The first thing to know about Umamusume’s career mode is that you probably won’t win your first, or your second, and maybe not even your fifth. Career mode is a lot more complex than than Pretty Derby’s cutesy, wholesome presentation might suggest, and it requires careful planning, along with no small amount of luck. New players have it the toughest, as you’re working with a limited set of sparks – Umamusume-speak for inherited skills – and it’s only when you start winning and creating a scenario where you have more control over the inherited abilities you pass down that the curve starts to flatten a bit.
Setting some low-ish expectations for your first few career runs as you get used to how things work, but our Umamusume career mode tips includes some helpful advice to get you off to a strong start, even when the tools at your disposal are a bit limited.
Umamusume career mode guide
Umamusume career mode: Energy, resting, and mood explained
Pretty Derby makes a big deal out of telling you to rest, and the basic idea is correct. You don’t want to go into a training activity with very low energy, lower than 30 percent, as the rate of failure increases to the point where you’re much more likely to get no results from training. However, spending time resting is a last-ditch effort to improve your Uma’s energy, since it’s essentially wasted time.
The best way to restore it is by picking energy regeneration options during training events – which is easy to say, but they aren’t typically marked in a way that clearly shows boosted energy is the outcome. You generally want to opt for a response that seems like it’ll spark inspiration, which motivates your Uma and gives them an energy boost, or that leads them to rest or recuperate in some way.
It doesn’t always work out that way, so don’t sweat it if you end up having to rest a few times. Just don’t use it as your primary method of recovering energy unless you have no other option.
Then there’s mood, which causes a slight split among longtime Umamusume fans. Some believe you can ignore mood and recreation as long as it doesn’t dip below “normal.” Others say it’s best to do a bit of recreational activity to boost it at least one step up from normal, since you end up with better training bonuses that way.
The problem is that recreation, like resting, takes an entire turn. In an ideal world, you’d start a rotation by improving your Uma’s mood and benefit from the training bonuses until it drops, which, with the right balance of good choices and successful training, wouldn’t happen for a while. You might also get lucky and stumble on an event that improves your Uma’s mood. Since luck does play a role in the order that events come up in and how training might unfold, though, the right approach to mood training is probably somewhere between the two – try elevating your Uma’s mood if you can, but don’t let it take away from stat training.
Umamusume career mode: Should you train or race?
Racing seems like the obvious thing to do in the game about horse girls attending a horse girl racing school. However, it doesn’t yield as many positive results for your skills as training. Racing’s primary purpose is to gain fans throughout the career, which is important, but until you get your stats in a nice place, not something that’ll have a worthwhile return. Reaching specific fan milestones helps increase your Uma’s special skill and unlock certain key races, so it is important, but only if you stand a decent chance of winning, which you’ll only do by training.
Since races aren’t an essential part of your Uma’s career early on, you’re free to pick and choose the ones that she’s best-suited for. Pay attention to the race length and turf type compared to your Uma’s strengths to know which ones you have a better chance of winning.
Umamusume career mode stat training tips
Umamusume’s two most important stats are speed and stamina, and which one is most important depends on your Umamusume’s strengths, the kind of race you’re running, and, eventually, the sparks you inherit. Speed is what it sounds like and determines how fast an Uma will run during a race, but it doesn’t govern how long she can keep going for. Speedy Umas are best for short tracks. Stamina is what kicks in and lets an Uma keep the pace up, and it’s essential for longer courses. The fastest Umamusume with low stamina will absolutely not come in first during a long race, but a stamina-happy Uma needs speed to make good use of her fortitude as well.
In other words, aim for both stats for medium length, speed for short length, and stamina for long, though you’ll need speed for long as well. We haven’t yet worked out the specific numbers for each. However, folks who’ve played the Japanese version for years prior to its global launch have recommendations of their own.
Power is basically acceleration, as it determines how quickly an Uma will reach her top speed, and Guts gives her a chance of maintaining that speed once her stamina runs out. Ideally, you don’t want to be in that situation, so Guts shouldn’t be a priority. Power is more useful on short tracks where claiming and maintaining the lead needs to happen fairly quickly, though stamina is still more important for medium and long races.
Finally is Wits, which governs how often and when your skills might activate. How important the Wits stat is depends on your specific scenario. For example, if you’re relying on skills to make up for a speed or stamina shortcoming, you’ll want to train Wits a bit more frequently, but if your skills are more “nice to haves” instead of essential, Wits can get less attention.
The other bonus that comes with focusing on a specific training type is that, after completing it successfully about four or five times, Director Akikawa improves it by one level. Improved training courses result in better outcomes for your Uma.
Umamusume career mode training
The type of training you do matters, in other words. Naturally, you want to focus on training stats you need, such as stamina. However, you also need to pay attention to your support cards, which the most important part of the game. Support cards augment your Uma’s stats and skills and provide bonuses in certain areas. Before each training round, you’ll see in the top right of the screen a set of icons showing which training your Uma’s friends and support cards are in. Improving friendship with your support Umamusume eventually unlocks friendship training, which grants you a much bigger stat improvement in that specific area.
It takes a long time to unlock friendship training, though, so training with your support Umas should be a priority whenever you can make it one. You’ll know friendship training is an option when you see a rainbow border around the friend in question instead of the usual solid color.
Tempting as it might be to pick a bunch of random support cards that help cover your Uma’s weak points, you should choose cards that match the attributes you need most for the races your Uma has a better chance of winning. The broader pool of players likes to go on about only using the best support cards, but it’s not required for victory in career mode, even if it makes things easier. The right mix of stats and good training is more important than using the top-tier SSR-ranked cards.
Umamusume career mode Legacy sparks
The secret to success in Umamusume’s career mode is planning ahead, both for the latter stages of your current career and the start of your next one through Legacies. Legacy Umamusume, the game’s term for Umas who win and pass their inspiration on to future generations in the form of sparks, are, if not essential to winning, at least a way to give yourself a much better competitive edge by influencing your starting stats.
Legacy sparks come in three values, with three stars being the highest. The more stars a spark has, the greater influence it has over that stat, so the ideal scenario is one where you train the skills you want your next Uma to excel in, while also not neglecting your current Uma. There’s a lot of min-maxing involved, where you can plan for specific stat numbers to increase your likelihood of getting a three-star spark in that stat. Getting three-star sparks shouldn’t be your primary focus if you’re just starting out, but you’ll still want to raise the stats you want to pass down to another generation, even if it isn’t perfect or the highest rating it can be.