The clans

A clan is a group of players. It is the only collective structure in the game, and it is free: creating one costs nothing, joining one neither.

You are not obliged to — a player can perfectly well lead a whole career alone. But a clan changes the way you play, and for a beginner it changes above all the speed at which you learn.

What a clan brings

Forums of its own, which nobody else sees. That is the essential thing, and by a long way: breeding, strategy and results are discussed there without exposing your ideas to the competition.
A common purse, a wallet belonging to the clan that its officers fill and redistribute.
A reserve of horses, where a member can place a stallion or a horse he no longer uses, so that another can benefit from it.
Reserved races, which a manager of the clan organises for his own people.
A monthly ranking of clans, which gives a collective reason to play well: see Clans.
An identity: a name, a motto, a picture, a website. Clans are visible to all, and several owe their reputation to those three lines.

And the most useful thing appears in no list: in an active clan, somebody answers when you ask why your horse is not progressing.

One clan at a time

You belong to one clan or to none, never to two. As long as you are in a clan, you cannot create another one: you have to resign first.

The menu adapts to your situation. Without a clan, you have a Join a clan group with two screens — Find a clan and Current requests. As soon as you have one, that group disappears and gives way to a group carrying your clan's name.

The four levels

Each member has a level, and it is the level that says what he can do.

Level	What it adds
Member	Seeing the clan, its horses, its statement, writing on its forums, giving sulkies to the common purse.
Recruiter	Inviting players, accepting or refusing applications.
Moderator	Creating and moderating the clan's forums.
Owner	Everything above, plus: modifying the clan, changing levels, excluding members, disposing of the clan's horses and drawing on the purse.

The clan's creator is its owner. He can appoint others: a clan can have several owners, which is the only way of not depending on one single person.

One exception to remember: a co-manager has no clan rights at all, even while managing the owner's account. Clan responsibilities are never delegated through co-management. See co-management.

The common purse, and its golden rule

The clan has its own wallet — one per world, like yours. It fills up through its members' gifts and empties through its owners' decisions.

The rule to know before touching it is a fiscal one: giving to the clan is not taxed, taking money out costs 10%. A member who pays in 10,000 sulkies puts 10,000 in the till; but when the owner gives him back 10,000, he only receives 9,000.

The common purse is therefore not a current account where you deposit what you do not need right now. It is a collective fund: you put in what you accept never seeing again, so that the clan can buy a stallion, fund a competition or help a beginner get started. Round trips, for their part, cost a tenth on each way out.

The clan's horses, and what they cost

A member can give a horse to the clan. The horse then belongs to the clan itself, and no longer to a player: see Clan's horses.

Two figures govern this reserve.

The quota: the clan can hold ten horses per active member. A clan of six members caps at sixty. If members leave, the ceiling falls — the horses already there stay, but no more can be given as long as you are over it.

The upkeep: each of the clan's horses costs 100 sulkies a day, taken from the common purse, with no allowance at all. That is the difference that comes as a surprise: a player pays nothing for his first ten horses, a clan pays from the first one. Twelve horses in reserve is 1,200 sulkies a day, and more than 36,000 a month — for horses that do not race and bring in nothing.

If the purse runs dry and goes negative, the game seizes clan horses to fill the hole. The detail is in Account statement, and it is the page a clan owner has to keep an eye on.

Getting into a clan

Three ways, all described in Find a clan:

apply from the list of clans, or from a clan's card;
be invited by a recruiter, who sends you a message;
create your own, which is immediate and free of charge.

Nothing is exclusive: you can apply to several clans at the same time. The first membership wipes out all your other requests.

Getting out of it

The Resign button, on your clan's page, takes effect at once. You lose your level, the moderation of the clan's forums, and access to its reserve and its purse. What you have paid in stays with the clan; so do the horses you gave it.

If you were the only owner, the clan is not left leaderless: the game appoints one automatically from among the remaining members — the highest-ranking, and at equal rank the most recently logged in. He inherits the title without having asked for it.

An owner can also exclude a member. The excluded player receives an automatic message, which he can answer to ask the reason.