A full month has passed since the release of Umamusume: Pretty Derby, and by now many players, including perhaps yourself, have settled in to understand how Career Mode works (if not, here’s our Guide!), better understood Support Cards (and, again, if not, here’s our Guide on those!), and maybe you’ve started to run into the question of “what am I supposed to be doing, especially since I’ve cleared URA Finale” (Well, PVP is one option, which we now have a guide for and if not, we also have a guide on how Leveling works!)? Well, that brings us to one of the more difficult and time consuming tasks of Umamusume: Farming Inheritance Sparks. Of the biggest hurdles to unlocking the full sense of satisfaction and completion in Umamusume, as well as truly allowing you to conquer harder content like Legend Races, PVP, or other challenges, Inheritance Sparks can be one of the most baffling and frustrating parts of the game.
So what are Inheritance Sparks, how do you get them, and what do they do, exactly? In this guide, we’ll be going over how you can start working on Sparks even with the beginner Umamusume you get from launching the game, the importance of finding Friends and Guests, and what “9* Uma” really means, as well as what types of Inheritances you should try to farm and create to unlock the true potential of your racers, even possibly making the dream of winning the Arima Kinen with Haru Urara not just a possibility, but a certainty.
Sparking the Flames of Success
First, perhaps the term “Spark” is confusing; in Gacha game terminology, “sparking” is sometimes used to describe obtaining a desired unit or card from a banner by “buying” it with in-game currency, such as the Exchange Points in Umamusume. However, “Sparks” in this circumstance refer to a very specific game mechanic that affect what types of stats, skills, and specializations your Umamusume can pass on to another when serving as a Parent. Sparks are incredibly important to achieving B+ or higher rank Umas, and good Sparks are often as important, if not more important, than your Support Cards in determining if your Uma can achieve A rank at the end of a Career run or not.
Sparks come in a variety of colors, specifically Blue (Stats), Pink (Aptitudes), Green (Unique skills), and White (Which can be divided into being either Skills or Races, specifically G1 races). Within those colors, Sparks also come in three possible levels: One Star, Two Star, or Three Star, with Three Star being the best and most sought after outcome. Unfortunately, the wrinkle about Sparks is that you can only do so much engineering to try and obtain the Sparks you want, and then pray that you get them at the end of your campaign, as they are determined randomly, which means that you will probably find yourself working to chase down the perfect set of Sparks to inherit for quite some time.
This cycle can be very cumbersome, so it is important to remember that first and foremost, Umamusume: Pretty Derby is supposed to be a fun game you play, not work, so if you find the hunt for Sparks frustrating and boring, I suggest taking a break from the process or even the game itself; burning out so early into the game’s life cycle because you haven’t gotten the perfect Stamina Spark Inheritance after a week of trying is only going to make you resent the game, and while the RNG aspects can be frustrating, it is also the game play loop that keeps the game functioning.
Turns Out You Can Pick Your Family
Sparks play a large role in the performance of your racer over their career, with three distinct points of influence on your run: First, your chosen Parents (two veteran Umamusume) provide bonus stats and aptitudes to your trainee. Then, your racer receives “Inspiration” three times across their career, and these Inspirations are when Sparks activate. The initial bonuses are static, but the remaining Inspiration bonuses have an aspect of randomness to them, both occurring in April of your 2nd and 3rd years of your career.
What is not made immediately clear, however, is that the Parents’ Parents ALSO matter to sparking. This is where the numerical value attached to Sparks comes into play: A 3* spark means it has 3 stars, but a 6* spark means that the parent and a grandparent both have 3 star sparks in that category, and the coveted 9* spark means the parent and BOTH grandparents have 3 star sparks in that category. This can be difficult to check if you aren’t aware of where to look, so when selecting parents, always check their Inspirations; this will show you their Sparks, as well as the Sparks of their parent Umas as well.
You can also get a decent sense of what Spark level you are dealing with based on the amount of stats your Umamusume inherits at the beginning of a career. Bigger number = Better spark, which can at least be a good starting point before digging into the minute differences between sparks between two different parent candidates. These stat bonuses are also some of the most immediate benefits you get, because generally Sparks have a 30% chance of “sparking” during Inspiration, meaning that you may not always get the same amount of “extra” inspiration across two career runs with the same sparks, but you should be able to generally start getting consistent and similar results.
The Six Hundred Club
Sparks are random, but there are ways to influence what type you get and how you might get them. The general rule of thumb is that any stat (Speed, Stamina, Wit, Power, or Guts) over 600 has a higher chance to generate higher quality sparks, meaning that spark farming runs can be done by achieving at least 600 in the stat you want, and possibly 600 in other stats as well, and then shooting to clear the URA finale. This is often not a little harder than it seems, however, as 600 is sometimes not enough to clear career scenarios that require higher investment, and wasting a spark run with a good inheritance is often not ideal. That said, remembering that 600 = Good Spark Chance can help when you are trying to raise secondary or even tertiary stats in a Career run.
Although it may seem that shooting for a bigger number will create a larger chance, the actual chance of high quality sparks occurring doesn’t change much the more a stat increases. That being said, stats that are close to maxing out (1200) will often give even higher chances than 600, but you’re only going to likely get a single stat that high in early runs of the game, and that’s generally with the help of good sparks and a good support deck, meaning that it’s fine to accept you’ll have to work towards hitting 1200 in your most desired stat, rather than feeling like you’ve failed a run for not hitting it. Remember: Anything over 600 is great, and the closer to 1200 you can get, the better.
Of course, the question of how you can consistently get your stats over that line–especially closer to 1200–tends to be almost circular, as it brings us back to the role of Inheritances in the first place: boosting stats. However, one of the quirks of Inheritances is that you will often want to pick a stat you are not planning on focusing on primarily. For example, Sakura Bakushin O does not want Speed Inheritances, because the primary stat you are building on her is Speed; her support deck as a Sprinter is going to be targeted almost exclusively to Speed, and thus her training priority will also favor Speed. Inheriting Speed on her, functionally not only does nothing to help you, it actively handicaps you.
The best and usual suggestion is to take an “off” stat that you need, but don’t want to spend time training. For a Sprinter, this would be Stamina, which is a stat your trainee will need (especially for PVP), but doesn’t want to spend time training, instead focusing almost exclusively on Speed, Power, and Wit (to about 300). This doesn’t leave a lot of window for you to also train Stamina, so inheriting as much Stamina sparks as possible means that you will be able to passively raise the stat to acceptable levels.
You’ve Got a Friend in Need–Me
Generally, the best way to inherit good Sparks early on in Umamusume is to find friends who have been either playing the game longer than you, or simply had luckier runs than you, and borrowing their Umas for your trainees will give you a big boost to getting started. There are a few strategies you can employ here to make this work for you, with some of them being to simply try and track down other players with 6* or 9* Star Veterans, and can often rely on the Umamusume Discords (Both the ‘Unofficial’ Umacord and the Official one run by Cygames), Reddit, or simply asking people you know who are playing the game. You can also benefit from joining Clubs, as Club members are able to recruit the Veterans of other Club members without having to directly friend/follow them back, which can be a benefit if you join a large or very active club.
There’s no real “shame” in borrowing better Sparked Veterans than you have yourself, and in-fact, it is generally assumed by both the community and Cygames itself that this is the general direct benefit of having friends in the game at all; there, is, however, a catch: players can only borrow 3 Veteran Umamusume a day, and there is no way to circumvent this cap. You can’t spend Carats to do it, or any other in-game currency, meaning that failing a run with a high-value Veteran Parent with good Sparks can be a crippling blow to your own Spark farming schedule. On the flip side, this is also a great way to try and prevent burnout: Do three runs, see what you get, and then try again the next day.
As for what “type” of friends to look for, while 6* or 9* Sparks in stats you want are ideal, don’t be afraid of accepting or seeking out help from “lower” number Sparks. Since your own quest for these inheritances is likely fairly new, there’s nothing wrong with trying to build your own Veteran Umamusume with quality sparks, even if they are lower than 3*; it is very unlikely you’re going to immediately hit a 3* anyway right off the bat, but combining 2* parents or grandparents even will start to help you improve your own runs, meaning you can hit the 600 or 1100+ caps far easier too.
Starting Your Own Farm
Of course, if you want to try doing things on your own, or simply lack access to a consistent source of friend Umas to borrow, there is a way to (slowly) farm up your own higher quality sparks. I do want to preface this by saying that this method is very labor intensive and honestly labor inefficient, but it can be done. Essentially, you’ll simply need to continually rotate your roster of racers over and over again, slowly increasing their levels bit by bit, and then working on making sparks possible from this process.
An important note to this is that an Umamusume cannot be their own Parent, but they CAN be their Grandparent, meaning that an Uma who lucks into a good Spark can influence the descendants of other Umas you own, including themselves, as long as they serve as one of the two grandparents of another trainee. This means that with proper cycling, you can increase your roster by moving quality sparks from one to the next, and then slowly over time hope that these quality sparks become higher quality sparks; you don’t need to inherit 3* Sparks to create a 3* Spark, after all. Inheriting higher quality Sparks will, of course, increase your overall benefits, but this slow process of building from 1, to 2, to 5, to 6 and then 9 Sparks can greatly impact how your racers develop over time.
This method has a few benefits, namely that you aren’t required to worry about being limited by what Umas you can inherit from friends, and generally one of the overall goals of Spark farming is to create your own stable of useful, varied Sparks. Focusing on a library of Sparks means that you can have one available for various situations, such as looking to inherit Speed on a Long Distance runner who wants to build Stamina, or even Wit on Umas who you want to have a higher than normal possibility of utilizing skills.
Non-Stat Sparks: Don’t Ignore These!
While much of the discussion about Sparks often falls to focusing on Stats, there are a lot of important considerations when it comes to looking for and inheriting non-Stat based Sparks too. These can be harder to farm, however, as Aptitude Sparks don’t generally have an easier way to farm or consider obtaining them like a specific stat requirement, so the best possible way to try and accrue Pink Sparks (which are applied to Aptitudes like Style, Terrain, or Distance) is to win your URA Finale career.
Pink Sparks are important to consider in Inheritances for Career runs in which you are trying to obtain a specific outcome, or trying to overcome challenges that your trainee is naturally bad at. Sometimes this runs counterintuitive to creating a good PVP Uma, but it can help you fill out the archive or other achievements; for example, King Halo struggles with her non-Sprint races, and having her inherit Pink Sparks that raise the level of her aptitude in those other distances can make it easier for her to win them, changing the story and possible achievements for her career.
In other situations, Pink Sparks can help you raise racers who may otherwise struggle in certain areas to be viable, such as in PVP, where the current roster of available racers features only 1 racer with an A rank in Dirt racing: Haru Urara. Other options are all listed as B rank, but Haru’s natural A rank means that clearing her Career and getting a good Dirt Spark means that you could have someone else inherit it, bumping that B to an A; this is why you may often see El Condor Pasa in PVP races running Dirt, because she’s an easy to obtain racer that can be promoted easily by inheriting off of Haru. Of course, just inheriting a Pink spark for something like that means you may be sacrificing Stats, but if you’re looking for specific terrain or distance modifiers, building around that can make for interesting (or at least experimental) outcomes.
The hardest of these is the monumental task of getting Haru Urara to win the Arima Kinen. Somewhat familiar players with the game know that Haru’s dream is to “run” in the Arima Kinen, but that she will almost always come in last place during it due to numerous problems in her base kit, namely: she is bad on Turf and bad at Long races. To overcome this, she needs to inherit both Turf AND Long Aptitudes, as well as training up her stats to be able to compete at that distance and style. This somewhat hinted at outcome–the game even tells you that “With the Right Inspirations,”–serves as a reminder, or impetus, for the type of work you’ll need to put into the game in order to make that dream real, while also painting a fairly realistic picture that realizing those Inspirations is going to take a lot of time and work to make happen.
Final Note: Consistency over Experimentation
Perhaps one of the things that newer players can struggle with, or even intermediate players, is that Spark farming is not particularly “fun”. You are generally going to be running the same career over and over again with the same Uma and the same situations, trying and trying to obtain the outcome you want, which is a specific Spark (or set of Sparks) rather than “Beat the game”. Because of this, the mindset to farm Sparks has to be one based on consistency of execution. A major factor of this is to understand exactly what you need to do and how, and setting up the game to try and obtain that outcome. While RNG plays a huge factor in Umamusume, you can try to mitigate that by knowing a career and the career events very well, which often only really comes from doing it enough times to start memorizing it.
Still, this doesn’t mean that you should only be farming Sparks. I personally like to set aside 2 or 3 days in a week for my time in UM to be devoted to Spark farming, while the rest is simply playing the game, completing dailies, and having fun with it. When you start nailing down the routine of a specific Career, you can start churning out A rank Umas over and over again without having to worry about variance too much. Being able to be that consistent means that you can also make Spark farming far quicker, as you will know what you need to do, and how, and this can sometimes be easier by setting your sights on a specific trainee and working with them exclusively for a while to obtain Sparks, and then moving on to a different trainee once you’re satisfied with the Sparks the first one will be able to pass on. Then, combine the two as parents for a new trainee, and begin working on passing on sparks to them. This helps you move on to establishing your own stable of horses, but also helps give you goals that are obtainable and easy to measure, without fearing that you’re somehow falling behind or not living up to expectations of a game that you primarily play by yourself.
Cheering From the Stands
Hopefully this guide has helped explain Inheritance Sparks a little bit better to you than the game may have originally! While the system is somewhat intuitive, it doesn’t make it overtly clear how they work or what they do, and it certainly doesn’t tell you how they are generated and what can impact them. It can also be frustrating to look at guides or videos from content creators telling you how to “Build the Best Uma” without explaining that they are inheriting 9* Sparks from two different parents, and thus why your own run trying to copy theirs has less than stellar results.
Umamusume is a game with a lot of moving parts and hidden math, and Sparks are perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of it. Just remember that with practice and patience, you can create good Sparks to inherit on your Umas, and then use those Inheritances to start creating Umas that can win almost any race, any distance, any turf, and even run in styles they aren’t naturally gifted in. More importantly, good Inheritances help you work on your consistency, which can help smooth out the farming process even more by helping you hit stat targets and win career faster and faster every time. Until next time, get out there and get training!
