Getting started

From a wild horse to a fully equipped mount.

  1. Default controls
  2. 1. Find a horse worth taming
  3. 2. Tame it
  4. 3. Start bonding
  5. 4. Give it orders
  6. 5. Gear it up
  7. 6. Ride better
  8. Where to go next

Default controls

Three keys do most of the work. All three are rebindable in Options → Controls → Icy’s Better Horses, or through Mod Menu if you have it installed.

Key Name What it does
P Horse Whistle / Info Calls your active horse. While mounted, opens the Horse Info screen instead.
R Horse Command Wheel Opens the radial command menu while looking at a horse you own.
G Manage Horses Opens the roster of every horse you own, wherever they are.

1. Find a horse worth taming

Horses now spawn across far more of the world than vanilla: mountains, taigas, deserts, badlands, snowy biomes, cherry groves and more. Each biome has its own breeds, so where you look determines what you find. See Spawning for the full biome list.

Craft an Upgraded Saddle early and hold it while looking at a wild horse. A Horse Stats panel appears above your hotbar showing gender, breed, speed, and jump. Check stock before you spend time taming.

2. Tame it

Tame the horse the vanilla way, mounting it repeatedly until hearts appear. The moment it’s tamed it becomes owned by you, and every Better Horses system switches on for it.

An owned horse answers only to you. Anyone else who tries to take the reins is bucked off immediately. They can still ride behind you as a second rider. Servers can turn this off. See Configuration.

In Creative mode, using a saddle on a horse tames it instantly. Handy when testing.

3. Start bonding

Bond runs from 0 to 100, and every 20 points makes your horse faster and jump higher, up to +75% on both at full bond.

Source Bond
Standing within 10 blocks of your horse +1 per minute
Feeding it a Name Tag +10, once per horse
Feeding it a Golden Apple +2 each

Full details and the stat tables are on Ownership & bonding.

4. Give it orders

Look at your horse and press R to open the command wheel:

  • Follow: trails after you
  • Stay: waits exactly where it is
  • Wander: grazes within a 32×32 area
  • Set Home: marks this spot as home, and switches to Stay
  • Return Home: sends it back to that spot

Setting a home means you can whistle your horse from anywhere and send it back when you’re done.

5. Gear it up

The Upgraded Saddle is the gateway to everything else. Craft it from a vanilla saddle, diamonds, and copper, and it opens five gear slots on the horse screen:

Slot Item Why you want it
Chest Chest or Ender Chest 27 storage slots, or your shared ender inventory
Hooves Horse Hooves Walk on powder snow, softer fall damage, takes Frost Walker
Medkit Horse Medkit Auto-heals your horse the moment it drops below half health
Stabilizer Horse Stabilizer Deploys on long falls and cancels the damage
Hitchpost Hitchpost Tether the horse in place

The Stabilizer slot is shared with the Horse Cart, so a horse tows one or wears the other, never both.

Every recipe is on the Recipes page.

6. Ride better

Once you’re mounted, a stack of quality-of-life changes kick in: double-tap W to cruise, look around freely without steering, ride straight through leaves, and float across water instead of sinking. See Riding improvements.

Where to go next