Oblivion:Horses
Horses are a mount that the player can purchase from stables, as well as acquire through a handful of quests. Seven of them need to be purchased to fulfill the Horses Owned statistic in the Accomplishments Tab.
Overview
When the player purchases one of the seven horses listed below from the specified NPC, the Horses Owned statistic increases by one. If one of these horses dies after the player has purchased it, the stat decreases by 1, forcing the player to return to the NPC to purchase it again. Horses essentially will never die as long as the player leaves them in the stable they were purchased from. Horses have almost no route logic tied to them due to them being unused, with their only main impact being an additional 14,500 gold required during Gold Farming.
| Horse | Cost | Seller | City Stable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black Horse | 5000 | Tovas Selvani | Cheydinhal |
| White Horse | 4000 | Clesa | Anvil |
| Chestnut Horse | 2500 | Bongond | Chorrol |
| Bay Horse 1 | 1000 | Isabeau Bienne | Bravil |
| Bay Horse 2 | 1000 | Ugak gra-Mogakh | Skingrad |
| Paint Horse 1 | 500 | Petrine | Bruma |
| Paint Horse 2 | 500 | Cat-Face | Leyawiin |
Technically, if one of the NPCs that sells horses dies, the player is unable to acquire their horse and cannot get 100% completion. There is essentially no chance of this ever happening due to stable owners never leaving their home or going near areas that contain enemies.
There are a handful of other Horses the player can ride throughout the game, but since none of these increase the Horses Owned statistic, they have been omitted. Refer to this UESP article for info on other horses.
Previous Methods
Very little route logic exists for handling Horses. However, this requirement has changed slightly between route revisions.
Version 1 and 2
In addition to the seven purchasable horses from stables, the original requirements included other horses that could become player owned, despite them not being tracked in the Accomplishments Tab. This included Shadowmere for completing The Purification and Prior Maborel's Paint Horse during Deliver the Amulet. Jaufree's horse was omitted since it canonically does not belong to the player despite them being able to ride it, and the Unicorn was omitted since it had to be killed anyway during Hircine.
Even as early as Version 1, horses were interwoven into other route logic.
Version 3
The requirements were overhauled in this version, resulting in Shadowmere and Prior Maborel's Paint Horse being removed from the requirements due to their subjectivity. No significant changes to route logic occurred in this version aside from this.
Current Method
As of the current route revision, horses are simply purchased the first time after Gold Farming that each stable is used as a fast travel location. The timing of when each specific horse is purchased will change each revision of route logic since they have an extremely low priority and do not dictate the order other objectives are done in. An example of when a horse is purchased would be at the start of Bruma Gate since that stable is the nearest fast travel point to enter the gate during that quest.
Horses were initially considered a viable option for Map Exploration in Version 4 due to the Crack Horse glitch giving them very fast movement speed. This was eventually obsoleted by Spell Stacking.
Potential Improvements
Given how simple this objective is, there is likely no way to improve it in any significant way. Horses are prone to a number of glitches and may be utilized as a means of achieving other objectives however. Sitting on a horse counts as a position for the Saddle glitch, and horses are required to set up the very underexplored TCL glitch.