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This update brings exciting new features like Crossbreeding and Traits, along with improvements to caretakers and important balancing changes!
Note: There will be no Live PVP Events this week to ensure a smooth transition for the 1.53 Crossbreeding and Traits Update.
Mix Breeds, Make Art: Unique Horses with Crossbreeding!
In Rival Stars Horse Racing, Crossbreeding is a game-changing feature that lets you create unique foals by combining different breeds. Here’s how it works: A horse with less than 90% of any particular breed is considered a Crossbreed. Breed two different purebreds, and you’ll get a foal that’s a perfect 50-50 blend of its parents.
Crossbreeds can have up to four breeds in their genetic makeup, offering exciting combinations to explore. Imagine breeding a horse with an Arabian’s sprint energy and a Thoroughbred’s increased speed. This results in a foal with a stunning and unique visual blend and bonuses to support your preferred playstyle. The exact outcome of your foal’s breed makeup is shown in the ‘Definite Breed Makeup’ on the Breeding Screen, ensuring you always know what to expect. With so many visual blends to discover, the possibilities are endless! Check out our updated Breeding Guide in-game for a deeper dive into Crossbreeding. Get ready to mix, match, and create a stable of one-of-a-kind champions!
You can learn more about Crossbreeding on our Breeding Guide 2024 Crossbreeding and Traits Update page.
Transform Your Stable with Traits!
Traits add a new layer of depth and strategy to Rival Stars Horse Racing. They can improve performance, offer energy savings, or provide breeding advantages. Traits can also affect performance in Flat Racing, Cross Country, and Steeplechase, as well as how your horse behaves outside of races. Each breed of horse will have access to a different range of possible traits, reflecting real-life breed specializations and allowing their unique advantages to shine.
Traits are categorized into several types, each bringing unique benefits to your stable. Here’s what you can expect:
- Standard Traits: These are the most common and can be found widely across the game, offering a variety of performance boosts!
- Breed Traits: Unique to specific breeds, these Traits reflect the natural strengths of each breed and will appear naturally on horses of the associated breed. However, through crossbreeding, players can transfer these traits to any horse, allowing for incredible combinations and strategic possibilities.
- Breed Pro Traits: An upgraded version of Breed Traits, unlocked when your horse has a dominant breed makeup of 80% or more. These Traits provide even greater advantages, reflecting the peak potential of the breed.
- Star Club Traits: These can only be found on Star Club studs that offer unique benefits to your horses.
- Exotic Traits: These special and powerful Traits will be offered in upcoming events.
When a foal is born, it inherits most of its Traits from its parents, but at least one Trait will always be a random surprise. Hiring a caretaker allows you to change one Trait if you’re looking to tweak your foal’s abilities.
You can learn more about Traits on our Breeding Guide 2024 Crossbreeding and Traits Update page.
Nurturing champions from Foal to Finish Line.
Caretakers play a crucial role in ensuring your foals develop into top-notch competitors, and with these updates, their impact is even greater.
Caretakers can now assist you in changing one trait on your foal, which gives you a strategic advantage in refining your horse’s abilities. As a benefit for our Star Club members, Caretaker Saeed Nair is now accessible for free, providing you with easy access to these valuable adjustments. Furthermore, caretakers ensure that your foal receives the highest possible bonus points for its grade without requiring regular check-ins. The bonus stats acquired through Foal Care will be randomly distributed among your horse’s stats. They cannot be passed down to that horse’s future offspring, but they do give you an extra edge in competitions!
Fine-Tuning Your Racing Experience
We are dedicated to providing the best gameplay experience, which is why we’ve made some significant balancing changes to make your horses stats more impactful. These changes will really boost the impact of stats, refine preferences, and make the horses more responsive, so get ready for even more dynamic and true-to-life races!
In the Crossbreeding and Traits update, Thoroughbred horses will have Speed and Stamina as their main traits instead of Acceleration and Stamina. This change is part of the new Traits system, designed to improve the breed’s performance in races. If you’re still using version 1.52, your Thoroughbreds will retain Acceleration and Stamina as their breed bonuses. To enjoy the new changes, make sure to upgrade to version 1.53!
Stat Updates
Flat Racing:
- Agility: This stat now influences your horse’s preferred position and stamina regain. A more agile horse will better maintain its preferred position and recover stamina.
- Jump: Your horse’s jump ability now affects its acceleration out of the starting gate. A better jump means a quicker start!
- Surface and Distance Preferences: Matching your horse’s preferred surface and distance to a race now has a greater impact. The closer your horse’s preferences match, the more you’ll see a boost in their performance.
Cross Country:
- Surface Preference: Cross-country races now feature surface preferences. Choosing a horse that prefers the surface of the map you’re racing on will enhance its performance.
- Controls: Cross-country controls have been refined to give you better control over your horse around tight corners, enhancing overall performance on those more challenging courses.
Steeplechase:
- Agility: Higher agility increases the size of the jumping zone, making jumps easier to clear.
- Progression: The difficulty balance has been adjusted for a smoother challenge progression.
These balancing changes are designed to provide a more immersive and rewarding experience. By making stats more significant, and refining preferences, we’re committed to offering you the most authentic and exciting horse racing experience possible.
We’re incredibly excited to bring these new features and improvements to Rival Stars Horse Racing with the 1.53 update. We can’t wait to see the unique and extraordinary horses you’ll breed using the new Crossbreeding and Traits systems. Your feedback is invaluable to us, so jump into the conversation on our social media channels and tell us what you think about these updates. Share your one-of-a-kind horses, and connect with fellow players as we continue to enhance and evolve the game together.
Happy racing, and see you at the starting gate!
Changes and Fixes
Crossbreeding:
- Breeds and Crossbreeds inherit traits. Crossbreeds also inherit and blend visual aspects from their parents.
- Breeds now have distinct sizes.
Caretakers:
- Players can now change a trait if they hire a caretaker.
- Saeed: Free for Star Club Subscribers!
- Jackie Warren: Costs gold dependent on foal’s grade.
Surface/Distance Preferences:
- EDIT: Your foal’s surface and distance preference is now more strongly influenced by its parents’ preferences.1
Meta and Stat Rebalance:
- All 3 Game modes have been balanced in consideration of:
- Stats & Meta Rebalance.
- Traits.
- Thoroughbreds main traits are now speed and stamina (previously acceleration and stamina). Note: This is determined by the traits they’re assigned. Players still on 1.52 will still have acceleration and stamina as their breed bonuses.
Diet Plans:
- Diet Plans will now work in Every Game Mode.
- When 1.53 releases, equipped Diet Plans will be removed and refunded to players’ inventories.
- Team members now earn more Diet Tokens for their efforts.
Various changes:
- Increased storage for items in the storehouse.
- Made improvements to turning in Cross Country.
- Various bug fixes.
- An edit was made on 01/07/24. To ensure a fair and reliable breeding system while enabling players to obtain distances not currently available in their stable, we’ve improved the likelihood of obtaining offspring with an average distance between the two parents. However, the further apart the preferences of the two parents, the less likely this outcome becomes. This means that the average is not always guaranteed. ↩︎