From the Bleachers to the Track: A Racer's Handbook

Hey Everyone!

Adventures of the Spiral just became official not too long ago (yay!) and with that comes some new installments! AoS’s staff kindly asked me to do a few derby posts to help get started and I’m so excited to be a part of it!

Derby is always looking for new people, but the best way to pave a racer’s success is through knowledge. The purpose of this series is to give everyone a basic understanding of derby and how it works!

I plan to do a three part series:

I. Introduction and basics (That’s this one!)

II. Training your pet

III.  Abilities!

So, let’s get right down to it, shall we? :)

Basics

Any player can race in the pet derby with a teen pet or higher. In the Pet Pavilion, you’ll notice 2 podiums, practice and ranked. Practice is a great way to well….practice! In practice, you can race others or even your friends with no impact on your rank. It also allows you to get a feel for all the courses so you can be ready for when it comes time to face the pros! Learning the courses and knowing what tracks suit your pet is a huge advantage!

Ranked racing will test your skills against other racers for a reward! Each ranked race has an impact on your derby rank. Coming in first will increase your rank by 10 points, second will increase your rank by 5 points. Coming in third or fourth will decrease your rank! Third place will lose 5 points, and fourth will lose 10 points! Oftentimes you will encounter less than 4 people in a race, in this case the points differ. For 3 people, first place increases by 10 points, second stays the same, and third loses 10 points. When there are two people, first place increases by 10 points, and second place decreases by 10 points.

Aside from rank, participating in derby also allows you to gain arena tickets which allow you to buy neat pets and items from various vendors.

Now that you are aware of the different types of derby, let’s venture into how exactly you will race.

What you will see:

1-This is your placement in the race. You’ll be in 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, or 4^th.

2-This is your running time while racing.

3-This shows you what lap you’re on. Each race has 2 laps, as you can see, Lady Oscar is on the final lap!

4-In the bar on the top of your screen, the green represents the morale you have left.

5-In the bar on the top of the screen, the yellow represents how much morale you would lose if you were to cheer at that exact time. (Green + Gold=How much total morale you have left)

6-This is where it will tell you what surface you’re on. Grass, Dirt, Clay, Water, Cobblestone and Mud are all the terrains on any given derby track. In this picture, you can see Lady Oscar is running on grass.

7-This is where the cost to cheer on the terrain you are on at a given moment is shown. Lady Oscar’s cheer on grass is 2, therefore, every time I cheer, 2 morale will be taken away.

8-This is your max power. (Determined by the Power stat)

9-This is a mini-map of the race. It shows where both you and your opponents are on the track. When the race starts, the person furthest to the right is lane 1, this person will be represented by a gold flag.  Lane 2 is represented by an orange flag, lane 3 is represented by a blue flag, and lane 4 is represented by a purple flag. (Blue and Purple not shown).

10-The abilities on the top of your screen are ordered in the way your pet received them. Farthest to the left is the ability you learned at teen, next over is adult, third is ancient, fourth is epic and fifth is mega. When you use an ability it will turn black and white and will be replaced with a cooldown time. When this time runs out, you can use that ability again.

11-Abilitiies you haven’t used or are ready to use are in full color and ready to go! You can use these abilities by clicking them with the mouse, although it’s more efficient to use the number keys on the keyboard. 1 corresponds to the teen ability, 2 to the adult, 3 to the ancient, 4 to the epic, and 5 to the mega.

12-My pet is only epic, therefore the fifth spot has no ability and it’s blacked out with the number  5.

13- Here you’ll see a hurdle. Hurdles are scattered all over the courses and when you jump or duck them successfully, they give you morale! Hurdles have red jump pads with exclamation points on them. These pads represent when you’re supposed to hit the spacebar to jump successfully.  Don’t waste your time trying to jump on the pads, just spam the spacebar when you’re close to one! But be careful, if you miss-time your jump and hit the hurdle, it slows you down!

14-Here you’ll see two things. First, you’ll see a star. There are 3 types of stars:

·         Yellow Stars-Give you immunity for 6 seconds and a speed boost for 4 seconds

·         Red Stars-Give you immunity for 6 seconds and a speed boost for 6 seconds

·         Blue Stars-Give you immunity for 6 seconds and a speed boost for 8 seconds

The second item you see is a wall. Walls and other obstacles that your opponent may drop slows you down! To avoid walls or obstacles, simply switch lanes.

15-Here you’ll notice buffs. Buffs, also called speed boosts, make you go faster! In the picture you can see Lady Oscar has one boost that will end in 13 seconds plus 5 more boosts, one of which will end in 6 seconds. 

16-Your de-buffs are shown here. De-buffs slow you down! In this picture you can tell that Lady Oscar has 2 slows, one of which will end in 4 seconds.

17-This is where the abilities being used are shown. When shown, the game will list the racer’s name, the kind of pet they’re racing, and what ability they used.  Here you can see that Destiny D, the Onyx Shenlong Dragon in this race, used unbreakable.  I, Vanessa M, the Ianthine Spectre,  used big hurry. Looking here can help you keep track of your opponent’s abilities and be prepared for what’s coming!

Controls

Your pet will move forward regardless whether you push the up arrow or not. What the up arrow DOES do is allow you to cheer. Every time you push the up arrow, you will give your pet a speed boost for 15 seconds, also known as 1 cheer. The object of derby is complete 2 laps faster than your opponents, so as you can imagine…cheering a lot is a necessity!

The side arrow keys move your pet left and right, and the spacebar is the button you use to both jump and duck hurdles. CAUTION: Pushing the down arrow WILL slow you down, so be careful!

Racing Tips

Important things to know:

·         Cheer is everything! You want to cheer as often as you can! Cheer specifics will be gone over in the next post. But for now, just remember you want to do a lot of it!

·         Start off strong! Even before the buzzer sounds, spam the up arrow! You want to get a head start!

·         Stay on the surfaces where your cheer is low. Say you have 30 morale left. Your cost to cheer on water is 10, and your cost to cheer on grass is 2. On water, you would only be able to cheer 3 times compared to grass which you could cheer a whopping 15 times! Therefore, sticking to surfaces with low cheer costs not only saves you morale but also allows you to cheer more which makes you go faster!

·         Stay on the inside lane when possible. Unless the inside lane is a surface that has a terrible cheer cost for you, stay on the inside! Being on the inside lane can shed tons of seconds off your final time! Even more important though, is knowing the courses well (practice!!!) so you can immediately get to the side that has the next incoming inside lane.

·         Cobblestone is your friend! Cobblestone doesn’t have a stat, it always has a cheer cost of 2! Whenever you see a stretch of cobblestone, especially on teen or adult pets, go for it!

·         Mud is your worst enemy. Pets cannot cheer while running on mud and it even slows you down! Avoid mud at all costs!

·         Go for the hurdles! The only way to replenish your morale without a specific ability is to successfully clear hurdles. Spam the spacebar when in the vicinity of a hurdle so you get your precious morale back.

·         Stars! Stars! Stars! Stars give you not only a speed boost, but also immunity! When you’re getting attacked by countless saps, and mutes, immunity is the difference between winning and losing. So…go for the stars when you can!

This post was to meant to give everyone a very conceptual and basic understanding of derby. The posts coming up will be a little more advanced and go into more specifics about cheer and how you can maximize it!

Until then-Thanks for reading and Happy Racing! If you have any questions, feel free to ask! :)

~Vanessa Mythdust