If you’re a new Umamusume: Pretty Derby player, you might have felt intimidated by how long it took you to complete a career for the first time. Maybe that first career felt extra long because you were still learning the ropes. Maybe you’ve wondered how some people could could complete five or six careers in a day, if not more. You’re not alone because a career could take an hour or more when you’re new. But the game is designed to be quick once you know what you’re doing.
If you’re just trying to get careers out of the way to complete missions or bulk up your roster, you can complete careers quickly. Skip all the dialogue and story stuff, and just do races and training. If you do the bare minimum, or just put in a little bit of effort, a career can be completed in as little as 20 minutes. But if you want good results, you’ll need to put in some more effort into your runs.
A more engaged career will include focused trainings for better stats and more optional races to increase your skill points, fans, and money. If you’re actively trying to build an S rank trainee, you’re not going to skip any of the stuff that directly affects how strong your trainee is. You can skip the dialogue and story stuff, but you’ll put effort into everything else until the very end. These runs can take between 30 and 35 minutes to complete, and this is the average for how long a career should take if you’re playing competitively.
If you’re playing with a new trainee for the first time, you might want to spend time reading all their dialogue, career events, and supports. If you’re really invested in the game and characters, you’re going to love all the story and lore of everyone. You can skip it all after you’ve played with a trainee for the first time, but you’ll want the full experience with each trainee at least once. Reading everything while also playing competitively can push a career to between 50 and 60 minutes, but this is the longest a career should take once you’ve gotten the hang of things.