Analyzing Tracks
Being able to determine what umas and skills will be good on a track is important. To do that, we need to know the aspects of the track. You use a visualizer to see the track. Let’s look at a Sprint G1, the Takamatsu Kinen.
The sloping green at the top shows the track’s elevation. Below that, it shows which parts of the track are considered hills. Below that, the locations of the Straights and Corners, and finally, where each of the legs start.
One of the most important aspects of tracks is whether the last spurt starts on a corner or not. The last spurt starts at the Final Leg. (Yes, it does not start in the Last Spurt. I know it’s confusing.) When the spurt starts, the umas have to accelerate to top speed. Acceleration skills at this point will help a lot, while Speed skills will be useless.
Maruzensky’s acceleration unique triggers on the final corner, so it’s useless on this track, it’s too early. Same for Seiun Sky, Taiki Shuttle, and so on. El Condor Pasa’s unique triggers on the final straight, so it’s very good, triggering nearly at the same time. Narita Taishin’s Encroaching Shadow(迫る影) skill is also strong. Umas like Silence Suzuka and Mihono Bourbon with last straight Speed skills will waste their uniques. If the last spurt started on the final corner, much of this would be reversed.
Hill skills trigger on the first hill. Since the first uphill happens shortly into the last spurt, the acceleration from Highlander(登山家) is very strong, while Restless(じゃじゃウマ娘) is useless (not that you’d take a recovery on a 1200m track). 1,500,000 CC(十万バリキ) is a Speed skill on uphills, so it triggers too early here. If the hill was later, 1,500,000 CC(十万バリキ) would be better and Highlander(登山家) bad.
The opening straight is around 300m, while the ending straight is 412m. Straight skills will be more likely to trigger in the final leg. If this was a longer track, that would make things like Vodka’s Breath of Fresh Air(好転一息) or McQueen’s Cooldown(クールダウン) very inconsistent.
Using the Umalator
This simulates races between two umas in a sterile environment. It’s useful for checking the effectiveness of skills and whether you have enough HP to survive the track.
Note that real umamusume races have a lot of randomness. Blocking, Wit rolls, skill triggers, umas being nearby or not, position keep, etc. The umalator is quite good at finding average performance, but it won’t necessarily reflect any individual race.
Checking Stamina
The most straightforward way is to enter your uma and click “compare” on the right side. If there’s a dip in your speed at the end, you do not have enough HP, such as in this chart:
If both lines are dipping, then the track is too long for the default comparison uma to survive in. You can also add debuff skills to the second uma. Mystifying Murmur (in Medium) and All-Seeing Eyes (set the second uma to a Late Surger) are the big ones.
If you want to check the Stamina requirement ahead of time, you can enter your projected other stats and any recoveries you’ll be taking. Then, click the green arrow at the top right of the uma sidebar and copy them over to the second side using the “>” button in the middle. You can set one uma to a target stamina and the other to that +100 or so and click compare. If the differences are shown as 0, then the stamina is not making any difference. If there is a lengths difference, then that amount of stamina wouldn’t be enough, and you can raise the stamina of both umas and check again until you find the point where there is no difference. I wrote a script to automate that for the Required Stamina Chart.
You could also lower the speed of the other uma to find out how much your lacking stamina is actually affecting you. I did this in the Stamina vs Speed section if you want a quick reference.
Finding Good Skills
First, pick the track you want to find the skills for. Let’s say Tokyo 2400m. Set it to that track and pick your uma’s style, then change the mode to “Skill Chart” in the top right and run it. You’ll get something like this:
If there’s a lot of heals or debuffs high up, it’s because your uma doesn’t have enough stamina. Just set their Stamina stat to 8000 or something if you’re looking for a general chart.
Look through the results for unique skills. In this case, Red Shift and Shooting for Victory! are unique skills. Add the best ones (that you have available) to your uma, as you’ll be inheriting them. Once you’ve done that, run it again. You’ll see the skills change a bit, as now you have acceleration so other acceleration skills will be less good, and max speed greens become better because you make more use of your top speed with more acceleration.
Now you have a list of good skills. The “Minimum” and “Maximum” values are particularly notable. Unyielding can trigger too early on this track and have no effect. Do check the requirements of the skills too, because sometimes they’ll be harder to trigger than the umalator believes due to various factors, such as the meta on the track. For example, in this chart, it rated Behold Thine Emperor’s Divine Might highly, but you need to pass three umas for that to trigger. In a normal situation, that’s doable for a Pace Chaser, but in the first Derby CM, Front Runners were relatively weak, so the Pace Chasers had fewer umas to pass. You’ll have to use your brain a bit.
The SP should also be considered, of course. And for the double circles, compare them to their single circle counterparts to see how much you gain from upgrading it. Similar for the gold skills and their whites.