Introduction

The Horse Training Life Skill is one of the more complicated life skills because there are many different components when it comes to horses. It has both AFK and active elements but requires a lot of time investment to really start seeing results. The horse training life skill also has a low silver per hour rate compared to other life skills and honestly I would not recommend investing in horse training if you are looking to make a profit.

This guide will not be going over the basics and will be more advanced and specific for players who want to invest in the horse training life skill.

If you are looking for the basics, check these out first, because they will be referenced throughout this guide:

• Traveler’s Horse Guide
• Mounts Starter Guide
• Horse Taming Guide
• Horse Breeding Guide
• Horse Racing Guide
• Dream Horses (Tier 9) Guide
• Mythical Horses (Tier 10) Guide

Increasing your Horse Training Life Skill gives the following benefits:

• Increases the amount of EXP your mount gains per tick
• Increases your chance of success when capturing horses
• Increases the chance of your mount gaining a new skill when they level
• Increases the chance of your mount gaining a higher movement speed stat when they level
• Extra profit when selling horses on the Horse Market or placing horses on the Breeding Market

Horse Training Gear/Buffs

There are various buffs you should be used to level your horses faster.

Mastery clothing is currently not viable in its current state and is not worth investing in but if you have accessories from other life skills then you should use these for the extra bonuses when riding your horse.

The Riding Crop though is highly recommended. It is definitely worth it to buy or make the Manos Riding Crop and to use it at all times just for the extra speed and auto running speed. However, you shouldn’t bother enhancing it because all that will do is increase your mastery points.

Silver Embroidered/Fine Horse Trainer’s clothes are almost identical. The Fine Horse version gives slightly more until you reach +5 and they are both the same.

Below is a full list of buffs, you should aim to use as many as possible:

Training Mastery

Horse Training Mastery is currently not viable in its current state and not worth investing in. If you have the accessories from other life skills you can use those for the extra benefits.

The Riding Crop though is highly recommended. It is definitely worth it to buy or make the Manos Riding Crop and to use it at all times just for the extra speed and auto running speed. However, you shouldn’t bother enhancing it because all that will do is increase your mastery points.

Leveling up Horses

Horses gain EXP every time the server updates and this is known as a “tick”. Mount EXP buffs increase the amount of EXP your horse will get each tick. The EXP gained is also calculated based on the amount of distance traveled, so the faster your horse is the more EXP it will gain per tick. You can increase the speed of your horse through horse gear and the riding crop.

Leveling a horse from 1 to 30 can take a really long time and you will be AFK and unable to do anything else for the whole duration. I recommend checking out Blisschen’s EXP Calculator to work out how long it will take you to level your horses

How to set up your Autopath Loop

You can set up an auto path route to level your horse while you are AFK and as long as you have enough carrots in your inventory you can be away from your computer for a long period of time. Your horse will follow the path from beginning to end and then start again in a loop.

• Begin by opening your interactive world map (M)
• Hold the “Alt” key and right-click the first point of the loop
• Next, whilst still holding the “Alt” key, add other points to create a journey.
• End the loop by placing your mouse over the starter position (where you are currently), the path should turn green and you can now press “Alt” and right-click to end the loop.
• Close the map again by pressing “M” the hold “T” to auto-run.
• Set it up so your horse automatically eats carrots when the horse’s endurance reaches zero. To do this, check the box under your horse’s health and endurance bars.

When setting up your auto path loop you need to make sure the horse can complete the whole route without getting blocked by anything and I recommend watching the route a couple of times before leaving. You should also make sure you do not go outside the safe zone at any point so that other players cannot kill you or knock you off your horse. Having an auto path route with a lot of turns will also slow your horse down and effect the EXP gain so you should consider all of these when choosing where to set up your auto path route. Popular routes include Heidel, Duvencrune, and Grana.

Once you’ve set up your path, close the game to tray (this does not exit the game fully). This is when the game runs as a background process but does not load your graphics card. It is useful if you like to have your power bills under control. You can do this by pressing [ESC] > “Disconnect” > “Minimize to Tray”.

Leveling with Horse Wagons

You can train multiple horses at once by using a wagon. All you need to do is connect the horses to the wagon and then set up your auto path route as normal.

For wagon AFK horse training, use a Merchant Wagon which can be crafted at a Wagon Workshop (Level 2).
The crafting materials required are: Wagon Horse x4, Acacia Plywood x12, Brass Ingot x12, Soft Hide x15 and Black Stone Powder x25. You can also use a +10 High-Quality Merchant Wagon Wheel to increase its movement speed

If you do AFK horse training often, then you may want to invest in a Forest Path Wagon because they do not lose durability and you can use the auto sprint skill. 

However, there are some disadvantages to using a wagon:

• Horses receive less EXP each – if you are looking to level one particular horse then it’s faster to do it solo
• The buff from Riding Crops does not affect wagon movement speed
• Wagons run out of durability and need to be replaced
• If your horse has a costume on it then the set effect does not apply when horses are connected to a wagon. This is an important one because the costume gives increased chance of learning skills so you should not use a wagon with horses that are tier 7 or higher.

Horse Skills/Courser

When your horse levels up it has a random chance of learning a new skill. Certain skills can only be learned by certain tiers and horse coats.

If a horse learns certain skills they are known as a “courser” horse. This is indicated by a gold icon next to the horse details, normal horses are marked with a silver icon. Courser horses have a 20% increase when it comes to: breeding, breeding market price, horse market price, and imperial delivery price. In addition, if you breed using two Courser horses, the offspring is guaranteed to be born with 2 skills (normal horses are born with 1). If you breed a Courser horse and normal horse, there is a 50/50 chance of the offspring being born with 1 or 2 skills.

A tier 8 courser horse is required to awaken into a Dream Horse (Tier 9). For more information about Dream Horses check out our guide.

To obtain a tier 8 courser horse, you will need to be very very lucky or use Mount Skill Change Coupons. Obtaining a tier 8 courser naturally is almost impossible.

Mount Skill Change coupons can only be bought from the Pearl Store (F3) > Mount > Misc. > 250 Pearls each.

To increase your chances of learning skills, you will also need a costume for your horse. These can be bought on the central market or the pearl store and you can use a mixture of any as long as you have the 4-set bonus.

Forechop Method

Below are details of the most effective method to get the most skills possible:

• Begin with a level 1 horse that is tier 8
• Level the horse up to level 15
• At this point, you want to stop and check how many skills the horse has. The horse should have around 11 to 14 skills at this point. Ideally, you want the horse to have learned either Hind Kick or Fore Chop. These are both common skills that have a high chance of being learned. If the horse has not learned at least 11 skills at this point then it is a “dumb” horse and you will need to start from scratch. It is not worth investing any more time into this horse or investing mount change coupons. You can take the horse to an Imperial Delivery NPC and exchange it for Imperial Training Seals.
• If the horse has a decent amount of skills then you should now go to the Stable Keeper and use a mount change coupon to change either Fore Chop or Hind Kick for S: Sideways. If you are extremely lucky and your horse has learned S: Sideways already then you can try to learn S: Instant Accell. The reason you want to try and swap to one of these is because they have the lowest chance of being learned naturally.
• Now you can continue to level your horse again. Each time your horse levels up, check if it has learned a new skill and keep swapping Fore Chop/Hind Kick for better skills.
• Once your horse is level 30 you should hopefully have around 17 or 18 skills. If your horse hasn’t learned all the courser skills then you will have to swap another skill. You should use skills with a low chance of being learned. If you try to swap Fore Chop/Hind Kick at this point then you will just go around in a loop.
• I recommend checking out this Google Sheet which shows what skills can be learned by each horse and the % chance of learning them.

Horse Stats

When a horse levels up they gain a set amount of extra stats. There are 4 different stats:

• Speed
  • Higher speed increases the horse’s speed while sprinting and auto-pathing. It also has an effect on the drift + instant accel combo
• Accel
  • The accel stat increases the starting speed of your horse. Higher accel speed lowers the time between when you first start moving and when your horse starts to sprint. The stat is not really that important because you can use the Charge skill whilst standing still and then drift + instant accel straight afterward.
• Turn
  • A higher turn stat makes your turns sharper when you use A or D to turn
• Brake
  • A higher Brake stat makes the drift animation shorter. The brake stat is the most important of all the stats because it will increase your overall speed.
  • Unlike the other stats, brake is split into brackets and you will only see increased benefits when you hit the next bracket.
  • The brackets are: 130.1 – 140, 140.1 – 150, and then 150.1 – 160 is the highest.

Horse stats are not “that” important at the end of the day but obviously having higher brake and speed is a bonus. I highly recommend checking out the BDO Horse Community Discord. They have a bot where you can enter your horse’s current stats and get an estimate of what stats they will have at level 30. They also have tons of other useful resources and the best horse trainers to get advice from.

Horse Gear

There are many different types of horse gear and if you are looking for cheap gear to put on your horse then the Storm set is best for you.

If you have a dream horse then you should really look to invest in the Granverre set or the Krogdalo set. The Granverre set is a blue-grade set and has identical stats to the Krogdalo set, but the Krogdalo set also has a set bonus and buff. That being said, it is much harder to obtain crafting materials and costs a lot more. Both sets can only be crafted in Duvencrune or at Stonetail Horse Ranch, but you can also find them on the central market or exchange Golden Seal – [Imperial Training] x50 for a Granverre piece.

If you do choose to go for the Krogdalo set, then the wind set is by far the easiest of the three to make, but it is completely up to you which you want to go for.

Both sets can also be enhanced up to +10. The recommended failstacks are:

• Use 6 – 8 failstacks for +1
• Use 8 – 10 failstacks for +2
• Use 10 – 13 failstacks for +3
• Use 20 – 23 failstacks for +4
• Use 23 – 25 failstacks for +5
• Use 25 – 30 failstacks for +6
• Use 30 – 40failstacks for +7
• Use 60 – 80 failstacks for +8
• Use 65+ failstacks for +9 (not recommended to bother)
• Use 100+ failstacks for +10 (not recommended to bother)

Granverre and Krogdalo have the same effects so check the table below for Krogdalo effects as well (Krogdalo also has a set effect, this is listed lower down)

Powerleveling Horse Training

You get horse training EXP every time you level a horse or tame a wild horse.

The fastest way to power-level your horse training is to go and catch wild horses that spawn around Trent or Duvencrune. These spots are very close to Stable Keepers and most convenient.

Check out our map for all the horse spawn locations. You can also check out our Horse Taming guide for details

It doesn’t matter what tier the horse is, you always get around the same EXP for every horse you tame. Once you’ve captured all the horses, change the channel and repeat.

Use as many of the life skill EXP buffs as possible

Imperial Delivery and making money

Horse training is really not a high-profit life skill. The only real profit comes from making Tier 8 coursers which is very RNG heavy and requires both time and real cash investment.

You can still trade “dumb” horses to an Imperial Delivery NPC for extra silver though. Or you can put 4 horses on a wagon and level them to level 15 to trade for seals. Although there are much better ways to make higher silver per hour, it is not a bad way to make some extra silver overnight.

The horse needs to be at least level 15 to exchange. You will obtain a certain amount of Golden Seal – [Imperial Training] based on the tier of the horse. If your horse is tier 6, you will get 6 seals. Higher-level horses do not affect the number of seals you can obtain.

Golden Seal – [Imperial Training] can be exchanged for the following items:

• Exchange 1: Swaying Wind Shard x1
• Exchange 1: Rumbling Earth Shard x1
• Exchange 1: Fighting Spirit Horse Gear box x1
• Exchange 2: Storm Horse Gear Box x1
• Exchange 5: Fine Horse Trainer’s Clothes x1
• Exchange 12: Black Essence: Viper x1
• Exchange 50: Granverre Horse Gear x1 (choose which you would like)
• Exchange 100: Manos Trainer’s Clothes x1
• Exchange 100: Manos Riding Crop x1

The best items to get are either the Black Essence: Viper, which is used to make Black Magic Crystal – Viper, or the Manos Riding Crop. Both can be sold for profit. The Courser Training Reward box can also be good to go for if you are training horses to make a dream horse. The box gives a random material that is used for courser horse training to awaken your dream horse.

Imperial Steed

An Imperial Steed is a special horse that has a low chance of being obtained alongside a normal foal when you breed horses.

You can level up the Imperial Steed to level 15 and sell it at a Stable using Imperial Horse Delivery

• An Imperial Steed sells for 120 million silver and also rewards other Training materials
• The Imperial Steed cannot be exchanged on the Horse Market or Breeding Market
• The Imperial Steed only has 1 skill called “Imperial Stature” to indicate it is an Imperial Steed horse
• The higher the tier and level of horses when breeding, the higher chance of obtaining an Imperial Steed

Imperial Steed Rewards

• Sell to a Stable Keeper with Imperial Horse Delivery when the horse is level 15 or higher
• Obtain 100 million silver and all of the following items:

Training EXP Quests

The following leap quests can be accepted and completed once per character.

Training Materials Quests

These Training Materials quests can be completed once per family:

FAQ