Eras, Clubs & Leaderboards

An overview of how eras, breeder clubs, and leaderboards work.

All About Eras
Exploring Breeders Clubs and Leaderboards
Cloning for the Limited Era Clubs

All About Eras

What are eras and why do we need them?

Eras break up all the horses in the game into groups of peers. These groups track when the foundations of a line were first created. For example all foundation horses created during a set six month period and all their descendents would make up one era. The higher the era number the more recently the line was founded. In era breeder clubs horses only compete against horses of their own era. That means leaderboard competition is fair and accessible to everyone. Members who have only played for 6 months can compete on an even level with members who have played for 6 years. Having ever changing eras means that starting new lines is more than just fun, they can be competitive as well.

How often do eras change?

New eras start on June first and December first to coincide with out winter and summer celebration events.

What era is my horse?

Open up your horse’s page. Just below its age you will see what era that horse belongs to. It will also tell you in the search what era a horse is. All new foundation horses are created as members of the current era. The exception to this is exceptional creates. Exceptionals are created with a 5% bonus to their showing and/or breeding ability. This is roughly equivalent to one generation of good breeding. Since this is an unfair advantage, they receive a one era penalty at the time of creation.

Should I use exceptionals in my era program?

Exceptional creates are great for jump starting your color leaderboard line but are not the best for era breeding programs. Because of the penalty they will be at best, the same breeding ability as the second gens of the era prior to the current one. At worst, if created just as a new era begins they can be two generations behind. While exceptionals can be used strategically and be a valuable asset to a era leaderboard program (particularly when working towards the 2nd generation points category) it is best to stick to normal creates while you get the hang of eras.

Breeding Eras

Two horses of the same era will always produce a foal of that era. If two horses of different eras are bred they will produce a foal of the era of the lower era parent. For example when breeding two Era 5 horses together the foal will be Era 5. When breeding an Era 1 and an Era 5 horse together the foal will be era 1.

This is no reason not to cross horses of different eras. There is no penalty. However when breeding for an era leaderboard keeping the era of your lines as high (as recent) as possible will give you the best shot at the leaderboard. A foal from an era 5 horse probably can't compete with a foal from a pure Era 1 line, simply because the Era 1 line has had more time to develop.

What era are we in now?

You can always see what the current era is by looking at the top right corner of the website next to the game server and year info.

What is the Primary Era?

There is a special era called the Primary Era. The primary era lags two real life years behind the current era. This era is a celebration of the hard work put in by players to produce some spectacular pedigreed horses. By this time herds of this era have obtained star and gold status. We celebrate this achievement by rewarding this era the largest trophies in the game and a significant increase in gene mode token awards, and giving them out through 5th place.

A primary era trophy compared to a standard trophy.

Boosting, Maxing, and Cloning

Boost Tokens: When you boost a horse you can push it past the ability possible for a horse of its era. To compensate for that boosting results in a one era penalty. This is applied one time per horse regardless if you add three 1% boosts, or one 5% boost.
Max Out Ability: Maxing out a horse makes it the best possible offspring (maximum training, and breeding ability) possible from its two parents. As this can not push a horse past what is possible for that era, it does not change the era of that horse.
Cloning: When you clone a lined horse the resulting clone will be the same era as the original horse, (since it has the abilities of a horse of that era.) When you clone a foundation it will create a foundation horse of the current era. Boosted and exceptional foundations will result in the clone having the approparete era penalties of any normal create/

Exploring Breeders Clubs and Leaderboards

What Breeders Clubs does my horse qualify for?

Horses can be entered in up to four Breeders Clubs. There are clubs for each era and and assortment of colors and patterns in the game. Some color clubs are phenotype specific like Black. A horse must have black in the name to be entered (smoky cremes don't count!). Some are gene specific like Tobiano. A horse must have the tobiano gene to be entered. It is not always immediately clear what the rules are for color clubs. When in doubt check "Entry rules for this club:" given for each club.

The Breeders Club Leaderboards

At the end of a game year, the top ten horses of each leaderboard will receive an award. The leaderboard must have have a full 25 horses qualified to issue the awards. First place horses get a trophy. The other nine receive ribbons. Additionaly, the top three horses in each leaderboard receive gene mod tokens. Gene mod token prizes range from 5 tokens to 1 depending on the specific club.

Awards for each year are handed out during the roll-over between the 27th and 28th of each month. Awards go out slightly early to allow for any issues to be fought before the end of the game year.

Each Breeders Club has 6 leader boards horses compete for:

Top Producing Stallion: Based on the best ten foals sired by each stallion. Note the era of the foals mater for era clubs. Stallions need 10 foals to get on the leaderboard.
Top Producing Mare: Based on the best four foals produced by each mare. Note the era of the foals mater for era clubs. Mares need 3 foals gets them on the leaderboard
Highest PT of the Year: Only foals born this season count. Must be PT tested to qualify.
Points Earned by Foundation Horses: This leaderboard is often the easiest to get a spot on in color clubs.
Points Earned by 2nd Gen Horses: For horses out of two foundation parents.
Points Earned by Lined Horses: For horses third gen and higher.

Note: Only the 10 best foals of a stud or 4 best foals of a mare count towards the leaderboard which means lower quality foals do not negatively impact their leaderboard standing. There is no reason to sell back lower quality foals to the game or ask other members to do so.

Why Can't I Enter My Horse In This Club?

There are three reasons why you may not be able to enter your horse in a club.

Horses can only enter up to 4 clubs at a time.
Horses must be color/gene tested before they can be entered in a color club.
With color clubs double check the "Entry rules for this club:" section. You horse might not actually qualify for that club.

There are Color Clubs, Why Not Breed Clubs?

Since upgraded players can have, and name, their own breed there are an infinite number of 'breeds' on Hunt And Jump. So we "limit" clubs to the genetics your horse carries and the era in which it was born. Eras are important for the leaderboards but have no other real effect on game play. People who established their herds a long time ago will mostly have high pointed horses in earlier eras. Using eras gives people with younger herds a chance to win awards on the more recent era boards. (See All About Eras.)

Can we get a club for...

New clubs are not created when a new gene is added. Clubs are added when there is the potential for that club to actually fill and run awards. Additional efforts are made to keep clubs at reasonable sizes. While every horse has color clubs they can enter, not every specific color has or needs a club.

Cloning for the Limited Era Clubs

This article will discuss how to get horses on top of the current Era Leaderboard, via using Cloning and Maxing. Key points will be in bold. This is only available to Premium Upgrades.

As of August 1, 2024 there are new changes that will impact Era Leaderboard Showing & Cloning. You can read the article Ammit published on Bluegrass, Forest, & Mesa.

Proposed Talking Points

In-game Vocabulary
Picking Foundation Horses
Improving Consistency
Maxing Out
Cloning
Breeding Plan
Plan Costs
The Results

In-Game Vocabulary

Breeding Category: When discussing the Leader Boards, a Breeding Category is Top Producing Stallion, Top Producing Mare, and Highest PT of the Year. See Showing Category.

Eras: Are a way to group horses together with their peers. An Era in the game is 6 months real time, and they start with foundation horses. Learn about Eras here.

Gene Modification Treatment: An in-game service that allows you to see and modify most of your Horses Genes. The currency used are called GMT's (Gene Modification Tokens).

Herd Helpers: A way to get a wide variety of genes and combinations in your barn. This is how you create horses. Learn more about HH's here.

Investment Vouchers: Also called IV's, are another type of in-game currency that can be used for specific things. Learn about IV's here.

Leaderboard: Also called LB. Is a way for horses to compete in their Eras. Each Era has a Leaderboard with 6 different categories they can compete in. Learn about Leaderboards here.

Showing Category: When discussing the Leader Boards, a Showing Category is Points Earned by Foundation Horses, Points Earned by 2nd Gen Horses, and Points Earned by Lined Horses. See Breeding Category.

Picking Foundation Horses

For getting your horses on the Current Era Leaderboard (LB), you should avoid using Exceptional Herd Helpers. Because Exceptional horses are better than most foundation horses, they have an Era penalty as a way to even the playing field. Exceptional horses will always be Red/B Papered, and can also have higher PT (Performance Test Score). For example, if we are on Era 16, all Exceptional horses will be Era 15, and will never be able to compete in the Current Era.

Try to use Perfect Foundation Herd Helpers (Yellow/C and 9.90 PT), or another Yellow/C Herd Helper with the highest PT possible. This gives you the greatest starting point, without receiving an Era Penalty. You will need at least a Stallion and Mare of breeding age.

Does Horse Color Matter? For the purpose of Cloning, it does! The more basic color the horses are, the less expensive they will be to clone. Even if there are free genes on your horse (for example Halo), that will significantly increase your horses Cloning cost. You can check how expensive your horse will be to clone on the cloning page. The cloning page will tell you how many IV's you will need to spend before cloning.

Improving Consistency

This is a personal preference of mine, but it can make a significant difference in the Top PT category of the Leaderboards. Open up your horse on the Gene Modification Treatment page, and scroll to the bottom where you see Consistency. Even if your horse is Consistent, there is the possibility you can increase their consistency with 1 GMT. Do this for your Foundation Sire and Dam, as well as any Top Offspring or Clones you want to breed. Sometimes it will change, sometimes it will not, so it can be a little bit of a gamble.

Why increase consistency? By giving your horse Perfect Consistency, it can increase their PT by .10 points. Which sometimes is all you need to get to the top of the Leaderboard.

Maxing Out

Maxing is different than Boosting (which should be avoided). What Maxing does is looks at the total natural potential from both Sire and Damn, and then gives the foal the maximum potential they could have gotten naturally. This increases their Showing as well as Breeding potential.

When to Max Out? You will want to Max Out the Top Offspring from your Foundation Horses before Cloning it. This means all the clones from this Offspring will also be Maxed.

Cloning

As of August 1, 2024 there are new changes that will impact Era Leaderboard Showing & Cloning. You can read the article Ammit published on Bluegrass, Forest, & Mesa. The most important takeaway is that Cloning will no longer produce a horse with better PT than the horse being cloned.

Cloning

Once you breed your foundation horses, take the Top Offspring to clone. Offspring should be Red/B papered at this point, and have significantly higher PT than their parents. I select the Top Offspring based on PT score. Every time you clone, you're cost increases. For example 1st Clone = 1 IV, 2nd Clone = 2 IV's, 3rd Clone = 3IV's ect. You should expect to Clone 9 times, so your Stallion has a total of 10 offspring in order to get on the Leaderboard. Cloned offspring will have PT equal to or less than the original offspring. You want to select the Top Clones to use for future breeding. Select your Top Two Clones, check for Maxing, and make Perfectly Consistent. These two Clones should be used for breeding when they are of age, so make sure to GMT one of them into the opposite gender.

Tips and Tricks! Make sure the offspring you select for cloning has been Maxed Out and given Perfect Consistency.

Maxing in Limited Eras now costs 50 IV's instead of 5 GMT's. Both have the same HB value.

Breeding Plan

The offspring from my experiments will not be old enough to breed until September 2024. In theory I should be able to Rinse and Repeat the same cycle above with the Clones I made in June. But I may end up hitting some kind of Breed Cap wall. Further testing will need to be done.

As of August 1, 2024 there are new changes that will impact Era Leaderboard Showing & Cloning. You can read the article Ammit published on Bluegrass, Forest, & Mesa. These changes have taken place before my experimental horses were old enough to breed. Now there are multiple ways to compete on the board, so I don't think I will need to continue this experiment.

Plan Costs

Figuring out the costs for this Breeding Program took me 2 months, and 4 different experiments. On the second month of breeding, I created a chart to see where most of my money was going.

This chart shows the entire Era (6 months of breeding) and up to 3 generations. It follows the entire Era from Foundation Creation, to building up your 4th generation to breed in the following era. It breaks down costs into categories like:

Breeding Prep: costs of foundation testing and gender reassignment of cloned breeding pair.
Breeding: cost of live cover and AI.
Preparing Foals for Cloning: cost of testing, maxing, increasing consistency, retesting and cloning.
Testing Foals: cost of testing foals and increasing consistency.

Breeding your foundation will cost the most, but after that your prices alternate depending if you want to use AI to breed a mare at 3yo or wait until she is 4yo. If you breed using AI you can go into the next Era a generation ahead of everyone that didn't use AI for breeding.

Key Takeaways

After 6 months I would have spent over $10 million HBs.
The most costly investment is Maxing, followed by Cloning, and then Improving Consistency.

Why Improve Consistency?

While a horse may already be Consistent, they might not actually be Perfectly Consistent. To make a horse Perfectly Consistent, you first need to invest 1 GMT. Then retest your horses PT Score. Sometimes a horse will improve by .10 PT, sometimes they do not. The way the Leaderboards are, a .10 gain can be all the difference in you placing in the Top 3 or not. Using this method of Cloning and making Perfectly Consistent, I have consistently bred 2nd generation horses with a PT score of 10.70-10.80 PT. The Cloning Rule Changes on August 1st, 2024 may reduce this PT score.

These features are only for Premium Upgraded Accounts.

The Results

As of August 1, 2024 there are new changes to breeding for the Limited Era Boards. You can read the article Ammit published on Bluegrass, Forest, & Mesa for more information.

With each Breeding Pair Experiment I saw my horses rise to the top of the board. However this Breeding Plan only worked so well because other people were not doing this. I suspect with more competition, I wouldn't be able to sweep the boards so thoroughly.

But it does bring awareness to how easy it is for me to sweep the boards. I have an upgraded account, so I'm able to use features other players can not. I also make on average $500k HBs a day, so my income is basically limitless.

There is the potential to earn up to 3 Trophies, 13 Ribbons, and 18 GMT's on the Limited Era Boards. That comes out to $2,250,000 hbs.

Using the chart under Plan Costs, there is a negative trend in expenses vs. rewards. But there are some factors not present at the moment.

Key Takeaways

This chart is only looking at Top Stallion, Top Mare, and Top PT,
This chart is for 1 Breeding Family (1 Stud, 1 Mare, and 10 Foals).
This chart is assuming you will earn 12 GMTs across the 3 Breeding Categories (1st Top Producing Stallion, 1st Top Producing Mare, and 1st-3rd Highest PT of the Year.)
This should be noted you will most likely not sweep an era like this, so expect to earn fewer GMTs in the Breeding Categories.
This chart does not factor in any GMTs earned in the 3 Showing Categories, or HBs earned from Showing.

Why is Showing Not A Factor?

For starters, I was late to the game when it comes to showing. I started breeding for the new Era on June 23rd and missed out on 3 weeks of earning points. As of July 2024, we only have Foundation and 2nd generation horses competing. Eventually we will have 3 generations before the Era Change. Showing is currently an unknown factor with great potential. Right now you are breeding 2 horses and producing 10 offspring. Of those 10 offspring, your best 2 go on to breed next season, and the other 8 can be gelded/spayed and turned into Show Horses. These show horses should go on to win you GMTs and HBs, if they do they may make up for your breeding program deficit.

This article was written by Cheshire Farms on Bluegrass Server. Experiments were done in June 2024 at the start of Era 17 and updated on July 25, 2024,