Tag: buying a club

This is a guide for potential members of a club, as well as new club owners.

The advantages of joining a club

For most people the biggest advantage is being able to have a store.  You can sell items, mobia, horses, or offer stud services, and this allows you to make quite a bit of money if you price your wares right.

Another advantage is having other club members to talk to and do events with, everything from competitions to beauty shows to Essence hunts.  This varies widely from club to club, but usually clubs are pretty up front about whether they have a lot of events or not.

You can also take part in auctions, and can restrict that auction to other club members if you like.

If you are a Gold ranked member, you can have a ranch that is within 1.5 kilometers of the club.  Silver ranked members can hold competitions if courses have been built.

The Drawbacks of joining a club

You can only join one club at a time.  Also, many clubs have dues, usually a certain amount of gold, wood or stone per active game day.  Some clubs are sticklers for that, others just ask that you contribute as you can.

Clubs can pick a percentage of gold dust to add on to your store prices, and that money goes straight to the club.  Same goes for trainers etc.  It’s better to pick a club with a low markup because then your prices will be lower and you’ll get more sales.

For example, my club has a 5% markup so if someone buys an item for 1000 gold dust, it will cost 1050.  On the other hand, another club I knew had a 50% markup, so that same item would have cost 1500 gold dust.  No thanks!

If you leave a club, you get 40% of your gold, stone, or wood back, up to the amount you can currently carry.

Buying your own club

First of all, it costs $80 US to buy a club, or the equivalent amount of Mobia.  That money goes straight into supporting the game, and you own that club forever.  You can only have one.

Once you have enough Mobia either purchased from other players in game, or bought with real money, you can buy your club.  At that point you are just reserving your name.

Next, travel around the world until you find the perfect spot.  Make sure you really like it because you can’t move or delete a club.  It’s best if the spot is relatively flat so it’s easy to build on, and is close to various useful biomes.  For example, mine is in Deep Jungle, but is close to Open Jungle, Wonderland, Mountains, and Geysers.  It was founded in a spot that had a naturally open area surrounded by trees, with a couple of useful paths leading away from it.

You can choose to travel really far away from others, or be a bit closer to another – some clubs also choose to ally with other clubs, having reciprocal wagon routes and such.  It all depends on your goals.

At this point I have many buildings and that whole place is surrounded with cool stuff.  I’ll be adding decor fairly soon too.  That tiny little building is the Club House, which is the first building that needs to go up.  I took the picture when my club was just founded.  As it grew, it looked like this:

At this point though, my club is pretty well decorated and has a fair number of stores and such, so it looks like this:

There’s holiday stuff all over because of the time of year, but take a look at how much taller that Clubhouse became.

When your club is new

When you first start out, you can only have five club members including yourself, so try and find people who are motivated to donate to the club.  After all, the more donations there are, the more amenities there are, and the better it is for everyone.  If you want to make two of any given building, which is useful for things like trainers and horse traders, it will take extra Building Slots.  So your first trainer takes one slot, but your second would make two.

If you intend to add more buildings in a certain place, it also makes sense to leave extra space near them so you don’t have to go and rearrange later.

Tips for making a great club

Have a plan in advance.  Take a really good look at the area you have chosen and think about what buildings you want.  For every club level you have, you get five building spots, though club stores don’t count towards that total.  Think about what most people use a club for and set those buildings up first.

For example, my club started out with a horse trader, a breed identifier, a trainer for speed, some club stores, and an importer so we can get things like iron, wool, and garden seeds.  I built up from there and I also asked my clubbies what they would find most useful.

Pick a good color scheme.  Whether the color scheme is meant to be tasteful or wild, put some thought into it.  I’d be more likely to spend time in a club I liked the look of, then stick around in a place that was all black and hot pink, for example, with low contrast store signs.

Have fun with profiles.  Some stores allow you to put up a profile, which is short but still enough to put in a few sentences.  I chose to describe what each shopkeeper looked like and I think it adds something to the club village.

Creative club Amenities

Horse Isle 3 allows for some flexibility in thought, so I’ve used that to enhance things for my members and visitors.  For example, I bought a land parcel as close as possible to my ranch, and made sure one of the paths led to it.  I built a breeding barn there, which is a structure anyone can use, then put a lamp post near it, and put up a sign in the club letting people know where it was.  I also placed a water trough for use by thirsty horses.  That way it’s something useful for visitors but isn’t a pre-designed, official club amenity.

Some clubs also have signs with helpful hints and tips on them.  This can be fun and also helpful for newbies.  I have seen signs that tell when the club is accepting new members, ones that show where the different wagon routes go, ones that talk about different characters in the club, and more.  I have even seen signs with dye recipes on them!

Workshops and Breeding Barns – since workshops can now be shared, having one near your club (or a wagon route to one) can be really handy.  At TigerTon, ours is near the Breeding Barn.  It can be a great boost for new players who can’t afford a ranch yet.

Courses – Folks like places to ride their horses.  Some clubs have marked out long endurance trails to interesting places in the area.  My own club has a speed track I made around an oval path, a Sled-Pull, and also a multi-use course that is an easy Sled-Pull, but the low fence can also be used for jousting.

Not only that, but if you have good courses, they might be randomly selected for the Mane Event, which brings players to your general area.

Towers – now that you can build really tall towers, they make great glider launching spots and can be a popular amenity.

Gardens – some clubs have relaxing areas with benches and plants and such, so that people have a peaceful place to sit while they sort their horses or go through Super orders and such.

Quest Table – not only are quests fun for your own clubbies to do, but they will also bring other people to you when they are looking for new quests to do!  Having a variety of easy, medium, and hard ones is best.

Consider lighting.  It gets pretty dark during our ten minutes of night, so plan carefully when placing your lamp post.  It’s usually helpful to put it somewhere players will want to go , like near the trader, or the vet.  You can even pick what color your lights will be, to help create mood.

Pick a theme and purpose.  One club I know of found a club area on a mountainside and picked a Greek Mythology theme.  My own club is supposed to be a village of friendly traders who live in the jungle.  Others focus on breeding, or competitions.  One really awesome club has a knightly theme with some really cool quests.  So if you know what you most like doing, and you have some special interest that can be turned into a theme, that will lead to a cohesive club that is a pleasure to come to, and return to again and again.

Think Ahead With Building Placement  Keep in mind that new people will want things to be easy to find.  You may want to group all your stores in one place, your horse facilities in another, and your services still somewhere else.  You may want to create a ring of buildings around a clear area, or along a path.  You may want to create streets.  Keep in mind that it’s pretty hard to build more than one or two lamp posts, so save those for important places.  For instance, I have a lamp post near my horse traders, that also shows the way to the vet and the trainers, and another lamp post near my competition area.  You can also use trees and other plants to add interest and draw the eye where you want it.  I have planted a huge flower near the closest cave entrance to my club, so people will look over there and see it.

Name things!  If you have names for various land forms around your club, use them.  If you build a directional sign, for example, and want to point to a nearby mountain, you could say “this way to Blue Peak.”  When setting destinations for your Wagon, you don’t have to list the destination plainly, like “plains biome” or “mesa and sandstone.”  Why not make it immersive by listing them as “Sunlit Plains” or “Rattling Gulch.”  Of course, if it’s really hard to guess, you may want to put a sign nearby explaining what everything actually is.

Getting more Building/Decor Slots

Since the Epic Finds were introduced, we now have a new way to get more of those.  Each time a player is the first to discover a new Epic Find, they get an Epic Token.  Those can be donated to clubs and traded in for more building/decor slots.  They can also be sold and some players will just do that to make a little extra money.  Each time a club owner trades them in the amount increases for next time, but it’s still a great way to make clubs a little bigger than they otherwise would be.

Drawing more people to your club

As stated above, it’s a good idea to have several courses nearby so the Mane Event may come to you.

Another quick thing to do is to log in when the new horse traders are picked each day, or have a club member do it, and look at the horse traders your club has so that they will appear on the main trader board.  That way people are more likely to come to your club in search of a trader.  If they like your general atmosphere, they just may join.

Similarly, holding events fairly regularly gives people a reason to come to your club.  You could also have information in your club profile that is useful.  Check out TigerTon, Blood Ruby Knights, or Where the Drafts Go for examples of useful lists and information.

Quests are another fantastic draw.  If you have an Adventure Table with at least a couple playable quests, then nearly everyone will come to you – eventually.

Lastly, having a good description of your biome in your club profile will be helpful to those using the Biome Sort function to find a club.  For example, “Jungle near Volcanic” rather than “Nice warm place” or the different climate descriptions that autopopulate at the top of the screen.  The Biome Sort function is alphabetical based on the description so a no-frills description helps here.

Have fun!

Interested in joining? 

Click HERE or go to the HI3 site and put in my user ID, 1023.   If you decide to buy a subscription, even for one month, you’ll be rewarded with 10 Esroh Essence (good for more energy) and 1000 gold dust to help you get started!