I'm new to Starters Orders and I was just wondering if there is any good advice that other players want to share on breeding, training, jockey instructions etc?

It would depend how you plan on playing the game.

For just general enjoyment of the game, or league play?

So far just the enjoyment. But I would like to work out how to get a horse ready for league play and how to know if a horse is good enough.

That`s a massive question.

Just play for now. If you find yourself with beginners luck and a multiple race winner then export the horse, check the jockey feedback for riding instructions.

As far as the league goes just join up and put your best exports in and see how they do. If you have plenty of exports then trial them in the race builder against each other to see which is the best. Knowing if a horse is good enough is difficult and can only realy be found out once raced in the league, I think all league players have found they have uploaded a star only to be well and truely beaten over and over again. I speak from experience on the latter lol.

I'll give it a go but others are more experienced and their advice would be better. I can give you some general advice on how I get my stable up and running.

First off you'll need a good bankroll. The method I used was to bet longshots on a big race. Auction off the two horses you start with right away. Save your game. Go racing and skip results until you find a good race where a longshot won or even two longshots 1-2. Ctrl-alt-del and close SO4. Restart the game and go back to that race and bet however you like on the longshots. Run it and cross your fingers, it might take a few tries. Make note of who did win if yours didn't and maybe include more longshots. Eventually, you'll have a nice sum of money to get things started.

Now go into the finance screen and buy the Breeding Barn and everything else. Next is auctions, whether daily auctions, 2YO or both. Money shouldn't be an issue so you can buy some top class animals. Keep an eye on the money at first though because not much is coming back to you....yet.

Start breeding however you see fit. A good rule of thumb is to only retire your best horses to stud. If you breed average horses you'll get average horses in return. Take advantage of breeding with top class gamehorses in the breeding barn.

You'll know who your top horses for the league are through the Race Builder. Export and trial them and also breed your best Race Builder horses if you're interested in the league. Sometimes a horse could be a beast in the game but fall flat with trialing and vise-versa.

Have fun!

Thanks all.

Quick question: What does 'Race Handy" mean in terms of how a horse is going to run?

Jockey lets the horse run on a loose rein in a prominant position, 2-4 postions off the lead

I think its just trial and error mate. Although i did see this great post about racing a horse under its naturally distance on here, and one of the responses was use the instructions, hold up, challenge earlier and don't trial. Have to say it works pretty well, although ive adapted it to slight hold up.

The other bit of advice would be to use the diary and not just the declarations screen, because the declarations screen only covers a month. So you might might miss that big race which is 32 days ways and when you spot it your horse maybe so tired from its last run, it cant race.

story of my life!

That's a lot of effort. If you're going to short-cut the game process you might as well just use Art Money and get it done in 30 seconds rather than all that faffing around.

I had the last game, played it now and then, so got this one today, looks impressive.

I'm playing on Easy because I wasn't too good at the last one, just wondering a few things.

Would it be better to start on easy and try and learn how to do the training yourself or start on normal with the training automatic, or is it all just trial and error.

I have a horse that has won 5 group 1 races, 10 group 3, at the age of 7, so enjoying my current game, just wondering about advice on what you all did first time around when you started playing.

yeah id start on easier and manually train.

Cool, I'll try that then.

Breeded a grade 1 winner, and was delighted, but it was on easy lol