This guide will explain the mount taming system in Gloria Victis including information on where to find horses, how to tame them, how attributes work, and how to level and engage in combat on your horse.
Introduction
The first iteration of the taming and mount system was released for extensive testing in patch 0.9.1.6. This long anticipated feature is very much still under development, but it has surprising depth.
The developers have the ability to turn the whole system on and off at will. They have been on most of the time, but last week, the developers chose to disable mounts for the Saturday open State of War. Currently, we are not sure if devs intend to wipe our horses or if they will turn them off temporarily again. Horses will be on for the upcoming State of War Saturday!
What I can say is I have been pleased with the system and having a lot of fun with it. It has some major hiccups, but the potential is definitely there, and devs are putting out updates and patches all the time. The game feels different on horseback than on the ground, and it has already changed the way battles are fought.
Devs have said they intend to allow breeding and selling of horses, and implement horse cosmetics and crafting items for use with horses.
For now, let’s look at the mount system as it is!
Finding and Taming your First Horse
Outside each capital city there will be a spawn, and there are spawns within about a minute’s walking distance from every town on the map. Devs have said that horses are supposed to walk from point to point, but so far, I have found them in stationary locations only.
Here is a player made map resources guide. Horses are very new, but peole are adding in horse
spawn locations every day.
https://www.gloriavictisgame.info/map/
Here is a section of the map in in Ismir territory showing known horse spawn locations:
Taming is as easy as going to one of these locations, walking up to a horse and pressing E. You don’t need any special item or skill or weapon. Your tame MAY fail, but you simply hit E again and you’ll get it eventually. The horse will not run away or despawn or anything. I would expect this system to see some additional tweaking as time goes on.
When you are successful, you will see:
Then just type a name in, and it’s yours. If you decide you don’t want it, just hit Cancel and the horse will despawn. A new horse will spawn in about 15 minutes.
To summon your horse, press T.
To look at your horse’s stats, press Y.
To dismount your horse, look at the horse and press E.
You can tame up to 3 horses. A 4th stable slot is available for 5 gold at the Stablemaster which can be found near the logistician in every major city. To swap your current active horse, you must visit the Stablemaster and select a different horse.
That sure was easy! But are some horses better than others? Oh, you bet! Read on.
Horse Age and Level at Time of Tame
AGE:
In this image, we have tamed a horse who is 3% of his max age. This is a young horse. When a horse hits 100% age, his “Durability” goes down, and much like durability on your gear, you cannot repair that back to maximum. Generally you want to tame YOUNG horses. This horse is quite young, so that is good!
The youngest horse I have heard of had 0% ageing. The youngest horse I have personally tamed had 2% ageing.
Horses age automatically over time. You cannot change the rate at which a horse ages.
It seems that horses are designed to last around 3 months based on their current ageing rate.
LEVEL:
This horse is level 10/47 at the time of the tame. That means his CURRENT level is 10 and his MAXIMUM level is 47. Is that good? After many, many tames, it seems that the maximum horse level is 101. So, this horse is quite below average in that respect. Would you want your character to only be able to hit level 47?
The horse currently being level 10 now means you don’t have to “waste” time leveling him through those 10 levels and he will have 50 ability points to spend on stats immediately.
Is this horse worth keeping? NO. Even though it’s young, it has a low overall level, meaning it’s stats will be capped at level 47. Other people will have horses with level 90 and above stats.
It may take you a few or many tries, but it is really important to try to find a YOUNG horse with a HIGH MAXIMUM LEVEL.
My advice is tame and release horses until you get a horse that is under 25% Age with at least level 95 maximum.
If devs wipe horses and there is a mad rush for horses, just tame whatever you can get and try for a better one later. Any horse is better than no horse!
Attributes and Builds
Press Y to see your horse’s current statistics. Visit a Stablemaster, near the logistican, to apply unspent attribute points.
Vitality: HP and HP regen. A horse with high HP and HP regen will be tankier on the battlefield and take longer to kill.
Condition: Stamina and Stamina Regen. Stamina determines how long your horse can sprint and how quickly that stamina regenerates when you slow down or stop.
Dynamics: How quickly the horse speeds up and stops. Kinda like measuring a car’s 0 to 60 in X seconds.
Agility: Turn radius. Horses with high agility can turn quickly and at smaller angles, great for weaving in between enemies in battle or looping around a tree.
Durability: Seems fixed at 4320 for all horses. No horse I have tamed or seen has ever had a different durability. It is not something you can put points into. The horse’s durability will begin to go down after it has reached 100% age.
Ageing: This is how old your horse is. Younger horses have a lower %. You cannot make your horse younger and you cannot stop it ageing. This means you WILL eventually lose your horse. It will continue to age in the stable.
ATTRIBUTE POINTS
Much like your character, the more points you put into an attribute, the more expensive that will become.
80-150: 1 Point per Attribute point
151-230: 2 Points per Attribute point
231+: 3 Points per Attribute point
This means if you want to dump ALL your points into Condition, it will become costly.
This means you can also create builds for your horse and have a stable full of horses with different purposes. In the following builds, I have ranked the stats in order of importance:
Scouting Horse: Condition, Agility, Dynamics, Vitality.
Warhorse: Vitality, Condition, Agility, Dynamics.
It is not currently known whether there is a “soft cap” for things like turn radius or dynamics. (That is: is there a point at which putting more points into a stat doesn’t really help any more?) It seems to me that these two values are the ones which are most likely NOT to need to be pumped up to the max, but again, no one has yet maxed out a horse, so comparing 2 horses turn radius or dynamics has not yet been done extensively.
In the future, there will be Attribute Rest Books available for horses like you can get for your character, so you could “reroll” your horse.
Leveling Your Horse
RIDING: You must be covering distance in order to get XP for riding. That means you cannot just auto walk it into a wall or in a small circle to get XP. you have to cover a decent amount of ground.
KILL THINGS: Combat on horseback is tricky and will take you a while to get used to. A good long 2 hander will help you feel it out. I like guisarmes as well as Hordun Spears. The hitboxes and such feel much different on horseback, so try out different things and see what you like. one good trick is to dress in light gear and use archery. It is kinda OP for leveling a horse right now in terms of damage and ease of use, especially against NPC mobs.
You will also receive XP for PvP kills, so don’t be afraid to ride your horse into battle. If your horse dies, it will have a short cooldown and then you can resummon it OR you can visit the stable and click “regenerate” to bring your horse back for a fee.
STABLE: You will find the Stableman right next to the Logistician in all major cities. When your horse is in the stable, you can pay a small fee to level it once every 22 hours.
You can visit the stable to train your horses and spend their attribute points earned while leveling. The stablemaster is found near the Logistician in every major city, and is indicated by a white covered wagon icon on your minimap.
When you click on your horse in the stable, you can spend earned attribute points by clicking on the left and right arrows on each attribute. Once you put points into an attribute and accept it, you cannot undo it unless you reset your mount’s attribute points entirely with the Attribute Reset Book, which I do not believe is available yet in game.
You can level your horse in the stable once per 22 hours for a fee that increases as your horse’s level increases.
LEAVING YOUR HORSE IN THE OPEN WORLD
You can dismount your horse anywhere in the world by looking at it and pressing E. It can be killed by other players or NPCs. If it is, it will have a short cooldown timer and you can resummon it.
Your horse cannot be stolen or looted from you.
If you leave your horse in the open world, you can easily find it with the horse icon on the map. If you get too far from your horse or stay off it too long, it will despawn, you can simply resummon with T. You can also just leave your horse somewhere, and hit T and it will teleport over to you, so its really impossible to lose.
Mounted Melee Combat
Power Bar when standing still:
Power Bar at a Trot will be LOW green (W Key) OR (W + Capslock):
Power Bar at a Gallop will be MEDIUM yellow: (W+shift):
Power Bar at a Sprint will be STRONG red (W + Shift + Shift):
That means it is not efficient from a DPS perspective to sit atop your stationary horse in a melee moshpit and swing down on the people on the ground because you are going to do low dmg and be interrupted constantly.
If you want to ride your horse in to soak up damage, depending on your build, that could be a very good idea.
When your horse is damaged while sprinting it will be knocked out of “sprint” and be reduced to gallop for several seconds.
Horses do not have player collision boxes, that means you and everyone else can walk through them, and trying to use them to block a bridge or door way will not work.
Remember: Your horse cannot be stolen or looted by another player. It can be killed. After a short cooldown, it can be resummoned with T.
Mounted Archery
Mounted archery is pretty simple. You sit on your horse and shoot your bow. This is an easy way for archers to get a bit of quick elevation when standing behind a group of infantry.
Unlike melee, your horse does not need to be moving for you to get maximum damage potential.
There is a built in RNG wobble to arrow shots from horseback. This means that instead of your arrow landing always exactly where you are aiming, there is a built in “wobble.” this was put in place to simulate the fact that the archer is sitting atop a living breathing, slightly wiggling creature. The faster you are moving, the more RNG (wobble) there is in your shot. Even at 0 movement, there is still an RNG wobble in your bowshot. So, being on foot will always be the more accurate option.
Stationary: Minor Wobble
Trot: Moderate Wobble
Gallop: High Wobble
Sprint: Very high Wobble
I have found the amount of wobble is significant enough for me to miss many shots I know I’d otherwise hit, especially on small or far away targets. It does not feel significant at close range.
Archers seem to have about a 140 degree radius they can land shots from. This means the best way to avoid being hit by an archer is to be behind him. Archers will want to be careful of enemies on their 6 in their blindspot.
The freelook (tilde key) does not function for archery without also turning your character around, so keep that in mind.
Theories, questions, and further development
Are “good” mounts found in certain places? UNKNOWN. I can tell you with reasonable certainty that bad mounts are found right outside of capital and I have had good luck finding high level/low age horses in areas near the “natural borders” of Ismir territory such as Ulfgard and near Brandon. This makes sense as developers have “balanced” the map to consistently put highly desired resources in PvP hotzones between nation borders.
Do mentor points affect what stats your horse will have upon taming? UNKNOWN. I have 4200 mentor points and I have gotten a lot of crummy horses and a few good ones. I have seen other people with low mentor points get horses as good or better than mine.
Is it possible for a horse to come with “extra” unused skill points when tamed? NO. It seems that level 2 horses have 50 skill points, and every level after that is 5 points. There has been no variation in Skill Points.
Will horses eventually need to eat food? UNKNOWN.
Will they have a food system like players do with quality and stomach fullness? UNKNOWN.
Will there be something like animal husbandry and breeding? YES.
Will functional horse armor and gear be implemented? TENTATIVE YES.
Will there be cosmetics related to horses? UNKNOWN, but my guess is yes.
Will there be other varieties and colors of horses? YES.
Will horse color indicate anything special about the horse? UNKNOWN.
Will horses ever have different base speeds? NO. Much like players, all horses speed differences comes with how much you put into Condition (stamina and stamina regen) they have which determines how LONG they can run for, not how FAST.
Will devs change the rate of Horse Respawns in the wild? YES. In the latest patch notes they said that horses currently have a higher spawn rate than they will at “full release.” Currently horse respawns seem to be around 15 minutes.
When is “full release” for horses? UNKNOWN.
Could devs turn off horses anytime they want? YES. They are considered in testing now, not fully released.
If I pay 5 gold for the extra stable slot, will that be wiped if devs turn off horses? UNKNOWN. I can pretty much guarantee that if they do wipe it, no one is refunding you your 5 gold.
Will devs wipe our current horses for full release? UNKNOWN. My personal feeling is that it will depend on how much changes between now and full release.