Horses?

In Castle Atos the stable hand waved with a sparkly hand at me and - thinking there would be a quest - listened to a sales speach describing how to aquire a horse...

However some questions that I have were not answered.

What happens to a horse if I dismount? Can I still use stealth or will the animal follow me around to give my position away? Could I "park" a horse at a safe space in a scene and go adventuring on foot without the horse following me?

How many horseshoes and hay / fortnight does a horse use?

Do I have to ride it? Meaning: Could I use a horse simply as a packanimal to provide additional packspace to avoid overencumbrance?

 

https://sotawiki.net/sota/Mounts#Use

 

The first and foremost information you need to know is: Mounts are a bare bones feature, it doesn't connect with almost anything in the game besides adding some movement speed.

That being said, horses actually vanish in thin air when you dismount them.
No food, no horseshoes, no nothing. They're literally an item you use directly from your inventory to get move speed and a nice look. Press ESC and you'll dismount and the horse vanish back to inventory.

 

So no pack horse as the horse can´t carry anything while dismounted.

Perhaps a pack mule?

 

One can dream... but I wouldn't hope for any progress in this feature since it was abandoned shortly after first introduced and debugged.

 

I only mentioned it because Daggerfall had horses (even carts) that could be used to transport more stuff from Dungeon to City. Have I mentioned that my character constantly is over the encumbrace limit?

 

Are you wearing a Backpack with the Major Encumbrance Masterwork Tailoring Upgrade bonus and a BMC ring and have strength and heavy lifter skills to gm?

 

Yeah such a simple mechanic overlooked.

 

And eating bacon

 

I´m far from doing masterwork in tailoring. Only crafted a normal backpack in Solace River Outskirts that looked, when worn, like my character would be on his way to school. Haven´t found a BMC ring yet.
"Train Strength" is trained at 56 and "Heavy Lifter" at 62 so far from GM.

However my "Mounted Proficiency" is already at 17 - despite not having a mount... Wonder why that trains without actually having a mount.

 

There are no active skills related to riding a mount, only passive skills which increase in line with others in the same tree (tactics I think?)

I have one character who rides a horse. Training those passive skills makes a big difference to movement speed and carrying capacity while you're mounted. Actually that's a less obvious feature of riding which can be very useful: if you train the appropriate skill your carrying capacity increases while you're on the horse, so you can move at a decent pace even if you would be encumbered when you dismount - although while mounted you can't interact with the world normally. Not quite as good as having a pack mule but does part of the job. Also I've never tried using teleport/recall scrolls from horseback, I assume they won't work but if they do it would be even more convenient.

 

Sure, but having them increase *without actually having a mount* is a bit premature. After all there are skills which require to have a polearm or blade equipped to train, so having a mount to train mounted stuff would make sense.

 

No picking on our horses. We waited a looooooooooooong time and are glad what we got!!!

 

I just found mention of pack mules ingame - in the "Valorbook of the Vale XVII" is the tale of Evan the Herbsman who travelled the forest with his packmules laden with his healing remedies...

 

Another ingame mention of pack animals:

In Solania Beckwith the adventuring trainer speaks that he never could afford to go adventuring and says:
"Armor, weapons, potions, tools for repairs, maps, rations, celebratory mead AND DONKEYS TO HAUL BACK your loot are not cheap to come by. Starting out can be rough."

 

I don't think celebratory mead can be found in the game either. Not everything mentioned in stories is available to players

 

How can anyone do without celebratory mead? Especially with a whole "viking" subculture regarding housing and clothing? A brew made of honey, a beverage even praised in the movie "13 warrriors", a staple of every medieval-style marketfair? I´d rather believe that the recipe for it has not been found yet.

 

No Celtic specific recipes are in the game. Yet the original Celtic town Dara Brae is.

Dara Brae is the spiritual successor to Skara Brae.

 

There is a recipe for a kilt. Scots wear kilts and are celtic. So there is at least one celtic specific recipe in the game.

Edit: Oh, and bagpipes, too.

 

You are right. I forgot about those. Thanks.