I am somewhat bored out of my head due to being off work, and suffering with the unpleasantries of a mucus infested chest, with a head that feels like it is an over ripe melon with the constituents of a live heavy metal band. So to combat my lack of ability to get out and mingle with the world I have decided to entertain myself and start a mini project involving my new batch of 2 y/o horses and the games skill mechanics.

I have read mixed posts of opinion that all or some skills can increase throughout the horses career, and I have read that the potential bar can only increase to the max of the greyed out part of the bar. I am sure I have seen the potential bar increase regardless of whether it has a greyed out or ungreyed part (hope that makes sense).

Therefore I have decided to follow my retained 2039 2 y/o horses from my stable (Wincanton Stables) to monitor the progression over the year and will update the images accordingly so that I can see how they have matured and to see how the bars adjust over time. If anything, it should be interesting to see how the horses develop.

I have copied a link below which will take you to the first page of horses, there is 5 pages in total. There is a view all sizes button in the top right where you can change the resolution which is best suited for your monitor or to just simply make the picture easier to look at. The next button will take you to the next page etc..

Editted below (first year study completed)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/84944594@N ... /lightbox/

Nice idea. Fwiw here's my understanding. Maximum Potential rating will go up at 4 and 5 years assuming it's not already maxxed out at 2. It doesn't go up between 2 and 3. Achieved potential goes up at 2. If you haven't achieved max by end of the 2 year old season then it will continue to rise at 4 and 5 (maybe later but can't comment as I don't run horses past 5 yrs). The only other stat that rises is cruising burst. This goes up significantly between 2 and 3. I don't play jumps so don't know what happens with the jump stats.

Agree fully with your observations.

Get well soon GG!

Cheers mate, I am getting there, slower than expected.

Should be done with the first season of the 2 y/o's, so hopefully have some news soon.

The first season for this batch of 2 y/o horses has been completed.

The season was a measure of 12th April 2039 -12th April 2040.

The horses were officially 3 y/o olds around November 2039 and there were some changes to some of the horses attributes prior to reaching 3 y/o, however I did not capture these as I wanted to just focus on year end. Therefore the atributes seem to increase regardless of mid season or end of year.

The start and end of year pictures have been added side by side for ease of comparison with a brief description of any changes that occured below the horse.

The document can be viewed on the below link, or from the original post which has been updated. As before if you click the 'view all sizes' button in the top right hand corner you can change the viewing resolution to make the details much clearer.

The most interesting find I have come across is that some attirbutes can decrease !

http://www.flickr.com/photos/84944594@N ... /lightbox/

Edit* There are two horses which I state gained a substantial amount of weight within the document which has just dawned on me as to why this is the case. Both horses were injured during the season and sent out to grass, which explains why they are so much heavier now. Should be interesting to see whether this causes any long term problems or whether they will shed the weight during the season.