One of the most important things that you will need to do with your horse is get them experience. Experience helps your horse win races, by being efficient in how they run in a race at that distance and how they come out of a race.
Experience is not the end all be all of how well a horse races in this game, but it does help, and can often times be the difference between winning and losing.
There are 4 ways to get experience for a horse.
The easiest way to gain experience is to race the horse in races.
- This may seem intuitive, but it is one of the best ways to get experience, especially early on, since you also get experience with Jockey and Horse Race Instructions.
- You typically get the most experience racing in Cup Finals. This does not mean that you will get a full pop every race in a Cup Final.
- Other races that give good experience are End Season Regional Races, Cup Prelims and Semis, and League races.
- Stakes races give a varying amount of experience based on number of runners and where you place in the race. An empty race will give you far less experience than a coming in 3rd in a race with 15 horses.
- Also racing other players will give more experience than racing just bots.
The next way to get experience is to do training that specifically targets gaining experience.
- There are numerous training that gives experience to a horse. They all give different amounts of experience based on the type of training that a horse gets.
- Short Sprint and Starting Stalls are common training sessions to use for sprint/short horses and give small amounts of experience, but due to their high use on sprint/horse horses, they tend to gain experience the fastest and are often a common distance to have in barns.
- All Training Track (Sprint, Short, etc.) give large amounts of experience in the given distance and lesser experience in the distances on either side.
- So TT-Long will give good experience in Long Distance, and lesser experience in both Medium and Epic experience.
- These give terrible body stats building, but they do give a little.
- Trackwork-Distance and Speed, give a combo of stats and experience development, but less than stats only training and distance only training.
The third way is to win lots of HooF Instant Racing.
- These run all day and take nothing out of the horse.
- It uses your default instructions on each horse for each race.
- It will give you a random jockey that is on the top jockey list.
- There is no way to pick the jockey traits, or what kind of jockey you get.
- HooF Lists your horse’s Overall Rating by about 2 less than it actual is (this is often times used as a way to find out 2yos final birthing OR)
- You can also earn $25,000 if you win a HooF race.
- HooF uses a slightly different race engine, including a catch-up feature that can help lower rated horses win.
- You will get a very small amount of experience but every little it helps.
The fourth way is using the Training Track.
- There are 3 types of Training Track
- Arcade Mile-Which is for fun and costs $1,000. You will not give any experience.
- Normal Session-Which costs $20,000
- Full Session-Which costs $50,000
- None of these will increase Injury Profile. But they will decrease health (except for the Arcade Mile, it will not affect health)
To get to the Training Track use this link http://www.trackking.org/traintrack.php
Once you get to the page you will see a page similar to this where you will see how much personal funds you have to spend, and your horses and who can do what kind of training.
Typically speaking Normal Training is not as worth while to due because it takes a good health hit and gives less experience than Full Training Track Session.
Also running a horse in a Normal Session or a Full Session only if the horse starts the session with health at weary or above, will give Experience.
You can also pick the number of horses you run against and the distance and the track conditions that your horse will be running.
If you have OC you can race a max of 9 competitors, if not you can race a max of 4. The more horses you beat the more experience you can earn.
Remember you can also get experience in distance and ground type.
Once you have picked the horse that you are going to use, can pick the strength of the horses that you will race.
The Field Quality of the horses is based off what your horse at full health are like. They can be 10OR less to 10OR Above your horse.
The Field Spread lets you pick how similar the horses you are running are.
The better the field the harder the competition.
This is the next screen that you will see.
This is the most important screen to make sure to fully explore.
On this page you can check out the controls, select your jockey out of 3 choices (the first and default one is not always the best), set race instructions (by default it says hold your line and run steady, MAKE SURE TO CHANGE IT), and view your Lineup.
Clicking each tab before the race starts is necessary thing to do.
Also if you do not like your horse’s competition, post, or jockey options you can at this point refresh the page and not get charged the $50,000 for the session and you wont get a health hit.
When you set the instructions they can be slightly modified during the race. But you need to set your horse instructions, otherwise you will get very slow showing from your horse and jockey.
The instructions are set only by quarters. And you cant set your jockey instructions, that is why it is important to pick a good jockey.
Also if you get post 8-10, it is highly unlikely that you will get top 4 in the race.
Once you have decided to run the race you will come to the next page. And the fees will be taken from your stable when you hit the Race Button.
During the race you can change your instructions by clicking the arrows.
The jockey will sometimes listen to your new instructions but will revert to the old instructions every quarter of the race.
The dark blue arrow will tell you what the jockey is supposed to be doing.
The red circle will tell you what the jockey was told to do in your instructions. So if you change instructions you can see what you said you wanted the horse and jockey to do.
When the race is done, it will say “Stay Tuned Race Results Pending”.
DO NOT leave the page till you see the page next to you with the times. If you do you will NOT get the experience boost.
After you see this page you can see if you got experience or not.
You will only get experience if you finish in the top 4 of the race.
Your health hit for a Full Session can be up to 5 levels. This is based on the horses health, stats, and experience level. It is not recommended to do Training Track the week of a race. Also you cant use Training Track when the horse is busy such as in vets, training, or traveling.
Best of luck getting the experience that we all need to win.