This guide will teach you how to breed and exchange horses in BDO. With some knowledge and persistance in horse breeding, you will produce a new horse of a higher tier than its parents.
Horse Breeding Benefits:
- Imperial Steed: there is a rare chance to obtain an Imperial Steed that rewards training materials.
- Increased Horse Tier: potentially obtain a higher tier horse up to Tier 8.
- Once a horse reaches tier 8, it uses a different breeding system to awaken into a T9 Dream Horse. T10 Mythical Horses also use a unique system.
- Horse Skill Improvement:
- Can increase amount of horse skills.
- Can open up previously locked horse skills.
- Horse Coats: new horse coats become available.
- Improved Horse Stats: higher tier horses usually have better base stats
- Speed – increase AFK and Sprint running speed
- Acceleration – improve top speed for Instant Acceleration horse skills
- Turn – how sharp a horse can turn
- Brake – Important for stability during Drift + Instant Accel animation cancel. Brake can reduce Drift animation significantly. A horse with Brake at 150.1% makes the sliding from Drift almost non-existent.
- Health – influences how quickly the horse will die if hit
- Stamina – how far the horse can travel before being fed
Breeding Horses at the <Stable Keeper> gives you a chance to gain a higher Tier horse.
An increase in horse tier usually means better base horse stats, but there are some exceptions, depending on your goals. For example, some horse coats have better base Turn/Brake or Sprint/Acceleration.
Horse tier is different than horse level. Horses have a maximum level of 100. You level horses by riding them on your character, with or without a wagon.
- Max Horse Levels: horses can be leveled up to 100, but anything past level 30 will not improve the horse’s stats, improve its breeding chances, nor will it learn any new skills.
How to Breed a Horse: Step by Step
1. “Check In” 1 male horse and 1 female horse at a <Stable Keeper> that has a Breeding Market.
Every major city has a Horse Breeding Market: Velia, Heidel, Calpheon, Altinova, Grana, Duvencrune, O’draxia, Eilton, and Nampo’s Moodle Village. Many other smaller cities and outposts also have a breeding market, but not all. More Breeding Market locations are listed below.
*If you don’t have a male horse, you can use the Breeding Market to rent someone else’s male horse to use its breeding chance with your female.
2. Make sure both horses have “Breedable” counts greater than 0. (Each horse’s breeding count can be reset 1x by purchasing a Breeding Reset coupon from the Pearl Shop. See details below.)
3. Recover both horses to ensure full Stamina & Health, or you will get an error message.
4. Ensure the female’s stable has one empty stable slot for the foal.
5. Select the male horse and the “Register at Breeding” button on the menu that pops up.
5. Select “Show Only Me” to breed the male yourself. If you leave “Show All” checked, other players can purchase your horse’s breeding count.
Confirm. He will now be registered for your use only at the Breeding Market.
STOP: Be sure to buff your Training mastery before pushing that final “Request Breeding” button. This increases your chances of getting a higher tier foal!
6. At the stable where the female is located select the “Breeding Market” button at the bottom of the UI window.
7. Click the “My Horse List” tab to find the male you registered earlier. Hover over the 35k silver button. It shoud say “Request Breeding”.
8. Click the “Request Breeding” to open up a list of the available females at the current stable.
9. Place a checkmark in the box next to the female you want to breed with the male and hit the “Request Breeding” button.
The confirmation window tells you it will take 2.24 hours until the breeding is complete. Click “OK” to start.
Breeding Timer is shown in the Mare’s stat window at the Stable Keeper.
Optionally, click “Complete Now” in her stat window. Costs 130 Pearls to bypass the Breeding Timer. Pearl cost decreases as Remaining Time decreases.
10. When the breeding time has completed, select the female in the stable window and hit the “Complete” button. This will open a window to register your new foal. You’ll be able to see your foal’s appearance, sex, and base stats in this window. Give your foal a name and register it to see its tier and skills.
Ingame Horse Breeding Calculator
Open the Horse Growth Info by pressing ESC, Life, Horse Growth Info. Here you can see your current mount’s stats, growth potential, and breeding potential.
Input your Training mastery level. Higher Training mastery increases your chances for a higher tier foal, offsetting the horse levels needed.
Select the Breed/Exchange Calculator. Input your Training mastery. Select a male and female horse to breed. You can choose from your own stables a horse by Tier and name or choose from a list of all current ingame horses by Tier and coat.
After choosing, mess around with each horse’s level. You will notice that the chances of obtaining a higher tier foal increase when the parents’ levels increase. For example, at 1500 Training Mastery and Tier 8 parents, the parents must have a combined level of 48 for a 100% chance of obtaining a Tier 8 foal. See pic.
The same Tier 8 parents with a Training mastery of 1200 would need a combined horse level of 52 to have a 100% chance of obtaining a Tier 8 foal.
This makes it easy to see how important Training mastery is for players who like to breed horses as it shaves off the horse levels needed for the best tier foal and saves time.
Horse Breeding Limits
- Breed Counts: Normally, males can breed twice and females once without resets. There are rare horses that can be caught in the wild with 4 breeding counts, male & female.
- Breeding Resets: An item that can reset horse breeds for Tier 6 to 8 horses can be purchased in the Pearl Shop.
- Breeds must be at 0 to use a reset
- Horse Breeding Reset (Female): Pearl cost 640 Pearls
- Horse Breeding Reset (Male): Pearl cost 330 Pearls
- Horse Breeding Reset can only be used once per horse!
Horse Breeding Stable Locations
Major cities of each zone will having a Breeding Market. The parents don’t need to be in the same stable, but they need to be in stables that allow Breeding Market registration:
- Velia
- Heidel
- Port Epheria
- Calpheon City
- Keplan
- Trent
- Altinova
- Valencia City
- Shakatu
- Sand Grain Bazaar
- Grána
- Duvencrune
- O’draxxia
- Balacs Altar
- Awina’s Tail
- Wind Nol’s Perch
- Eilton
- Pilgrim’s End
- Sherekhan Iron Mine
- Bronte’s Bolt
- Nampo’s Moodle Village
- Godu Village
There are many other locations not listed.
- TIP: View the Stable locations of all your mounts by opening the world map (M) and clicking the Horseshoe shaped icon. Keep in mind that not all of the stables listed have a Breeding Market.
Stable Expansion with Contribution Points
The default number of Stable slots is 3 or 4, but you can increase that number by purchasing a “Horse Ranch” house in select cities with Contribution Points (CP).
Select a city with CP houses on your World Map and use the house filter to find the “Horse Ranch”. Not all cities have a Horse Ranch.
Be aware that buying a Horse Ranch can be costly in Contribution Points as many have prerequisite houses you have to buy. Heidel’s Horse Ranch costs 2 CP but the two prerequiste houses are 1 CP each, bringing the total cost of Heidel’s Horse Ranch to 4 CP.
Some Cities with Extra Stable Slots:
- Velia: 2
- Heidel: 4
- Glish: 4 (No breeding market but near Heidel)
- Calpheon: 5
- Trent: 4
- Keplan: 4
- Altinova: 4
- Grana: 5 (also has T9 and T10 Dream & Mythical training)
- Sand Grain Bazaar: 3
- Valencia: 5
- Duvencrune: 5
- Muiquun: 3
- Nampo’s Moodle Village: 2
- Bukpo: 2
- Nopsae’s Byeot County: 2
Stable Expansion with Pearls
Stable slots in certain cities may also be purchased separately at the Pearl Shop for 100-300 Pearls each. There is a 50 purchase limit for each one.
Stable Expansion with Loyalties
You can also purchase a few extra stable slots with loyalties. These are not guaranteed to stick around so grab them when you can!
Currently, for 3000 loyalties each, you can purchase 1 extra stable slot at these locations: Veila, Heidel, Calpheon, Altinova, Valencia, Grana, Duvencrune, and O’draxxia.
Currently, for 19,900 loyalties each, you can purchase 2 Choose Your Stable boxes where you can choose from many different stable locations than just those listed above.
Horse Breeding Market
Using the Breeding Market
You may have a shortage of male horses. If you do need one, you can sometimes find some nice high level horses that will save you time leveling one yourself. It will cost you though!
Only male horses are available on the Breeding Market.
Breeding Market prices decline as the horses become lower in Tier. Lower levels also decrease the price. Courser icon triples the price.
Horse Exchange
What is Horse Exchange?
If both parent horses have Breeding counts of 0, you might want to Exchange them and immediately produce a new foal.
But both parents will be destroyed!!
There is no 2.2 hour breeding timer. Horse Exchange costs 35k silver. This is only an option, if you really don’t like the parents. 🙂
At the <Stable Keeper> click the “Exchange Horse” button.
Horse Breeding with Coursers
Benefits of Breeding with Coursers
Coursers are horses with a specific set of skills. They have golden horse icons.
They are over 3x more expensive in the Breeding Market.
When you breed two Coursers, you get a foal with 2 horse skills. If just one parent is a Courser, you only have a 50% chance of getting two skills.
Starting with 2 skills is a benefit because it increases your chances of obtaining an above normal amount of skills. Many low Tier horses struggle with learning 2 skills.
NOTE: Exchange of courser parents produces foals with only one skill.
Courser Skill Requirements by Tier
| Tier | Required Horse Skills for Courser |
|---|---|
| 6 |    Charge / Drift / Sprint |
| 7 |   Charge / Drift / Sprint / Instant Accel / Sideways |
| 8 |   Charge / Drift / Sprint / Instant Accel / Sideways / S:Instant Accel / S:Sideways |
To view a detailed list of horse skill info, visit our BDO Horse Tiers, Skills, & Stats List.
Horse Breeding: the Ultimate Advanced Uberness!
Players that love training and horses, will want to learn about the complexities behind horse breeding.
We no want potato horse?! :O No? Go to our Horse Breeding Advanced Guide.
Thanks bud
I’m pretty sure Duvencrune allows breeding too since I’ve only bred my horses there 🙂
Ooops! Thanks for the info. 🙂
I’m unsure when it was changed but it appears that the horse level cap is no longer 30. While I don’t know what the cap is, i only know it’s no longer 30 as my current T8 is level 34.
Thanks for catching that! 🙂
I’ve been wondering this for years now. Why is it that I can’t tie up my horse? Once I “park” my horse, there’s F5 to “tie up” my horse. But I always get “already resting.” What’s that feature supposed to really do?
Hello 🙂 Sometimes you run into weird things in BDO. I have no idea. haha!