Everything You Should Know About Horse Traits in The Sims 4: Horse Ranch

The traits you give your sims are going to have a huge impact on their life and that applies to horses too! Understand the different horse traits will help you pick the traits that will actually improve your experience either by making your horses more fun or making them more valuable.

How to See Your Horse’s Traits

If you have a horse and are unsure about which traits they have you can see them by opening up the horse’s profile which you can find by clicking on the horse and hitting open profile. This is where you can also see their skills and relationships.

What Horse Traits Are There?

There are three different categories of traits for your horses. The first is CAS traits that you are able to give your horses in create-a-sim or when they age up, the second is reward traits that you earn through gameplay and the last is breeding traits that you get depending on your horse’s parents.

CAS Traits

• Aggressive: These horses are cranky! They act meaner towards other sims and are more difficult to train
  • These sims are more likely to buck a sim off of them, will deny lots of social interactions and will take so long to befriend and train. Pretty hard to get these horses the temperament skill too.

• Brave: These horses tend to be stout of heart, unfazed by bad weather or danger. They also have a higher chance of succeeding when using horse jumps and barrels.
  • A brave horse is great if you want to go into horse competitions because they are great and doing horse jumps and barrels.

• Defiant: These horses tend to be more ornery when it comes to training and will develop skills more slowly. They also have a higher likelihood of failing horse jumps and barrels.
  • Defiant horses are just a pain in the butt. They aren’t going to want to be trained so they will gain their skills so slow, making it hard to win championships with these horses.

• Energetic: These horses are full of energy! They gain athletic skills faster but are slower to gain the temperament skill.
  • These horses are great for training in horse barrels or jumps because they have so much energy to get out. They’re going to be a little harder to get temperament so they won’t have the best social interactions at first.

• Fearful: These horses are afraid of everything and will often become spooked. Due to their fearful nature, it will take them longer to gain the temperament skill.
  • These sims are scared of so many things from the weather if you have Seasons to Vlad’s visits if you have Vampires.

• Free Spirit: These horses thrive in the open outdoors and will become sad if left inside for too long.
  • Let these horses roam and live their lives however they want. All they want to do is graze and hangout in the sun like they deserve.

• Friendly: These horses love all things social! They are more likely to have positive social interactions.
  • These horses are going to be so easy to befriend which is nice for gaining trust with your horse.

• Independent: These horses are content on their own and don’t need as much attention.
  • Independent horses are great because you don’t have to give them as much attention which is nice if your sims are busy for a day.

• Intelligent: These horses are all-around rapid learners, giving them an increased gain of all skills. As an added bonus, they’re also brilliant conversationalists!
  • An intelligent horse is one of the best because they will gain every skill more quickly. They are so smart they can even give sims a positive moodlet from conversations, how cute!

• Mellow: These horses prefer relaxing over everything else! Because of their laid-back nature they are quick to gain the temperament skill and slow to gain athletic skills.
  • A mellow horse doesn’t want to train. They don’t want to learn. They don’t want to run. They’re just vibing.

• Needy: These horses need social interaction often. They will frequently approach sims in the hopes of gaining their attention.
  • These horses are going to get sad all the time if they aren’t getting enough attention from sims in the household. You’ll need to give them lots of hugs to cheer them up.

Breeding Traits

There are two types of breeding traits that your horses can gain at birth, there are inherited traits and random traits. The inherited traits are going to come to your horses depending on their parents and the others can be assigned randomly if there are no inherited traits to give from the parents.

Inherited Breeding Traits

• Champion Genes: Horses with champion genes have winner’s blood coursing through their veins. As a result these horses will gain skills faster and hold a higher Simoleon value than the average horse.
  • This trait is given to horses that were born from a parent who has the Champion Horse Trait.

• Well-Manned Foal: This horse got a good head start on the temperament skill as a foal, they are primed to learn more skills.
  • This trait is given to horses that were born from a parent who has a high temperament skill.

Random Breeding Traits

• Curious: These horses are naturally more curious and enjoy exploring objects and using horse jumps and barrels
  • These horses are adorable, they just want to explore the world and learn everything they can.

• Hardy: These horses are born to run! They can train for long periods of time without getting fatigued and work up a horse-sized appetite.
  • Make sure you keep your horse trough full at all times for these horses, they are hungry more often but are great for gaining endurance since they love to run.

• Playful: These horses love playing with toys and other sims!
  • You need to make sure that you have the big ball for these horses to play with!

Reward Traits

A horse who manages to win the ultimate horse championship is going to get a reward trait, which is awesome because they deserve it!

• Champion Horse: A champion through and through! This horse’s foals will gain skills and that fighting spirit faster and have higher value.
  • This trait is great if you want to breed this horse. It’s going to give your horse’s children so many legs up in life and they will gain their skills quickly and be worth more if you decide to sell them.

What Horse Traits Should I Choose?

The types of traits you give your horse really depend on what type of gameplay experience you want. Let’s go over a couple scenarios and what kind of traits I’d give that horse:

Gameplay Experience	Horse Traits
You just want a horse for aesthetics and cute screenshots but don’t want to put in much effort to take care of that horse	Mellow, Independent, Intelligent
You want a horse to become a champion and be good at all athletic skills	Brave, Intelligent, Energetic
You want a horse to be your sim’s best friend but don’t care if they’re good at athletics	Friendly, Free Spirit, Needy

It really depends on what you want from your horse experience and what type of gameplay you’re here for, I like to give my horses two good traits and one bad one just to torture myself. So I’d give them traits like brave, intelligent and defiant.