Not exactly new here, just been gone for a long time...   TL;DR story:  they jerked us around for years, dangling alternative means of gear upgrading (besides raw R.N.G.) that Korea servers already had *(Cron stones at the time). Then when they finally said they were delivering on it, all we got were these Prohibitively expensive Cron Caphras Stones, that players who already got TETs and PENs were able to consume as well (which was a horrible mistake on their part). This led to an even more hopeless situation for the rest of us semi-Casuals with both bad Drop Luck and bad Enchantment Luck because they just plain weren't even available on the market some times, or we'd have to sell everything else we owned just to get 1 single piece of Armor to TET because it required so darn many Crons.   I was so disgusted by the systematic Bias and Favoritism towards the top Paying-to-Win players in that update, that I didn't even tell the forums I was done, I just left immediately.

 ...Also there was never ever EVER any other means of getting a horse skill-Change without selling one's soul to the cash shop.  ..and even if I had the money (one month I did), their Currency Transfer billing went through China which my CreditUnion locked my debit card out of buying for "National Security" Sanctions & Scam reasons if you can believe it

Did either of these things change at all while I was gone?  ....even if it was just an increase to the Likelyhood of horses learning more than like 2 or 3 crappy skills while you're endlessly leveing them all the way up to 30?    Any time frame for updates I can search for details on would be very appreciated.  Thank you.

Honestly, this is probably the best time to come to BDO. Seasonal servers are one of the greatest things they have done in the game for people new to the game, coming back after a long hiatus or for those players who have bad RNG period. 

They are bringing out group content for those who like playing with friends and family and implementing ways of getting pearl shop items through questing.

The only negative thing I have to say about BDO in the current shape it's in right now is that they don't have true PvE servers outside Olvia and seasonal servers or a Dwarf class.

Okay, I sorta recal something about the Seasonal deal which is basically copying what Archeage was doing in ... 2019... I wanna say?   Sounds tempting because I was having the most fun with this game back when Calpheon Shrine was the "End Game" and everyone had relatively similar TTK's.  (except for SosukeAizen's Sorc who farmed Tri Witches his first month).   I'll see if I can fiind time to wrap my head around it.

So far the only thing I've come across even related to horse skills is the following: 

they did rework training perks  and its honestly pretty decent  this is what mine says at master 4 training 

With regard to caphras, make sure you do the rift bosses regularly. You can get on average 40 to 50 caphras a week through a combination of rift bosses, daily login rewards and the black spirit's adventure dice game.

But don't you need like 2000-3000 of them just to get a single boss gear piece out of TRI-hell?

That would take literally Years to get even 4 pieces of armor going up less than a dozen DP points.  And when I left, DP barely did anything against AP, even non-evasion DP was terrible on everything but Urugons

Hello, Illrep3 :) I do not recommend wasting caphras on TRI level gear. It's better to enhance items to TET and then start using caphras on them to boost them. Sometimes you'll get bad luck on enhancements, but usually (3 out of 4 times to my experience) you can make TRI to TET boss gear cheaper than buying it off the market.

I then use the caphras on the TET boss items, and for most items it's only a few hundred caphras to make a significant difference. If you check this calculator, type in the armor/weapon you want to see how many caphras you need to get what, and you'll see you can do good upgrades just taking something to caphras level 3 or 4. Type in the item, set the level to 19 (TET) and then look at the caphras levels you want.

Dandelion Jordun - BDO Codex

Yes, it's thousands of caphras to go all the way from TET to PEN, but it's only hundreds to go from TET to better than TET.

[Damn this website forum for making me type this answer twice.]

While I appreciate you taking the time to write that out... it's also the same old information I was already aware of when I first left.  I think it would be really really important for people who's general observations are "3 out of 4 times it's cheaper to enchance to TET than buying it off the market", to understand that all of the other people they know, or still see playing the game, also had that general experience and thus are way more likely to still-actually-be-playing the game mainly because that was their experience.  And that there is no API or transparency from PearlAbyss on just how many other players DO NOT have that experience, and quit because of it.   Yes this is a bit of specualtion, but it's also an Occam's Razor when looking looking back years ago and seeing how many more players the game used to have on its normal servers compared to what it has now.

Put more simply:  There was a really big GearScore-cliff which cost more than a Billion-and-a-Half silver to overcome for every single piece of gear.... and for a Lot more of us than you might realize, that real estimate was actually working out to roughly 2.5 bil to 3 billion Silver.  And We were told that Caphras would alleviate that.   But then all of the Players who wanted "Better Than TET", were put on the same Resource Sink, which drove the Price for those Caphras waaaay too high for the rest of us, and has kept it there ever since.  It's really simple supply and demand economics that any thoughtful Designer could have anticipated well ahead of time

yep so crons and caphras are different. Although caphras have an enhancement method it is rarely if ever used due to the raw silver required to get it to pen would not be worth in any sense (better to just buy a pen off the market). Caphras are instead used to update pre-existing gear by providing buffs like +1 ap per level for weapons or +dr and +dp for armours. Crons can still be used to try weapon and armour attempts without a chance of degrade. Accessories have a chance of degrading with crons. Training on the other hand provides a higher chance of gaining the skills you desire as your training level and mastery increases. The only method to swap skills on a pre-existing horse is still through the pearl shop.