Getting Started with the Unity Cup Scenario in Umamusume: Pretty Derby

Although it may sound strange to say “happy half-anniversary” four months into the release of a game, the accelerated schedule of Umamusume: Pretty Derby’s global release means that we are currently in the midst of that celebration. Although the bonuses are great, and we’ll talk a bit more about what some of them are in more detail shortly, the biggest thing to arrive with the half-anniversary is the second main storyline scenario in the game: The Unity Cup, otherwise known in Japan as “Aoharu Hai”. We’ve briefly mentioned the Unity Cup in some of our previous PVP guides, especially one particular support card, but today we’ll be going over how the new scenario works, changes and updates you can expect, and how to make the most of the new way you’ll be training your racers for the next four months.

If you’re new to Umamusume: Pretty Derby, some of our guides will be a great help to you as you jump into this new scenario as your onboarding process, particularly the Career Guide, which goes over the general basics of how Careers Work, as well as Support Card decks. We also have guides on Sparks, PVP, and much more that you can check out, but with the arrival of the Unity Cup, now is a fantastic time to begin your Umamusume: Pretty Derby training arc!

Career Mode Refresher

Although we do have a full guide on Career Mode, a small refresher ahead of Unity Cup is a fair shout to help out overall; there are a few innate changes to the Scenarios, but Career Mode itself functions generally the same between the URA Finale and Unity Cup. At the beginning of a career, you select your trainee, as well as 2 parents (one of which can be a guest), and then a support deck of 5 cards you own and 1 guest card for a total of six. Although many of the PVP guides we’ve published in the past have focused on specific skills or cards in order to maximize your results tailored to those races, generally Career Mode decks will want to focus on clearing the career mode and possibly producing a good parent.

Support decks in that regard can be varied; they can be balanced between a few stats (Such as Speed and Power) or tailored to the trainee themselves to help create ideal results or overcome certain challenges, such as mercurial trainees like Gold Ship or Narita Taishin benefiting from the inclusion of mood altering Friend cards that can negate bad status effects. Career runs are primarily about producing (or hoping to produce) inheritance sparks, and the secondary effect of Career is being the place in which you train a specific trainee for Champion’s Meetings or other specific goals. Generally, a few runs of the career to familiarize yourself with it is the best option instead of hoping for the best possible results right out of the gate, and the Unity Cup adds a few new features that may throw off players who are comfortable with the fairly simple URA Finale in comparison.

With two different scenarios, a specific thing that won’t change is your trainee’s unique goals.Those remain the same regardless of scenario, and it is important to keep them in mind as we move from URA Finale to Unity Cup, as Unity Cup has far more direct interaction with your trainee over URA Finale did, which really only showed up at the end of a career with the final 3 races. Overall, though, the general scenario goals and interactions are secondary to what your trainee needs to do in general, so keep in mind that those specific goals and fan numbers don’t change between scenarios.

The Unity Cup

The Unity Cup introduces a new wrinkle to the Umamusume Story, particularly in introducing URA member Riko Kashimoto. Scenarios in Umamusume often come with a new character that plays against you, the trainer, and while URA Finale was Kiryuin and her trainee Happy Meek, Unity Cup introduces Riko and her team First, which will challenge your trainee and their team every six months of the career. That’s right: you have a team as well as your primary trainee, although you won’t be training each individual member of your team the same way you train your primary. In many ways, the Unity Cup team races work like Team Trials do, where you go through five different races with your trainees. These will occur every six months of the career, and the final races are essentially like the URA Finale again (3 back to back races).

A few of the other changes will come over time, so note for Global Players is that many of the initial implications of the Unity Cup will still have trainees capping out at 1200 per stat. Eventually that will change to 1300 for all stats but Wit, which will jump to 1800. For now, though, there won’t be a huge shift in stat levels, so if you are looking to farm sparks for parents, you may want to keep running the URA finale. The important difference for training PVP events and similar, however, is that Unity Cup will provide better overall stat gains and growth, meaning it becomes easier to hit wider, more specific stat spreads for Champion’s Meeting races.

We’re Putting Together a Team

The team composition aspect of Unity Cup is the biggest overall mechanical change between URA Finale and Unity Cup. Although you thankfully do not need to train entire other groups of trainees at the same time, you are still going to need to manage a team and select trainees to help you out with your goal of winning the Unity Cup against Riko’s team First. Tazuna will explain how it works and the game will suggest/offer you a list of selected trainees, but you can also put together a group of your own utilizing other trainees or even characters from support cards. One of the important parts here is that you will need to pay attention to what the team verson of the trainee does, instead of just assuming what they do based on how they do in the regular game (or what types of skills their support card seems to indicate).

You’ll also want your teams to do well and also ensure that your teams perform to the best of their ability across the board as winning team races is the primary way you increase your stat training facilities; unlike URA Finale, your trainings won’t increase simply through multiple uses, but instead are going to be tied to your performance in the team races and their overall team rank. This may be the most important or initially confusing aspect of Unity Cup, because many players may just expect that slamming Speed, for example, will result in Speed levelling up, and then being unsure as to why that isn’t happening.

So, again, to raise your training facility levels, you need to increase your team levels in that particular stat; if your team has a low team level in Speed, then no matter how many times you train in that stat, you won’t progress it past level 1. Of course, the better your team does, the better your training levels will be,and this is going to be the primary key to turning out high stat, successful trainees from Unity Cup.

Team Spirit

A new aspect of training in Unity Cup is Spirit, which is a gauge that will appear underneath your teammates when they appear for trainings; this also means that trainees can benefit from both your Support Deck friends as in URA Finale, but also from the team trainees you’ve accrued during your run. Although these extra helpers won’t have quite the impact your Support Deck will, they can still result in huge boosts to stat bonuses and skill hints, especially as the gauge fills up.

A very interesting and useful aspect of the spirit gauge is that once it fills up, it will be used the next time you train with that person, but you won’t lose it until you use it. This means that if the friend shows up on a stat you don’t want, you don’t have to feel pressured into training it that turn; you can save up Spirit gauge meter for when it will benefit your goals the most. Also, you can build Spirit on Support Cards that are also members of your team; for example, if Super Creek is in your Support Deck and also on your Unity Cup team, she can provide her Support Card training buffs and bonuses as well as the Spirit gauge boost as well.

One of the primary reasons Unity Cup is the new standard for high level competitive trainees is due to the extra boosts from Spirit gauge trainings; the coveted ‘high rolls’ from URA are a little easier to work around if they don’t show up due to the extra boosts, and it becomes easier to also hit high stat totals with better overall training stats and rewards combined with more boosts to those stats.

Riko Kashimoto’s Support Card

Aside from the Unity Cup scenario itself, a big part of the new scenario launch buzz is Riko Kashimoto’s Support Card, both the R and SSR variants. The reason for this is that including Riko Kashimoto in your Support Deck will provide your trainee with larger benefits when running the Unity Cup scenario, from energy cost reduction to better stat gains and other things. The problem is that it may seem hard to justify trying to roll for Riko after the numerous ‘prized’ banners and the upcoming Kitasan Black rerun and other cards further down the line. That being said, you still very much want either an MLB R Riko, or a single copy of SSR Riko to ensure you get the bet benefits from Unity Cup as possible, especially if you lack access to a deep Support Card deck with numerous MLBs.

The good news is that Cygames announced 100 free pulls, in 10 pull increments, on Riko’s banner when it launches. Since 200 is required for hard pity, you’ll be halfway there before you need to consider spending your own carats on her banner; although it may seem tempting to roll on her banner immediately to start your Unity Cup runs at the best possible outcomes you can get, there really isn’t a reason to rush a banner like Riko’s when you are going to get 100 free pulls over 10 days. And, frankly, there are very lucrative banners coming down the pipeline, one of which is Christmas Oguri Cap (who will, ironically, probably arrive in February). If after 100 free rolls you don’t have an MLB R Riko or SSR, you may want to consider pulling on the Riko Banner. If you got an SSR copy or MLB a Rare one, then you should stop and save your carats.

As some other notes, some later patches will up the stat cap from 1200 to 1300 in Unity Cup; this also means that currently, if you are simply running Career for parents and sparks, you can probably just keep running URA finale for the moment, saving your careers in Unity Cup for trainees you want to put into things like Champion’s Meetings. That means that your need for Riko may really depend on what exactly you are going to be doing with your time in Unity Cup until the full changes to the scenario arrive a little further down the line. Finally, and hopefully, the auto feature will be arriving soon, which should make all forms of career runs for sparks/parents vastly less exhausting. As a final note, Unity Cup is longer than URA Finale, so again, only run Unity Cup if you either have not, or are training a competitive trainee; if you’re just running for dailies or parents at the moment, stick to URA for a bit longer. If you have any questions, please leave us comments down below, drop by the Goonhammer Discord if you’re a Patron, or even email me at marcy@goonhammer.com! Until then, I’ll be training to hopefully see you all out there at the Unity Cup!

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Tags: umamusume | Uma Musume Pretty Derby