Riding Back into Star Stable Online

Posted on October 13, 2023 by Aywren

Star Stable Online (SSO) is one of those MMOs that you can pick up and put down as you please. While there is a sort of MSQ type story that unfolds around events throughout the course of the game, I’ve never really paid a whole lot of attention, aside from just remembering NPCS, when I play.

I have a lifetime Rider account there, so even when I’m not logging in, I’m building up a stipend of the star coin currency the game uses. All of this leads me to come and go as I feel inspired, which is a refreshing thing for any MMO.

I didn’t play a whole lot last year. I think I took a glance at the Halloween horses and found their designs too close to other horses I already owned, so I skipped out. I did, however, pick up a unicorn and leveled him over the course of the Christmas event (which always has good XP and cosmetics).

Aside from that, I’ve popped in from time to time to keep things updated, and that was it.

A few weeks back, SSO celebrated the game’s anniversary. I logged in and took a look at the birthday horse, and at first, I dismissed it. I’m not sure what made me change my mind a week or so later, but I logged in and bought Vanillasunrise.

Of course, a new horse means daily logging in to level that horse through races. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that they updated the daily care routine for the horses to also provide XP towards the horse’s level.

It used to be that feeding, watering, brushing, etc. your horse every day only worked to keep the horse’s mood up. If the mood lessened, I believe that the horse’s speed and performance would lower until you raised the horse’s mood again (which took repeated days of care). Now, daily care also adds a little bit of XP each day, which really makes it worth doing.

Another thing they changed since I’ve put time into playing was the UI. I’m getting used to the less intrusive UI design, and I do think that it’s for the better.

After the anniversary event left the stage, there was a small market event that I took note of, mostly because some breeds of horses were on sale there. I looked through the horses and their coat patterns, only to find a lovely blue roan Tennessee Walker.

Blue roans are one of my favorite coat colors, and it’s used often across the breeds in SSO (I looked it up on the wiki). So, when I saw this horse, I decided I wanted to get it while it was still on sale.

The only problem was, my character needed to be level 11 in order to purchase it. When I’d left off last year, I was halfway through level 9. I did go around and clean up a few random quests since I started logging in again, but leveling wasn’t a huge priority to me.

I was sitting halfway through level 10 when I decided I wanted to push level 11 to get this horse. The only thing is, while there is a sorta-MSQ type questline in SSO that gives more XP, it’s not easy to determine which quests are worth the better experience gains. There’s lots of little quests out there that will sprinkle you with 15XP or 25XP. I wanted to find the ones that gave 100+ XP since I needed to earn quite a bit to make it to 11!

It took me a while of exploring around to finally discover the quest lines that helped push me up and over level 11 – it did help that the birthday event offered pretty good XP, too, while those quests lasted. Once that was done, I successfully purchased my blue roan, whom I named Bluenebula.

Now, the Halloween event has come to SSO, so I’m checking out the quests and the cosmetics you can earn there this year. The first year, I was so low leveled and I had no clue what I was doing, so I didn’t get much out of the Halloween event. As I said, last year, I somewhat skipped it completely.

This year, I’m being more consistent and working on unlocking holiday outfits for me and tack for my horse. Vanillasunrise finally reached max level, so it’s time to start training Bluenebula!

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