The Witcher 3 Horse Gear: Best Saddle, Blinders and Bags

Roach's starting saddle is worth 20 Stamina. The best one in The Witcher 3 is worth 100, and no merchant sells it — it is a parting gift from a man who has just collected on a soul.

In between sit 45 other pieces of tack. The Witcher wiki files 47 items under horse equipment across the base game, the free DLC packs and both expansions: 26 saddles, 13 sets of blinders and 8 sets of saddlebags. The game never ranks them, never tells you which race pays out which piece, and never mentions that one of the three slots is really an inventory upgrade for Geralt rather than anything to do with the horse.

So here is the whole thing with its numbers attached.

Three slots, three different jobs

The wiki's horse equipment page is blunt about what each slot does, and the three effects have nothing to do with each other:

• Saddle — Stamina. How long Roach gallops before dropping to a trot. This is the stat that decides races.
• Blinders — fear level. Blinders raise the limit on Roach's fear meter so she panics less easily. Panic is what throws you off mid-fight.
• Saddlebags — Geralt's inventory weight. Nothing to do with the horse at all. This is your carry capacity.

There is a fourth slot on the saddle for a monster trophy, and that one is an equipment slot in disguise — each contract head carries a passive buff while it is strapped on. Our contracts guide covers which trophy does what; this post is about the three pieces underneath it.

Every saddle in the game, ranked by Stamina

Twenty-six saddles. The four-step crafted ladders (plain, enhanced, superior, mastercrafted) do most of the low-end work, and the top of the table is almost entirely quest rewards.

Six of the eight Toussaint saddles — the Grapevine, Toussaint, Beauclair, Caed Myrkvid, Knight errant's and Five Chivalric Virtues saddles — are loot or shop stock at any Toussaint armorer. The other two are rewards you cannot buy or loot: Sir Geralt of Rivia's saddle and Sir Ravix of Fourhorn's saddle, handed over for winning the race in The Warble of a Smitten Knight under your own name or under the Ravix of Fourhorn pseudonym respectively, so a single playthrough can only collect one of them. All eight are identical at 90 Stamina and differ only in how they look, so in Blood and Wine you can buy the best-but-one saddle in the game off a shelf and pick the one you like.

Three things that table makes obvious. The three crafted ladders — plain, racing, cavalry — are parallel bands rather than one continuous progression, so a mastercrafted plain saddle at 35 is still worse than the bottom rung of the cavalry ladder at 60. Three of the tiers exist only as random loot, which means you cannot shop your way up the ladder in a straight line. And everything above 80 comes from an expansion.

Blinders: thirteen of them, one ceiling

Blinders are the slot you can finish early and forget. There are thirteen sets and the best value in the game is +60, reachable in the base game.

Win one Skellige race and your blinders are done for the playthrough. Nothing in either expansion beats +60 — the Blood and Wine sets (Grapevine, Toussaint, Beauclair, Caed Myrkvid, Knight errant's and the Five Chivalric Virtues blinders) all match it rather than exceed it, and the Ofieri pair from Hearts of Stone actually sit 5 below.

Saddlebags and the 250 ceiling

Saddlebags are the slot worth the most to the way you actually play, because they decide how much loot you can carry between merchants.

The wiki puts the game's maximum carrying capacity at 250, reached with the Beauclair saddlebags, the Strong Back general skill and the fiend decoction active. Add those three up — 110 plus 60 plus 20 — and you get 190, which means the capacity Geralt starts the game with is 60. Your saddlebags are therefore the single largest carry-weight upgrade available, worth nearly twice what the skill point buys.

If you are hauling junk to market, the money guide is the other half of this conversation: blacksmiths pay a 20% bonus on horse equipment specifically, so your obsolete saddles have a preferred buyer.

Which race hands over which piece

Eleven separate races exist in the base game, and every one of them pays out in horse gear or crowns. Hearts of Stone adds a twelfth, and Blood and Wine adds the tourney race covered above.

Two scheduling warnings attached to that list. The Derby only opens after you have done most of Get Junior, and the wiki flags that the Crow's Perch races can vanish once you reach the Isle of Mists while the Novigrad races have been reported as unavailable after Now or Never. Each Crow's Perch race also skips time to 11pm, so running all three back to back burns three in-game days.

Those eleven base-game races are also exactly the checklist for the Fast and Furious achievement, which is missable for the reasons above — our achievements guide has its Steam rarity alongside the other 77.

The fastest route to endgame tack

The wiki's own horse equipment page spells out a route, and it holds up against the numbers in the tables above. Get to Skellige, pick up The Heroes' Pursuits: For the Goddess' Glory! from the Larvik notice board, talk to Svana, then run the three qualifiers in this order:

1. Fyresdal first, for the cavalry saddle. At 60 Stamina it is a triple upgrade over the starting saddle and it makes the next two races easier.
2. Fayrlund for the Zerrikanian saddlebags (+100 carry weight).
3. Kaer Trolde for the Zerrikanian blinders (+60 fear — the ceiling, permanently).
4. The final race against Astrid for the Zerrikanian saddle, at 80 Stamina the best in the base game.

If you own Hearts of Stone, swap step one. Races: Swift as the Western Winds at Upper Mill is a single race against the Ofieri merchant Dulla kh'Amanni with no fight attached, and the wiki notes that although it is flagged as a level 32 quest it can be run at any level, because it is only a race. The Ofieri stock saddle it pays out is 85 Stamina — better than anything in the base game, collected before you have earned any of it.

The other shortcut is coin. The free Skellige armor DLC puts the Undvik tack on the armorer in Kaer Trolde citadel: 960 crowns for a 75-Stamina saddle, 840 for +100 saddlebags, 840 for +60 blinders. That is 2,640 crowns for a near-top-tier set with no race won at all.

The Caparison of Lament is a choice, not a drop

The only saddle above 90 is a relic, and you cannot loot, buy or craft it.

The Caparison of Lament is 100 Stamina, and you are given it during the Hearts of Stone finale Whatsoever a Man Soweth... if you let Master Mirror take Olgierd's soul and then pick "To be as swift as the wind" from the gifts he offers. Equip it and Roach turns into a black horse with glowing eyes. The wiki describes an actual combat effect on top of the Stamina: every few seconds it addles a nearby enemy, and mounted enemies are knocked straight off their horses.

The cost is the whole point of that ending. Taking a gift from O'Dimm means you did not challenge him, which means no Iris — Olgierd's relic sabre — and it is one choice from a list that also holds the Horn of Plenty, the bottomless carafe and a pile of crowns. Our Hearts of Stone guide walks the whole branch, including the conversation you have to not skip to get the option to fight him at all. If you are planning that ending anyway, the saddle is a genuine 10-Stamina upgrade over anything Toussaint sells. If you are not, the Toussaint 90s are a shop away.

The Stamina that does not come from a saddle

Two effects sit outside the equipment screen entirely, and neither one costs you an equipment slot.

The Corvo Bianco stable. In Blood and Wine, the 2,000-crown stable renovation at your vineyard increases Roach's Stamina by 100% for 60 minutes. It is a doubling rather than a flat addition, and it costs no equipment slot. The Blood and Wine guide covers the rest of the renovation list.

The nekker warrior decoction. Mounts never panic — not "less easily", never — plus 50% mounted combat damage, for 1,800 seconds at 50 Toxicity since patch 4.0. While it is up, your blinders are doing nothing, because the stat they raise cannot be reached. The wiki also notes the immunity applies to any mount Geralt uses, not just Roach, and the alchemy guide has the recipe's place in a decoction rotation.

Quick Action Checklist

• Do the three Races: Crow's Perch early — one saddle, one set of blinders and one set of saddlebags, from a notice board in Velen.
• On reaching Skellige, run the four Heroes' Pursuits races in the order Fyresdal, Fayrlund, Kaer Trolde, final. That is an 80-Stamina saddle, +100 saddlebags and the +60 blinders ceiling.
• With Hearts of Stone installed, beat the Ofieri merchant at Upper Mill at any level for the 85-Stamina Ofieri stock saddle.
• Buy the Beauclair saddlebags the moment you reach Toussaint; +110 is the highest carry-weight item in the game.
• Do not chase blinders past +60. Nothing exceeds it.
• Clear the Novigrad and Velen races before the Isle of Mists and Now or Never, or lose the Fast and Furious achievement.
• Keep a trophy on the saddle at all times — it is a free passive buff in a slot you are otherwise leaving empty.