There are three side statistics to consider when you are shopping for equipment. With horses, they have a handling difficulty, ranging from easy to fair to hard. The easier it is, the bigger the green bar in the middle of the speed bar will be (the one that you have to hit for the most speed increases). The more difficult the handling is, the smaller the green bar will be, meaning that you’ll have a harder time getting the high speed bonus.
Lances, also, will have a different aiming rating. The ones that are easy to aim will make it much easier to steady the lance so that you can hit the rival knight in the weak spot, thus earning the perfect hit bonus. The harder the lance is to handle, the more it will move around while you are trying to aim it.
Finally, horses also have an overall load capacity. Everything that you can equip has a set weight. Your armor, lance, and helmet will all add up, and if their combined weight is too heavy, then your horse won’t be able to ride while you are carrying them. You will have to equip something lighter, or purchase a better horse that has a higher load capacity.
Another tip (a glitch) is to play one of the medal challenges, and fail over and over to earn coins. For some reason, the game will keep letting you play after you hit “rematch” even if you don’t have any more royal seals. You can do this for as long as you want as long as you don’t go back to the stage select screen, because you won’t be able to play again from there.
Gameloft has a forum for Rival Knights. If you want to access it, go to the button in the lower left corner of the screen that looks like a Gameloft logo and tap it. Then on the next screen the pops up, hit the forum button. Stay tuned for announcements, events, giveaways and other goodies.
If you have a ton of equipment upgrades that you want to do, you can line them up all at once. Go to the first piece of equipment, start the upgrade, then to a different piece of equipment, and start the upgrade, then do the same for one or two more if you so choose. You can do one horse, one lance, one shield, and one helmet at the same time.