My many years of experience have taught me: you should only stay with someone because of who they are, not who you think they could be. The last two weeks have taught me: unless they are a horse. Because it turns out that, if you stick with the worst nags in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 long enough, they'll eventually blossom into strong, valiant steeds.
If you've gotten to Semine in KCD2—a process which could take 30 minutes or 100 hours, depending on how sidequest-happy you are—you'll know the game does you the favour of giving you a free horse: Pebbles, Henry's dowdy old mare from the first game. She's terrible. She's slow, scared, and weak, and you'll probably make it your first order of business to buy or steal something better as soon as you can. But you shouldn't.
Because it turns out that, if you ride old Pebbles for 35 kilometres or so, you'll eventually unlock a secret perk that makes her one of the best horses in the game. It's called Good Old Pebbles, and it sends her stats skyrocketing. Here's a quick comparison.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Pebbles | Pebbles+ |
Stamina | 127 | 210 |
Carrying capacity | 138 | 293 |
Speed | 32 | 43 |
Courage | 12 | 12 |
Value | 100 | 4,140 |
Which is, frankly, nuts. This makes her one of the speediest and strongest horses in the game, meaning you might finally be able to beat the Voivode's son at that bloody race. The only downside is her static courage (I'm half-convinced it's a bug, but perhaps not), but I reckon it's a very worthwhile trade-off when it comes to getting such an incredible horse for free. Also, townsfolks will stop insulting her, which should make you feel a bit better about yourself.
Pebbles actually isn't the only horse you can do this with. There's a similar secret perk for Herring, the free horse that you'll get as part of your adventures around Trosky castle. If you ride ol' Herring around for 50 (count 'em, 50) kilometres, you'll unlock the Red Herring perk. Here's his before-and-after (though a quick note: I never got this perk myself, so I'm using stats from the community, and it looks like these ones factor in your horse's basic gear, which Pebbles' upgraded stats above do not).
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Herring | Herring+ |
Stamina | 169 | 231 |
Carrying capacity | 138 | 288 |
Speed | 40 | 56 |
Courage | 14 | 14 |
Value | 1,260 | 4,910 |
Which one you prefer is, of course, up to you, but I'm such a hoarder that Pebbles' extra carrying capacity makes her an obvious choice for me. Also, she's been with you since the first game, are you gonna just abandon her in some podunk village outside Kuttenberg? Not very chivalrous of you, Henry.
