Derby Stars Is Releasing a Major Race Engine Update on April 17th

Free-to-play horse racing game Derby Stars is getting a major Race Engine update on April 17th, introducing a host of balancing changes for GRT (Grit) and INT (Intelligence) thanks to player feedback.

Update Details

This update is scheduled to go live at the start of Season 35 without any form of trial period, as the majority of the community voted in Discord for the changes to go live straight away, with the reward pool also set to be the same.

GRT Changes

A higher penalty will now be inflicted when racing on bad weather. Specifically, rain will now cause a –15% penalty instead of –10%, while snow will cause a –20% penalty instead of –10%.

If the horse is not racing on a track it prefers, a higher track preference penalty will now occur, going up to –10% instead of the fixed –5%.

Next to these nerfs, there are buffs available too, particularly for horses with high GRT stats, who will have their maximum speed at the Last Spurt increase by GRT/75 (m/s). For horses with over 50 GRT, speed will be decreased at a lesser rate when running out of HP, but for horses that have more than 100 GRT, their speed won’t be decreased at all. Another bonus for horses with 100 GRT is that they will have 90% evasion instead of 60%, making it more likely to avoid debuffs from other horses.

INT Changes

For this stat, the update post states that the start delay range will be adjusted to range from 0.1 to 1 second instead of being 0 to 1. Horses with high INT will get to enjoy various new bonuses that will allow them to run quicker, decreasing delay by 90% for 100 INT horses. Having high INT will also makes it less likely to be affected by debuffs such as Exhaustion, Confusion and similar. With that said, Exhaustion will now be affected by INT instead of GRT, while the probabilities are set to remain the same.

Depending on the amount of HP left, Last Spurt will now activate either quicker or slower. This means that a horse with 100 INT will have Last Spurt activate at 10% HP, while horses with lower INT will have Last Spurt activated at the place marked on the stadium.