From the Bleachers to the Track: Can't Rush Perfection ~ Adventures of the Spiral

Hello again!

It’s time for the second installment of this derby series, and maybe the most important…training!

Make sure to check out the first part of this segment: A Racer's Handbook

What You’ll Need to Know

The first thing you’ll need to know is what each attribute translates to on the derby course.

Strength=Cheer cost on Water

Intellect=Cheer cost on Clay

Agility=Cheer cost on Grass

Will=Cheer cost on Dirt

Power=How much total morale you have

The second thing you’ll need to know is the “level spots” or points at which the cost to cheer goes down. Every 45 points a stat goes up, your cost to cheer on that surface goes down by 1.

*PLEASE NOTE: The stat corresponds to your MAX stat, not your trained stat. If for example, you have trained 235/245 on agility, 245 would be your MAX stat.*

Stat: Cost to Cheer:

1-14 10

15-59 9

60-104 8

105-149 7

150-194 6

195-239 5

240-284 4

285-329 3

330-374 2

375 and Higher 1

The next piece of information is optional, as it’s not as important as cheer cost, but, there is a table for power as well. Every 6 points your power stat increases, you gain 1 morale.

*Same deal here, the stat corresponds to your MAX stat.*

Power: Morale:

0 40

6 41

12 42

18 43

24 44

32 45

36 46

42 47

48 48

54 49

60 50

66 51

72 52

78 53

84 54

90 55

96 56

102 57

108 58

114 59

120 60

126 61

132 62

138 63

144 64

150 65

156 66

162 67

168 68

174 69

180 70

186 71

192 72

198 73

204 74

210 75

216 76

222 77

228 78

234 79

240 80

246 81

252 82

258 83

264 84

270 85

276 86

282 87

288 88

294 89

300 90

Selfish Talents

You’ll notice on our nifty table, the max stats extend beyond 250. How is this possible, the max stat on a pet is 250?! Well, you do this with the help of SELFISH TALENTS, aka, stat boosts or attribute boosting talents. Talents like Durable(+50 Agility), Crafty(+50 Will), Relentless(+65 Agility) etc.. are all useful in derby.

Having a pet with high stats already is very beneficial. Take for example a pet that starts with 225 agility vs. a pet starting with 240 agility. With Durable, the pet with 225 agility would be increased to a MAX of 275 agility, this would equal a cheer cost of 4. Now, do the same thing with a pet that starts in the 240 range. With the help of Durable, that pet would have a MAX of 290; this reaches the next “level spot” and gives our pet a cost cheer of 3 on grass.

It’s best to stack selfish talents when you train higher level pets. For example, with a pet that starts with 250 agility, Relentless and Durable together will increase your MAX agility to 365, which brings you to a cheer cost of 2 on grass. Add another talent that increases agility and you’ll have cost cheer 1!

Although it’s good to stack, it’s also good to balance the stats as well; this means you’re good on virtually all surfaces. A max stat pet with Durable, Relentless, and Crafty would be a pretty good pet. That pet would have cost cheer 4 on water, 4 on clay, 3 on dirt and 2 on grass.

So What?

So what? 4 is so close to 3 anyway, right? WRONG! Even a difference of ONE cheer can make the difference between winning and losing! Let’s take a pet with cost cheer 4 and 3 respectively and compare them. For the sake of this example, let’s say both pets have a power of 250 which translates to 81 TOTAL morale.

81/4=20.25, so you would get approximately 20 total cheers.

81/3=27, so you would get 27 total cheers!

That’s SEVEN more cheers than a pet with cost cheer 4! That’s HUGE in a race!

Training

Derby pets are tricky because you train them differently depending on what level you want to race them at. With that in mind, it’s best to know which level you want to race at before you even start training. If you wait, you could make a mistake and that perfect pet will no longer be perfect.

The first thing you want to do is find a pet with high stats and good abilities/talents. The best way to do this is hatch with already existing derby pets. But, if you’re up for the challenge, creating your own pets allows for endless possibilities.

As far as high stats go, you want all your starting stats to be at or above 240. This isn’t necessary, but certainly is preferable and will make your cost to cheer significantly better from the get go.

A general rule of thumb:

You want your lowest cost to cheer on a terrain that appears OFTEN. Take for example Grass vs. Water. While grass makes up a good portion of derby courses, water takes up almost nothing! It’s worthless to have a cost cheer of 1 on water if you’ll only be able to use it for 3-5 seconds a lap! Grass on the other hand is almost always an option and therefore would be more useful than water. Why have good cheer cost on a surface that only appears 10% of the time, when you can get that same cheer on a surface that appears 50% of the time?

As a result of that theory, my suggested “order” to training stats at the lower levels is as follows:

1. Agility (Grass)

2. Will (Dirt)

3. Intellect (Clay)

4. Strength (Water)

Teen

In order to maximize a teen pet, you’ll have to train one stat exclusively and put your “leftover” stats toward power.

Using my suggested order above, when choosing ONE stat to focus on, I would choose grass. But, that is completely your preference.

Once you choose a stat to focus on, find the game that focuses solely on that stat. Since I like grass, the WC Dance Game (+4 Agility) is what I need.

For dirt-Way of the Ninja Pig(+4 Will) and/or Cannon Game (+4 Will)

For clay-Maze Game(+4 Intellect)

For water-Way of the Ninja Pig (+4 Strength) and/or Gobbler Drop (+4 Strength)

Once you find which game suits your needs, play ONLY that game, and do the best you can, it will make training go faster. Because…..for teen pets-NO MEGA SNACKS!

When it comes time to give your pet a snack, you’ll want to use snacks that focus on that same stat. This way you can maximize your cheer cost. Since I like grass, I feed my pets Spicy Popcorn(+4 Agility).

For dirt- Golden Biscuit(+4 Will)

For clay-Swirled Lollipop(+4 Intellect)

For water-Huge Ice Cream(+4 Strength)

There are other options when it comes to snacks, but just make sure it only focuses on that one stat. +3, +2, are all good as well, but these +4 just make the process go quicker.

After you train your pet for a bit, you’ll want to keep track of your trained stat. This is where those “level spots” come in. The “level spots” determine different times that your cost to cheer decreases. You want your cheer to be the lowest as possible, but you also don’t want to waste points. Take for example my teen pet. My teen pet has a max agility of 270 thanks to the help of durable (+50 Agility.) But look at our table, the cost cheer of 4 starts at 240, and then cost cheer of 3 doesn’t start until 285. Since my max stat is only 270, it would be pointless leveling past 240 since my cheer cost won’t change. Therefore, I train the dance game(+4 Agility) until my agility reaches 240, then I stop. This prevents me from wasting points that aren’t benefitting my pet.

After I have maximized my agility at 240, I put my “leftover” stats in power, increasing my morale. I do this by failing the dance game (+0) so that I do not waste any stats, then proceed to feed my pet Fairy Cake(+4 Power).

You ideally will continue this until you reach 249/250 experience, but BEWARE, this is risky! If you accidentally feed a snack your pet likes or loves, or even the wrong snack entirely, it will cause your pet to level up and waste all the training you have done for a teen! So, be cautious when approaching that. It’s best to stop maybe 3-4 points before 250 to stay safe.

In the end, you should end up with a pet like this; maximize one stat entirely, with the rest filled in power:

Using this pet you would ONLY cheer on grass.

Adult

Training an adult is very similar to training a teen pet. What you’ll want to do is exactly the same, but instead of stopping to train power after your first stat, you’ll want to switch to a second stat. Let’s go back to our teen pet. Let’s say we just finished training agility to maximize our cheer. Now, we would move on to maximizing a second stat. Like it says on my little list up top, I would recommend training dirt next, but again, it’s a personal preference. So, at this point, since I would be training will, I would switch to playing ONLY the Cannon Game and feeding ONLY Golden Biscuit until I maximize my cheer. Once that happens, I can then finally switch to maximizing my power by failing the dance game and feeding Fairy Cake!

In the end, you should have an adult pet with two stats maxed and power maxed. Using a pet like I described, you would cheer ONLY on grass and dirt!

Ancient and Up

These are the easy pets as far as training goes….but beware! Getting races for ancient and above is extremely difficult! Even though racing the higher level pets is fun, you’ll have to be prepared for the wait, and honestly, getting 6+ perfect talents instead of 2 or 4 for teen or adult is much harder.

Anyway, if you are looking to develop a higher level pet, you can use mega snacks because all your stats will end up maxed anyway. So, you can train it just like you would a PvP or questing pet! :)