LostVale guide

Horses, hounds and carts

Breeds and what each beast is born with, saddles and bags, riding and the gaits, stables and livery, ploughing with a team, carts and wagons, and the hounds, sheepdogs, terriers and cats that keep you company.

Every beast is its own

Every horse, pony, donkey, ox and bull is one of its breed and is born with its own speed, wind, strength, sure-footing, nimbleness and temper, scattered about the breed’s. A foal takes after its sire and dam. A name, a sex and an age go with each beast. The table below gives each breed’s typical numbers.

• Speed: how fast it gallops.
• Wind: how long its breath lasts at the gallop (a hundred is a good horse’s).
• Strength: what it carries without labouring, rider, tack, bags and all.
• Footing: how it takes steep and broken ground.
• Agility: how short it turns and how high it leaps.
• Temper: placid to hot. A hot beast shies at what it fears, refuses and kicks; bulls charge. War horses are trained never to shy.

Buy beasts from a town’s ostler or its farmers, or tame a wild moor pony with oats. Feral beasts keep their wildness a while after taming.

Tack

• A saddle (and its bridle) goes on a horse, pony or donkey. Saddles differ in how firmly you sit (whether you are thrown when the beast shies, leaps or is struck), how kindly they bear on the beast’s back (its wind goes further), and how many pairs of bags they hang. A pack saddle carries only; it is not for riding. Forms: pad, riding, hunting, war, courtly and pack.
• Bags hang from the saddle in pairs and stow what you put in them: sacks, leather bags, wicker baskets, panniers, and bags woven with a glamour.
• Barding armours a horse; a hound may wear a coat of leather or mail.
• A yoke (oxen and bulls) or a collar (horses) puts a beast to the plough or a cart.

Saddles, bags and harness are made at the saddler’s bench.

Riding

Press E at a saddled beast to mount (bareback, it will not go past a canter). You ask the gait (walk, trot, canter, gallop) and the way, and the beast goes as its breed, its tack and its load let it.

• Wind. Galloping spends its wind; a walk and a halt give it back.
• Load. Everything it carries weighs against its strength. Laden past it, it goes slower, tires sooner, leaps lower and will not gallop; laden past half again, it will not go at all.
• It leaps when asked, swims deep water, shies from what it fears, and may throw a rider with a poor seat.
• You can fight from the saddle.
• Press E again to get down.
• Whistle (H) to bring a horse of yours that can hear you.

Stables and livery

A stable stall you set down is a beast’s home: one standing in it eats from its manger (filled like a trough) and gets its wind back quickly. A town’s stables take a beast in at livery for a fee, the ostler feeding and keeping it. Every kept beast’s stats, its tack and what its bags hold are saved with the world.

Ploughing

Put a team to a plough (oxen or bulls under a yoke, horses in collars) and it draws where you, the ploughman behind, lean it. The share turns a strip of ground as wide as the plough into tilled plots. An ard breaks only light ground; a mouldboard plough turns any, breaking turf and heavy clay and burying the weeds. The team’s pull against the plough’s draught and the ground’s heaviness sets the pace, and the work tires them. Some ploughs want a team of two. The settlements’ own teams plough their fields in the sowing seasons the same way.

Carts and wagons

• Set a cart down from the hand like any placeable; take it up again empty and unhitched.
• Its bed is a store: open it from beside it or from the bench.
• Hitch beasts of yours in a collar or yoke, up to the cart’s team. It goes only with its least team.
• Drive from the bench like riding, but a cart turns only as it rolls, round the arc its wheels allow. The team’s pull against the cart’s weight and load sets the pace and the gaits it will go to (a wain walks; oxen walk), and its breath is the team’s. A load past its pull will not move at all.

Townsfolk keep their own beasts and carts: the lord rides out of the gate of a dry afternoon, farmers’ carts go out light and come back laden, traders’ carts go to market full. Theirs, not yours: killing one is a crime against the place.

Companions

Hounds (deerhounds and wolfhounds), sheepdogs, terriers and barn cats can be bought from a farmer or a town’s ostler, or a stray coaxed with meat or fish.

• Trust. A companion knows you as far as it trusts you: fed, fussed over, taken along and kept from harm, it trusts you more. Its regard runs from wary to bonded.
• Orders, by talking to it (E): come along (it follows at heel and fights your foes beside you), stay (it waits where it was told, as long as its trust will hold it, and then goes home), go home, and this is home now. A cat comes along only once it trusts you.
• Skills grow with use: a hound’s fighting, tracking and guarding, a sheepdog’s herding, a terrier’s and a cat’s mousing and hunting. Each pays its way: harder blows, a scent caught, a warning growl, the flock kept together, the rats kept down.
• Their ways: sitting, wagging, nose to the ground, the play bow, washing, lying down to wait.

The table below gives every breed of the stables and the plough, read from the game’s own content.

Written from the game's source and content as of commit 02e81b2 (2026-11-01).