February 11, 2025: We added info about the Good Old Pebbles perk and why it's probably worth hanging onto your original mount.
Grabbing your first horse in makes life a lot easier. Rather than traipsing across the vast countryside on foot, you'll be able to speedily explore each new area, and escape any bandit muggers on the road you can't be arsed fighting. Considering how often you get attacked by roadside bandits at inopportune times, a method of escape is a must-have.
How to get a free horse
If you talk to Bara the beggar once free of Troskowitz stocks, she'll tell you that the best place to find a horse is in Semine. Now, if you follow The Blacksmith's Son quest to get into the wedding, you'll find yourself in Semine before long, but you can head there whenever if you follow the main road south-west from Troskowitz. Once there, head through the castle to the fenced enclosure on the far side where you'll find the horse trader.
You'll also find Pebbles, the horse you lost in the prologue. You can get Pebbles for free if you convince the horse trader that he was stolen, or pay him some Groschen to get the horse, instead. The bad news—which you'll quickly discern from the nonstop tide of strangers insulting your horse—is that Pebbles isn't a very good mount. You can buy another horse from Semine's horse trader, though it will set you back by a tidy sum of Groschen.
Later in the story, after the For Whom The Bell Tolls quest, you'll be offered another horse called Herring at Trosky Castle who is better than Pebbles. You'll also get some better equipment for your horse at the same time. You [[link]] might choose to swap horses at this point, though there are advantages to keeping your original horse, which I'll explain below.
How to keep a stolen horse
For those not averse to pinching a horse, you can get one a lot cheaper, though actually assigning it as your mount will still cost you some groschen. You'll need to take your stolen horse to the nomad camp and find Horse Handler Mikolai near the entrance. Speak to him, mention you want to keep the horse, and he'll ask for around 50% of its price to convert ownership.
Stealing a horse from a town or village is quite tricky without getting spotted, so what I'd instead suggest is to look for a horse whose previous owner has been killed. You'll often find horses whose riders have been mugged by bandits on the road, or passersby will get off their horse to help you fight bandits before unceremoniously being gutted. You can sometimes find horses in bandit camps, too, such as the camp by Rocktower Pond. Make sure [[link]] to press X to inspect each horse and see its value.
Taking these horses is really a victimless crime, especially as there are no witnesses left to see you pinch them. Take one of these back to Mikolai and you can quickly upgrade from Pebbles at a far cheaper price.
While you're at the Nomad Camp, if you're looking for something else to do, you might also want to pick up the Miri Fajta quest from the Voivode to track down his daughter .
Should you keep Pebbles?
It's worth noting that if you ride Pebbles long enough you'll automatically get the Good Old [[link]] Pebbles perk, which vastly improves his stats and makes him better than most other horses. You can see above that Pebbles with the perk is now worth around 4,000 Groschen, when before it was about 100. The only downside is it does take this perk a while to activate and throughout that time you'll have to ride a horse with poor stats. For me, Good Old Pebbles activated towards the end of the first region, so around 20 hours in.