HGG Community Forums

Just think how much harder it would be in real life!!

IF you are really feeling that overwhelmed you may want to consider (and you may already have considered) narrowing your focus. You've got a ton of separate lines, and each line is going to need a couple hundred breedings every months to keep it moving forward at a good clip. Two lines is about all I find manageable, and usually I only have one line going.

This would be my advice:

1. This game is not a competition, so you should aim to set your own goals and strive to reach them. Please yourself, not the rest of us.

2. Take time as you are starting to become familiar with the basics of the game--creating horses, visiting the public auction, training and showing the horses you've bought, studying the Breeding Info and How to Use Pastures, asking specific questions about things you aren't clear about.

3. Do some searches for horses of various colors or patterns to see what's available.

4. Decide what color or pattern you would like to breed for--flaxen chestnuts, tobiano appaloosas, silver bay splashes, white 2 frames--anything at all that pleases you. You might also decide to breed for light horses (the Araby looking ones), ordinary warmbloods, drafts, horses or ponies. Many people have their favorites. Some, like me, have some of almost everything.

5. Start building up a collection of neutered horses for your show herd.

6. Train and show EVERY horse. This is where you will make your money; NOT by breeding to sell.

7. Have fun doing all of the above. If you find, after playing for a while, that you need or want to refocus your goals, don't be afraid to toss the unwanted horses into the auction and start fresh with horses that reflect your reformed goals.

8. Most of us try to improve the quality of our horses with every generation. Some players have extremely strict rules for this. Personally, I'm somewhat lax about it--stricter with my stallions than my mares, for sure. The only wrong thing to do is to refuse to follow the simple game rules (which are found at the bottom of the left menu bar), or to try to figure out some exploit by which you can cheat the game. Other than that, there is no one way to play Hunt and Jump.

I had a 4th gen mare paper red who I rightly should have spayed but because she was one of my first horses with satin I tried to breed it in to some better foals. One of her satin carrier foals papered Gold and went on to produce one of my best lines!!

I require my gen 2 mares to AFPT 10.5 unless they have a really unusual color or are from lines I can't access otherwise. I am currently strengthening my targets for gen 3, looking for blues and/or an AFPT of 11.0. Eventually they will have to be both, but I don't have a ton of papered gen 3s yet. I also still use my 3 altered foals and you're out rule when I am looking to cull further, so 3 foals altered by SMA/GA or stallion papering and I cut that mare.