Are Horses OP?

It’s important for potential horse players to remember that although the base HP stat is decent, the HP reduction from a broken limb is both permanent due to the lighter bone density of the legs and guaranteed to lead to an eventual game over due to issues with their blood circulation since they have a glitch where the hooves are necessary to help pump blood around the body. This is in stark contrast to many other player factions, where broken limbs can be an acceptable risk to ensure overall survival.

Many points over the Donkey build were missed. Specifically, their “Moxie” ability. Donkeys are able to ignore all debuffs caused by intimidation from other players, making them capable of rushing down players who believe they are too scary for an equine to attack. While they may do the least amount of damage compared to other equines, donkeys deal the fastest damage. They also don’t get fear debuffs from nearby corpses.

While they may default to solo play, donkeys make excellent team players. While most equine players will only protect either themselves or others of their build, donkeys do not discriminate and will fight for players that are outside of their species, thanks to their high intelligence. For these reasons, it can even be suggested that donkeys are the most survivable of the equines.

I love the breakdown this gives for players new to equine gameplay. I know that this video can’t get to all the nuances (I could talk about frame-perfect flying lead transitions all day!), but I want prospective horse players to know that the relatively low HP of equine builds (scaled for weight class) comes with serious challenges. In order to take perks that enable OP sprint speed and the iconic kick parry the horse relies on its legs a lot and injuries to them are run-ending. Especially to the feet, which can easily become infected in wet biomes. Because of the roaming playstyle of the horse, it is extremely hard for a horse player to rest for long enough to recover from a leg injury. Beware environmental hazards like soft mud, sharp loose stones, smooth mountain rocks, hidden holes, ice, and other terrain hazards because slipping and falling is the easiest way to pop a stifle or worse.

One of the advantages of other ungulates using horns to extend the hitbox is that horns tend not to be critical to mobility. So because horses use mobility strat as such a major part of their attack setup, kicking can be a higher risk move than you’d think. If a horse player misses and they injure that foot, they’ve lost the ability to escape. Part of why the high-INT team strategies with human players can be so OP is that human players with their tool use and building abilities can create relatively safe zones or equip gear to horses to mitigate some of their low HP fragility risks, and because of the horse build’s high endurance those safe zones can be in almost any biome. I do want to point out however that zebras and horses prefer flat terrain in whatever biome they inhabit and don’t do as well ascending or descending elevated terrain. The donkey build is somewhat more effective in high elevation maps and their INT stat really helps problem solving about how to get around hazards without broken wallhax perks like the bighorn sheep or mountain goat. In these environments the donkey’s sprint speed doesn’t matter as much as there’s no flat straightaways to escape and because they compromised on the mobility stat I think that’s why they lost power on the kick.

Another challenge to equine builds is that their digestion can be sensitive as well as inefficient. They do not belch to the same degree as ruminant builds so the gas from processed food has to escape the other way, and if they eat something that produces too much gas, impacts their digestion, or poisons them it can apply the dangerous status condition ‘colic.’ This is the number one run-ender for domestic horse builds. Be careful out there, and fellow horse mains remember: stay away from foxglove but you ARE valid to eat fingers, don’t forget your forward lunge has amazing distance coverage and auto-applies a morale debuff.

There seems to be lots of confusion and misinformation regarding the “horses are originally from North America” part. Some people are claiming this is false information. However, it is technically correct. The ancestors to modern horses actually ARE from North America. Modern species are not. They migrated across the Bering straight crossing long before humans domesticated them, and spread across the entire world, ending up in Africa where they evolved into zebras. Then, North American horses went extinct and were later brought back to the New World by humans. This was several thousands of years ago. All modern horse species originate from Europe, Asia, or Africa, but those species are descendant from species native to North America.

Edit: I am speaking about the whole Equus genus (Horses, Zebras, Donkeys and Mules) here. Obviously specific species like Zebras didn’t originate from NA, but the next step up from species, Genus, most certainly did originate from the New World.