I must admit, I didn’t expect to write a story about the free-to-play Umamusume Pretty Derby. I also didn’t expect that an extremely anime-troped game for Android, iOS, and Steam would pop off to the point that people are obsessing over it with Balatro or Vampire Survivors levels of passion. If you’re here, it’s because you saw the social media buzz or watched any number of ordinarily cynical, anti-anime, anti-mobile streamers get really into it, and now you want to know how to get the most out of your endearing horse girls.
Download Umamusume Pretty Derby
In Umamusume (a Japanese word that means “horse girl”), famous real-life racehorses are reborn as cute girls with horse ears and tails who run really fast and compete in races. It’s surprisingly compelling. You play as a trainer at Tracen Academy, where the most promising racers strive to become the best. You raise these racers using time management and visual novel mechanics to improve their stats and friendships with other horse girls so they can win competitions and pursue their dreams.
If you’ve downloaded the racing simulation, check out these 13 helpful tips for finding early success in Umamusume Pretty Derby. These are basic concepts and tricks; I’m not diving into the meta. Good luck at the races!
(Credit: Cygames)
Upon firing up Umamusume Pretty Derby, you’ll see many tabs and activities, but you should focus on Career mode to improve the horse girls’ stats. Trainees, whom you get from the Pretty Derby Scout gacha mini-game, can’t immediately race. They’re starting templates you put through Career mode to turn them into skilled veterans who race in other modes.
Each Career mode run costs 30 training points out of a maximum of 100, and the points regenerate over time. You also get many free regeneration items, so you needn’t worry about waiting to play for quite some time. Once the horse girls are on the track, their success stems from what they learned from you in Career mode. So, get them in there as soon as possible.
(Credit: Cygames)
2. Train, Train, and Train Some More!
New players may think that they only need to run through Career mode once to elevate their horse girl to veteran status. Or, that a bad run is a wasted run. Neither is true. You strive to make trainees better and better versions of themselves with each new Career run, so keep at it.
3. Understand and Prioritize the Right Stats for Your Build
Various training and support events give your horse girl at least one of five different stat points: Speed, Stamina, Power, Guts, or Wits. They are the main factors that determine how your trainee performs in races. Speed is how fast she runs. Stamina represents how long she can run at her top speed. Power is how easily she maneuvers around racers. Guts boosts stamina in the last leg of a race. Wit increases the chance of her skills activating and prevents her from panicking and using stamina too quickly.
The five stats are roughly in order of importance. That doesn’t mean you should neglect any of them, though. Work on increasing Speed the most, but make sure Stamina and Power don’t lag too far behind. Guts and Wit are useful, so don’t let them languish. For example, you should bump up Guts if you want a horse gal to excel at long-distance racing.
(Credit: Cygames)
4. Get Good Support Cards and Grow Them
The Support Card Scout gacha mini-game gives you the chance to snag useful support cards. You use them to build a five-card deck for each Career run. They determine the characters your horse girl interacts with and offer many training bonuses, like increasing the points you get per turn.
Like trainees and gacha pull items in many free-to-play games, support cards have rarities: R, SR, and SSR. You’ll want at least gold SR cards, but rainbow SSR cards are better. Their bonuses to friendship levels and training results are potentially much, much bigger than regular R cards.
To get the most out of your support cards, you must increase their levels to better the bonuses they give. Do this under the Enhance tab by tapping Support Cards. This requires the Movies and SP currencies that you earn by playing the game. Additionally, you increase your cards’ maximum levels by feeding duplicate cards to them. The Enhance tab also lets you boost your trainees’ star rank and potential level, which are their baseline stats and skills for Career mode, using other items you accumulate by playing.
(Credit: Cygames)
5. Build Friendship Levels
Training choices alone don’t determine your umamusume’s growth. The more friends she trains with during a turn, the more her stats grow. The friendship level further boosts results and increases the likelihood of support events each turn, which grants even more bonuses. Besides prioritizing the right stats for your build, you must pick training sessions that give the most friendship boosts. They make a huge difference in each race.
You might want to focus in particular on the friendship levels of Director Akikawa (the principal in the hat), because she gives you extra skill points. She also occasionally upgrades your chosen training facility, making it easier to enhance a stat.
6. Keep Energy Levels High
Energy levels are incredibly important. The less energy your umamusume has, the more likely she is to fail a training session. You don’t want that. Failure results in the inability to gain new stats, a lowered mood, and a possible ailment that would require wasting a turn at the infirmary to avoid massive training penalties.
Training Speed, Stamina, Power, or Guts uses energy each turn. So, to get the energy back, you must rest your horse girl for a turn. In addition, training Wit gains a small amount of energy instead of using it, and reliably gives you a few extra skill points, so you can always use it in a pinch.
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(Credit: Cygames)
7. Manage Moods
Mood is yet another factor you must consider. How well your umamusume feels impacts her training benefits and race performance. Mood is set to Normal by default, but it can go up to Good or Great, or down to Bad or Awful. A Great mood boosts training stats by 20% and race stats by 4%. An Awful rank swings the numbers by the same amount in the other direction.
Spending a turn on Recreation is the best way to improve Mood. It will usually bump up Mood two tiers (or up one tier and also grant some energy). Mood levels stay where they are unless an event affects them, so it’s not too hard to keep your umamusume’s mood high.
(Credit: Cygames)
8. Pick the Right Skills
Every horse girl has unique aptitudes. Some are more suited for turf tracks, some for dirt tracks. Some are better with sprints, some with long courses. And each has at least one preferred way to race, whether it’s in the front of the pack or holding back until bursting ahead just before the finish line.
Besides improving stats, you earn and allocate skill points that give condition-specific race bonuses that can make the difference between first and second place. They might be very broad, like regaining stamina in a straightaway or running better when the ground is soft. Other skills are focused on track lengths (Sprint, Mile, Medium, and Long) or running styles (Front Runner, Pace Chaser, Late Surger, and End Closer), and that’s where you need to pay attention. If your umamusume prefers the Pace Chaser style, pick up skills with Pace Chaser at the end of the description, but ignore any that say Late Surger or End Closer.
I’ve found the general stamina and speed skills the most useful, though I try to slot in a level or two in Wet Conditions and/or Firm Conditions. Either one regularly provides a nice boost, regardless of the weather or track length.
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9. Don’t Rest Before a Race
Energy levels only determine how likely training will succeed. They have nothing to do with race performance, so you needn’t worry about resting before a competition. In fact, if your horse girl is at half energy the turn before a race, you should use it for training or recreation, because a sprinter’s mood significantly affects race performance. You can restore energy after the race.
10. Get the Most Out of Camp
In Career mode, your trainee visits a training camp for four turns. You’ll be given a heads-up two turns ahead of time, so you should use those turns to get ready for it. This means making sure your racer’s energy is at maximum and her mood is high, because training during camp is much more effective than ordinary training. It also consumes more energy. Although rest and recreation are combined into one option during camp, it only restores 40 energy points.
If you go into camp with full energy, train any of the first four stats for the first two turns. Then train Wits for the third turn to restore energy. Doing so lets you successfully train one of the other stats on the fourth turn, not wasting valuable camp time by resting.
(Credit: Cygames)
11. Run in Optional Races
Career mode has a list of goal races your trainee must participate in before moving on, but you can run in others between them. You can use a turn to race instead of train, which can prove useful in two ways. First, some goal races require your horse girl to have a certain number of fans to enter the competition, and you gain fans by racing. If you don’t have enough fans by the goal race date, your run comes to an end.
Second, races give you valuable resources. You’ll get many more skill points by racing than you will by training. If you get first place in a G1, G2, or G3 race, you’ll also get items that are required to improve your trainees’ potential levels—and they’re carried over between runs. These make a huge difference in how well your trainee performs in a Career run.
12. Raise a Stable of Good Racers
After you raise your favorite umamusume to veteran status, you should start another trainee. You can use your horse girl in single-event races, but if you want to play against other trainers, you’ll need a stable. Team races are Pretty Derby’s other major gameplay element, and they require a full team to get anywhere. You start at Class 1, which means your team will have slots for five racers. You’ll probably hit Class 2 quickly with skillful play, which raises the racer slots to 10. Class 3 is the hardest to crack, and it has 15 slots.
In other words, raise five different horse girls so you can have a full team. Then, raise five more. Then, if you get really good, raise five more. After that, you don’t need to be concerned about raising other runners unless you find one you really like.
13. Don’t Worry About Spending Money
Like most free-to-play gacha games, Umamusume Pretty Derby feeds you carats, the premium currency, during its first few weeks. In fact, you’ll get lots of it just from daily logins, and you can use it on gacha pulls. I’ve been playing for about a week and a half, and without spending a dime, I currently have six, three-star trainees (five SSR pulls, one R upgraded to SSR), 11 two-star trainees, 9 SSR support cards, and 12 R support cards. You can go pretty far playing for free.
Of course, after a few weeks, you must save the smaller, daily carat rewards if you want to get gacha pulls. Don’t let FOMO seize you.
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About Will Greenwald
Lead Analyst, Consumer Electronics
