Buy a horse

The horse market: everything for sale in the world, at a fixed price, in a reserved sale or at auction, mixed into a single list.

At the top of the screen, a figure to watch: Current offers, the total of what you have committed in auctions — horses and matings together. It is there because it limits you: the sum of your offers cannot exceed your balance.

Reading a line

The horse and its description, with its genetics. Good news for the buyer: a horse put up for sale always shows its genetics, even if its owner keeps them for their team the rest of the time. The display setting does not apply here. A reserved sale, on the other hand, shows them only to the player it is reserved for — that is, the only player who can buy it.
The owner, clickable. They are worth a look: their card says how long they have been playing and what their stable is worth, which places the horse they are offering you.
The deadline and the type of sale.
The price — selling price, or minimum price if it is an auction, in which case the best offer and your own are displayed too.
Refuse and Buy.

The filter that counts: the type of sale

Four values, and each answers a different question:

Fixed price: what can be bought straight away.
Reserved: what is reserved for you. It is the filter to set when the menu counter shows a figure.
Auction: what can be bid on.
Offer in progress: the sales where you have an offer. The most useful of the four, and the one that gets forgotten: it is how one finds one's auctions again before they are settled without us.

To those are added the horse's name, the owner's name, the speciality, the sex, the age, a mare's pregnant state, all the genetics, the price and the earnings. The sort starts on the price.

The filter on the pregnant state is worth pointing out to breeders: a pregnant mare takes her foal with her to the buyer, so looking for a pregnant one is looking for two horses for one price.

Buying

The button on the line, or Buy the selected horses to take several at once: see Purchase. The window totals the prices before having you confirm.

Auctions are set aside from a batch purchase, and the window tells you so by counting them: an auction is not bought, one makes an offer on it, horse by horse. See Make an offer.

Refusing a reservation

When a player reserves a horse for you, the menu counter lights up and the line appears here with a Refuse button. Refusing releases the horse: the seller will be able to offer it some other way.

It is not compulsory — a reservation not refused expires of itself at its deadline. But refusing is courteous: the seller knows where they stand instead of waiting.

Before paying

Three habits, in order of importance.

Open the horse's card. The figures in this list are a copy refreshed once an hour; the card is up to date, and it shows the birth genetics, the record and the pedigree that the list does not give. See A horse's card.

Look at the age. A horse runs from 1 to 16 years old and goes into retirement at 17, that is sixteen months after its birth — and its value collapses well before. A fast twelve-year-old is not a bargain, it is the end of a career.

Tell the current genetics from the birth genetics. The list displays what the horse is worth today; the card displays, in addition, what it was born with. It is that second one that tells you about its heredity, and therefore about what it will pass on to its produce. See breeding.