Care & condition

Care is the one thing to do for every horse every day. It grows your youngsters, builds bond and speeds healing. Condition is how ready a horse is to race today: how fresh it is, how fit, and how it feels about its recent runs.

#Daily care

Open a horse’s Care tab, choose a feed, and tap Care for the horse. One session per horse counts each day (your local day, the same one your goals use). Caring again the same day changes nothing, and missing a day only pauses growth; it never harms the horse.

• Youngsters grow. Each counted session moves a foal one step towards racing age (19 in all). See Growing up.
• Bond grows with every session, and bond lifts morale.
• Injuries heal faster: each session takes 12 hours off the recovery. See Injuries & insurance.
• Care quality builds up from the feeds you choose. Top-quality care adds up to 5% to every stat’s training realisation, so the horse shows a little more of its potential. See Training.
• Caring for a horse completes one of today’s goals (45 credits).

#Feeds

There are 4 feeds. The game marks the one that suits the horse right now. The right feed gives a perfect session; Maintenance is a safe middle choice; anything else is a poor one. Care quality is a running average, so one wrong feed only dents it.

#Fatigue and freshness

Racing and hard training make a horse tired. Fatigue goes down by 12 points (out of 1000) every hour in real time, whether you are playing or not, so even an exhausted horse is fully rested after about 84 hours. Above 30% fatigue a horse counts as tired: it races below its best and its injury risk rises.

A race tires a horse more the longer the trip, and less if it is a sound, durable type. For a real starter: 1,200 m adds 27.8%, 2,000 m adds 36.1%, 2,800 m adds 44.3%.

The freshness peak

Hard work does more than tire a horse: it sets up a freshness peak. Nothing shows for two days; then the horse comes to its peak, worth up to +2.5% on speed, stamina and burst, and it fades away after that. The Care tab tells you when the peak is building and when it is on.

#Fitness

Fitness goes up with every training session that builds it and with every race. A completely unfit horse races at 94% of its speed, stamina and burst; a fully fit one at 100%. A new horse starts at 50% fitness. Fitness never drops while you are away.

#Bond and morale

Bond (0 to 100%) is how well the horse knows you. It grows with care, training and racing, and it never fades. Morale runs from −100 to +100: wins and places in the last five runs lift it, finishing in the back half of the field dents it, and bond adds a steady cushion. On race day morale is worth up to ±1.5% on speed, stamina and burst, and it also steadies (or unsettles) the horse’s temperament.

Next: Training.