Has anyone lost prize horses?

[Doofus]

This play through (1.7.2) I know at least once, possibly twice, I've lost protected horses. I had at least 5 different horses from tournaments (Asaligat, Nahayanti, Cossian, Tyal, & Battanian Thoroughbred). I had checked the box to 'lock' the item for each. After a battle in which I had retreated I noticed they were gone. I'm not sure if they were just used as regular horses or whether a bug glitched them out of my inventory. I thought I had a lot of horses, but when I looked there was nothing but sumpter horses & mules. Since horses are at the bottom of the inventory now I'll admit I don't pay a lot of attention to them, so its possible I just ran out. I thought locking the horses would keep them from being used by upgrades though.

I also thought locking them would keep me from inadvertently selling them too but a couple times this game I've sold them when selling a bunch of swords, then grabbed them back when I realized it. I wish there was a pop-up when selling that says 'Are you sure you want to sell this locked item?' or 'unable to sell. Unlock item & try again'. In any case, in the above instance I definitely didn't sell the 5 horses. Can someone tell me if 'locking' the horses is supposed to keep them from being used for upgrades (if not, what does locking them do?)?

 

[clovis_sangrail]

As near as I can tell, locking horses only prevents them from being sold when you click on the 'sell everything' double arrow at the top. It does not prevent them from being used to upgrade units. I set the lock on my horses and mules, on my food, on my smithing raw materials and on my crafted weapons so they don't get sold when I am dumping a bunch of loot with 'sell-all'.

If you set the lock on weapons and then try to smelt the weapon, you will get a warning. But you get no warning when you try to sell a locked item.

 

[Doofus]

Hmmm...I don't use sell all. I keep spares of stuff on me pretty much all the time in case I lose a companion and need to outfit a replacement. I know I can keep things in a stash instead (when I have a holding), but I regularly upgrade the back-ups & get rid of the old stuff; plus if I lose a companion during war I don't want to be forced to go back home to get stuff when it may be far away. Since smithing isn't my thing, I never do that & the lock thing doesn't affect me one way or the other in regards to smithing.

I have decided to keep as many spare horses as I can on companions/family members on the casual page, but of course some can't use the prize ones. I also try to keep spares of the prize horses in Stash, but only occasionally get around to stashing them.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Yeah they get used as normal horse upgrades, even if locked.