Horse Training Lifeskill Guide - BDFoundry (2024)

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.

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

The gear you use depends on different factors and what your goals are. Mastery clothing is now considered viable and may be worth investing in. It honestly depends on how much you want to invest into Training and what mastery you can realistically reach.

The Manos Riding Crop is highly recommended for all players. It is 100% 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 unless you need to push your mastery points, since the item effect does not change.

Horse Training Buffs

There are various buffs you should use to increase your Mount EXP, Training/Life EXP, and Training Mastery.

• Mount EXP = increases the amount of EXP your horse gains per EXP tick (horse levels up faster)
• Training/Life EXP = increases the amount of EXP you gain towards the training life skill
• Training Mastery = hitting certain mastery brackets will give you bonus Mount EXP

Training Mastery

Reaching the following mastery brackets rewards bonuses:

• Horses gain EXP every time the server updates and this is known as a EXP “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

Having an auto path route with a lot of turns will slow your horse down and effect the EXP gain so you should consider this 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.

You can do this by pressing [ESC] > “Disconnect” > “Minimize to Tray”.

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.

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.

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.

There are many different types of horse gear.

• 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 and most desired because of the AP buff it provides.

• You gain a small amount of horse training EXP when moving on a mount.
• The EXP is obtained every time the mount gains a tick of Mount EXP, even if the horse is at max level.
• You also gain EXP when you 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. The respawn time for wild horses is 30 min to 60 min, so you will need to swap channels often.

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

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

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 for Imperial Delivery.
• You will obtain a certain amount of Golden Seal – [Imperial Training].based on the tier of the horse.
  • For example, if your horse is tier 6, you will get 6 seals. Higher-level horses do not affect the number of seals you can obtain, only the tier of the horse.

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 Leap Quests

The Training Leap Quest chain can be completed to obtain rewards and large Training EXP boosts.

• For example, completing the 2nd quest in the chain “[Training Leap Apprentice 5] Training for Delivery” can be completed once you are Training Apprentice 5 or higher, and gives approximately 50% EXP at that level.

The quests can be found in your Quest log (O) under the “Suggested” tab.

These quests are available once per character

Alongside these quests, you can complete the “[Life][Leap] Honor to the Training Family” quests for additional rewards.

You must have completed the previous Training Leap quests on your current character to accept these additional quests.

• For example, to start the [Leap] Honor to the Training Family #1 quest you must have completed the [Training Leap Apprentice 5] Training for Deliery quest on the current character

These quests are available once per family.

How do I get a fast horse?

You need two skills on your horse:

• Drift
• Instant Accel

First, you will want to set a keybind for Evasions (WW) in your Settings > Action Hotkeys. Setting a hotkey to this makes it much easier to use the drift combo because you don’t have to press [W] after drifting and use fewer key inputs.

Now you can hold the button you assigned and then drift by pressing [A/D] + [S] and press [F] to cancel the drift and get a burst of speed. Wait until the horse slows down again to use the combo and repeat.

You can also use the combo without changing your keybinds but this involves pressing [A/D] + [S] and then [W] + [F] together, which means your middle finger has to move between [W] and [S] each time, so it’s good to get into the habit of using the keybind method instead.

This combo can be used to make your horse much faster. You can also use the Charge skill [Q] whilst stationary and then go straight into drift + instant accel.

Does Sprint make the Drift + Instant Accel combo faster?

Nope! This was tested and Sprint does not make the combo faster.

Should I invest in Training Mastery?

Training Mastery is not worth investing in its current state. The pieces simply cost way too much for very little gain. If you have mastery accessories from other life skills then you should use these when horse riding for the extra benefits, but if you ONLY do Horse Training and don’t do any other life skills, then the accessories are not worth it.

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.

How much silver can I make from Training?

Horse Training is really not that great for making a profit and has a very low silver per hour compared to other life skills. It is much better for you to invest in another life skill if you ONLY want profit.

Should I use a wagon to level my horses?

It is better to level each horse solo unless you want to level 4 horses all at once. DO NOT use a wagon on horses that are tier 8 or 9. Horses can wear costumes and having a 4-set costume gives an increased chance to learn skills, but this is not applied when leveling horses with a wagon.

How long does it take to level a horse?

Check out Blisschen’s Horse EXP Calculator for an estimate of how long it will take

Should I brand my horse?

Using a Horse Brand Spell Stone is not worth it. Use the skill change method explained in our guide (under the horse skill section).