticipate lots of fun to be had with these new enhancements!

Like to join me on this awesome game? If you would, 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.

Boris the nutter — Goofy Pic of the Day – “Boris” in mid-yawn

Horse Isle 3: Underwater Adventures

Horse Isle 3

Updated 11/18/21

To help everyone have something else to focus on right now, Horse Isle 3 just pushed out a pretty massive update. They opened the oceans for exploration! You need 2500 Essence to unlock the Diving Bell, with 500 of that being from the Savannah. They also launched a fun form of jousting, and recently released a horse cart and a chariot, which I’ll cover soon. By the way, Caverns are in the works too!

Right now the oceans are a bit emptier than they will eventually be, but they are still really cool to see. The Diving Bell lets you go as deep as you want, and lets you see the ocean bottom through a slightly wavery lens that’s a bit like using the Telescope. There is a new Lucky Find too, a Giant Clam that lets you gather a pearl. and can also be photographed. After several months of time I finally saw one so here are pictures!

The Message in a Bottle, another new Lucky Find, is below the clam pictures.

In order, they are: Giant Clam seen from underwater, closed, then open, then from the water’s surface so you know what your’e looking for.

Deploying the Diving Bell is easy, just go to your equipment menu to activate. You can stop using it by hitting X. It’s really slow to move while wearing diving gear, so it’s best to swim, kayak or sail to where you want to dive, just like in real life. If you put the diving bell away while using it, all that happens is you float quickly to the surface. That can actually be handy if you just found the Horse Isle version of the Marianas Trench and went all the way to the bottom.

As seen in other entries, there is now sea life and a greater variety of things to find underwater including more kinds of seaweed, sponges, coral reefs, etcetera. One of the rare sights is the Message in a Bottle. If you find one you get to read a note plus gain a small amount of gold! I’ve added pictures at the bottom.

Under the waves are neat coral (including brain coral) and colorful water plants. I hope you enjoy the pictures below, as much as I had making them! I had so much fun being the “Jacques Cousteau” of Horse Isle. Please see the bottom for a special offer.

Diving Bell 3 — On the way to a diving site

Diving Bell 4 — Surveying an area before diving

Diving Bell 2 — Looking into deeper water

Like to join me on this awesome game? If you would, 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.

[:en]A chance in the shadow[:] — Chronicles from Concordia

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[:en]I’m writing these lines from Thessaloniki, Greece, while most of the continent – and a large part of the world – is on “lockdown”. The last few days have seen an unprecedented coordinated effort to limit the advance of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the human-to-human transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that has cost the lives…

via [:en]A chance in the shadow[:] — Chronicles from Concordia

Magnificent desolation — Chronicles from Concordia

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https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/20jhZ58fJ7xTkTudhxrWQg

Dr. Stijn Thoolen is the ESA-sponsored medical doctor spending 12 months at Concordia research station in Antarctica. He facilitates a number of experiments on the effects of isolation, light deprivation, and extreme temperatures on the human body and mind. Find this blog post in the original Dutch below. Concordia, January 2, 2020 Sunlight: 24 hours…

via Magnificent desolation — Chronicles from Concordia

Horse Isle 3 – Balloon Adventures

Horse Isle 3

As many of you know, there is a balloon you can buy in Horse Isle 3. This article is for those of you who want to know what’s it’s like before earning and spending the massive amount of Essence needed for its use.

First of all, I would not recommend buying the Balloon if you want to use it to travel long distances. After all, it goes at half the current speed of the wind, and in the same direction, and the only way you can control it is by pressing the up or down keys. You can see what direction the wind is going by looking at the little blue arrow on the round map in the upper right hand corner of your screen. However, you likely know this if you already have the Sailboat.

Note of hilarity: If you try to deploy your balloon in shallow water, you get the message “Not a water balloon.”

Basic Balloon Facts

Cost: 25,000 Essence with at least 1,000 of that being from Decay Biome

Fuel: Lantern Oil

Time to take off: 5 seconds of burn

Speed: 1/2 of current wind speed

Hotkeys: Up and Down arrows

Fuel Saving Tips

You will quickly find that flying the balloon takes a lot of Lantern Oil. Rather than spamming the Up-arrow key, it’s best to space out your key strokes to find the best interval where you don’t lose altitude but keep going.

2 or 3 Lantern Oils are required to get off the ground and to a decent altitude, then let off the up button, then wait about twenty seconds, then hold the up button till you see that another Oil has been used. After a while you’ll get the feel for how often you need to use oil, but basically it’s best to hold then button down till you see that an Oil has been used then let up for a while. The higher you go, the harder it is to see.

I would suggest saving up between 30 and 50 lantern oils before your first flight.

Another thing you can do to save oil is to deploy your balloon from a place that’s already high, like a Beach Spiral, the top of a Mesa, or even one of those conveniently located tall towers.

Note: it can be a lot of fun to hit X at the top of the balloon’s flight, putting it away and giving you a chance to skydive!

How to get Lantern Oil

You can buy it, often very cheaply, from player stores. Check the Shopping Board for prices.

There are basically three ways to make Lantern Oil.

You will need a Ranch House and a Furnace for all three methods.

Recipe 1: Melt shovels of Tar at your Furnace.

Tar is found in Tar Pits in Decay Biome. Be careful not to walk on the wet sticky part or you can get stuck, you can still dig from black ground near the wet tar surface. Some clubs are in Decay Biome and have tar pits nearby, so that is a cheap way to get there. It costs 1 shovel of tar per 1 Lantern Oil.

Recipe 2: Make Cooking Oil from Olives then use Furnace.

Olives are found in the dark green portions of Mediterranean Biome, growing on trees. It takes 4 olives to make a bottle of cooking oil, then 2 bottles of cooking oil can be combined at the Furnace to make 1 bottle of Lantern Oil.

Recipe 3: Make Cooking Oil from Coconuts then use Furnace.

Coconuts can be found on coconut trees all over beaches, and it takes one coconut to make a bottle of Cooking Oil. 2 of those can be combined at the Furnace to make 1 bottle of Lantern Oil.

See below for pictures!

Like to join me on this awesome game? If you would, 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.