BLUPing your Horse

The BLUP (Best Linear Unbiased Prediction) of a horse is a measure of it's skill and achievements so far. It is also very important in breeding, the higher the BLUP of the parents the more skills will get passed on to the their foals. So two 100 BLUP parents are going to have foals with far better skills then two 50 BLUP parents, and negative BLUP parents won't pass on any skills at all. Meaning that to stay competitive and improve your blood lines breeding BLUPed horses is your best bet.

So here's the break down.

A horse needs to gain 200 points reach 100 BLUP because the scale is from -100 to 100. Your horses gains BLUP points like this:
- 20% of BLUP is gained each day upto age 10, which equals 40 points.
- 65% for all rides and training done in top 3 skills, which equals 130 points.
- 15% for 20 victories which equals 30 points.
All this equals out to the total 200 points.

So to reach 100 BLUP your horse needs to have:

- Completed training in at least the horses top three skills.
- Completed rides in at least the same top three skills
- Have earned the maximum amount of skills from competitions in those same top three skills.
- Have won 20 competitions in any combination. They do not all need to be the same kind of competition.
- Reached be at least ten years of age.

N.B. Training and working skills that are not the horses top three will not effect BLUP. Nor will lessons, though they do gain skills. If you don't know what your horses top three skills are you can check by looking them up in the breed directory or looking at what skills your horse has the highest GP in.
While it is not required my personal opinion is that it is better to max out every skill a horses has because it leads to more skill balanced horses. But that's just my method, just so long as you meet the requirements you can BLUP your horses how ever you wish.

Happy Howrseing!

Choosing Competitions for your Horse

Entering competitions on howrse is one of the largest parts of the game. Horses can gain skills form competitions and win equus. Twenty wins is required for BLUPing, and this all plays into the breeder rankings.
But how do you know which competitions to enter your horse in?
Each comp has the top three skills it required to successful in it, so a pretty good way to judge what a horse will be good at is by it's breeds top three skills. The comps that cater to those skills are what the horse will likely be best at.
So here are the competitions with their required skills ordered form most important to least important.

Classical Competitions

Trot competition 

- Trot

- Speed

- Dressage

Gallop competition 

- Gallop

- Speed

- Dressage

Dressage competition

- Dressage

- Trot

- Gallop

Cross Country competition

- Stamina

- Dressage

- Jumping

Show Jumping competition

- Jumping

- Dressage

- Speed

Western Competitions

Barrel Racing competition

- Speed

- Stamina

- Gallop

Cutting competition

- Stamina

- Dressage

- Speed

Trail Class competition

- Dressage

- Trot

- Jumping

Reining competition

- Gallop

- Dressage

- Stamina

Western Pleasure competition

- Trot

- Stamina

- Dressage

Now you just need to pick the competition that matches your horses tops skills. You can check what a breeds' top skills are by going 'Community > Directories > Breeding Farms' from the tabs at the top of the page. Then find your horses breed and click the little book icon underneath it. That will show you what the breed looks like, their possible coats and percentage chance of getting them, and its' talents or each of the skills. (You can also get to the same page by just clicking the horses' breed on its' page with is under 'Characteristics')

While it's not a fool proof way to tell what your horse will be good at it does give you a good idea. It also is a good way to decide which specialty is best for which breed. One should note though that where a horse wins is also decided by where it's skill rank against the rest of it's breed and the horses it competes against. So say if you had a Purebred Spanish Horse that had the best trotting skill out of all Purebred Spanish Horses then it would do well in trotting against it's own breed because, even though trotting is the breeds' and the horses' worst skill, that horse has the highest score in that skill and therefore the best chance of winning.
So if you have a horse that isn't doing well or a new breed you're training try matching the skills to the competition and see how it goes.

Happy Howrseing!

What is 'The Howrser'?

The Howrser is a user-run blog dedicated to providing up to date information and news that keeps with the game 'Howrse'. Here you can find news on upcoming and current events, information on updates, howrse training and game tips, even updates on changes in the rankings or 'opinion articles' and other helpful bits and pieces. There are a lot of great Howrse sites our there but 'The Howrser' works towards being part newspaper, part helper site, and all complete.

Any who would like to join The Howrser staff either as one time, part time, or full time writers and moderators simply have to contact me either here or on Howrse it's self (My name is Wintertime there as well. On the international server at least). There is a bit of an application for moderating but one time 'articles' can be submitted straight to me for review and then possibly posted with your username credited in the title and body of the article. Full time writer/moderators will have access to the blog it's self and post when ever.