DFS Shetland Ponies

Owner's guide

Everything from the in-world notecards in one place. The system is in beta, so this guide is updated as things change.

What you need

  • Starter ponies: a mare and a stallion if you want to breed. Each comes in a Starter Box.
  • A DFS BSP Food Trough and a DFS BSP Water Trough.
  • Refills (Food Sack and Water Container) to top them up.
  • One Birth Box for every foal.
  • Optional: Breeding, Recovery and Perma Pet potions.

The DFS BSP Starter Pack has everything to begin: both troughs, a mare and a stallion, a birth box and extra refills. All DFS items are no copy, no modify and no transfer, and they're registered to you on our server.

Getting started

  1. Pay a DFS vendor. The pay buttons buy 1, 5, 10 or 20 at a time.
  2. The DFS Delivery Terminal sends your items within about a minute.
  3. Rez the Starter Box. It loads your pony's gender, coat and hair and shows them.
  4. Touch the box to deliver your pony. Each box holds exactly one pony.
  5. Your pony arrives with its own name. Touch it for its menu, where you can rename it. In your inventory it's called "DFS BSP <name>".
  6. Rez your food and water troughs within 20 metres of your ponies.

While a box says "Please wait…" it's talking to the server. Touch it once and let it finish.

Food and water

  • DFS ponies eat and drink only from DFS BSP troughs. They don't use hay or other farm systems.
  • While rezzed, a pony checks every 5 minutes and eats or drinks when it's below 95%, from a trough within 20 metres.
  • Hunger goes from full to empty in about 3 days, thirst in about 2. This continues in your inventory, but a pony can only eat and drink while rezzed.
  • A new trough holds 1,000 units and can be topped up to 10,000. One pony uses about 33 food and 50 water a day.
  • To refill, rez the refill within 10 metres of the trough and touch it. It pours in only what's missing and keeps the rest.
  • Auto-fill: touch the trough and choose Auto-fill On, then leave a refill rezzed within 10 metres. It tops up the trough whenever it drops to 75%.
  • Trough access: Private (your ponies only, the default), Group (ponies set to the trough's group) or Public (any DFS pony).
  • The trough sends you an IM at 500, 200 and 100 units, and when it's empty.

Wandering and riding

Touch your Animesh pony and choose Wander to let it stroll around a home spot within 5, 10 or 15 metres. It walks home by itself when hungry or thirsty, so put the troughs near home. Right-click it and choose Ride to ride it: up arrow to walk, double-tap to trot and canter, left and right to turn. Riding uses no extra food or water. The Low Li version doesn't wander or animate.

Sick ponies

If hunger or thirst reaches 0%, the pony gets sick. A sick pony can't breed or give birth and stops eating, but it never dies and is never deleted. A Recovery Potion cures it and refills hunger and thirst to 100%. You can also keep a sick pony as a decoration with its hovertext turned off.

Breeding

  • Ponies age in real time and can breed from 7 days old.
  • Put a mare and a stallion within 5 metres, touch one and choose Breed, then Find Mate. Pick the partner from the list.
  • Both must be healthy, at least 7 days old, past their wait time and under the foal limit.
  • Relatives can't breed: parent and child, brothers and sisters, and half-siblings.
  • After breeding, the mare waits 7 days and the stallion 4 days. The mare is pregnant for 3 days, then shows "Ready to foal".
  • Each mare can have 10 foals and each stallion can sire 10. After that, the pony stays as a pet.

Breeding with other people's ponies

Touch a pony and choose Breed to set who may breed with it: Owner Only (the default), Group or Public. Other owners' ponies show a * after the name. The foal always goes to the mare's owner, and both owners get a message.

Bonded pairs

After you breed a pair by hand, the mare offers to bond them. A bonded pair breeds by itself whenever both are ready, rezzed and within 20 metres. The bond belongs to the ponies, so it survives being taken back, updated or re-rezzed. Touch either pony and choose Bond, then Unbond, to end it.

Birth boxes and foals

  1. When the mare says "Ready to foal", rez a Birth Box within 5 metres of her.
  2. Touch the mare and choose Birth. The foal is created and loaded into the box, which shows its coat.
  3. Touch the box to deliver the foal.

A foal's gender is random. Its generation is the parents' average generation, rounded down, plus one: Gen 1 × Gen 5 gives a Gen 4 foal. Its coat, hair, eyes and hooves each have a 10% chance of copying the mother, 10% the father and 2.5% each grandparent; otherwise a new one is rolled by rarity. See the odds.

A birth box holding a foal can be sold in-world: touch it, choose Sell and enter a price. The buyer gets a new birth box with the foal in it.

Rarity and generations

Higher tiers unlock for new coats as the foal's generation goes up: Common from Gen 0, Uncommon from Gen 2, Rare from Gen 4, Epic from Gen 6, Legendary from Gen 8 and Mythic from Gen 10. A coat inherited from a parent keeps its rarity at any generation. Breed ponies of the same high generation together to climb fastest.

A pony whose coat, eyes and hooves all share the same name is a Purebred.

Conformation is a pony's quality score. It comes from the coat's rarity (Common 40–50 up to Mythic 90–100) and drops by 3 with every breeding and by 2 with every potion. Worth in points is conformation times the rarity's multiplier.

Potions

Rez a potion within 5 metres of your pony, touch it and pick the pony. Each potion works once and then removes itself. A potion the pony refuses isn't used up.

Breeding Potion
Skips the 7-day wait between breedings. One per pony per breeding cycle. It doesn't speed up a pregnancy, skip the first 7 days of age or reset the foal limit, and can't be used on sick or Perma ponies.
Recovery Potion
Cures sickness and refills hunger and thirst to 100%.
Perma Pet Potion
The pony never needs food or water again, never gets sick and stops ageing, but it never breeds again. This can't be undone.

Selling and gifting

DFS items can't be given from your inventory. Ownership is held on our server, so the pony does the sale itself.

  1. Rez the pony, touch it and choose Sell.
  2. Enter a price in L$ and grant debit permission. It's only used to refund a buyer who pays the wrong amount or if the sale fails.
  3. The buyer clicks the pony and pays exactly that price. You get the L$ directly, and the buyer receives the pony from the Delivery Terminal.

To give a pony as a gift or contest prize, sell it for L$1 while the winner is there. Anyone who pays first gets it, so stop the sale (right-click, Touch, Stop Sale) if you have to leave. Ponies, Perma Pets and birth boxes holding a foal can change owner. Starter boxes, empty birth boxes, troughs, refills and potions can't.

The new owner gets everything: ID, generation, traits, age, foal count, wait times and any pregnancy.

Updates, redelivery and lost items

  • Choosing Update on a pony, trough, potion or empty birth box removes the old object, and the Delivery Terminal sends a new one with all its data.
  • Lost something, or it didn't arrive? Touch the DFS Delivery Terminal. It re-sends anything still waiting for you.
  • After an update, only the newest copy works. Delete old copies from your inventory.
  • If your land auto-returns objects, ponies end up in Lost and Found. They're safe, but they can't eat there. Turn auto-return off where your ponies live.

Common mistakes

  • Touching a box again and again, or taking it back while it's delivering.
  • Rezzing an old box after a new purchase. Deliver boxes in order and delete leftovers.
  • Troughs more than 20 metres away, or a friend's trough still set to Private.
  • Leaving ponies in inventory for days. They'll be sick when they come out.
  • Breeding too young (a Breeding Potion doesn't skip the first 7 days) or breeding relatives.
  • Birth box more than 5 metres from the mare.
  • Using a Perma Pet Potion or Convert on a pony you still want to breed.
  • Paying a person instead of paying the pony that shows "FOR SALE".

Questions

Can my ponies die?

No. At 0% hunger or thirst they get sick and stop breeding until cured with a Recovery Potion. They're never deleted.

Do they eat hay or use other farm troughs?

No. Only DFS BSP Food and Water Troughs, filled with DFS BSP refills.

Do ponies age in my inventory?

Yes. Age, hunger and thirst run in real time, but ponies can only eat and drink while rezzed.

Do I need one stallion for every mare?

No. One stallion can breed with several mares, once every 4 days.

Do I need a new Birth Box for every foal?

Yes, one Birth Box per birth.

Can two Common parents have a Mythic foal?

Yes, if the foal is Generation 10 or higher. The new-coat roll depends only on the foal's generation.

Can my ponies just be pets?

Yes. You don't have to breed. Keep them fed, hide the text on a sick pony, or make them Perma Pets.

Can I sell my pony on the Marketplace?

No. Sell it in-world with the pony's Sell option, so ownership on our server moves with it.

Something didn't arrive.

Touch the DFS Delivery Terminal. If that doesn't help, contact us with your order number from the vendor's thank-you message.