Umamusume: Pretty Derby Beginner Guide (Your first careers)

Umamusume: Pretty Derby is Cygames's horse-girl training sim. It looks like a gacha and it is one, but the real game is the seven-in-game-year training career you run for every trainee. Support cards decide more outcomes than trainees do. This guide is the shortest path from download to finishing a strong career.

The training loop — the whole game

Every trainee runs a seven-in-game-year career. Each year you get a limited number of training turns; each turn you choose one of five training options (Speed, Stamina, Power, Guts, Wisdom) or rest, then support cards trigger events. You race scheduled races, adjust your build, and try to peak at the URA Finale.

Two things decide how strong your run gets:

1. Your support card deck — the six cards you slot in determine training bonuses, event outcomes, and available skills.
2. Your skill picks — every career hides a shopping list of skills you buy with skill points; the right list wins races the raw stats couldn't.

Building your first support deck

The default deck (three Speed, one Stamina, one Wit, one friend card) is a strong opening. As you pull more support cards, upgrade to the meta shape:

• 3 Speed / 2 Stamina / 1 Wit for Sprint and Mile careers.
• 2 Speed / 3 Stamina / 1 Wit for Medium and Long careers.
• Always include one Wit card — Wit training generates massive stat gains from Wisdom Rest turns.

Limit break priority: get every card to LB1 before you focus any card to LB4. LB1 unlocks the second event slot, which more than doubles the card's utility.

Aptitudes vs. stats — what actually matters

Trainees have aptitudes (S, A, B, C, D, E, F, G ranks) across five stats and each distance/running-style. Aptitudes cap the growth of the underlying stats. A trainee with C Mile aptitude will never Mile at the ceiling of an A-Mile trainee, no matter how hard you train.

Practical implication: don't try to force a trainee into a distance they're not aptitude-blessed for. Read the trainee's card before you start a career.

Skill picking — the difference between finishing top 3 and top 1

Skills are bought during career races and unlocked from events. The strongest skills:

• Gold skills — unique-tier passives that trigger in specific race conditions. Every trainee has a signature; buy it.
• Recovery skills — restore Stamina mid-race. Essential for Long careers.
• Position skills — trigger only if you're in a specific race position (Front, Mid, Late). Match to your trainee's running style.

The Legend Race turbulence: don't spend skill points on random utility skills. Save for gold and matched position skills.

Scenarios — which one to run

Every career runs inside a scenario that adds bonus mechanics. Start with:

1. URA Finale — the default. Easy, forgiving, teaches you the loop.
2. Unity Cup — for competitive Sprint/Mile trainees.
3. Grand Live — adds Fan-collection mechanics; slower but rewarding for Wisdom builds.
4. Trackblazer — build-your-own-race system; save until you know what you're doing.

Convenes and pity

Character banners hit hard pity at 200 pulls. Support card banners have a separate pity. You get more from careers than you spend on gacha, so don't panic-pull — the anniversary selector ticket beats most character banners.

For this guide we consulted the Game8 Umamusume: Pretty Derby wiki (career mechanics, support card decks, scenario release order), the Cygames official page, and community discussion on Reddit and player Discords.