In order to build a course, follow the following steps:

1) Choose a place. You can build a course on your own ranch, or on any patch of unoccupied land, so long as it is not too close to someone else's course. Remember, these are Infinite Wilds! There's no shortage of room, let's not crowd and confuse each other.

2) On the top menu, click Courses. A window will come up saying, "Build or manage your own obstacle courses." To start a new course, click Add.

3) Once you've done this, you'll see the Manage Course window. Here you can do a number of things:

Name your course. Name it anything you want, but keep in mind that very long names won't fit on the sign. You can change the name of your course at any time.

Set the time penalty. Since the game keeps track of time to complete the course, faults are automatically added to time. Here you can decide how many seconds (in tenths of a second increments) you want to add to a player's time for things like hitting an obstacle, going off course, or whatever.

Set the Horse Source Rule. From this pull-down menu, you can restrict who runs your course in a number of ways. You can limit it to only Ordered horses, or horses who were caught wild, or were bred by a player, and several other options.

Set LifeCycle Rule. You can limit your course to horses who have a Natural life cycle, or to those who are Eternal, or to those who are Extended... or not.

Set Water Rule. You can direct riders/kayakers/swimmers to stay in the water, or everyone to stay out of it, if you like.

Set Terrain Rules. Want people to say on paths, beaches or ice? You can set that here.

Set Transport Rule. Plenty of options here! You can disallow changing horses in mid-course, or specify that a course is kayak or skis only, or that horses can't be used at all, or several other things.

NOTA BENE: You must click SAVE COURSE SETTINGS for any of these to take effect!

4) Place your starting obstacle. There are two available: one for land and one for water.

5) Set up your course.

Start by setting up your Starting Gate. Click BUILD, and you'll see the gate in ghosted (transparent) form. Move your player to select the spot on which you'd like to place your gate, then hold down your left (or right, if you're a lefty) mouse button to turn the gate in the direction you desire. Releasing the mouse button will build the actual gate. These steps will serve for setting up all future obstacles, just remember: red (diamond) on the right!

Once you have set up your start obstacle, the course setup window changes, and you will see many more options for a great variety of obstacles you can add. Please do exercise some care when placing obstacles, though, and make sure horses and riders have plenty of room to prepare for the next one.

6) End your course. By default a course end will loop back to the start. Otherwise you can put up a Finish gate. You can't add to the end of course unless you remove the Finish gate (though you can insert and manage obstacles if you're not happy with your current setup.)

7) For any corrections, you can DELETE or insert BEFORE or AFTER any existing obstacle. To do this just click ABOUT on one of the obstacles.

The obstacles available are listed below.  Some have clockwise and counterclockwise variations and some move; we've indicated which have these in their descriptions here. 

Obstacles are sorted on the Course Management page by type. Scroll to the bottom of the Course Management page to view more!

Course Start: This is just the gate you pass through to start your timer.

Course End:  This gate stops your timer.

Course Gate: A pass-through gate to help keep you on course.

Floating Course Gate:  For kayak and swimming competitions. These can also be placed on ice for speed skating competitions :)

Floating Course Start: Starts an aquatic or icy course. 

Floating Course End: Ends an aquatic or icy course.

Vertical Jump:  A simple vertical with pole-rails.  Faults are accrued by how many of these you knock down.

Hedge Jump:  This is hurdle made of arbor vitae plants.

Spread Jump:  A triple-bar jump; you are given faults for how many individual poles you knock down.

Bricks Jump: A low faux-brick wall.

Planters Jump A jump with plants in pots on it. For every pot you knock down, you'll get get a fault!

Chicken Coop Jump:  A low triangular obstacle.

Filler Board Jump:  Just the bottom part of a vertical.

High Board Jump:  A board vertical.

Funky Log Jump:  A large, brightly-painted log.

Pirouettes:  Stop and do a complete turn on this spot before proceeding. These go both clockwise and counterclockwise.

Spins:  Stop and do four complete turns on this spot before proceeding. These have clockwise and counterclockwise variations.

90 degree turns: Stop, turn just enough, and carry on.

Walk Forward: Cross this obstacle at a walk, in the direction (and right over) the arrows. This obstacle has one line on either side of the arrows, indicating you need to walk.

Walk Backward: Same as above, but go backward in the direction of the arrows.

Trot Gait:  Trot over the arrows, in the direction they show. This obstacle has two lines on either side of the arrows, indicating a trot.

Canter Gait: Canter over the arrows, in the direction they show. This obstacle has three lines on either side of the arrows, indicating a canter.

Rollbacks:  These require you to turn around(180 degrees) on the spot in the direction indicated by the arrow.

Barrels: Run in a complete circle around the barrels in the direction indicated on the barrel. We have two variations of these!

Halt: Stop for four seconds, then move to the next obstacle.

Lasso High: A simple object that needs to be hit with a lasso before continuing with the rest of the course.

Air Rings: There are three variations of the Air Rings, each a different height (10m, 25m, and 50m.) These are for the Hang Glider- don't miss the ring or it's going to be very hard to complete an air course!

Moving Obstacles 

Moving Oxer Jump:  This multi-poled moving obstacle is similar to our Vertical Jump, except this one moves up and down. A horse with high Jump Power and a rider with excellent timing will be best for this.

Moving Board Jump: This Moving Board Jump also moves up and down and will require both skill and great ability on the rider's part.

Lasso Spin:  This spinning target will test a competitor's ability to lasso a moving target. 

Lasso Bounce:  This moving target bounces up and down. Timing and practice will help you complete this target.

Nonobstacles

Course Checkpoint: This bright circle on the ground is excellent for endurance courses. Horses will need to simply pass over it to clear it.

Course Fence:  Not an obstacle per se, but helps riders line their horses up for another obstacle. You'll get faulted if you hit it!

Low Cavaletto: Also not really an obstacle, but something you need to avoid. Super fun to put these in front of course gates or other jumps to increase the difficulty!

You can build additional courses if you permanently unlock the slot with Essence. The more courses you wish to build, the more Essence you'll need to collect; but if you're willing to explore and put the effort in, you can always unlock more slots.

Should you delete a course, the slot you unlocked for that course will remain unlocked on your account. You'll never lose your course slots!

TIP: Use the double course slots tome at the library to create more courses. The tome can be unlearned once course starts are built without losing courses.

Clubs have a 1km range of protection around themselves. So unless you are a Gold club member you cannot build in that area. There is also minimum distance from other course obstacles which may block placement. Otherwise you can build a course pretty much anywhere you like that isn't owned by another player.

Players that own a Preserve are the only ones that may build courses upon it.

Please note that while you can't build a course on another person's ranch, someone may build a ranch on your course. It's best to build your courses away from populated areas to prevent this from happening.