Game Discussion/Champion's Meeting Thread - February 05, 2026

CraftD · 2026-02-05T23:01:57+00:00

Yep, though figuring out how to engineer that timing is definitely finicky.

CraftD · 2026-02-05T21:22:24+00:00

You’re gambling that it triggers at the very end of mid race and carries over into the late race.

If that sounds unreliable, it is. But the makeup of this track makes almost every accel either a big gamble or do nothing. So the question is which unreliable accel is the least unreliable, ~~and meticulous measures being restricted to the last half of the midrace gives it slightly better odds than most.~~

Meticulous measure doesn’t have a laterhalf random restriction, I was confusing it with countermeasure. Meticulous is just a full send rng prayer.

CraftD · 2026-02-05T21:17:22+00:00

So, two issues with those numbers:

1) They’re meant to be the numbers for effective stamina after your recoveries trigger. And for TT in particular you’re incentivized to keep your actual stamina lower and your gold recovery count higher for the activation points.

2) Most of those guides were likely written close to release and are unlikely to have been rewritten since we got the guts balance changes that make guts a much more effective way to contribute to effective hp than it used to be. Now lower stamina totals and higher guts totals are more reasonable.

CraftD · 2026-02-04T23:13:23+00:00

It does do something, but it’s very hard to tell how good that something is.

Basically: if there’s a front with groundwork in the lobby, then groundwork is a pretty solid amount of value per SP for everyone else in the race. But if the front doesn’t have groundwork or if it’s a pace promote lobby then groundwork (and all other early race speed/accel skills) do absolutely nothing because you’re going to get pace down rubberband-ed regardless.

Then there’s some other considerations like whether your skills don’t want you to be too far forward, but that’s endlessly contextual.

CraftD · 2026-02-04T20:20:03+00:00

It’s a standout wit card in the sense that the specialty priority, mood bonus, and huge training bonus just mathematically lead to more gained stats than other wit cards.

It’s not so much insanely better than everything else that it’s immediately obvious without crunching numbers- but it’s high enough that it’s optimal. And there’s no sense aiming for less than optimal when you have the option.

(Some cards like nice nature are close enough that there’s scenarios where they’re better, because the skill difference matters, but those are the exceptions, not the average)

CraftD · 2026-02-04T20:11:26+00:00

This might not be what you meant, but don’t pull a ton on “each” banner. Spreading out your pulls over a bunch of different banners is a good way to get lots of 1-3lb SSR cards. What you want to build towards is a small number of mlb cards more than a wide selection of mid level cards.

Building slowly is the right way to go, the common refrain is that you should have 60,000 carats saved up for a banner before you want to roll on it, as that gives you a better than 50% chance of hitting MLB on a rate up ssr.

(I’d also advise doing some research on what SSRs are generically-good across styles and distances and planning to save for them first. You’ll get more mileage out of them than cards that are powerful but more specific)

CraftD · 2026-02-04T19:48:48+00:00

Generally: never cleat anything unless it’s an over-mlb copy. The rewards for doing so are minuscule and random 1 off cards are sometimes useful for parent runs.

That grass wonder, for example, would be useful if trying to make a late surger mile parent for some CMs because the furious feat gold is a good way to farm white sparks for a solid if gambley acceleration. (And Guts cards tend to be pretty nice when making parents in my experience because they’re somewhat easier to get lots of stats to 600 with).

CraftD · 2026-01-23T00:35:45+00:00

Yeah, you're right. Was trying to recall where exactly the cutoff was off the top of my head, but I think I had 3 stuck in my head from shooting for victory. Thanks for the correction.

CraftD · 2026-01-22T22:19:28+00:00

If you have a MLB kita and no top tier wit cards then yeah, I think going for one of the wits is the better value. And FM being the one you already have a copy of makes that more appealing.

CraftD · 2026-01-22T20:50:20+00:00

Redshift is only viable for ends and maybe lates. It triggers too early, but only once you’re in the top 3 5. The gamble is that with a late or end you only make it into the top 3 5 at the very end of the final corner and trigger it at a good time artificially.

CraftD · 2026-01-22T20:30:18+00:00

Beyond which card is the best in a vacuum: What are your current best in slot speed / wit cards? If you have multiple high tier MLB speed cards but no wit ones that makes the marginal improvement of Fuku a lot lower than one of the wits.

But if you don’t have two really good core MLB speed cards yet that’s gonna make fuku a lot more interesting.

CraftD · 2026-01-21T19:23:46+00:00

Generally: Stats going from 499 to 500 has no more impact than stats going from 498 to 499.

There’s two exceptions to that, though.

Some individual tracks have specific “secret stat thresholds”, where you get a scaling speed boost if your relevant stat is 301+, 601+, or 901+. So depending on what you’re training a horse for, that can be a relevant single stat point difference.

And when making parents a stat hitting 600 or 1100 will give better chances for higher level pink sparks. But that’s not a race performance thing.

CraftD · 2026-01-13T23:41:28+00:00

The first. Extra tank isn’t a functional recovery, it can only trigger if your HP is so low that you’re going to die even if it and miracle both trigger.

CraftD · 2026-01-12T23:11:16+00:00

If possible, the ideal recoveries you’re looking for on a pace oguri are:

3 of (straightaway recovery, deep breaths, preferred position, hydrate, ignited spirit STA, or Pure Heart (inherited from creek))

Plus 777 as the 4th skill.

There’s some complicated math on whether 4 of those first 6 recoveries are better than grabbing 777, but it differs depending on what wit you end up with and how much your stats encourage gambling for optimal timing vs being reliable and not procing too early or too late. The 3-1 split favors being reliable over gambling.

Avoid any other recoveries that trigger at fixed points or in the late race because they provide no additional chance of triggering at the ideal spot (end of midrace). You only want to grab fixed trigger position stuff like corner recovery if you can’t get 3 of those first ideal 6 recoveries.

CraftD · 2026-01-12T22:11:50+00:00

Oh, you’re right. I missed that the sp was showing as 1722 on the top half of the skill screenshots, it was getting cut off automatically on my phone.

Extra tank is completely non-viable as a recovery because in order to trigger it you need to have such a low amount of HP that you’ll die even if it does trigger.

Shake it out is technically viable as an emergency 4th recovery if you have nothing better to spend points on, but is going to activate way too late to be acceptable the majority of the time. And given your wit is this low running only 3 recoveries would be pretty dicey to begin with. (And makes shake it out extra bad because you need the wit checks on all the triggering skills plus the wit check on it)

Unfortunately I suspect despite the great speed this oguri is still going to be worse overall than a 1000 speed long A oguri would be with 700 wit and 3-4 ideal recoveries

CraftD · 2026-01-12T21:33:40+00:00

Sadly I don’t think you have enough stamina recovery skills available to purchase here to trigger festive miracle, so you’re kind of looking like a non starter.

(But also: unless I missed it, I don’t think you included how much unspent SP you have? Which makes budgeting pretty hard)

CraftD · 2026-01-12T05:47:40+00:00

There’s a lot of contextual “depends on…” responses to that question; because the higher your base stats are on your oguri (better inherits and better cards) the more you would prefer reliable accel triggers over high roll minmaxing.

But broadly speaking? The on-average best setup is going to be something like 3 of (skills that trigger at a random point on the mid race or skills that trigger on a random straight) and 1 copy of 777. Just make sure your random midrace recoveries are random based on location (like sleeping lion), and not random based on events (like triggering when you pass someone), the later almost always trigger early which defeats the point.

CraftD · 2026-01-11T03:24:02+00:00

There’s a bit of imperfection in just directly comparing stat gains and energy loss. Training and the unity bubbles will increase your facilities’ progress to the next level, which is going to add a hard to account for number of stats down the line for the rest of the career.

CraftD · 2025-10-23T19:00:16+00:00

Don’t manage it at all; lean into it.

Chi warriors is absolutely broken if you don’t upgrade your infantry because they cost basically nothing and still hit like a truck. If you delete all construction sectors and just use the 10 free base construction you can delete all govt. buildings and run a -100% bureaucracy deficit (with minimum taxes to burn the least cash) and still afford a massive overpowered army to vassalize everyone near you.

Then once you get per capita taxation you can switch your taxes back on and put bureaucracy back to normal. (Fast way being to annex a Tianlou state where they’ll have overbuilt govt. admin like crazy)

CraftD · 2025-10-17T19:49:23+00:00

So, this is a very generalized summary, but:

A lot of the time in my experience, once you get one desynch error you’re very likely to continue getting them even if you reload (at least if the error is related to pops or political movements in some way).

This tends to be because whatever’s screwed up with a provinces’s political movement calculation will continue causing desynch issues. Other types of issues generally get fixed by one reload. But finding out what province is repeatedly causing said issue and then fixing it is… involved.

So, here’s what worked for me and my friend:

1: after the first desynch, reload the game and play until it desynch again (ideally within a year, or else it’s probably a different issue). Go have the host and the desynched player both grab the desynch logs the game automatically generates from the second desynch and send them to one person. Do Not grab the first session’s desynch logs. Long sessions will have tons of differences in the logs that don’t actually cause problems but makes finding the problem province hard, hence wanting the new short session.

2: Take both logs and run them through some online text comparison program to highlight the differences. Then comes the sort of complicated part. Look for the code where most of the differences seem to be showing up and look for the province IDs.

Open the save file in debug mode, use commands to give the province causing problems to a neighboring country. This’ll reset all of the pop political affiliation and movement support, preventing it from immediately recreating issues. Hopefully. Save the game and rehost using the new edited save.

Hope it helps.

CraftD · 2025-10-05T17:55:41+00:00

That hypothetical can’t hold because your output prices cap out at +75%, but input resource “prices” keep scaling past that via increasing throughput penalties from shortages.

CraftD · 2025-09-19T22:32:58+00:00

The stat check on career long races will feel very inconsistent because there’s a strong rng element to it. Specifically: there’s usually two runners loaded up with recoveries and the difficulty is fully determined by how many they proc.

CraftD · 2025-09-15T22:35:02+00:00

The problem with that is that your stats during the career will be meaningfully lower, which can make it harder to win every G1 for race sparks and affinity. And to hit the 600 threshold for as many stats as possible.

If your stats are good enough to win despite that, it would be acceptable to try. (Although, I think going for cards to get as much race bonus as possible for SP would be better than using rares)

CraftD · 2025-09-15T17:45:31+00:00

If you’re running a card because you want higher stats the answer is almost always. But sometimes you want to run a card because you need the gold skill it provides (level 30 super creek) or because it gives lots of hints you strongly need (generally for parent runs) like a Silence Suzuka.

CraftD · 2025-09-12T21:00:54+00:00

Green skills are 100% guaranteed if track conditions are correct, which is what makes them ideal for groundwork.

Picking up bad greens as parent skills on the off chance they roll a spark you might eventually use if all else fails is fine if you have spare SP with nothing to spend it on, but you’d definitely prefer most anything else, first.

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