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Learn about acquiring and upgrading skills, and the way their effects are calculated in Umamusume: Pretty Derby
Raising a horse girl (uma) in Umamusume: Pretty Derby’s Career Mode is a balancing act between energy management, stat training, and earning skill points (SP) through races. Collecting SP by participating in racing events is time that could have been spent increasing raw stats.
However, skills have a dramatic effect on the outcome of a race, and their importance is indisputable. This article will analyze the force-multiplying power of skills, breaking down their effects to help inform your builds.
Table of contents
Umamusume: Pretty Derby: Skills Guide
Skills in Umamusume: Pretty Derby work by triggering a Wit check when your Uma meets the skill’s conditions. For example, ‘Pace Chaser Corners’ will roll a Wit check if you are using the Pace Chaser running style and reach a corner (turn) in the track. If the Wit check succeeds, the effect will activate. The exception to this norm are passive and (some) unique skills.
How To Get Skills
Every uma has an innate, unique skill, and a few other normal skills that are learnable with SP. You can unlock more innate skills by leveling up your uma’s potential. The majority of skills are unlocked by obtaining skill hints. Once unlocked, you can learn them using SP. Gain skill hints through:
- Support Card “!” events.
- Scenario events.
- Legacies’ sparks of inspiration (inheritance).
Regular Support Card events also unlock skills sometimes. To check for them, go to the “Events” tab on a Support Card and click on an “i” icon, one that isn’t grayed out. These skills do not appear on a support card’s skill tab and often contain rare (gold-bordered) skills.
Types of Skills
There are four broad types of skills:
- Standard (Yellow): Increase speed and manoeuvrability
- Recovery (Blue): Replenish stamina or reduce fatigue.
- Passive (Green): Provide passive bonuses to stats if their condition is met. Their icon art represents the stat they boost.
- Debuff (Red): Debuff other racers when activated.
Purple “skills” emerge as Career event debuffs that can be removed using SP. After removing them, spending more SP will turn them into a passive (Green) skill, a positive version of the Purple skill.
Levels of Skills
- Normal: The most common, they have four sub-levels.
- Slightly Increases
- Moderately Increases
- Increases
- Greatly Increases
- Rare: Their icons have golden borders. They are some of the most powerful and are usually an upgraded version of “Slightly increases” normal skills. These skills have added value as they can become colorless sparks that pass on to a new trainee through Legacy.
- Unique: Belong to a particular uma, unique skills have a prismatic background. Upgrade them by increasing the uma’s star level and by meeting fan count thresholds during the career.
Also Read: Umamusume Pretty Derby: URA Finale Career Guide
Upgrading Skills
Skills with a single circle in front of their icon are upgradable once you learn them. Their upgraded version features a double-O (◎) instead of a circle. Upgrading such skills usually levels them up from “Slightly increases” or “Moderately increases” to “Increases.”
| Skill Type | Slightly Increases | Moderately Increases | Increases | Greatly Increases |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard (Yellow) | x0.15 (15%) | x0.25 (25%) | x0.35 (35%) | x0.45 (45%) |
| Recovery (Blue) | x0.15 (15%) | N/A | x0.55 (55%) | N/A |
| Passive (Green) | N/A | +40 attribute | +60 attribute | +80 attribute |
| Debuff (Red) | x0.15 (15%) | x0.2 (20%) | N/A | N/A |
Takeaways
- Stamina-replenishing (Blue) skills are fairly broken.
- You can have a Stamina stat of 300 and use a skill like Swinging Maestro to replenish half of it during the race. If activated at the right time, 300 Stamina will function like 455 Stamina instead.
- Spending SP on a higher-level Blue or Yellow skill provides greater value.
- This is especially true for stamina-replenishing skills. The level gap in standard skills is less pronounced.
- Upgrading Green skills isn’t usually worth the SP.
- While Green skills might be cheap, upgrading one from “Moderately increases” to “Increases” will provide around a 50% bonus for a similar cost. It is better to diversify rather than invest in the same Green skills twice
- Spending SP on a few lower-level skills covers up for bad luck.
- If your increase velocity skill triggers on the first corner as an End Closer, it will be completely ineffective. On the other hand, if you have two “Slightly increase” velocity skills, there is a better chance that one of them will trigger when you need it most.
- Acceleration-increasing skills are better than velocity-increasing skills.
- Investing in expensive Yellow skills that activate in the final stretch is foolproof.
- An increased acceleration skill might be wasted if it activates in the middle of the race when your uma is stuck in a crowd. However, the final straight gives ample space for the racers to weave out of the pack. Skills like Speed Star are expensive, but they always activate in the critical final stretch, providing a dramatic boost to speed.
- Level up Wit for a skill-heavy build.
- If your uma heavily relies on skills to make up for low base stats, Wit needs to be 500+ to ensure most skills actually trigger during the race. The RNG involved in skill triggering is what makes guaranteed-activation unique skills so powerful and reliable.
- Career Mode pads all your uma’s stats by 400+.
- If you find your umas not doing as well as they did in the career, it is likely because career mode boosts their stats. This is readily apparent with Stamina, as a low Stamina uma can breeze through career with the right skills but struggle to finish races as a veteran.
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