

After you purchase one, it will be found waiting outside in the corral ( not with the stablehand as the dealer says, due to an AI bug), so be very careful not to accidentally take the wrong horse if there are others like it in there. The price is fixed, you can't haggle, and your Mercantile skills have no effect. Each stable has several types of horses, but only sells one. Horses can be purchased from stables across Cyrodiil (except from the one in the Imperial City) starting at 500 gold, and can be stolen. The horse scripting itself is decidedly non-trivial, and adds considerably to the framerate load, as does zipping through the landscape more rapidly. Controlling horse movement can be very difficult at choppy framerates in such circumstances, you may need to stick to the walking speed except on straight, level stretches, and consider temporarily reducing your graphics settings to speed up the game's responsiveness. You can use the View key while mounted, to switch between first- and third-person views. The Sneak key has no effect while on horseback (horses aren't exactly stealthy). The horse walks at a brisk pace (though slower than a PC with very high Speed), and can be made to gallop much faster, with the same keys that control PC running. The mouse pointer has no effect on horse direction, and is simply you looking around while riding. The horse is steered with all four direction keys (W-A-S-D by default), turns rather awkwardly, and backs up very slowly. To mount one, press Spacebar (or whatever key or button you have remapped as Activate). As covered in more detail below, be careful which horses you mount and how.
