Hi Konami team, it's your devoted fan jrod3921, the guy who's played Star Player for over 350 hours already and who's been writing guides like it's his day job (which it definitely isn't!). I love this game so much but have some big ideas about how you can make it even better! And the people in the comments will have ideas of their own so read what they have to say too. :)

• Add virtual stadium tours! Seriously, these things are works of art, but it's hard to take time to enjoy them in the middle of a game. Give us an option somewhere to just go into the stadium with a free-floating camera so we can see every nook and cranny!
• Give us options for more than just home and away jerseys! I know you've included throwback jerseys in previous years, and this community has already shown an amazing creative ability. I'd love to slap on a classic 1960s Hiroshima Carp shirt as I take on the Hanshin Tigers at the Zoomsta on Throwback Night!
• Expand multiplayer to four players or more! u/PutPutPutrik suggested this in their thread yesterday and I totally agree that this would be great. I don't play multiplayer yet but if you make it so that more than two players can face off, you expand the possibilities! See https://www.reddit.com/r/EBaseballProspirit/comments/1vr7lr7/konami_please_add_4player_online/
• Make the World Baseball Classic mode available worldwide! The fact that we can finally play this game with English menus is wonderful, but not being able to enjoy one of the flagship modes is disappointing. I'm sure it has to do with licensing but hopefully you can work it out. The fact that gamers outside Asia have figured out, uhhh, creative ways to circumvent this shows that there's a lot of interest in it! u/Doucejj pointed out in the comments that this is a licensing issue because MLB The Show has exclusive rights to the WBC in North America. So we'll remove this and just ask even harder for the other three! ;)

There are little things I'd love to see change throughout Star Player, but they're really minor ("we should be able to use any day as a Free Day"). The four I listed above are big ones that I think would be really impactful, and I'm sure others have great ideas too.

Hopefully someone from Konami is lurking in this sub and says, "you know, we should totally take this feedback". :)

Note: I miscounted again. I have no idea how I keep getting these wrong. This is guide #10, not guide #11. :) I think I was remembering the 10 from the "10 things" post I did.

Hey everyone! This is the last full guide I'm planning to do for Star Player mode, and it's going to cover Post-Game Free Actions (PGFAs). They come up in most of the other guides, but this one is dedicated to them as a whole. As with all of my other guides, I'm very aware that I will have missed things and I'm open to feedback, questions, etc. Just leave a comment and let's get to talkin' about it. :)

The tl;dr: There are more options than many people realize, but to be honest you can really just concentrate on two things--Hobbies and social stats from the Movie Theater and similar locations. You get some form of boost from every option but it's very unpredictable and you have limited influence over any of it.

The first question you probably have is, when exactly will I get PGFAs? The short answer is that you will usually get them after day games (14:00 start time), and day games often take place on weekends, so you can reasonably expect around eight PGFAs per month. You will occasionally get a midweek PGFA after a night game, but probably no more than two a month. And you are not guaranteed to get PGFAs after day games. If your team suffers a blowout loss, the manager may decide to schedule extra practice and you'll lose your PGFA (although you'll get a hefty amount of Practice EXP, so not the end of the world :)). You'll also never get a PGFA on the first game of a series, because instead you'll get the message about how there's still time before the game and you can meet with the manager, another player, or just proceed to the game. As a general rule-of-thumb, you can expect nine or 10 PGFAs per month.

When you do get a PGFA, you're going to have a default set of options no matter which city you're in, with minor variations. You've probably seen the general layout a hundred times by now, but here it is again:

https://preview.redd.it/knnkvl512njh1.png?width=1634&format=png&auto=webp&s=064140308806cf1663e025c4ba087fcefe7588b4

I'm not going to cover the Restaurants in any detail here, because I did that in Star Player Guide #5 - Restaurants (work-in-progress) : r/EBaseballProspirit. The Shops are also very straightforward. Use the Shops as needed--when you finish all your Books, when you break your last Power Bat, when you want to buy a fancy Luxury Watch, etc. The Real Estate and Car Dealership are never open at night, but the other seven usually are. On occasion, you'll find that only the VP Shop is open when you go to select a PGFA, like in the above screenshot. I haven't exhaustively tested this, but I think it happens when your game goes to extra innings (which would make sense).

If you need fatigue relief, your best bet is actually to wait until the following morning and use a Fatigue Drink to reduce 30% instead of visiting a Restaurant. You can use up to 30 of them in a single career playthrough, so relying on Restaurants for fatigue relief early on isn't an efficient use of time. But if you absolutely must relieve fatigue at night, by all means dine out! If you're in a city where you've discovered the Ramen Restaurant, Sushi Restaurant, or Yakiniku Restaurant, use one of those for 30%+ fatigue reduction. If you're in a city where you haven't discovered any of those, go to the Gyudon Restaurant and get the Extra-Meat Gyudon with Pork Miso Soup Set. The fatigue reduction varies but it's generally over 10%.

The next section down, Others, is actually quite important for boosting your Intelligence, Communication, and other social stats. While many of the Other locations are only available during the day (and thus only accessible via Free Days), a subset are available at night. The Movie Theater, Karaoke, Park, Spa, and Sports Rehab Center are usually open at night, and on weekend nights the Manga Cafe, Game Cafe, Arcade, and Shopping District are usually available as well. The Movie Theater, Manga Cafe, Game Cafe, and Arcade are among the best options for raising stats. However, you have to have discovered them in your current city before they'll show up in this list. Because you have half your games in your home city, it's worth selecting the Take a Stroll option on Free Days there until you've discovered these and the Event Hall. For more detail on the Other locations, see Star Player Guide #2 - Other locations : r/EBaseballProspirit.

So now that we're done with Shops, Restaurants, and Other sections, that leaves us with just the top row, and that's what I'm going to concentrate on here. I'm going to save Go Home for the end, because it's the longest group and cover the others first.

Chat With Manager

Talking with your manager typically results in one of two outcomes:

• You invite him to dinner. If he accepts, you'll go to an izakaya together and you'll either have a good, relaxing time (and thus reduce fatigue) or you'll obsess over the game (and thus increase fatigue). If he says he has other plans and declines, you just go home and rest. He is far more likely to agree to go to dinner with you if you've spent time on his friendship, but even at max friendship and Star Player level 100, he'd still turn Fujii down.
• You discuss post-game recovery and you pick up tips from him. I haven't actually seen any improvements to Health, Condition, or Fatigue after getting this outcome.

You'll occasionally get a message that your manager looks busy and you just leave him alone. You don't get any fatigue reduction if you get this outcome.

Now, if you're reading the above and wondering, "why would I ever choose to talk with my manager?" you're not alone. Simply stated, this option isn't a great choice. It adds color and variety, sure, but you don't get any meaningful gains, especially not early in the game. My recommendation is to just never choose this option.

Chat with Player

This option is very similar to the pre-game option of choosing to talk to a player but unlike talking to your manager, you have a little agency here. You're given three random teammates to talk to (drawn from the top team) and you can select any of them:

https://preview.redd.it/oasrmsq77njh1.png?width=2559&format=png&auto=webp&s=08d4ea65217f4db9e2243515d6eb4899ca68ad92

Regardless of who you choose, you get four options for post-game activities:

https://preview.redd.it/4g3le0ob7njh1.png?width=2559&format=png&auto=webp&s=4aca270ab40df594bdaa86a88df65e8e57afd838

• The first one, Grab some food, is functionally equivalent to inviting your manager to dinner. If you have a good relationship with the player already, or you are significantly higher rated than him, he's likely to agree and you go to the izakaya where you'll either reduce or increase fatigue.
• The second, Do some stretching, reduces fatigue, but not significantly. [For example, when I did it for these screenshots, I got a whopping 2% reduction.] There are much better options for fatigue recovery than stretching with a teammate.
• The third, Hit the sauna, has similar health effects, but unlike stretching they improve with each visit. Once you've gone to the sauna five times, you'll get decent Health, Condition, and Fatigue improvements.
• The last one, Chat, is similar to the random chats you have with teammates before games. You'll talk about Defensive Theory or something, and you may gain a bit of fatigue relief.

In addition to the effects I described above, you will also increase your friendship with the player you chose. If you weren't previously acquainted with the player, he'll be added to your Player Relationships list. This means Talk to Player can be a useful tool in the early game for expanding your pool of players from whom to acquire Carry-Over Abilities and Practice EXP, but as I mentioned at the beginning of this section the selection of players is entirely random and you can't influence it. This unpredictability means that Talk to Player is a very low priority. You'll get something from it if you choose to select it, but there's a better way to spend your time.

Go Home

So for the last 10 paragraphs or so I've been a real Debbie Downer. But Talk to Manager and Talk to Player are really just color, not content. I promise, I am much more positive on the options for Go Home. Well, some of them, anyway. :)

After you've confirmed that you really want to head home, you'll be asked what you want to do. You'll have your choice of up to 10 options:

• Rest <<< don't ever select this. Really.
• (Read a Book)
• (Watch a Movie)
• (Play a Game)
• (Listen to Music)
• Watch TV
• Surf the Web
• Clean
• Meditation
• Mobile Apps

Notice that I said "up to 10". That's because the four with parentheses will only appear if you have bought the necessary equipment and have incomplete items to consume. For example, if you haven't bought the Home Theater Kit, you won't see Watch a Movie, and if you've bought five books and completed them all, you won't see Read a Book.

Earlier I mentioned that if you're worried about fatigue, you should wait until the next morning and use a Fatigue Drink. That still holds true here--you should NEVER Go Home and just Rest. If you choose to Go Home, your primary reason for doing so is generally going to be to work on those Hobbies or Stat boosts.

Read a Book / Watch a Movie / Play a Game / Listen to Music

In your early career, you will want to use 90%+ of your PGFAs specifically for your Hobbies (especially if you're planning to marry Runa). When you choose one of the Hobby items, you'll finish about 30% of a book/movie/etc. during a PGFA (or during a Free Day). This means that it takes four attempts to complete one of these Hobby Items. And yes, the idea of listening to two or three tracks on a CD or watching 30 minutes of two-hour movie sounds as stupid to me as it does to you. :) But that's how the game works--you need to read a book four times before you complete it. You increase your Hobby skill as you're making progress on the Hobby item as well, and the Hobby items also increase your social stats. This is why these are so important--you're progressing two things at once, although you only get the social stat gain when you complete the Hobby item.

[Side note: I noticed something interesting about doing Hobbies with Players as opposed to doing them on your own. If you read a book during a PGFA, you'll complete about 30% of the book and make some progress on the skill. If you read a book with another Player, you'll complete only about 10% of the book, but you'll actually increase your Hobby skill level more than if you read alone. And if you notice the way the math works, it's actually "more efficient" to read a book three times alone and then once with another Player. You'll actually see that in the progress bar if you go into Private Life > Items and then look at the Hobby item in question.]

The last five options are intriguing ones because the effects are quite varied. You may see a boost to a Hobby, or you may see a significant boost to Intelligence or another social stat. You may see huge fatigue reduction. You may discover a new location in the city you're visiting. Or ... nothing at all might happen. Luck of the draw.

• Watch TV: You'll watch something (a soccer game, a cooking show, whatever) which will increase the associated skill (Watching Sports, Cooking, etc.). You'll only see programming for Hobbies you've unlocked. I haven't tested enough to see if you can increase your Fishing or Golfing skills by watching them on TV.
• Surf the Web: When you select this, you get two sub-options, Watch Videos and Do Some Research. Selecting either of these will give you some form of attribute boost, but (and you're going to get tired of reading this) it's unpredictable. I've gained Creativity from watching cat videos, Communication from reading an interview with a teammate, and gained Intelligence from researching batting theory. The gains can be of decent size (maybe +20 or +25).
• Clean: It's what it sounds like. You clean. This is one of those multi-part ones, where you need to do the same activity more than once. After you've cleaned three times, you finally finish cleaning your room and ... that's it. I didn't see any social stat gains and didn't get any messages about fatigue reduction, health improvement, or a bump in my condition. It seems that the cycle starts over after the third cleaning, and I didn't explore this one to the bitter end.
• Meditation: I didn't see any benefit to this beyond a tiny bit of fatigue reduction on the occasions when I fell asleep while Meditating. This may be another multi-part one but even after Meditating 10 times in a season I didn't reach enlightenment or have an epiphany. I was hoping that maybe I'd just have a flash of inspiration and acquire a Carry-Over Ability or something, but no. Maybe I wasn't properly contemplating my navel?
• Mobile Apps: This has three choices: Play a mobile game, Open the map app, and Scroll through social media. One of them has promise but underdelivers, and the others are simply underwhelming.
  • Play a mobile game: You play a gacha game and try to get a specific character. You have the illusion of choice in that you can choose to pull or not pull. When you finally get the character you're looking for (typically after spending three PGFAs on this), it's underwhelming as you get a health benefit and fatigue reduction.
  • Open the map app: This is basically a roulette version of Take a Stroll on a Free Day. You may discover a location in your current city, or you might not find anywhere noteworthy. In my testing I discovered new locations about 30% of the time. That's not a high success rate, especially since you're almost guaranteed to find a new location when you Take a Stroll on a Free Day.
  • Scroll through social media: You see that a teammate has posted something. You comment on it. Your teammate likes the comment. You get a bit of Initiative for doing this, but in smaller amounts than you'd get at (for example) the Arcade, and while it mentions a teammate, you don't actually see any increases in friendship level with any of your Player Relationships. Sometimes you'll get a message that one of your comments will go viral, and you'll get a big health and fatigue boost, and sometimes your comment will "blow up in a bad way" and you'll apologize to everyone but not suffer any other consequences.

So after exploring the PGFA mechanism for several days (real-life days, not in-game days :)), and discovering quite a few things I didn't know about, I feel like I've come full circle. Despite the incredible variety of activities and options, I still feel that the best use of PGFAs is for Hobbies and stat boosts. In a pinch you can relieve a lot of fatigue and if you get bored with just going to the Movie Theater or reading books every time, you can spice things up by opening the map app or whatever. But if you're trying to be efficient, you should stick to Hobbies and the primary Other locations like the Movie Theater.

This is the last major guide I'm going to do for Star Player (I say "major" because I want to do guide 7B for the Pitcher Carry-Over Abilities). At this point I've covered absolutely everything I wanted to do, and I hope that I've helped folks in this community enjoy this game even more!

There's a banner hanging in the roof of the Belluna Dome (Seibu's home stadium) indicating where Alex Cabrera hit a 180m blast back in 2005. Everyone marvels over a towering home run like Cabrera's, but you don't get bonus runs for distance. So I wanna flip the script: I'm curious what your SHORTEST home runs are. So far I've managed a 102m poke off the base of the foul pole in Hiroshima. From my research it looks like the shortest distance down any foul line in NPB is 97.5m in Meiji Jingu (Yakult's home stadium). I would love to get a home run under 100m. Has anyone done that?

https://preview.redd.it/owhz86agtmjh1.png?width=485&format=png&auto=webp&s=1130071b38270b497d22eec5eb113bda65def632

Added the above image in honor of u/SnakesRewind31 :)

Update 1: Getting reports that people are unable to find the Movie Theater right away in pathway 2 (completionist). I'm looking into it, but the current working theory is that you need to visit the Video Store, purchase the Home Theater Kit and all the movies you can, then take invite a teammate from the top team out and watch a movie with him. You will need at least one post-game free action and one Free Day to do this, which shifts everything to the right. You will more than make up the time, so this is a sequencing issue, not a significant rework.

----------------------------

Here it is, folks: version 1 of my optimized Star Player build order. Or build orders, plural, because as you'll see, there are two pathways. And no, I don't mean one for fielders and another for fielders. While I've typically focused on fielders, the guidance should apply equally to pitchers (and two-way players). Instead, here by pathways I mean two different build orders based on what YOU want to get out of your career.

If you're planning on using this guide, you need to ask yourself an important question right away: what do I want to get out of this career? Do you want to maximize your playing stats right away to get to S-tier for everything? Or do you want to experience everything to the maximum? This will determine which of the two pathways you should take. I'm calling these pathways the "fast ramp" and "completionist" and you can probably guess why.

I'm also going to try not to repeat things I've covered in my other guides. I'm not going to deep dive on every Carry-Over Ability, every Non-Player Relationship, all the Restaurants and Other locations, and so on. There are times when I'll need to refer to them, but I don't want you to have to wade through tons of content to get to the optimizations. Search this subreddit for "Star Player Guide #" to see all the other stuff I've written on this wonderful game mode.

For the purposes of this guide, I'm assuming that you're starting with a player you've created in Star Player and not one you've created in Spirits and imported into Star Player. I also have a bias towards using a high school player instead of college, corporate, or independent ball. Your base stats will be higher if you choose something other than a high school player, but the general flow of the two pathways doesn't fundamentally change--you'll simply reach thresholds a little faster.

Last, this is version 1. I will update and revise it based on my upcoming playthroughs and feedback from others. I actively encourage people to chime in on this!

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PATHWAY 1: FAST RAMP

The goal in this pathway is to secure top team status for your player as quickly as possible and then enable him to gain all desired Carry-Over Abilities and maximize player attributes to S-tier (90+). This pathway pushes the vast majority of content, including the majority of Non-Player relationships and Stats building, to the right. This is best for players who do not intend to play more than three or four years in their career. You will miss out on nearly all side content (meaning stuff that doesn't happen in the baseball games themselves) in this pathway.

When you start:

• From the Prospi Shop in the main menu, purchase 10 Special Training tickets, 10 Gold Bars, and as many Fatigue Drinks as you can afford (up to 30).
• Set your three training options to All-Around Training, Focused Batting, and Focused Defense. Use all 10 Special Training tickets immediately.
• Use all 10 of your Gold Bars so that you have 100,000,000 yen.
• Review the Carry-Over Abilities list to determine which ones you want to collect for your player and make a separate list that you can access during your playthrough.
• On your first Free Day in your home city, save your game and then Take a Stroll. Your goal is to discover a specific location (Karaoke) and one of three restaurants: the Ramen Restaurant, the Yakiniku Restaurant, or the Sushi Restaurant. Quit and restore until you discover one of those four. You will be relying on this restaurant for fatigue reduction and the Karaoke spot for Carry-Over Manuals.
• Use your next Free Day to discover whichever location (Karaoke or a restaurant) you didn't discover during your first Free Day.
• On your next (third) Free Day, go to the Car Dealership and purchase the Japanese Car, Luxury Car, and Ultra Luxury Car to add nine teammates to your Player Relationships list.
• On your first post-game free action, go to the Sporting Goods Store and buy 99 of the Power Bat, 99 of the Speed Cleats, and 99 of the Fielding Affinity Glove. Purchase the Pitching Robot #1 Training equipment. Before you begin your next game, make sure to equip the Bat, Cleats, and Glove.
• On all subsequent PGFAs in your home city, go to the Karaoke location when offered (usually weekend nights). If it's not offered, select Talk to Player and choose any option. You receive a Carry-Over Manual after every five visits to Karaoke, and talking to players will improve your relationship with them and make it easier to maximize their friendship and thus gain Carry-Over Abilities or Practice EXP.
• On all PGFAs in away cities, either go to the Gyudon Restaurant to relieve fatigue or select Talk to Player and choose any option, like the above.
• Accept all invitations from teammates, both before and after games, to maximize friendships and minimize the number of times you need to meet with them.
• On all Free Days until 05/01/2026 and all home Free Days afterward, invite teammates on the top team to practice with you. Choose teammates whose rating is no more than 100 points higher than yours for now. Make sure to select teammates, not opposing players, and specifically those from the top team, not the farm team. Choose teammates with whom you've already developed a relationship and if you can find one that you can complete right away, choose that person first. Alternate between taking desirable Carry-Over Abilities and Practice EXP.
• After you unlock Ken Yano, the Baseball Data Corp. Employee, on 05/01/2026, prioritize him on every away Free Day. Make sure that you do NOT have a Carry-Over set when you visit him so that you receive Practice EXP instead of EXP towards your Carry-Over. Remember to set your Carry-Over again once you've visited Ken. You will need to visit Ken a lot until you maximize his skill Getting to Know Yourself, but you will receive Practice EXP on every visit and when you maximize it you'll start getting Carry-Over Abilities as well.
• When you unlock Isao Tsukada, the Athletic Brand Employee, at Star Level 40, alternate visits to Ken Yano and Tsukada until you've leveled Tsukada up to level 5. Your goal is to get 20xx Model Bat, Cleats, and Glove from him and advance his Maintenance skill. You can get new Bats, Cleats, and Gloves from him even if the others haven't broken. Equip these as you receive them for their significant skills bonuses. Once you've leveled Tsukada up to level 5, return to visiting Yano with every away Free Day visit.
• When you earn enough money to buy the Apartment (200,000,000 yen), visit the Real Estate location on any Free Day and purchase it. On your next PGFA, visit the Sporting Goods Store and buy additional Training Equipment (your choice).
• When you earn enough money to buy the House (400,000,000 yen), do so as well, then on your next PGFA visit the Sporting Goods Store and purchase the remaining Training Equipment.

At this point you will have maximized your early-game attribute improvement machinery. You'll have enhanced your current attributes with upgraded gear, grown those attributes through Ken Yano and friendship boosts, and acquired numerous Carry-Over Abilities from Karaoke and eventually from Ken. You won't have improved your Communication, Critical Thinking, or other attributes, and you won't be able to meet all of the other non-players, but you'll be able to meet and date the three girlfriend candidates. If you decide to continue your playthrough and tackle some of the other content, you'll do so from a strong playing foundation but you will have to catch up on the social side, especially with the other NPCs. Unfortunately, the pathways are different enough early enough that I can't just say "jump into the completionist pathway at step 12 and continue from there".

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PATHWAY 2: COMPLETIONIST

This pathway is designed for people who want to do and experience everything in the game. Be warned: this is a serious time commitment! It will take you close to 20 seasons to complete the Star Player tracker, get every attribute to 99, every Stat to 10, and all the Hobbies to 10.

When you start:

• From the Prospi Shop in the main menu, purchase 10 Special Training tickets, 10 Gold Bars, and as many Fatigue Drinks as you can afford (up to 30).
• Set your three training options to All-Around Training, Focused Batting, and Focused Defense. Use all 10 Special Training tickets immediately.
• Use all 10 of your Gold Bars so that you have 100,000,000 yen.
• On your first Free Day in your home city, save your game and then Take a Stroll. Your goal is to discover two specific locations (Movie Theater and Event Hall) and one of three restaurants: the Ramen Restaurant, the Yakiniku Restaurant, or the Sushi Restaurant. Quit and restore until you discover one of those four. You will be relying on this restaurant for fatigue reduction, the Movie Theater for general Stats growth, and the Event Hall for Creativity and three NPC unlocks.
• Use your next Free Day to discover another location (Movie Theater/Event Hall or a restaurant) you didn't discover during your first Free Day.
• Use your next (third) Free Day to discover the last remaining required location.
• On your next (fourth) Free Day, go to the Car Dealership and purchase the Japanese Car, Luxury Car, and Ultra Luxury Car to add nine teammates to your Player Relationships list. This will also enable you to be ready to date Ano, Risa, or Runa when you're ready.
• On your first post-game free action, go to the Sporting Goods Store and buy 99 of the Power Bat, 99 of the Speed Cleats, and 99 of the Fielding Affinity Glove. Purchase the Pitching Robot #1 Training equipment, Golfing Set, and Fishing Rod as well. Before you begin your next game, make sure to equip the Bat, Cleats, and Glove.
• On your next post-game free action, go to the Bookstore and buy every book that's available. Before you exhaust your supply of books, make a trip to the Bookstore to buy the newly-offered ones. When you have finished all of your books, switch to Movies, then CDs, and then Video Games.
• On all subsequent PGFAs in your home city, go to the Movie Theater location and select a movie, prioritizing ones you haven't seen yet that month. Always buy the Pamphlet to maximize your Stats gain.
• On all PGFAs in away cities, either go to the Gyudon Restaurant to relieve fatigue if needed or Read a Book. Prioritize books which grant Creativity bonuses to speed up the Event Hall NPC unlocks.
• On any remaining Free Days until 05/01/2026 and all home Free Days afterward, visit the Event Hall to boost your Creativity. You want to get to level 8 and unlock the Teacher, Artist, and especially the Consultant.
• Once you have unlocked the Artist and Consultant, alternate Free Days to maximize their friendships to level 10 as quickly as possible. This will speed up Hobby and social stats growth considerably.
• When you earn enough money to buy the Apartment (200,000,000 yen), visit the Real Estate location on any Free Day and purchase it. On your next PGFA, visit the Sporting Goods Store and buy additional Training Equipment (your choice).
• When you earn enough money to buy the House (400,000,000 yen), do so as well, then on your next PGFA visit the Sporting Goods Store and purchase the remaining Training Equipment.
• In your first two offseasons, use every Free Day to take a teammate Golfing or Fishing. You will not be able to maximize either of these Hobbies in a single offseason.

This will set you on a path to maximize the social stat gains (Communication, Intelligence, etc.), make good progress on your Hobbies, and make solid progress on your player attributes as well. The remaining activities can be done in any order once you've completed the above list:

• Unlock all remaining NPCs by increasing your Intelligence, Critical Thinking, and Communication to level 5 and by reaching Star Player level 40. Maximize them at your own pace while completing other activities in this list.
• Use Free Days in your home city to discover the remaining Restaurants and Other Locations. It's up to you if you want to do the same for your league rivals. Note that because there are more than 15 locations and you play interleague games away every other year, you won't be able to unlock every location in every city in a playthrough.
• Meet the three girlfriend candidates at Star Player levels 10, 15, and 20. See my separate Star Player guide for dating guidance. There are only two events in the tracker related to dating, for getting a girlfriend and then marrying her.
• Maximize friendships with 50 players and acquire 10 or more Carry-Over Abilities from them for two more Star Player tracker items. Once you've collected all your desired Carry-Over Abilities, collect the Practice EXP boost from players. If your goal is to maximize every player attribute, you'll be spending nearly every Free Day for five or more seasons on this.
• Visit the Hardware Store and purchase the Cooking Set to unlock Cooking as a hobby.
• During the season, prioritize friendships with teammates on the top team so that you can choose specific sub-activities (individual books, meals, sports, etc.). Maximize every other Hobby (Watching Sports, Karaoke, etc.) before then switching to reading, watching a movie, playing a game, or listening to music with players. Continue this even after you maximize those Hobbies and even if the other player has a specific interest in a different Hobby. [You complete 12.5% of a book/movie/CD/video game each time you enjoy it with a teammate, and this can add up over a season.]
• During the offseason, you can choose sub-activities with players on other teams and on your team's farm team as well.
• While the Movie Theater is the best all-purpose location for stat gains, if you're trying to maximize a specific skill, these are the best locations for each:
  • Intelligence: ESL School (Free Days). Watch your fatigue when you attend ESL School!
  • Initiative: Arcade (PGFAs and Free Days), Fishing Pond (Free Days)
  • Communication: ESL School (Free Days). Watch your fatigue when you attend ESL School!
  • Critical Thinking: Game Cafe (PGFAs and Free Days)
  • Creativity: Event Hall (Free Days)
• When you finally maximize all your player statistics, have maximized every Hobby, have maximized every Non-Player Relationship, and have maximized all your social stats, you can use Free Days to complete books, movies, CDs, and video games by going into Private Life > Items and then selecting the item. You'll interact with it the same as if you were interacting during a post-game free action (~30% clear).

You will reach Star Player level 100 before you complete every activity in the tracker. You are likely to finish the Hobby Items tracker last, as it requires you to finish every book, movie, CD, and video game. This guide assumes that you're making consistent progress towards the gameplay tracker items like "hit X home runs" and "steal X bases in a season".

By following this second path, you'll see the "best" version of every Star Player event like the TV quiz show, baseball camp, fans in the stadium, fans in the park, and more.

I hope this guide helps you on your Star Player journey, and I welcome all feedback, corrections, and suggestions for improvement.

Play ball!

Hey everyone! Not a guide this time, but a collection of random things I've noticed across my testing and playtime in Star Player (260+ hours and counting!). They're mostly curiosities rather than important notes. Enjoy!

• Regardless of how many restaurants you've discovered in a particular city, you only ever visit the Izakaya with teammates and/or your manager. This is true even if you haven't actually discovered the Izakaya location in that city.
• If you level up an attribute via Practice EXP from Ken Yano, you don't get an indication in his dialogue. You have to discover it by looking at Training > View EXP after your visit.
• Your pre-match conversations with the manager and teammates are only partly influenced by your Communication score. The higher it goes, the less chance you have of explaining things badly to teammates, but you will still regularly throw off their concentration. Even at max Communication (level 10), I'm still making Shirakawa and Fujikawa and everyone lose their focus. They must dread seeing me approach them in the locker room!
• If you meet with a player, choose a hobby, and then select an item you've already finished, you'll give it to the other player and remove it from your inventory. For example, if I've finished the book "The Grief Counselor" and then I meet with Beppu and choose to read it with him, the dialogue says I rave about my favorite book and then give it to him so he can enjoy it. It's removed from your inventory and you can actually buy it again from the Bookstore. It retains its completion percentage when it returns to your inventory.
• When you finish every item in a hobby category, that category disappears from the post-game free actions menu when you return home. I've finished all the books, and "Read a book" no longer appears as the first choice after "Rest".
• If you get just the right angle, it's possible to hit home runs out of the Belluna Dome in Saitama on the fly. It's tough to do and there's a lot of RNG to it, but if you get a launch angle around 27 degrees and a distance of around 145m, the arc and distance is just right to hit one of those exposed areas in left-center and right-center field. I've done it two or three times and it's a weird thrill to do so.
• If you've made friends with every player in your team's system (top and farm), the "player to be introduced" area on player cards in the Private Life > Player Relationships section will just read "No". :)
• If you choose to turn down a teammate's dinner challenge, the dialogue says that you and he talked it over and decided to just split the bill, and then you go to dinner normally (and you pay the usual 50,000 yen).
• NPB teams sometimes play in regional locations, and I've played in local stadiums in other areas like Niigata and Matsuyama (Botchan Stadium). The splash screens will have pictures too. I don't remember what Niigata's was but Matsuyama's was of a huge bridge spanning the Seto Inland Sea (it was probably the Akashi Strait Bridge). The NPB All Star games will occasionally be in other locations as well.
• The player in the SECOM ad in right-center of the Tokyo Dome is NPB legend Nagoshima Shigeo, who's known as "Mr. Baseball" in Japan. He and Oh Sadaharu were the core of the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants during their heyday in the 1960s.

What interesting stuff have YOU discovered in your playthroughs?

"I keep telling you, my name isn't Purosupi!"

We've all been there, at least those of us playing with Japanese commentary. You've set your name correctly in the Player/Called Name Settings and Josh Lewin gets it right, but the Japanese announcers keep calling you "Prospi" (or rather "Purosupi"). It's frustrating and unclear and the good news is that this guide will help you resolve it! [Assuming of course that you want to use a normal Japanese name! :)]

The root of the problem is that the Japanese commentators take their setting from a menu that's simply not exposed in the English UI. You have to temporarily switch to the Japanese UI to see it, and once you do, you need to understand how to actually manage it. The game tells you this if you switch to Japanese audio, but it doesn't tell you how to fix it beyond just changing the language.

https://preview.redd.it/d8rhmwex01ih1.jpg?width=2564&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0543a1fb16e172f9d2b9d2fc761e66367e03e2e7

Before you do anything in the game, though, you need to do a little research. It is waaaay beyond the scope of this guide to explain how the Japanese language works, but for our purposes you want to know what your desired name is in hiragana. In this guide I'm going to use the character I just created whose last name is Ohshima. If you run this through a hiragana name translator like https://japanese-names.info/ (I am not affiliated with this site), it'll show you what the hiragana characters will be. You will need this, so take a picture with your phone, bookmark the page, write it down, or whatever. In my case, the translator says it's おおしま. It will also help you if you go into the English name picker for the PA announcer and see if your name is listed and if so if there are any players on other teams using it. This can help you make sure you have the right name later. In my case, there's a player on the Chunichi Dragons named Ohshima.

Now that you have your translated name, you're ready to begin. Go to the main screen for Prospi 2026 and select X/Square to access Language & Units.

https://preview.redd.it/cufxh0x5x0ih1.jpg?width=2556&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=98f8473b8526526ffd0e7ac226c6697189836a36

This will take you to a menu where you can change the language. Japanese is the option at the top. Select this and press A/X then select whichever units of measure you want. It won't matter what you choose because we're not going to ac tually play any games, just access a menu.

https://preview.redd.it/orolpceex0ih1.jpg?width=2563&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dc2b5cee83e99515a7d7daeb17d84ad1ce88aa38

When you've done this, start the game as normal and select Star Player. The menus will be exactly the same as they were in English. If you've pinned Star Player to your shortcuts, select it there, or go into the menu at top right and select it there. [While you're on the main menu page, notice that the Japanese version of the game gets a nifty News pane which talks about daily challenges and stuff. I hope Konami localizes that in a future update!]

https://preview.redd.it/q7c8u92lx0ih1.jpg?width=2567&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ae3827076c31e226c800ad8477e58f05172954dd

Select Star Player and select the bottom option ("suzuki kara", or continue from here) to load your game.

https://preview.redd.it/lbwe3qyrx0ih1.jpg?width=2559&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b336c438c5ed733d171c2d2b833124a3df617fc2

Select the appropriate saved game and then select the left option ("hai", meaning yes).

https://preview.redd.it/afe1xvexx0ih1.jpg?width=2558&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dbbc8c1b3c8815d3ca51c18af749bb02d4d516c6

This will load the game exactly where you were when you last saved. Switching to Japanese doesn't do anything to your save beyond change the display language (as you'll see when you go to load it after you're done).

The menus will look the same but different. System is now "shisutemu" on the right, and User Settings is the second option down.

https://preview.redd.it/k3fb76o7y0ih1.jpg?width=2559&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d57ee1df901eecc4c259f4e616d03d6a48094cde

On the subsequent menu, you want to select the option third from the bottom, above the one labeled BGM.

https://preview.redd.it/jk3b60yay0ih1.jpg?width=2563&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1d094887320dc45b58dcef7613a2060f411a0348

The next page is the equivalent of the Player/XXX Settings page. Player/Called Name is the second option down.

https://preview.redd.it/466rpemey0ih1.jpg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=addaa7f2374e231ad5591c51fab7cb363415bddb

Select that and then choose your player, which should be very easy since it is likely to be the only name in Western characters on the page! [I didn't grab a screenshot of this step since it's self-explanatory.]

The next page is where you'll see the hidden "evidence" of why they keep calling you Purosupi. I'm calling this the "choice" page and you'll return to it when you finish correcting each of the names.

https://preview.redd.it/ob10pjymy0ih1.jpg?width=2557&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9359b5f4d249b507af632d3ccc8dc533fa91cd6d

The first line controls what the commentators call you, and the latter controls the PA name. Both of them currently read "Purosupi". We want to change both of these!

Select the first option first, to change the commentary name. This will bring up a new page that doesn't exist in the English menus, for pitch accents.

https://preview.redd.it/irzoyauzy0ih1.jpg?width=2559&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0398244a1a984b0ef9e62617309041a6d51e486

Select the option to the right of OK to open the keyboard, and you'll see this new page. If you don't know basic hiragana, this is going to be a game of matching symbols. Press X/Square to delete Purosupi and enter your name in hiragana.

https://preview.redd.it/0ecknvc2z0ih1.jpg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ae81bb2c8161181be8cc62dcde8795b738169db7

Here's what it looks like after I entered Ohshima:

https://preview.redd.it/1akknshc11ih1.jpg?width=2561&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7416c7794c72541917a7efb73a958850ee19d762

When you're finished, select OK to get back to the pitch menu page and then press X/Square twice to hear how the commentator will say your name under normal and excited conditions. You don't need to do anything to the pitch accents if you don't want to. If it sounds good to you, click OK to return to the choice page. Select the second option to change the name the PA announcer uses.

https://preview.redd.it/752gxzo601ih1.jpg?width=2559&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d2408843f3141e557eea06f92a136d840bf1c4da

This one behaves a little differently. Here you just need to select the first kana in the translated name (I'm hovering over "o" in the screenshot above) and it'll open another menu with every name the game recognizes which starts with that kana. It can be a long list and it is in order, but if you don't know hiragana you won't really recognize the order. You'll have to do your best to scroll through the list to find the one you're looking for and then carefully match the characters. This is where finding a player in the league who uses your name can be super helpful, because it'll show a team logo and the kanji for the name on the right. That's the case for Ohshima, who as I mentioned before is a real player on the Chunichi Dragons. This means I know I found the right name!

https://preview.redd.it/rdugkn7n01ih1.jpg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=609fa984e256d47d20f385c14b8b2ee2d3085825

Once you've found the right name, you can press X/Square to hear how it's spoken by the announcer, and then click OK until you get back to the choice screen, where both lines should now show the corrected name.

https://preview.redd.it/kkmzb6yv11ih1.png?width=2566&format=png&auto=webp&s=7455cefef40a816c0d010655dd34515eda232828

If everything looks good here, click OK to return to the Player/XXX Settings menu and then B/Circle your way back to the main Star Player menu. Make sure to save your game before exiting Star Player mode! Once you've saved successfully (and it's the same interface as in English so you probably don't need screenshots for that), return to the Prospi 2026 splash screen, switch back to English, and re-enter Star Player mode. You'll notice that some elements of the save game's display have changed--the date and your position will have changed to Japanese characters, but your progress is unchanged within the save. [Those Japanese remnants will be overwritten the next time you save the game from the English UI.] But now the Japanese commentators will finally call you something other than Purosupi!

Hopefully this guide helps you enjoy this awesome game even more! Switching to Japanese audio helps with immersion but hearing Purosupi breaks that immersion, so I definitely want to help you fix that. If you run into any trouble, don't hesitate to ask for help. This community is fantastic and there are plenty of people who'll be able to help you out!

Note: I learned how to do this from two other members of the community, specifically u/A_Jar_Of_Vodka and u/Ieyasu1565. I don't know if they're the ones who figured it out, but they passed on the knowledge to me. I can take credit for documenting it in this post, but not for coming up with it myself. Just want to make sure that others get the credit they're due!

Update 1: I wrote a detailed guide for changing the Japanese commentary name as Star Player Guide #8 and added the link to item #10 below.

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New to Star Player? [If you are, welcome! You're gonna have fun!] Thinking of starting over? These are the top 10 things I wish I known before I'd started playing this awesome mode!

1. Set your birthday to something during the regular season. You get a "birthday boost" from your wife/girlfriend, but it only helps if it's during the regular season. But better still, you'll hear the stadium play "Happy Birthday" on your birthday (assuming it's a game day)!
2. Use your Special Training tickets right away. Don't hoard them for later. Buy them in the Prospi Shop before starting your Star Player journey. Use them as soon as you can.
3. Buy and use all of your Gold Bars right away as well. You can use 10 which will give you 100,000,000 yen and that can pay for all the bats, cleats, and gloves, your first training equipment, a car, and plenty of recovery meals.
4. In-game performance doesn't affect attribute growth. Only Practice EXP does. In-game performance affects manager trust and your salary, but your player only improves through training. So make sure you maximize the payoff! Always set your Training to Intense (but keep your fatigue below 30% to avoid injury). Training equipment like the Practice Swing Bat increases the amount of Practice EXP you get from any source, so invest in it early.
5. Take a Stroll early and often in your home city to discover important locations like the Movie Theater, Game Cafe, Manga Cafe, Arcade, Event Hall, Sushi Restaurant, and Ramen Restaurant. These provide important stat boosts to Communication, Creative Thinking, and Creativity as well as provide important fatigue and health recovery during the season. Other restaurants and locations provide benefits as well but these are the "best bang for your buck".
6. Never use Free Days for rest or trips to the shops. Do those at night after games. Use your Free Days on building relationships with players and non-players, Taking a Stroll to discover locations, or visiting important locations like the Event Hall.
7. Never visit the VP Shop inside your player career. You can get everything you need outside of your save, from the Prospi Shop on the main menu, and then access it from your inventory inside your save. Don't waste a Free Day or post-game free action when you don't need to!
8. Equipment can be the difference between struggling on the farm team and making an impact on the top team. Getting a supply of Power Bats (for power, obviously) and Speed Cleats (for Speed) can push your player from the "maybe" band to the "can't miss" band.
9. You can customize almost everything about your character during your career. The only things you can't change are your throwing arm, batting side, birthday, and hometown. You can change everything else, including your name. So don't fret if you didn't come up with the perfect batting stance, or that you couldn't get the face quite right. You can change all of those while he's playing.
10. If you're playing with Japanese audio, you can have the commentators call you by your correct name instead of "Prospi". To do so, you need to temporarily switch to Japanese language menus (from the main 2026 splash page) and go into the settings menu to your player and change the commentator and PA names. Once you do that, they'll call you by your correct name! I posted a detailed step-by-step solution with screenshots here: Star Player Guide #8 - Changing the Commentary Name in Japanese : r/EBaseballProspirit.
11. Because this list goes to 11! You can control whether or not famous former players are "regenerated" into Star Player. I first noticed this when a new player came into the league and just started tearing it up. It turns out he was Ogasawara Michihiro, a hero (pun fully intended) of the 2006 and 2009 Team Japan WBC teams. The game will add players from that era and earlier eras, including Oh Sadaharu (who is currently active in my save, playing for Lotte) via the draft. If you don't follow NPB then or now, you might not recognize these regens (I sure didn't!) and if you don't want them in your game at all, you can prevent them by going into System > Change Settings > Star Player Settings > Season, and then disabling Legacy Former Player and Legacy Pro Player.

I've tried to keep this short since I didn't want to write yet another novel, but u/realredpaz1 and I were talking about this kind of post and I wanted to get one out there since we see more and more new players every day.

If you are new, and have questions, don't hesitate to ask. This community is awesome and we all love to help out!

If you've been playing for a while, what are the tips YOU would share with new players?

Update 1: Marked EV King as acquirable via Ken Yano and added thresholds for S-tier skills now that I've seen one (Game Calling S). I never did see S-tier for Bunt, Durability, Run Maker, Running, or Steal, though.

Note: This is just the Compendium. I did a complete post on the whole Carry-Over Ability process earlier tonight. Check the other one out as well! :)

Including the Compendium as a table as a separate post. I know, it looks really ugly this way! But I know some people will want to search it so I'm including it separately. Enjoy!

Attribute	Type	Rating	Set Carry-Over Menu Description	Unlock EXP	Unlock Conditions	Notes
Bunt	Rating	G-E: - / D-S:+	G-E = Makes it harder to deaden the ball when bunting / D = Ability to deaden the ball when bunting reverts to normal / C-S = Makes it easier to deaden the ball when bunting	G-E: 50 / D: 60 / C: 150 / B: 300 / A: 600 / S: 900	E = Each failed bunt: +50 / C = Each successful sacrifice bunt +30
Durability	Rating	G-E: - / D-S:+	G-E = Greater chance of injury / D = Chance of injury is normal / C-S: Less chance of injury	G-E: 50 / D: 60 / C: 150 / B: 300 / A: 600 / S: 900	E = Each at-bat: +50 / D-S = Each at-bat: +2
Run Maker	Rating	G-E: - / D-S:+	G-E = Batting worsens with runners in scoring position / D = Batting is normal / C-S = Batting improves with RISP	G-E: 50 / D: 60 / C: 150 / B: 300 / A: 600 / S: 900	G-E = Strike out with RISP: +50 / D-S = Each hit with RISP: +10 / D-S = Each RBI: +5	Hits with multiple runners in scoring position grant +10 for the hit, plus +5 per RBI.
Running	Rating	G-E: - / D-S:+	G-E = Slows baserunning / D = Baserunning skill is normal / C-S = Improves baserunning	G-E: 50 / D: 60 / C: 150 / B: 300 / A: 600 / S: 900	G-E = Fail to get on base: +50 / D-S = Each extra-base hit: +15
Steal	Rating	G-E: - / D-S:+	G-E = Base stealing launch worsens / D = Base stealing launch average / C-S = Base stealing launch improves	G-E: 50 / D: 60 / C: 150 / B: 300 / A: 600 / S: 900	G-E = Failed steal attempt: +50 / D-S = Each attempted steal: +5 / D-S = Each successful steal: +10
Game Calling	Defense	G-E: - / D-S:+	Boosts Game Calling	G-E: 150D: 150C: 150B: 300A: 600S: 900	Appear as catcher when team wins: +30
All Fields	Batting	+	Opposite field hits retain their power		Each extra-base hit (double or more) opposite direction: +15	Cannot be combined with Pull Hitter or Push Hitter
AM Threat	General	+	Performs well in day games		Cannot be learned
Aura	Batting	+	Intimidates pitchers and reduces their performance (Requires Presence)	600	Each walk earned: +10 / Each home run: +10	Requires Presence
Ball Magnet	Batting	+/-	More likely to be hit by wild pitches	300	Each base reached by HBP: +100	Appears as “HBP”. Description: “More likely to be hit by a pitch on a mistake.”
Bunt Hunter	Fielding	+	Quick reaction to bunts by pitcher, first, or third baseman		Requires Pitcher, First, or Third Baseman Affinity	Implied by other skills
Bunt Hunter+	Fielding	+	Quick reaction to bunts by pitcher, first, or third baseman		Requires Pitcher, First, or Third Baseman Affinity	Does not require Bunt Hunter
Cannon Arm	Fielding	+	Delivers long throws with low trajectory (Requires OF Affinity + Laser Beam)	600	Appear as outfielder: +30	Requires OF Affinity + Laser Beam. Yellow background
Catalyst	Batting	+	Boosts batting power when pinch hitting	300	PA as pinch hitter: +10 / Reach base: +20 / RBI: +30	Appears as “Pinch Hitter”. Pinch-hit HR with 3 RBI = +110 EXP
Cleaner	Batting	+	Boost batting when bases are loaded		Each bases-loaded hit: +50
Clutch	Batting	+	Boosts batting during late-game opportunities to take the lead	600	Each game-winning RBI: +30
Clutch Hero	Batting	+	Boosts batting during late-game opportunities (Requires Clutch)	600	Each game-winning RBI: +30	Requires Clutch. Yellow background
Comeback	Batting	+	Increased power when trailing late
Disruptor	Baserunning	+	Forces catcher to fumble by charging home		Each run scored: +30	Never seen player force catcher drop ball
Easy Out	Batting	-	Reduced contact when behind in count			Replaces Tough Out. Appears as “Strikeouts”
EV King	Batting	+	Harder drives when hitting the sweet spot	600	Each home run: +15	Can only acquire from Ken Yano (Baseball Data Corp. Employee) after maxing his "Getting to Know Yourself" skill. Description on player reads "Hit speed increases when power swing is used". Yellow background.
Fearless	Baserunning	+	Slides headfirst when stealing		Game appearance: +30
Foul Shield	Batting	+	Ability to wait and swing late to foul off pitches		Each foul ball: +15 / Each fair ball: +10
Gold Glover	Fielding	+	Display masterful fielding		Game appearance: +30
Headfirst	Baserunning	+	Slides headfirst into first on close plays		Game appearance: +30
Home Keeper	Fielding	+	Reliable tagging to prevent runs			May require Catcher Affinity
Hot Hitter	Batting	+	Batting improves after two hits		Get 3+ hits in game: +50
Laser Beam	Fielding	+	Long throws with low trajectory (Requires OF Affinity)	300	Appear as outfielder: +30	Requires OF Affinity
Locked In	Batting	+	Batting improves with no strikes	300	Each first-strike hit: +15
Ninja	Baserunning	+	Sometimes avoid tags	300	Game appearance: +30	Never seen player dodge tag
PM Threat	General	+	Performs well in night games		Cannot be learned
Power Surge	Batting	+	Greatly boosts power after HR (Requires Power Up)	600	Hit 2+ HR in game: +100	Applies only to next PA. Yellow background
Power Up	Batting	+	Slightly boosts power after HR	300	Hit 2+ HR in game: +100	Applies only to next PA
Presence	Batting	+	Powerful presence pressures pitchers	300	Each walk: +10 / Each HR: +10
Prime Time	General	+	Performs well in high-stakes games		Cannot be learned	Can be added via Prime Time Cleats
Pull Hitter	Batting	+/-	Less likely to hook ball foul	300	Each pulled extra-base hit: +15	Cannot combine with All Fields or Push Hitter
Push Hitter	Batting	+	Less slicing on opposite-field hits	300	Each opposite-field hit: +15	Cannot combine with All Fields or Pull Hitter. Appears as “Push to Opposite Field”
Rally Hitter	Batting	+	Improves batting when trailing late	300	Each hit when losing: +10 / Each RBI when losing: +5
Table Setter	Batting	+	Batting improves when no runners	300	Each time reached base: +15
Takeoff	Baserunning	-	Quick acceleration enabling infield hits			Purple icon (likely error)
Takeoff+	Baserunning	+	Fast acceleration after hitting	300	Each infield hit: +50	Does not require Takeoff
Tough Out	Batting	+	Contact improves when behind in count	300	Each hit with two strikes: +15	Replaces Easy Out
VS Breaking	Batting	+	Harder drives vs breaking balls	300	Each breaking-ball hit: +15	Overwrites VS Fastball if learned after. Cannot be relearned.
VS Fastball	Batting	+	Harder drives vs fastballs	300	Each fastball hit: +15	Overwrites VS Breaking if learned after. Cannot be relearned.
Walk-Off	Batting	+	Boosts batting in walk-off opportunities	300	At-bat: +60 / Walk-off single: +90 / Walk-off HR: +150	Any non-HR hit counts as walk-off single (+90)
Wildcard	Batting	+	Produces unexpected performances	300	Each home run: +30	Description: “Unexpected power boost”
Grounder-Type Hitter	Trajectory	+	Batting type that hits balls low	300	Each hit: +15	Description: “Low trajectory, easy to roll”
High Trajectory	Trajectory	+	High trajectory batting type	300	Each hit: +15
Line Drive	Trajectory	+	Hard, low-trajectory drives without spin	300	Each hit: +15	Description: “Low angle, high speed, low spin, less affected by wind”
Low Trajectory	Trajectory	+	Low trajectory batting type	300	Each hit: +15	Description: “Common among contact hitters”
Mid Trajectory	Trajectory	+	Most common type	300	Each hit: +15	Appears as “Medium Trajectory”
Power Hitter	Trajectory	+	High-trajectory drives without spin	300	Each home run: +30	Not vulnerable to wind
Slugger	Trajectory	+	High trajectory, high spin	600	Each home run: +30	Great in domes. Can be added via “Artist” bat. Description: “High angle, high spin, beautiful arc — wind-sensitive.”

Update 1: After a tip from u/Extreme-Acadia5632, I did a lot of testing for Ken Yano and confirmed that you can learn Carry-Over Abilities from him including EV King which was previously thought to be unique to Ohtani Shohei. I've updated this guide and the companion compendium with this new information.

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Hey everyone ... I did another thing today. I did the first half of the Carry-Over Compendium, focused on fielding attributes. I do plan on doing one for the pitching attributes as well, but because more players (including me) focus on the batting side, it made sense to get this out first.

In this guide I'm going to (try to) do three things:

1. Explain what Carry-Over abilities are and outline how to acquire them
2. Explain how to have your Star Player learn them
3. Detail all of the possible Carry-Over abilities so that you can figure out which ones you want to seek out

That's a lot of content so this is going to be a long post. I hope you think it's worth the read!

Note: While the first two parts are pretty specific to Star Player, the compendium at the bottom should apply to every play mode, so there's actually something here for every player! I also posted the compendium separately as a markdown table which looks awful but is searchable. You can copy that content into Excel or whatever and make your own matrix!

Understanding and Acquiring Carry-Over Abilities

Carry-Over Abilities are those labels you see underneath the pitcher and batter during a game, and on the player cards when you look at them in menus. They're what make the players into unique individuals and give them characteristics that match their playstyles. And they're what you can use to build the player you want. You will actually start with a few when you create your player.

https://preview.redd.it/75mcxvaz6nhh1.png?width=612&format=png&auto=webp&s=dd2b971194c557deb9143bacc8499089313c0662

There are two main types of Carry-Over--Special Abilities and Trajectories. Although the game doesn't do this, it might be useful to mentally group Special Abilities into "lettered" ones (like Running C or Run Maker B) and "traits" (like Ninja or Fearless). All Carry-Overs have an influence on your player whether you're playing or simming and some of them will dramatically change your results!

If a Carry-Over is considered to be beneficial, it'll have a white background, and if it's considered to be negative, it'll have a black background. Some, like Fly Fisher in the screenshot above, have mixed results. They'll have that distinctive two-tone background. Similarly, when you see the Carry-Over Abilities on a player's card, good ones will have a pink icon (usually), bad ones a purple icon, and mixed ones a two-tone pink/purple icon.

https://preview.redd.it/tyct3ynoinhh1.png?width=1512&format=png&auto=webp&s=b9058b49ef3de2255a082af1ea860431cf47aea6

Once your player has been created, you can acquire Carry-Over Abilities and learn them by performing specific actions. There are two main ways of acquiring Carry-Over Abilities:

• Acquiring them from other players. This is the easiest, most common, and most accessible method for learning them. When you maximize your friendship with another player (teammate or from another team), you can choose to either learn a Carry-Over Ability or get a large boost of Practice EXP. If you choose to learn a Carry-Over Ability, you'll be presented with a choice of the Carry-Over Abilities your new BFF can teach you. This list won't include any abilities which you've already learned, but it may include ones which are worse than ones you already have. For example, if your player has Steal A, you could in theory acquire Steal D from a player. Not sure why you'd want to, but hey, you do you. :)

https://preview.redd.it/q8fioai18nhh1.png?width=2564&format=png&auto=webp&s=d60940d54cb6d53b6d445fead50dd5309716ba1f

• You can also acquire Carry-Over Manuals from the Batting Cage (upon successfully completing a One-Hit Challenge) and from Karaoke (after every five visits). When you receive a Carry-Over Manual, it'll be stored in your inventory, which you can access via Private Life > Items > Carry-Over. [Side note: Part of me wonders if it's possible to get AM Threat, Prime Time, and PM Threat from Karaoke. There are different songs, and it takes five visits, so maybe if I carefully track which song combination I selected and which Carry-Over Manual I got, I could work ou- ... no, no, that's too much testing and math. I can't go down that road! :)]

https://preview.redd.it/sokjon2k9nhh1.png?width=2559&format=png&auto=webp&s=a66b8f0413a2cc90431ddb61034447ab48880de7

https://preview.redd.it/xbfnkkhi9nhh1.png?width=2565&format=png&auto=webp&s=2c51fdb94e4fa63c6767aad4c28de398fb5eef85

You can also "acquire" some Carry-Over Abilities via equipment. When you equip the Hit For Average Bat, you're adding the Consistent Carry-Over Ability to your list of active abilities. This is a really useful way of gaining the benefit of a specific ability, but it's tied to the equipment--when it breaks, you lose the ability. However, in one special case (the Prime Time Cleats), it's the only way to actually gain that particular skill, so it's worth remembering this. [You can find a list of all of the equipment in Star Player Guide #5 - Attribute Progression : r/EBaseballProspirit.]

Last, you can also acquire Carry-Over Abilities directly from Ken Yano, the Baseball Data Corp. Employee. This is probably best saved for the middle game, after you've maximized the other NPCs, discovered all the locations in your home city, and maximized friendships with players. You need to maximize the Getting to Know Yourself skill, which takes a long time. In my testing it took at least 25 visits after I had maximized his friendship. As you improve Getting to Know Yourself, you'll expand the range of Carry-Over Abilities that he can help you with, so you can level up Carry-Over Abilities with every visit. If you don't have a Carry-Over Ability set, you'll get practice EXP. Once you finally maximize Getting to Know Yourself, on the next visit he'll say something about learning new skills:

https://preview.redd.it/bz5odkj5lshh1.png?width=2565&format=png&auto=webp&s=c6f208d9a690a8dedd8958255dfbf0e67344b546

This is the indication that you'll learn Carry-Over skills on future visits. It won't happen with every visit, but it was pretty consistent. He will only teach you skills you don't already know, similar to how the Candidate List works when you're acquiring Carry-Over Ability from players during the max friendship events. This does mean you'll acquire ones that are lower-tier than ones you already have or which don't apply because of fielding position. The more Carry-Over Abilities you've already learned, the fewer choices he'll have to choose from, which means that you'll be able to get him to teach you this:

https://preview.redd.it/485pvdujlshh1.png?width=2563&format=png&auto=webp&s=ebc303aa1f7cdcf4e748bd8ea28548c20e92b477

This appears to be the only way to acquire EV King in Star Player.

Important note: You can acquire Carry-Over Abilities at any time, but that doesn't mean you'll be able to learn it. Some Carry-Over Abilities require that you've learned a precursor ability or have upgraded one to a specific level. You can't learn Clutch Hero unless you've already learned Clutch, and you can't learn Bunt B unless you've already learned Bunt C (and you can't learn Bunt C unless you've learned Bunt D, and so on). If you're trying to acquire a Carry-Over Ability which has a prerequisite, the game will let you know right then and there:

https://preview.redd.it/kaje7z7vdnhh1.png?width=1284&format=png&auto=webp&s=ae1304cac7b871149305a72896edd1d15a8056c2

You shouldn't let this stop you, though. You might not be able to learn it right away, but you can acquire them in any order. If your grand plan for your player involves him having Durability A, and he currently has Durability E, then you know you're going to want Durability D, Durability C, Durability B, and Durability A. You can acquire them in any order you want--you just won't be able to learn them out of order.

Last but certainly not least, there are some ultra-rare Carry-Over Abilities which you simply cannot acquire from other players. You learn one (Fan's Star, which shows up on the AI tab of your player) when you reach Star Player level 100 but there are at least three others which will never be offered in the Candidate List. They are:

• AM Threat
• PM Threat
• Prime Time

You'll occasionally see teammates and opposing players with these three, and you can actually acquire Prime Time through equipment as mentioned above.

Learning Carry-Over Abilities

Once you've acquired a Carry-Over Ability, you can (hopefully) start learning it by going to the Training menu and selecting Carry-Over Settings. On the following page, you can select from any of the Carry-Over Abilities you've acquired and begin to actively learn it.

https://preview.redd.it/h3t3drc2anhh1.jpg?width=2566&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bd90608c5c375cf185cd102ab747ae1002e7467c

As I mentioned earlier, Carry-Over Abilities are divided into two types: Special Abilities and Trajectories. You can switch between them by pushing left or right on the D-pad. Carry-Over Abilities you've already learned will be greyed out with a yellow check mark (e.g. Table Setter), and ones you've already learned but have upgraded (like Durability C) will have green "restart" circles in case you want to relearn them. This is mostly useful if you want to change your Trajectory back to one you used before. Carry-Over Abilities you haven't learned are simply white boxes with black text.

The most common way you'll learn a Carry-Over Ability is by performing tasks in-game. The easiest to achieve are game appearances and at-bats, but some are harder to achieve because they're tied to very specific circumstances. For example, to acquire the Walk-Off Carry-Over Ability, you need to come to bat in a walk-off situation (where your team would win immediately if they score a run).

While in-game performance is the most common way, it's not the only way. There are three other ways to gain the experience needed to learn a Carry-Over Ability:

1. If you get a Carry-Over Manual for a skill you've already acquired but haven't fully learned, set the ability as your active Carry-Over and then open the manual. You'll gain EXP towards it.
2. You can buy Carry-Over Tickets from the Prospi Shop and use up to 10 of them in a single player career. Each ticket will grant you 10% of the necessary EXP to learn a skill, so you could use all 10 to learn a skill as soon as you load it. My recommendation is to only do this for skills which you simply cannot do otherwise. I wouldn't use them for ones that are merely time-consuming (like the Durability line) rather than difficult.
3. The Baseball Data Corp. Employee, Ken Yano, grants EXP towards Carry-Over Abilities, but I've found him to be somewhat hit and miss. I haven't tested it exhaustively but it seems that he can only grant EXP once per Carry-Over Ability and he can't grant it for some of the situation-based ones. If you try to use Ken Yano for this, I'd strongly recommend saving first and using the Free Day for something else if he can't help you. As mentioned in his description, he grants more EXP as he levels up, but he grants EXP towards Carry-Over Abilities on every visit, not just ones where he ranks up. [Assuming, that is, he actually can provide EXP for the skill you want to acquire ...]

Of course, I'm assuming here that you've been able to actually set the Carry-Over Ability. If you try to set a Carry-Over Ability when you don't meet the prerequisites, the game simply won't allow it. Here's an example using my own player--I have Bunt D but not Bunt C, and I'm trying to load Bunt B.

https://preview.redd.it/pl98vkgienhh1.png?width=2567&format=png&auto=webp&s=b16e74cf6974fef454cbaa7551e1ced2ffb9632d

It's a good idea to always have an active Carry-Over Ability (assuming it's one you want), even if it's not your priority at the moment. The game will helpfully remind you if you haven't set a Carry-Over Ability:

https://preview.redd.it/lirga4jdfnhh1.png?width=1187&format=png&auto=webp&s=80a34012cb157245e2535386063ebfad7550d5e3

Note that it will do this even if you can't actually learn it at the moment. The only new Carry-Over I could learn is Bunt A, but I don't meet the prerequisites as you saw above.

It's important to note that while you're learning a Carry-Over Ability, the game acts as if you already have it. This is especially important when you're trying to do something which goes against your current player attributes, like trying to hit opposite field hits when you're a pull hitter. If you're trying to learn All Fields, while you have that Carry-Over Ability set, you'll perform in game like you already have it.

Carry-Over Compendium

I'm sure that a good portion of readers probably knew everything in the previous sections and just wanted to get to this part: the list of Carry-Over Abilities. I'm still collecting information on them and will update this list as I get more information. [My challenge is that I have nearly every desirable Carry-Over Ability on my primary playthrough so have already met the requirements and you don't see them once they're met!]

One note regarding the "lettered" items (Durability, Bunt, et al.): I have never actually seen an S rating out there except for Game Calling. I've seen 20 or so G ratings, so I know there are players out there with legendarily poor bunting skills, but I've never seen someone with Bunt S or Run Maker S. Everything suggests that there should be, but I've never seen one. If you have, please send me a screenshot so I can include it!

I've grouped the Carry-Over Abilities into six sets just to make it easier. They are:

• Baserunning
• Batting
• Fielding
• General
• Ratings (the "lettered" items)
• Trajectory

They'll appear here in that order. I'm doing them as a series of screenshots because when I entered them initially as a table it looked horrible. Click the images to see the full size.

The columns are relatively straightforward, with the possible exception of "Rating". This represents the color of the icon--the Rating will be + if it's pink, - if it's purple, and +/- if it's two-toned.

Baserunning

https://preview.redd.it/v00fviycjnhh1.png?width=2483&format=png&auto=webp&s=66777650c933826598eede2c8631489898606702

Batting (two images)

https://preview.redd.it/b8zdleuxlshh1.png?width=2485&format=png&auto=webp&s=a0d2af7db130894d00f875a2738939505944bc76

https://preview.redd.it/y70mz530mshh1.png?width=2484&format=png&auto=webp&s=52b705025577a36fc572b911a294973567e9a4b7

Fielding

https://preview.redd.it/63ufg8vjjnhh1.png?width=2482&format=png&auto=webp&s=f511afd1e98a8332d865612b9b31a57e5c99c570

General

https://preview.redd.it/24kqsg3mjnhh1.png?width=2485&format=png&auto=webp&s=f99f955a3cb6f346c8f33ccd4739a6c66389464b

Rating

https://preview.redd.it/kezn4h9ojnhh1.png?width=2483&format=png&auto=webp&s=c1ef914404e2f8ba36db150531869df63433db59

Trajectory

Note that players can have only one Trajectory. You can learn all of them but learning any of them overwrites the existing one.

https://preview.redd.it/269xjcyujnhh1.png?width=2484&format=png&auto=webp&s=621c7af5d8e278df0dd1ee05715916b3992e57d2

And there you have it: my complete guide on Carry-Over Abilities! I hope it helps your Star Player become the player you want him to be!

Note: Uhhh I can't count. This is actually guide #6. :)

Hey everyone! Work in progress here on the Restaurant options in Star Player mode. Like everything else in Star Player, this is an incredibly rich and complex system and this is not going to be exhaustive. I'm taking shortcuts to get the content out there. This is part of the larger post-game free actions guide I mentioned yesterday.

The big takeaway is that there are three different restaurants that give extremely high fatigue reduction. They are the Ramen Restaurant (max of 38%), the Sushi Restaurant (max of 40% or higher), and the Yakiniku Restaurant (also 40% or higher). I have to say "40% or higher" because I did my testing with 40% fatigue. I just don't know how high those go. The Ramen Restaurant is actually exceptional value--you get 38% reduction with the Tonkotsu Ramen and Fried Chicken set and it's only 6,000 yen. [Side note, tonkotsu is my favorite ramen style! :)]

The challenge in testing these is that nearly every restaurant has multiple options, and your selection influences cost, fatigue reduction, and price. The Max Cost in the table below reflects the maximum cost I discovered by playing around with options, but I didn't try every option in every location. That would just take waaaaay too much time, and it didn't seem to be worth it.

I wasn't able to really quantify the health (status) improvements as part of this. I have some data but left it out of this preliminary guide because I'm not comfortable making pronouncements about how much health the Gyudon Restaurant (for example) gives back.

At any rate, here's the current table. Please provide feedback if you see any errors or if you know a specific combination at a restaurant grants a higher fatigue reduction. Like I said, I wasn't going to play combinatorial mathematician today and test every possible combination at every restaurant. :)

Also, side note, thanks to the mods for adding Flair. This is my first post with the Star Player tag!

Restaurant	Max Cost	Max Fatigue Reduction	Notes
Burger Restaurant	1,000	8%	Available in every city by default
Café	2,000	13%	Not open at night
Chinese Restaurant	3,000	22%
Curry Restaurant	5,000	16%
Gyudon Restaurant	4,000	24%	Available in every city by default
Izakaya	10,000	20%
Japanese Restaurant	2,000	6%	Aren't most of the others Japanese?
Okonomiyaki Restaurant	5,000	26%
Ramen Restaurant	6,000	38%	Best value for fatigue reduction. Get the Tonkotsu Ramen and Fried Chicken for highest fatigue reduction.
Soba Restaurant	2,000	4%
Sushi Restaurant	100,000	55%	No menu options (omakase style). Price varies based on chef selection, ranging from 80,000 to 100,000. Highest fatigue reduction of any known restaurant.
Udon Restaurant	2,000	25%
Western-style Restaurant	5,000	26%
Yakiniku Restaurant	50,000	51%	Get the Premium Galbi Meal for the highest fatigue reduction.

Hey everyone ... After having whipped out a bunch of guides last week, I still haven't exhausted all the things I've documented and wanted to put out there. Since you guys seem to like what I'm doing, I wanted to share the plans for the next few weeks. I do want to stress that I am 100% focusing on Star Player for now so while I'd love to do guides for other modes, I won't get to them for at least a little while.

Here's what I'm planning:

• A Carryover Compendium and guide. I'll document all the known Carryover abilities, along with explanations of what they do and unlock criteria. I'll also include tips and tricks on acquiring, combining, and maximizing them. I've posted here and there on them but this guide will bring everything together in one place.
• A Post-Game Free Actions (PGFA) guide. I've covered the locations and did a time management guide, but I haven't actually posted about the other things you can do at night beyond the Hobbies and the Other locations. There's more options besides just those, and so I'm going to document them so you know what's possible.
• Some kind of optimized build guide. Again, I've touched on this topic in the time management guide, but I want to do something on "this is the most efficient path and use of PGFAs and Free Days to maximize your player as quickly as possible". I'm into my 14th pro season with my primary playthrough and want to get him past Mainstay Regular status before I start over, but when I do I'll be field-testing my optimization strategies for attribute, Carryover, stats, NPC relationships, and more.

I'm also partnering with u/RealRedPaz1 on all of this--I'll continue writing here and he'll continue doing content on YouTube, and we're cross-referencing and coordinating on our content. We'll reach more people that way and drive more community engagement.

If there's a huge demand for a particular guide I haven't listed above, please let me know in the comments! Again, I'm just doing guides for Star Player right now, so I'll have to politely decline requests for guides for Hakkyu no kiseki etc.

Play ball!

Earlier today, u/ManufacturerSoggy871 shared some feedback on the original NPC and Other locations guides, and it led me to do some very focused testing on the Event Hall. And I'm glad I did because I was able to unlock not one but both of the missing NPCs. Because I did the original post as an image and not a table, I can't edit it, but I'm very happy to share the complete (and mostly accurate ;)) Non-Player Relationships list in this revised and complete guide!

To be honest, I'm not absolutely certain that the Artist and Consultant require Creativity level 8. I had done some testing on the Event Hall earlier in the week and saw a good range of lectures (and some repeats), but I don't know that I did or didn't see the two specific ones which seemed to unlock Mai and Shinji. If folks in the community at different Creativity levels can test and get back to me, that'd be great. We do know that I was able to unlock them both at Creativity 8 so it has a ceiling.

On a personal note, this is an update of the first guide I wrote for this game. It's been followed by a few others, but I'm still really happy I did this. It appears that I'm the first person to document Mai and Shinji, which is kind of a neat feeling. :) Thanks everyone for reading, commenting, interacting, and providing feedback. We're all enjoying this game together and I love that! :D

Yuichiro Machida

Description: Team Staff
Unlock Criteria: Automatic
Ability Name: Friendship Capital
Ability Effect: After becoming friends, receive a merch revenue bonus. Bonus amount increases based on use.
Priority: High (First)
Notes:

• Should be first priority. Monthly bonus maxes at 50,000,000 yen.

Takahiro Saito

Description: Sports Journalist
Unlock Criteria: Automatic
Ability Name: Media Darling
Ability Effect: When becoming friends, one player will be added to your friend list. Effects intensify with each use, meaning even higher-skilled players will become potential friends.
Priority: Medium
Notes:

• Will start introducing friends from other teams at level 5

Ken Yano

Description: Baseball Data Corp. Employee
Unlock Criteria: Automatic (05/01 of first season)
Ability Name: Getting to Know Yourself
Ability Effect: When become friends, the set skill you are learning will gain EXP. Effect intensifies with use, allowing more skills to be learned.
Priority: Medium
Notes:

• Seems to only work once per Carryover Ability.
• Will give practice EXP if no Carryover currently active.

Shinsuke Yasui

Description: Personal Trainer
Unlock Criteria: Automatic(06/01 of first season)
Ability Name: Friendship Gains
Ability Effect: When becoming friends, fatigue and health will recover. The amount of recovery increases with use.
Priority: Low
Notes:

• Use health drinks or post-game restaurant visits instead of visiting him.

Isao Tsukada

Description: Athletic Brand Employee
Unlock Criteria: Star Level 40 (may also have additional unlock condition)
Ability Name: Maintenance
Ability Effect: Reduces equipment's chance of breaking after games. Effect intensifies with use, decreasing rate of wear and tear.
Priority: High
Notes:

• Gives Sample Bat (sets of 10, +3 Con L/R) at level 1.
• 20XX Model Glove, Cleats, and Bat at levels above this.
• Can request additional equipment on subsequent visits, and can upgrade to newest model.
• Newer models have higher stats.
• Good person to max early because of the equipment boosts to Power, Contact, Fielding Affinity, Speed, Catching, and Throwing.

Hideki Nagase

Description: Sports Agent
Unlock Criteria: Automatic (contract negotiation discussion at end of second season)
Ability Name: Presentation Skills
Ability Effect: Negotiations are more likely to succeed. Success rate increases with use.
Priority: Low
Notes:

• Doesn't add much and if you're maxing your player you'll hit the max salary of 2,000,000,000 yen at which point the Agent does nothing for you.
• Presentation Skills increases each time you use the Sports Agent to negotiate on your behalf.
• It does not increase if you negotiate for yourself.

Miho Takamatsu

Description: Nutritionist
Unlock Criteria: Intelligence level 5
Ability Name: Apple a Day
Ability Effect: Increases fatigue recovery and form recovery from eating. Effect intensifies with use.
Priority: High
Notes:

• Improves the recovery from meals with teammates etc.
• Apple a Day will continue to max passively with those meals as well.

Tomohiko Omura

Description: Doctor
Unlock Criteria: Critical Thinking level 5
Ability Name: Safety Measures
Ability Effect: Reduces risk of injuries following games. Effect intensifies with use.
Priority: Low
Notes:

• Low priority if you keep your Fatigue under 30%.
• Safety Measures will continue to passively increase with each game appearance.

Kazuya Doi

Description: Interpreter
Unlock Criteria: Communication level 5
Ability Name: Worldly Wise
Ability Effect: Friendships with international players increase more easily. Effect intensifies with use.
Priority: Low
Notes:

• Low priority.
• While international players usually have higher star ratings, they don't usually possess any ultra-rare Carryover Abilities.
• Worldly Wise increases passively with each new international player friendship event.

Mai Maebara

Description: Artist
Unlock Criteria: Creativity level 8(?) then visit Event Hall
Ability Name: Hobbyist
Ability Effect: Hobby skills increase more easily. Effect intensifies with use.
Priority: Low
Notes:

• Very low priority. She's gated behind Creativity 8 which is pretty high level, so you'd probably have your hobbies maxed by the point you can unlock her. She doesn't speed up how quickly you read books, watch movies, etc.
• May require specific lecture ("Express Yourself Like An Artist")

Soichi Morimoto

Description: Teacher
Unlock Criteria: Creativity level 5 then visit Event Hall
Ability Name: Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
Ability Effect: When practicing with teammates, your partner's attributes increase more easily. Effect intensifies with use.
Priority: Medium
Notes:

• Will take a while to unlock but is very useful once you've collected all the desired Carryover Abilities.
• Improves your teammates which increases win percentage when soft-simming (selecting Results instead of Play Game) or hard-simming through the Calendar.
• Teamwork Makes the Dream Work increases whenever you practice with a teammate.

Shinji Adachi

Description: Consultant
Unlock Criteria: Creativity level 8(?) then visit Event Hall
Ability Name: Self-made Man
Ability Effect: Your stats will increase more easily. Effect intensifies with use.
Priority: Medium
Notes:

• Will be incredibly valuable when increasing Communication, etc., but will take a while if he's truly gated behind Creativity level 8.
• May require specific lecture ("Talk like a Conversation Coach")

The attribute progression system in eBASEBALL Pro Spirits 2026 is different from that of MLB The Show and it throws a lot of players off. Your in-game performance does NOT affect your progression. Attributes grow only when you gain something known as practice EXP. In this guide I’ll cover where you get practice EXP, how you allocate it, and some strategies for maximizing it.

Where you see attribute gains is entirely down to your Training settings. Whatever you choose there determines where you'll see gains in the EXP Boost (post-game progression) screen. But there's a lot that goes into how you get the EXP.

There are six sources of EXP:

1. Pre-game practice. This is automatic and is where the actual gains you see in the post-game screen come from. This is also the most consistent as you get throughout your entire career. You appear to get the same amount of practice EXP whether you play the game, soft-sim it from selecting Results instead of Play Game, or hard-sim via the Calendar menu.
2. Special Training Tickets. You can buy these at the Prospi Shop for 3,000 VP each. They're each worth 15x the normal amount of EXP but you can only use 10 during a single career. Use them when you're just starting out because the proportional boost will be so much higher. I'd recommend setting your training to All-Around, Focused Batting, and Focused Defense so that you spread the improvement across every stat to get a better baseline, and then after you've used the tickets you can adjust your training settings to whatever makes the most sense for your play style.
3. Friending other players. You get practice EXP from friendships in two ways. You can practice with teammates (not players on other teams) to get EXP boosts. When you max a friendship with a teammate or player on another team, you can choose Practice EXP instead of a Carryover ability to get a big boost. The boost depends on whether your player rating is higher or lower than the other player's and what the difference is. If you're a 300-rated player and you max a 500-rated player and take the EXP, you can see your trained stats jump several levels.
4. Visiting the Bowling Alley or Gym. You get a decent amount of EXP from doing this. It's more than the gains from practice but less than the gains from the max friendship bump. The real challenge is finding the time to get there. The Bowling Alley is only open during the day and the Gym during the day and weekend nights. This means that you can only get to the Bowling Alley on Free Days, while you have a bit more flexibility with the Gym, as you can go there during weekend post-game free actions. However, there are so many things you can only do on Free Days so this might not be the best use of that time. It might not make sense to prioritize practice EXP over building friendships with players or non-players. You also have to have already discovered these specific locations by Taking a Stroll in that city, which means using more Free Days. As a result, this really isn't a great pathway in the early game.
5. Spring training. This makes sense as it's the whole reason it exists! If you're a pitcher, you can learn new abilities here or remove weaknesses, and if you're a batter, you can improve your hitting trajectories. In both cases you can also improve your fatigue recovery and I would highly recommend always taking that since fatigue management is such an important part of the game and you can’t improve it through any other means.
6. International competitions. If you're selected for either of the international competitions (the World Baseball Classic in preseason or the International Baseball Cup just after the All-Star break), you get a huge boost of EXP at the conclusion. It doesn't seem to be dependent on your individual performance or that of the team.

You can amplify your practice EXP gains from each of these by buying training equipment from the Sporting Goods Store. The training equipment choices are expensive (5,000,000 each). If you’re playing as a fielder you’ll see these options for training equipment in the Sporting Goods Store.

Note: I don’t have a pitching playthrough going at the moment so couldn’t capture those. Maybe someone can add them in the comments?

• Tee Batting Kit: Enhances Contact Against Righties and Contact Against Lefties practices
• Pitching Robot #1: Enhances Focused Batting practice
• Practice Swing Bat: Enhances Power practice
• High-speed Treadmill: Enhances Speed practice
• Fielding Robot #1: Enhances Defense, Focused Defense, and Catching practices
• Side Step Band: Enhances Physical, Throwing, and Arm Strength practices

When you begin your career you can only buy one piece of training equipment, but you can raise that limit (and remove it entirely) by buying the Apartment and House later. [The Apartment costs 200,000,000 yen and the House 400,000,000, so these aren’t purchases you’re going to make in your first year. You have to buy the Apartment before you can buy the House.] Since they all cost the same, which one to get first is entirely up to you and should be based on your play style. That being said, the game does overwhelmingly reward power in Star Player, so it makes sense to get either the Pitching Robot or Practice Swing Bat.

You can also directly increase your player attributes with equipment. The Sporting Goods Store also has a host of equipment which either add to your stats (for example, the Power Bat gives your Power attribute a +5 boost) or give you Carryover abilities (for example, the All Fields Bat grants you the All Fields ability). Again, the options for pitchers will be different.

Item	Price	Effect
Contact Bat	800,000	Contact +5 VS L/R
Power Bat	800,000	Power +5
Run Maker Bat	1,000,000	Clutch Hitting +1 [Improves Run Maker by one letter]
Hit for Average Bat	2,500,000	Grants Consistent
Push Hitter Bat	1,000,000	Grants Push Hitter
Hot Hitter Bat	1,000,000	Grants Hot Hitter
Tough Out Bat	1,000,000	Grants Tough Out
Grounder Bat	1,500,000	Grants Ground Ball
Artist Bat	1,500,000	Grants Artist
Pull Hitter Bat	1,500,000	Grants Pull Hitter
All Fields Bat	2,500,000	Grants All Fields
Speed Cleats	800,000	Speed+5
Baserunning Cleats	1,000,000	Baserunning +1 [Improves Running by one letter]
Base Stealing Cleats	1,000,000	Base Stealing +1 [Improves Steal by one letter]
Infield Hitter Cleats	1,500,000	Grants Takeoff+
Ninja Cleats	1,500,000	Grants Ninja
Prime Time Cleats	1,500,000	Grants Prime Time
Catcher's Glove	800,000	Catching +5
Throwing Glove	800,000	Throwing +5
Fielding Affinity Glove	800,000	Main Fielding Affinity +5
Gold Glove	1,500,000	Grants Gold Glover
Home Keeper Glove	1,000,000	Grants Home Keeper
Laser Beam Glove	1,000,000	Grants Laser Beam

Side note: The Prime Time Cleats are the only way to get the Prime Time Carryover Ability onto your player if he doesn't already have it. Prime Time improves performance in "big games", presumably games against rivals, clinchers, or playoff games.

There are two more important notes to cover regarding attribute growth and loss. First, attribute growth slows as your player improves. It takes much more practice EXP to go from level 70 to 71 than it does to go from level 50 to 51. [You can imagine how slow it is once you reach the 90s!] That’s why training equipment (and by extension the Apartment and House) become so important: because they allow you to maximize practice EXP throughout your career. Second, once you reach a certain age (around 35) your stats will begin to decrease as your body begins to show the effects of a longer pro career. You can slow this quite a bit by purchasing the Hot Tub (500,000,000 yen) and its upgrade the Oxygen Chamber (1,000,000,000 yen) from the Hardware Store, but Father Time is undefeated, as they say. Once you've established yourself, you will want to make sure to get both of these.

So if your in-game performance doesn't affect your stats, what does it affect? The most important thing it affects is your manager’s trust. At the end of every game that you play you get a rating from the manager based on what you did. The final rating (an X, a triangle, a circle, or two circles) reflects whether you improved or decreased his trust in you. That trust is what gets you playtime and increases the initial contract offer at the end of the season. While in-game performance doesn’t have any impact on your in-game attributes, it’s important nonetheless.

I said I wasn't going to write another guide for a little while. I meant it, too. But here we are, at the end of another guide. I hope it helps you and your Star Player, and I'll see you in the next one!

Update 1: Added guidance to the section on Ano reflecting the best way to boost Creativity (going to the Event Hall).

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It appears that I'm a glutton for punishment because I'm still writing guides for Star Player! This one will focus on the three dating options. I've shared this information here and there in various threads, but to make it more discoverable I'm making a dedicated post/guide for it. Seriously, though, someone stop me from making any more guides for at least a week. :)

The short, short tl;dr version

• Girlfriends appear at Star Player levels 10, 15, and 20, in random order
• You need a Car to go on dates. Cars cost 5,000,000 yen at the Car Dealership. You can get a Gold Bar from the Prospi Shop to get the funds.
• You can ask a candidate to be your girlfriend around rank 6. Asking one to be your girlfriend removes the others from your friends list.
• Each girl has unique marriage requirements which will take a while to match. Ano requires Creativity level 5, Risa requires you to make 100,000,000 in annual salary, and Runa requires you to buy a House and have all Hobbies at level 3 or higher.

Real Straight Talk About the Girlfriend Arc

Before I dive into the actual guide, I want to make sure everyone's aware that there are no real gameplay benefits to dating or marrying. The only tangible thing that helps your career is the 4,500 Star Player points you get for getting a girlfriend and then marrying her. You will get a ton of extra cutscenes and dialog throughout your dating/married life, and they're cute, but they're not enough to mean you should rush these steps. Just let the girlfriend thing happen naturally. If you want my advice, I'd say to not even worry about dating until you're well into year 3 or so. You don't need to spend precious Free Days on them. They aren't going anywhere. [If you want to know how you should spend Free Days (as well as post-game free actions), well, I have a guide for that too. :) See Star Player Guide #3 - Time Management Mini-Guide : r/EBaseballProspirit for the lowdown!]

All the Single Ladies

Okay, assuming you're here because you're ready to date, let's talk about the three dating candidates--Ano, Risa, and Runa. The first will appear when you reach Star Player level 10, and the next two should appear at levels 15 and 20. The order in which they appear is different--Runa might appear at level 10, then Risa, and then Ano, or it could be Risa at level 10, then Ano, then Runa. It's random and can't be influenced. But while you can't influence the order, you can inadvertently prevent all of the candidates from appearing by advancing any of them to level 6 and asking her to become your girlfriend before you've triggered the appearance of the others. For example, if you just fall head over heels for Runa (and who hasn't?) and you go exclusive with her before you reach level 15, you won't even see Ano or Risa. Don't do that if you want to see all three appear.

If you want to know more about the ladies, here they are. [Note that the thresholds are indeed 10, 15, and 20. The reason my screenshots have 11, 16, and 21 is that I jumped multiple Star Player levels when I crossed the thresholds.]

https://preview.redd.it/kbsm0jnl0ogh1.jpg?width=2559&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a4ac6fdc5c204498655dbf8958656edc49cda101

https://preview.redd.it/3pwg7inl0ogh1.jpg?width=2561&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=989f1d9c896ffd2e3fd7150e85f1eaa2a455dfa0

https://preview.redd.it/5rcchinl0ogh1.jpg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d5f5a244bf3e7719dd47337028596bbf20a9a808

As far as the ladies go, there's a clear number one and her name is Runa. If you explore each arc and see how they behave, I think you'll agree. Or you could just trust me on this and go with Runa from the start. Your call. :)

Round, Round, Get Around, I Get Around

Once you've met the ladies, you can ask any of them out on a date provided that you have a car. If you don't have one, your potential date just, umm, politely declines.

https://preview.redd.it/1wbqnhmu0ogh1.jpg?width=2561&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=96d8e76dae9b85eab47860838a6d94750de7e4cc

Cars are reasonably expensive items at 5,000,000 yen, and at this point that's going to be several months' salary for you. The best course of action is just to wait until year 3 to start dating, at which point your income should allow you to get the Car easily.

If you don't want to wait until your income has grown, you can take a shortcut provided you have enough VP. You can buy Gold Bars in the Prospi Shop, which you should access from the main menu and not during a Free Day or post-game free action in your Star Player playthrough. They're under Consumable Items > Star Player, and each Gold Bar costs 10,000VP. You can use up to 10 in a single Star Player career, and each Gold Bar gives you 10,000,000 yen. In this case we only need one to buy the Car. When you've bought one, you can access the funds by going into Private Life > Items > Consumable Items and selecting a Gold Bar.

Once you have the funds, you need to actually purchase the Car, and you do that by visiting the Car Dealership during any Free Day. It doesn't matter if you're in your home city or on a road trip.

When you finally have a car, you can start going on dates with any or all of the ladies. Each date will see the pair of you doing date-y things like going for a drive, shopping together, and (my favorite) playing catch. The dialog for each date is unique to each girlfriend candidate. You won't rank up on every single date, but you'll make steady progress until around rank 6, at which point you'll start to need more dates to rank up.

Once you've gone on enough dates with a girl to have seen all the options, you'll be prompted to choose what you want to do when you ask her on a date. Going on "repeat" dates lets you see different dialog, some of which is actually quite fun. It looks like there are three dialog sets for each date and as mentioned before they're unique to each character.

The options include:

• Go for a drive
• Go to the park
• Go to a cafe
• Go shopping
• Go out for dinner
• Play catch
• Go running
• Hit the gym
• Chill at home

It's actually possibly to max the friendship for a girlfriend candidate without actually, you know, asking her to be your girlfriend. In fact, you can get all three to max rank if you really want to.

Going Steady and Then Some

Once you approach rank 6 with a girlfriend candidate, it's decision time. At the end of every date, she'll ask you something like "can I help you with something?" You can ask her to be your girlfriend or you can ... just not. If you don't, she will look confused and disappointed and then just move on with her life.

When you do finally ask one candidate to be your girlfriend, the other girlfriend candidates are immediately deleted from your list (and you never run across them again in the game world). You can continue to rank up your girlfriend but oddly enough this is not a prerequisite for marriage. Once you're a couple, you'll spend time together, run across each other in town, speak on the phone, wish each other birthdays, and more.

Now marriage is a little more complicated. You can ask her to marry you on the very next date after you ask her to be your girlfriend, but she will ... have requirements. [Curiously, I don't believe that being at max rank friendship is one of those requirements!]

The ladies will give you more detailed explanations than this, but in a nutshell:

• Ano requires your Creativity to be level 5
• Risa requires your annual income to be 100,000,000 yen
• Runa requires that you own a House and have all Hobbies at level 3 or above

Of the three, Risa's requirement is probably the easiest to meet as a good year at the plate or on the mound can easily see you command that much in contract negotiations at year's end. For the testing I played the first month to accrue some good stats and then simmed the rest of the year and was offered 154,000,000 yen.

Runa's requirements cost a lot more (I believe the House is 500,000,000 yen) but you will want the House at some point because it removes restrictions on Training Equipment. If you're consistently increasing your friendships with players and rotating through the various Hobbies, you won't have any trouble getting most of them to level 3. The two hardest ones are Golfing and Fishing, both of which must take place in the offseason (and both of which require you to purchase specific equipment from the Sporting Goods Store). [You may be able to raise your Fishing level by discovering the Fishing Pond via Taking a Stroll and visiting it on a Free Day. I didn't explore that during this testing.]

Ano's requirement of Creativity level 5 is just time-consuming more than anything. You'll want to get it at some point because it's also a requirement for one of the Non-Player Relationships (Soichi Morimoto, the Teacher). However, it will take a lot of time. If you absolutely want to rush into matrimony with Ano, your best bet is attending lectures at the Event Hall. Its Creativity boost is absolutely massive (and for the lectures I've seen you also get a good amount of Critical Thinking as well). You can also get Creativity from specific movies at the Movie Theater, manga at the Manga Cafe, visiting the Art Museum, and of course reading books after games or with other players.

The marriage requirements all seem to be structured so that you cannot get married in the first year. You can't satisfy Risa's salary requirements until the next calendar year, and even if you propose right away you'll still have to wait until the following offseason to get married (specifically on 1 December 2027). You can't satisfy Runa's Hobbies requirement until the offseason (because of Golfing and Fishing), and you won't be able to afford a House either. It may be possible to meet Ano's Creativity requirement in a single year but that would mean concentrating everything on Creativity to exclusion of all else and that just wouldn't be a good balance, especially in the early years of your career. This is why I recommend delaying the whole girlfriend arc until you've established yourself.

Once you get married, the girlfriend events morph into blissful married life. Instead of wishing each other greetings over the phone at New Year's, you spend it together. You go on anniversary trips every 1 December. She'll sometimes attend your games, cook you meals, call to cheer you up after a game, and more. It adds a lot of color but again doesn't affect stats or gameplay in any way.

And that's about it. This guide's 10 times longer than it needed to be, which is why I added the tl;dr at the very top.