Horse Stat Guide

The game doesn't really explain how the stats affect horse performance in different modes well, so I decided to make a guide partially for myself and partially for others who might like to know what stats do in each event.

Intro

Have you ever wondered if Agility does anything in Flat Racing? Does Acceleration affect Cross Country?

Well, I am here to answer these questions. I, too, had these questions and the game does not do a good job of answering them. I think the devs may have forgot to change the tutorial info after a relatively recent update, so I've taken it upon myself to provide the answers to anyone who needs them.

Speed

Often considered the most important stat is Speed. It can mean the difference between First and Second place, or Gold and Silver, but I'd wager it isn't the end all be all.

Opinions aside, Speed is a core stat for Flat Racing, Cross Country, and Steeplechase. All modes take it into account.

The stat itself determines both the horse's base speed and sprint speed. When not sprinting, your horse's speed stat will be the reason he/she pulls ahead of the herd, or falls behind.

Sprint Energy

This stat is your horse's stamina, but they didn't want to label is stamina...I don't know why.

This is the second core stat for all modes. It is important for pulling ahead of the herd in the final stretch of a Flat Race, and affects how long your horse can sprint between jumps in both Cross Country and Steeplechase.

Like Speed this is a basic, easily understood stat that can be the difference in any event.

Acceleration

I'll be honest, I feel like most players focus most on Speed and Sprint Energy and ignore Acceleration (unless the stat on the horse in low). In my experience, some of my best early horses had Acceleration as their highest stat with Sprint Energy at second and Speed third. Despite lagging behind a little through the race, their Acceleration pulled through when it came to gaining ground quickly during a sprint.

This stat does affect all game modes.

In Flat Racing it determines how fast your horse gains speed when using Sprint Energy. Higher Acceleration generally can mean you don't have to use as many bars to reach max speed.

In Cross Country and Steeplechase it also affects how fast your horse can reach its max speed. Which means it takes less sprint energy to do so.

Agility

Agility, as the name suggests, affects how well your horse maneuvers itself. The faster you are going it will generally be harder to take tight turns, but with a high Agility stat it won't be as difficult.

When Cross Country first came out on PC, this stat was the most important stat for that event. The stat did not affect Flat Racing, and when Steeplechase came out it did not affect that either.

The devs finally added an update that gave more purpose for Agility and for the Jump stat (more on that next). Per the devs:

• Flat Racing:
  Agility: This stat now influences your horse's preferred position and stamina regain. A more agile horse will better maintain its preferred position and recover stamina.
  
  
• Steeplechase:
  Agility: Higher agility increases the size of the jumping zone, making jumps easier to clear.

I don't know why this info is not in any of the game help as far as I could find. I hope they fix that at some point.

Jump

Jump affects your horse's ability to, you guessed it, jump. However, this stat doesn't determine how high or if your horse fails jumps (not yet anyway that may change with the Showjumping Update).

In Flat Racing this stat used to do nothing. With the update, per the devs:

• Jump: Your horse's jump ability now affects its acceleration out of the starting gate. A better jump means a quicker start!

In Cross Country and Steeplechase, the Jump stat affects how much Sprint Energy is regained when performing a jump. The higher the stat, the more energy you get.

Outro

There, every stat explained to the best of my ability.

It really bugged me the game didn't explain these stats super well, so I had to make this at least for myself to be able to review from time to time. I hope this helped anyone reading this.

Happy Riding

[Wolfszeit]

Oh my goodness! Thanks for the guidance. I was wondering why my cross-country horses were doing so poorly, even though I was training the specific skill. The fact that all skills are important explains a lot. Thanks for solving this mystery.

[Lilytje]

This is a great guide! The only time the agility and jump stats (that affect on flats or steeple) where mentioned where on one of the update posts, they said they've updated that and told us what they did. Strange that they don't explain it in the game itself.