HGG Community Forums

Hi Saralindiel! So great to have you!

Straws are a term (also a real world term!) which relates to breeding - in the real world you can freeze sperm from a stud, and that's called "straws". It allows for insemination of the mare without the stallion needing to be present (artificial insemination).

In game, you can "pull straws" from your stud, and sell those to other players, who can then use it on their mare or on eggs from their mare to get foals who have that stud as their sire, without the stud ever needing to be put up for public breeding or go into a pasture. Straw breeding can be accessed from the advanced breeding lab over on the left under advanced facilities, with varying levels and features available depending on what kind of upgrade you have.


As for genes, I'm going to assume you mean "licensed genes" - the licenses you see at the bottom of your homepage. (Otherwise, the answer is more simple - find a horse with the genes you want and breed to it). Licensed genes are special in that they can only be shared among and accessed by other people who have that license. They go on sale at certain times (usually for real money, but every once in a while for GMT tokens) and once you've bought into it once, you have that license permanently. You can see what's available by going to the buy rare genes tab under upgrades. (As of this writing, the three licensed genes for sale are height regulator (which makes your ponies tiny), ice 13 (which puts snowflakes on your horse), and phantom will-o-wisp (which makes little will-o-wisp prints inside any white markings already present on your horse). The standard sales rotate out every 1st and 15th, but sometimes special events will change that up).