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Umamusume: Pretty Derby can be a complex game and people who aren’t familiar with games where you build and train characters like Idolmaster and Princess Maker might be a bit lost when starting out a career. You need to take into account the length of race the horse girl will run, the strategy you’ll use for positioning, and their innate growth rate bonuses. It is a lot to take in, and it gets more nuanced once you own a stable of Veterans and horde of Support Cards. At the very start, there are a few things you can remember to help you reach at least the URA Finale qualifying races, if not URA Finale itself.
Identify your Umamusume: Pretty Derby character’s strengths before a Career mode run
Every Umamusume: Pretty Derby character is viable and a potential winner, no matter what her star rating is. Any one of them can win the URA Finale and get a good ending in the Career mode. The training plan you choose, skills you teach them, and “friendship” bonuses all help her out.
I’m going to use Sakura Bakushin O and Vodka, two of the starting characters everyone gets for free as examples for this, for examples. Before you even get into a Career, look at their Distance and Strategy ratings. Sakura is a Short distance runner you’ll want to put in the Front or Pace position in a race, since she has an “A” rating in all of those. Vodka is best at running the Mile or Medium distance races and solidly in the Late category for the same reason. Now, through inheritance those could shift! You could get a Vodka who gets her Pace strategy up from B to A or a Sakura who could manage a Mile.
Now that you know that, it comes down to informed decisions about who to inherit from.
Prioritize stat and skill inheritances from Veteran Umamusume: Pretty Derby characters.
You select two Veteran racers to inherit from at the outset of a Career campaign. If you are new to the game, stats are most important. You’ll see the guaranteed buff they’ll get when selecting, and icons in the upper right will show if characters are compatible and get along with each other. A good rule of thumb here is to prioritize stats that your racer might need, but might not necessarily pick up during training. When raising someone who is running in Sprint races and might be a Front or Pace racer in a Mile race, you’ll want to ensure they inherit Power and Stamina stats from their legacy units. I think getting other strategies up to A at this point can be fun too, and looking at Skills that might be viable with a unit could be handy here. But those extra details come in once you’re tapping into A and B rank Veteran racers and working on more serious builds.
I’m going to use Sakura Bakushin O and Vodka as references again here. We already established that Sakura is a Sprinter who should be in the Front or Pace position. I prefer to go with Front for her, since her innate skills tap into Sprint races and her Class President + Speed = Bakushin unique skill triggers when she’s near or in the lead at the end of a race. We aren’t going to work on Guts for her or dedicated Power classes. Since she’s all about Speed and gets a 20% growth bonus there, that and Wit to ensure skills trigger will be our priority. So to make up for that, it’d be good to focus on Power and Stamina from inheritances. (I tend to lean more toward Power, since she’ll need that more if you actually get into URA.)
Since Vodka is going to be on longer Mile and Medium races and follows the Late strategy, we take a different approach for her. She’s going to still need Speed, but Power will be her priority and we can’t ignore Stamina. She gets a 20% growth bonus to Power and 10% bonus to Speed, so we’ll be training her in those during the Career. I would suggest going with a higher Stamina inheritance, if it’s possible, but also going with either Power or Wit as a secondary option for her since she might not be getting those from classes.
I didn’t mention a Long race option yet, but the rule of thumb here is that Power and Stamina will end up being more important. A lot of the horse girls that prioritize that will often end up getting growth bonuses for Stamina, Power, and even Guts. This means for inheritance, you should really focus on Power and perhaps Guts even if they aren’t a Late or End strategy character. It’s going to be critical once you head into URA.
So essentially, a Sprinter should focus on Power. A Mile runner should start going with a balance between Power and Stamina inheritances. Someone focusing on Medium races might want to err toward Power, Stamina, or Wit based on their character’s growth rates. If you got a Long distance horse girl, then look at her growth rates and prioritize Stamina, Power, and maybe Guts or Wit.
Speed Support Cards are your friend for any Umamusume: Pretty Derby character build.
There are two rules of thumb for Umamusume: Pretty Derby Support Cards early on, especially for the global launch, and it is that you should always try for three-to-four Speed type cards. If the person you are raising isn’t a Sprinter, then you should have the Super Creek SSR Stamina Support Card with the Swinging Maestro skill for your character to get stamina recovery when taking a corner near the end. It really is that simple. This is because you want to get Friend bonuses when training those specific skills during a Career to bolster those stats further and potentially learn new skills. Once you’re further into the game and building A and B rank characters, you’ll need to focus more on the skills tied to every card too. But for now, just bolstering stats is enough.
There is some more fine-tuning even this early when you build characters in Umamusume: Pretty Derby, of course. If the horse girl you are training is going to be a Sprinter, then load up on Speed. I’d say four Speed cards, maybe even five depending on the person, and then put in a Power or Stamina to prepare for URA. Using Sakura Bakushin O as an example, I’d say go four or five Speed for her, then choose either Power or Wit as her sixth card. If some of those cards even have skills for Front strategies or Sprint races, even better.
Returning to Vodka, she’s still going to have a need for speed. Since she’ll be running Mile and Medium races for you, you need to take into account her growth rates. You’ll be training her in Power and Speed, but she’s going to need the Super Creek SSR Stamina card. Super Creek SSR needs to be there, so borrow a stranger’s or friend’s if you don’t have it. Three to four Speed can be helpful, since she’ll be training in that. I would also say going with at least one Power card could be great to pair with her growth rate.
Focus on building “friendships” and taking on “rainbow” training.
Once you get into Career mode, the initial focus should be to build up friendships with characters in Umamusume: Pretty Derby so you can unlock the ability to learn more skills. Prioritizing Speed or one of the stats critical to a character is great, but for your first “year” you should be working on getting each character from your Support Card deck up to maxed out friendship. This is because you want access to their skills and to the boosts during training signified by rainbow accents in the UI. You’re always going to pass your Make Debut race, and the first two or three races after that can be pretty relaxed, so diversifying to build up friendships is critical.
Once you do have friendships maxed out or at least four of the five bars under a character’s name filled, then you can transition to prioritizing critical stats for the horse girl’s race length or strategy. With Sakura Bakushin O, that would mean going with Speed whenever there isn’t an opportunity for rainbow training with friends or you don’t need to rest or send her to the infirmary. For Vodka, working on Power, Speed, and Stamina when you don’t have friend training as an option can be a good idea.
Toward the end of her career, about when you’re at the sixth or seventh of her individual challenges you need to meet to continue, building up Skill Points for skills is smart. That means racing in races when you don’t need to in order to gain fans or pass challenges.
Don’t be discouraged if it takes time! Learning to build characters in Umamusume: Pretty Derby takes a lot of time and investment. Plus once you start reaching URA regularly and beating it, you’ll want to pay more attention to sparks from Veteran horses, inheritances, skills Support Cards possess, and other details to ensure every character is at her best.
Umamusume: Pretty Derby is available for the PC via Steam and mobile devices.
