Advanced Training Strategy (URA)
Bonding
The first phase of training is getting your supports to orange bond so you can get rainbows. Picking the one with the most supports on it is a fine start, but there’s a lot more optimization you can do.
When you do a training four times, it levels up, increasing the stats it gives for the rest of the run. Because of this, you should prioritize the trainings that you want to focus on. For example, if you’re doing a Speed/Power build, you can choose Speed/Power training while bonding even if it’s slightly worse in terms of bond.
Wit training is also very useful, as it doesn’t cost any energy. All other things being equal, you should probably pick the Wit training. Guts training costs the most energy and is the least desirable stat, so it should be avoided unless it’s very good.
Hints also influence things. Each hint gives +5 bond, so having a hint on a training is almost as good as having an extra support there. You should also consider the level of bond for each card. If you get everyone to orange, except one who is still at one bar, it’s going to be very annoying to raise that one to orange.
Mood
Mood is important to keep high, as every increase results in around a 1.16 multiplier to your stats gained, depending on your support cards. However, you also lose a day of training by going out on a date to raise it, so it’s sometimes hard to judge when to raise it.
If we consider the multiplier to be 1.16, then we can roughly say that if we raise mood and then have 6 turns of good training, it’s worth giving up a turn. Considering rests and races, that’s more like 8-10 turns. Though, if there was nothing better to do on the turn anyway, might as well. Dates can sometimes raise your mood by two steps, so if you’re in a neutral mood it’s even more worth it, and there’s the potential energy gain / crane game to consider.
There are a few set mood ups during training. Classic Year Late March, the New Year’s Raffle in Senior Year Late January, the fan meeting in Senior Year Early April, and some uma-specific ones (such as Senior Year Late April for Oguri Cap). If you’re close to these dates, you can use them to raise your mood and not worry about it. The rests during Summer also raises mood.
Other things to consider are how many mood events you have left from your support cards. Kitasan’s first two events raise mood, for example, so if you haven’t seen those you might avoid dating and hope it shows up. Doing an optional race can also raise mood sometimes, and if you’re racing, you also don’t need to raise mood. For example, if you’re doing the Fall Triple Crown, which is Late October, Late November, and Late December, that’s three turns in a 6 turn stretch where you won’t be training. You can put off dating and hope you get a mood up from one of the races.
Races
Races are fairly efficient, especially G1s. They give 10 stats and 45 skill points base if you win them, which with 35% race bonus becomes around 13 stats and 60 skill points for the cost of 15 energy. If we count skill points as half a stat, that’s 43 points for 15 energy, 2.86 per energy. For a level 3 Speed training to be better than that, it would have to give 66 points.
| Race Type | Reward (35% Bonus) | Points per Energy | Lv3 Training Equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| G1 | 13 Stat + 60 Skill Points | 2.86 | 66 |
| G2/G3 | 10 Stat + 47 Skill Points | 2.23 | 51 |
| OP | 6 Stat + 47 Skill Points | 1.97 | 45 |
In general this means that if it’s a G1 race day, and you don’t have a triple rainbow or strong double rainbow, you should do the G1. More Race Bonus will naturally make races more valuable. Races are more important when raising a Team Trials uma (as you want the skill points for more skills and more points) and less important when raising a Champion’s Meeting uma.
Rainbows
When you have multiple rainbows, choosing which one to do can be a little complicated, and depends a lot on the deck you’ve brought. For example, if you have a 5 Speed 1 Power deck, Speed rainbows will be very common while Power rainbows will be rare. If it’s a single or double Speed rainbow and a single Power rainbow, you’d typically choose the Power.
With decks like that, you might even ignore single Speed rainbows at times. You’ll have at least one rainbow like two-thirds of the time with a 5 Speed deck, so a single rainbow isn’t particularly special. This is especially true if it would reduce your energy to the point where you have a fail chance. If a good rainbow shows up the next turn with a fail chance, that’s sad.
Sometimes you even ignore rainbows to train other stats. If your Stamina is too low, this is pretty much necessary. Summer is a good time to do this, thanks to all the trainings being level 5.
As for fail chance, a general rule of thumb is that if the stats you gain are less than double the fail chance, don’t do it. For example, if the fail chance is 27%, and the stats are +35 Speed +16 Power, 27 * 2 = 54 and 35 + 16 = 51, so don’t do the training, rest instead. But, you can be riskier or safer as your preference dictates.