Make an offer
Making an offer on a horse put up for auction. The window recalls the horse, the minimum price, the date of award, the state of the offers, and waits for yours.
The amount offered is not a random one
The field arrives pre-filled, and the value depends on the situation:
- no offer yet: the seller's minimum price;
- you are not the best bidder: the best offer raised by 1 %, rounded down, and at least one unit more. It is the acceptable minimum, not a suggestion: an offer below it is refused;
- you are already the best bidder: your own offer. You can only go up, never back down.
That 1 % rule has a practical consequence on expensive horses: on an auction at 200,000, each raise costs at least 2,000 more. Big horses therefore climb by steps, and fast.
One offer only per sale
You never have more than one offer running on a given sale. Bidding again replaces the previous one — it does not add to it, and you never commit twice.
That is why the window shows you your current offer when you have one: you are changing it, not doubling it.
Open or blind
The seller has chosen, and that changes how it is played.
Open, the window lists every offer with the nicknames and the amounts. You see who is bidding what. And the player you overtake immediately receives a message of being outbid with a link to come back — which explains why lively auctions are played out in the last few hours.
Blind, the window announces it and shows nothing. Nobody is warned of being overtaken, nobody knows where the market stands. So you have to offer from the outset what the horse is worth in your eyes, because nobody will call you back.
The four refusals
- The auction is over: the deadline has passed, or the sale is no longer active. There is nothing more to be done.
- Insufficient offer: you do not reach the minimum price or the raising step.
- It is your own sale. One does not bid on one's own horse — that would be driving the others up artificially.
- You cannot offer more than your balance less your current offers. It is the most important rule of the window.
What your balance allows
All your live offers, on horses as on matings, are added up, and their total cannot exceed your wallet. The Current offers counter, at the top of the buying screen, displays that sum.
The game therefore stops you from promising the same money twice. It does not stop you, on the other hand, from then spending what you have promised: the offer stays recorded, and it is at the deadline that the balance is checked again.
There lies the real risk, and it has a figure: at the award, the game retains the best bidder who can really pay, and the first insolvent bidder met with is penalised 10 % of their offer. An auction forgotten and then spent therefore costs money without bringing anything in.
The discipline to keep is simple: bear your current offers in mind, and do not commit sulkies you will need elsewhere before the deadline. The Offer in progress filter in Buy a horse exists for exactly that.
How an auction ends
At the deadline, the game ranks the offers from the highest to the lowest — at equal amounts, the oldest in front — and awards it to the first solvent bidder, at the amount of their own offer. There is no second price: you will pay what you wrote.
If no offer holds up, the sale expires and the horse leaves the market. Every offer is then closed, and you have nothing to do to free yourself.
For the rest of trading, see trading.