New Ride

Mojang has finally decided to add horses to the main game so we don’t need to use mods to get a mount anymore. There are several different types of horses being added but not all of them can be ridden. The Skeleton and Zombie Horse CANNOT be ridden nor can foals. Donkeys Mules and other Horses (horses of different colors) can be ridden.

Tamed Horses are extremely fast and don’t take as much time to gain speed like the Saddled Pig. Horses can climb hills with ease and traverse many plains; you can hit “Space” to make the Horse jump over obstacles. One of the best features of riding a Horse isn’t the speed but the fact that I can now jump over Fences!!! Horses give you the ability to break through the annoying invisible walls above all Fences allowing you to finally go straight through them instead of around them.

Saddle up Partner

You can’t just hop on the back of a Horse and expect them to cooperate, when you find a Horse you must first tame it. To do this walk up to the Horse making sure no items are in hand and click on him, you will then be placed on the back of the Horse and go for a very short ride. The Horse will throw you from his back; continue to do this until you see hearts above the Horses head.

Once you see the hearts you can dismount with Left-Shift and place a saddle on him. The top slot in the Horses interface is for the Saddle so drag and drop it in.

Leading

A new item added to the game called a “Lead” is a rope for tying around the horse so you can lead them about. You can use a Lead on both a tamed and untamed Horse. Leads can be tied to Fence Posts to keep your Horse from wandering too far.

Armor

An interesting and very cool feature is the ability to add armor to your Horse. A Horse can be equipped with 1 of 3 types of Armor, Iron, Gold and Diamond. Place the armor on the Horse just as you did the Saddle, the slot below the Saddle is your armor slot.

Breeding

Breeding Horses is the same as breeding other animals in Minecraft, place two Horses in a closed proximity and feed them. A Foal is born, if you feed the Foal they tend to grow at a faster rate so you can ride them. When searching for wild Horses always bring several Leads, also have a Fence post set up to tie them to. This way when you find a Horse you can lasso and lead them back to the Fence Post then go search for another to breed them with.

All items and features are of the snapshot in progress, more items may be added as well as replaced or deleted from the final product. Controls and other features may also be changed thus far this is what we are looking at in terms of a mount in the future 1.6 Minecraft update.

Happy Trails Cowboy!