Earning a Dream Horse in Black Desert Online is a significant achievement, often requiring immense dedication. Beyond the initial luck of awakening your Dream Horse, the journey involves meticulously training your high-tier horses, including the T8 Courser, to learn essential skills like Sprint and Instant Acceleration. This guide focuses on practical strategies to efficiently train these crucial horse skills, drawing from personal experience and community-shared tips.
Understanding Horse Skill Training in BDO
Every time your horse levels up, it has a chance to learn a new skill. While some skills are learned automatically, the most vital ones, such as Sprint and Instant Acceleration, require active training. You can view your horse’s learned skills by pressing “P” while mounted.
To level up a skill, you must repeatedly use it. For instance, to train Sprint, you need to equip a saddle (ensuring it’s not broken) and press “W” while riding. At lower levels, skill usage can sometimes fail, triggering a mini-game where you must press “W” and “S” to regain control. Failing this mini-game results in being thrown from your horse, a process that can be both frustrating and time-consuming.
Effective Strategies for Training Horse Skills
After encountering the challenges of the skill fail mini-game, I researched more efficient methods. Combining insights from various sources, I’ve developed a streamlined approach:
1. Train Your Horse Indoors Against a Wall
A highly effective technique is to position your horse in a corner inside a building, preferably in a safe, quiet area like a city or settlement. This allows you to repeatedly use skills without the horse running excessively. Shoving the horse’s “head” into the corner can facilitate this continuous skill usage. While this method significantly speeds up the process, expect it to take several hours for each skill.
2. Utilize Oasis Carrots (or Stamina Potions)
During extensive training sessions, your horse’s stamina will deplete rapidly. To mitigate this, stocking up on Oasis Carrots is crucial. These can be purchased for a minimal cost from the vendor who sells Oasis Gear, typically found near stables in major cities. As of November 2021, Oasis Carrots have been removed from the game. In their absence, players should rely on regular carrots or stamina potions to manage their horse’s stamina.
3. Master the Jump Technique
The jump technique is particularly useful for interrupting the skill fail mini-game and is especially effective for training Sprint and Instant Acceleration. By timing your jumps correctly, you can often bypass the fail game entirely, saving a significant amount of time and frustration. If your horse possesses the Streak Jump skill, it’s highly recommended to disable it by locking the skill in your skill menu. This prevents the rapid stamina drain associated with repeated jumping, allowing your carrots or potions to be more effective. Even when skills fail, continued usage while leveling them up will eventually lead to a high success rate, especially in the upper 90s. However, always be prepared to jump as a precautionary measure.
Handling the Fail Game
If you do find yourself in the fail game, the best approach is to be as hands-off as possible. Lightly tap the directional keys, or in some cases, simply removing your hands from the keyboard can be enough to win. While the jump method is excellent for Sprint and Instant Accelerations, other skills like Drift might still require you to engage with the fail game more frequently. Thankfully, most of these less critical skills can be trained later when you have more resources and time.
By implementing these strategies, you can significantly optimize the process of training your horse’s skills, bringing you one step closer to achieving your BDO equestrian goals.
