Hey everyone! As I mentioned in my recent post (Star Player Guides - MAJOR UPDATES COMING : r/EBaseballProspirit), I've been working through the data which u/Master-Weekend9664 mined from the Steam files and updating the various guides.

As of Saturday 10 October 2026, the following legacy guides have been revised and updated:

• Star Player Guide #1A - Non-Player Relationships (Complete) : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player #4 - Dating Mini-Guide : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player Guide #5 - Restaurants (work-in-progress) : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player Guide #11 - Social Stats (Non-baseball Stats) : r/EBaseballProspirit

I can't change the titles of the original posts, unfortunately, so the Restaurants guide will still say "work-in-progress" even though it's now functionally complete.

When you visit any of those guides, you'll see a section at the top called "MAJOR UDPATE" where I summarize the changes I made to the post from the original. In some cases it was just inserting some data or correcting errors, but in some cases (like the Restaurant guide) it involved wholesale importation of massive amounts of data.

I've updated the post with the complete list of guides as well, with "MAJOR UPDATE XX/XX/202X" in front of the ones that have been updated (those above). You can find that collection here: Star Player Guides - Complete List : r/EBaseballProspirit.

These revised guides are in every way better than the originals and again I'll thank both u/Master-Weekend9664 and u/darnell560 for their work and support. These updates simply wouldn't have been possible without them, so show them some love too!

Play ball!

Hey everyone! Let me begin by saying, I love this community. 😍 Two fantastic things happened this week. First, u/darnell560 posted the first of his Star Player observations, and we started chatting offline about what we had found and have really been helping each other out. And second, u/Master-Weekend9664 reached out with content he discovered by datamining the Prospi files in Steam. OMG I cannot tell you what a treasure trove it is. He is my mysterious benefactor and new Prospi BFF. 😃 Between these two, we are advancing our knowledge of Star Player (and Hakkyu no Kiseki) in a huge way for the community's benefit!

So what does this mean? Well, in a nutshell, I'm going to return to the Star Player guides I wrote since release and update all of them. Some of it will be adding information, some of it will be correcting errors, and some of it will be clarifying things. I did get more than a few things wrong during my playthroughs, and I want to correct those and improve the overall play experience for anyone using the guides.

My process for updating the guides will be as follows:

• When I update a guide, I'll add a line at the top with MAJOR UPDATE and a summary of the biggest things I've changed in the guide. For example, in the NPC guide, I'm correcting the unlock criteria for two of the three unlocks at the Event Hall, and I'll list that as part of the summary at the top.
• I'll also indicate, in my post with all the links to the Star Player guides, which ones have been updated by adding UPDATED XX/XX/202X in front of them.
• I plan to update the NPC and Other Locations posts first, because those will have the fewest updates and changes, and then move on to the others in whatever order seems appropriate at the time.

I decided against posting v2 versions most of the guides, because for the majority, they're just corrections. I may do a v2 specifically for the Optimized Build Order guide, because that's the one that's going to change the most. [And I apologize to anyone who tried to follow the v1 and ran into trouble!]

This will not happen immediately, of course. With so many guides, and so much information to parse through, it'll take some time. I'll probably post weekly updates about the guides so that people know which have been updated. Those updates will of course include links to the collection post and the posts I changed that week.

In the meantime, look for more content from u/darnell560 as he's doing some really great work that I think you'll really enjoy!

Play ball!

Hey everyone! Oh boy oh boy do I have a good one for you all today! 😉 In my first guide for Hakkyu no Kiseki I covered the Town locations, and I initially planned to do one on the practice command menu next, but during my current Meisei playthrough I went through a very intense scouting period and changed my plans to cover that instead.

In this guide, which in keeping with my general practice will be VERY, VERY LONG 😄, I'll talk through scouting from end to end, including a deep dive on the actual interface, how to approach the scouting period, and how to maximize both your chance of success with a single player and how to get the right class for your team at that time.

I'm still reasonably new to Hakkyu no Kiseki and there are others out there who know things about scouting that I don't or who will catch errors I've made in this guide. If you're one of them, please share your tips and insights in the comments!

Intro to Scouting

Strictly speaking, scouting is entirely optional. You don't need to scout a single player to be able to make a championship team. I've tested this, albeit from a position of strength (Meisei was already a Super Powerhouse), but even without scouting I still got multiple four-star players in my class of 10 players. I've also seen unscouted four-star players enroll for a Decent-reputation Seinan in my validation playthrough (and an unscouted five-star for them when I reached Mid-Tier!). But scouted players will generally be better than non-scouted ones, so you should always try to scout the maximum number of players every off-season.

You can only scout players once your reputation has reached Decent (the second level), so reaching that level should be your goal in your first year. Once you've reached that, you'll be able to scout players in the period between 1 November and 28 February every year. [These roughly coincide with the end of the Fall Nationals Tournament and the Graduation Ceremony at the end of Japan's somewhat unique April-to-March school year.] Note that you can't scout during the training camp at the end of December.

Practice command bar with Player Scouting highlighted

During the active scouting period, you'll often see a red Player Scouting icon in the practice command bar. I think I've actually seen two Scout commands available in the command bar before, but I didn't see that during my testing window so don't have a screenshot to validate my experience.

You should get plenty of opportunities to scout players in November, December, January, and February, but if you don't see Player Scouting icons quickly enough for your tastes, you can hurry things up by using a Schedule Book to immediately regenerate the command bar. You can get Schedule Books from the Yorozuya, the Bookstore, and other sources as well as from the Prospi Shop on the main menu. However, it's very important to note that the ones you buy from the Prospi Shop will have (VP) next to them and show up in the bottom of your Items list, but they're not tied to your save file, so you can't get them back if you restore a save from before you used them. Make sure to use "regular" Schedule Books if you plan to save and restore!

The number of players you can scout is limited by your reputation:

• Decent: you can scout up to two players
• Mid-Tier: you can scout up to three players
• Contender: you can scout up to four players
• Powerhouse: you can scout up to five players
• Super Powerhouse: you can scout up to six players

[Caveat: I haven't finished validating the numbers for every reputation level. I've validated Decent, Mid-tier, Contender, and Super Powerhouse but not Powerhouse. I'm pretty sure the progression is correct and that you can scout five players at Powerhouse level, but I haven't explicitly validated it yet. If your experience is different, please let me know!]

Note that this is how many players you can scout, not the number of scouting visits, and visiting a player a second or third time to improve his response counts as an additional scouted player. I don't know the actual number of scouting visits you can make per level, but I know that it's greater than the number of players you can recruit. However, once you've recruited your maximum number of players, you can't make any more scouting trips, even to visit players you've previously scouted in order to improve their response from Mixed or Negative to Positive. [We'll touch on this later.]

Planning Your Scouting Approach

Before you go on a scouting trip, though, you need to do a little roster analysis. Go into the Phone menu and look at your roster on the main screen.

https://preview.redd.it/wif8oygr9cqh1.jpg?width=2559&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9c47df29763921257a6dc1bd190a528295af2ce3

During the scouting period you'll be down to a maximum of 20 players (depending on your school's reputation), since your third-years won't show up in the team roster at this point. Your immediate focus is to fill holes in your roster. For example, if all your 1Bs or CFs left the team after your last summer tournament, and you have players filling in at positions other than their primary position, those are the obvious immediate needs. This is what I look for during this period in order of focus/priority:

1. Are there any positions where I don't have anyone at all?
2. Are there any positions where I have only one player and he's in his second year?
3. Are there any positions where I have only one player and he's in his first year?

Depending on your reputation, you may find that you need more players than you can actively scout. That's why it's a good idea to prioritize according to the above. If you don't have any 2Bs on the roster at all, it doesn't matter as much that you have only one first-year 3B.

Let's use my current playthrough as an example. It's November and the scouting season is open, so I'm looking at my roster and seeing who I'll need.

Roster showing how many players at each position and which years they are

If I run through the questions above, here's what I see:

• Are there any positions where I don't have anyone at all? No.
• Are there any positions where I have just a single second-year player? Yes, at Catcher.
• Are there any positions where I have just a single first-year player? Yes, at 1B, 2B, and SS.

As a Super Powerhouse, I can recruit up to six players. For this recruiting class, my scouting priorities would be C, then 1B, 2B, and SS, and then with the remaining two slots I can just choose opportunistically based on a player having a pro role model or being a three-star.

In a sense, scouting is just succession planning. If you always have "an heir and a spare", when you lose your (presumably) third-year starters, you have well-developed second years who step directly into their positions, and you're also developing first-year players as eventual starters. In an ideal world, every recruiting class in April would include exactly one of every position plus one duplicate to act as DH, but of course the CPU doesn't fill out the rest of your recruiting class based on the players you've scouted. So you will almost always answer "yes" to at least one of the above questions.

Speaking of the CPU ... the scouting mechanism is just to enable you to control the quality and position of the players you get. You will always get at least seven players every April, even at Underdog level, but scouting is the only influence you have over which players you get. If you have more positional needs than you can scout, you may still get lucky and get players who fill those needs. And with the right environment, you can still train a weak recruit into a powerhouse. [In my main playthrough with Meisei, I built Kawada Ikki, a non-scouted player, from 79 to 532 over the course of his career.]

Once you've determined which positions you need, it's a good idea to document them somewhere. I play on Steam so will just open Notepad and keep track of my needs there. Since I'm at Super Powerhouse level right now, I know that I should be able to cover all of my positional needs with scouted players. I just write it down so that I can refer back to it while I'm in the scouting interface, because there's no at-a-glance screens in that. And speaking of that interface ...

The Scouting Interface

I strongly recommend saving before you scout players, just in case you don't like the results and you want to restore to a previous day.

Main scouting interface showing the prefectures of Japan

Now that you know who you want to scout, let's dive into the interface. Your first view is of the Japanese home islands with 49 different locations (the 47 prefectures, with Hokkaido split into North and South Hokkaido and Tokyo split into West and East Tokyo). The prefectures are further grouped into regions, but you can only scout at the prefecture level. [Side note: the regions you see here are the same regions the game uses for the regional tournaments. Tokyo is grouped with the Kanto region teams for Regionals.] The prefectures are color-coded based on their current focus area:

• Pitching: red
• Batting: green (clearly red/green color-blindness wasn't a concern for the devs 😄)
• Fielding/Baserunning: yellow
• Special Abilities: purple
• None: white

You can see the actual number of available players and their positions at bottom left. Prefectures will typically have more players aligned to its focus area (and their average quality will be higher). But even if a prefecture is known for developing one type of player, you'll still see players from other positions.

Your school's reputation influences your scouting reach. At Decent level, you can only scout within your region, and at Mid-tier you can scout within your region and one adjacent region. Once you reach Contender, though, the map opens up and you can scout nationwide.

Regardless of how many prefectures you can visit, there are three main approaches to scouting:

• Focus on prefectures with the highest number of players for the positions you need
• Focus on the prefectures with the strongest "baseball cultures"
• Focus on prefectures where famous NPB players attended high school

The first two are really about the quality of recruit, while the last one is really a targeted operation. I'll cover the first two together and then dive into the NPB player hunt.

Note that while you're on this specific screen you can select X/Square to remind yourself of the details of players you've already scouted. You can't do this once you've selected a prefecture, which is why I recommended copying down your scouting priorities and positional needs earlier.

Scouting a Prefecture

In a previous section I showed my current roster, so we know that I need catchers and infielders, with catchers being the highest priority. To that end, I'm going to scout in Aomori because it has the greatest number of catchers. The number of players you see for a given prefecture in the scouting portal, and the quality of the information available to you, improves as your reputation increases. I'm currently managing a Super Powerhouse so I have access to the best information about the maximum number of candidates (10).

Every time you travel to a prefecture to scout, you'll see the same help text appear explaining the scouting portal in more detail. It's worth reading it at least once because it's very informative.

Scouting help text which appears every time you go to scout a player

Once you've dismissed that, you see the list of potential recruits from the prefecture. The number is dependent on your school's reputation:

• Decent: you will see six recruits
• Mid-tier: you will see seven recruits
• Contender: you will see eight recruits
• Powerhouse: you will see nine recruits
• Super Powerhouse: you will see 10 recruits

Scouting Candidate List showing five players

For each player, you'll see something similar to the above with eight key pieces of information (not including his name): Position; Scouting Difficulty; three position skills (Fastball, Breaking Ball, and Control for Pitchers; Batting, Running, and Defense for fielders); Energy; Ability; and Results. [I'll talk about the orange "Has a Player Role Model" tag more in the final section of this guide.] However, you won't necessarily have assessments for each of these attributes. You'll always know Position, Scouting Difficulty, and Results, but you may not know all or indeed any of the remaining ones. This is, as with everything, controlled by your school's reputation. You'll see very little information (and maybe none at all) at Decent, more at Contender, even more at Powerhouse, and most if not all at Super Powerhouse. [Note that because my school is a Super Powerhouse, none of these players are very difficult for me to recruit.]

The eight pieces of information are mostly straightforward. Position doesn't require an additional deep dive, and the position ratings and Energy just map to the obvious attributes.

For fielders:

• Batting: Contact L/R and Power
• Running: Speed
• Defense: Arm Strength, Throwing, Catching, and Fielding Affinity
• Energy: Stamina, Fatigue Recovery

Pitcher ratings map similarly:

• Fastball: Pitch Velocity, Pitch Power
• Breaking Ball: Pitch Power and Breaking Level
• Control: Pitch Control (all pitches)
• Energy: Stamina, Fatigue Recovery

Each of these will be rated in a straightforward scale: Bad, Normal, Good, or Excellent. Better recruits obviously have higher ratings in each area.

The three remaining attributes--Scouting Difficulty, Ability, and Results--get their own deep dives below.

Scouting Difficulty:

There's a common misconception regarding the stars next to the players' names. The number of stars in this screen represents the difficulty of recruiting the player and does not represent the player's quality. The game design is a bit confusing because when you scout a player, the stars represent the difficulty in recruiting him, but if you sign him, you'll see his actual quality rating in April. The two rating systems are linked, of course, because it will be harder to recruit a better player (presumably because there will be more competition to sign him).

Your school reputation is the biggest influence on Scouting Difficulty. If you're a Super Powerhouse with a strong winning history, you will have much less difficulty recruiting any given player. If you're only Decent, you'll struggle to sign the majority of players. At Super Powerhouse, the highest difficulty you'll encounter in three stars, but at Powerhouse that same player might be considered four-star difficulty, and at Contender or lower he might be an out-of-reach five-star difficulty.

Ability:

This represents the number of Special Abilities the player has when he first enters your high school. Special Abilities here includes not just skills like Dr. K, Failproof, Cleaner, and Clutch Hero, but also the rated skills like Base Lock, Poise, Run Maker, and Steal. A player with "Normal" may have one or two Special Abilities, while one with "Excellent" may have five or six. A player with "No" won't start with any Special Abilities, and his ratings (Run Maker, Base Lock, etc.) will all be D.

Results:

This is what your player is looking for in his prospective high school. There are four levels:

• N/A: You'll generally only see this on the least demanding of recruits. It means he doesn't have any specific expectations of the team's past performance. These guys are one-star recruits even for Decent schools.
• Pref. Top Finisher: The team regularly reaches the semi-finals of the prefectural tournament.
• Regional Tournaments: The team regularly participates in regional tournaments.
• National Tournaments: The team regularly participates in national tournaments (Spring/Summer Koshien, Fall Nationals)

The better the player, the higher his expectations of his prospective high school.

You can view your current roster if you need to figure out who you have any who you need, but this isn't an at-a-glance view. It'll do in a pinch, so it's good to know it's there, but I still recommend documenting your scouting priorities elsewhere.

Choosing Your Recruit

This is the last stage of the process where you have real control over the outcome. You know what you're looking for in prospective players, you know which ones you need most, and you've identified a prefecture where you think you can find a player who can help you.

So how do you choose a recruit? I'll describe my own experience here, as it has definitely worked for me and I know others have said they do something very similar. First, I look for ones with the best ratings (multiple Excellent, no Bad, etc.). Second, if two or more seem equally matched, I'll choose whichever is considered more difficult (because this is a subtle signal from the game that he's actually better). If two or more players are still matched here, I'll choose whichever has a player role model. If I still can't decide, then I just pick randomly.

If you want to make this a little more systematic, consider using this scoring system: assign numerical values to Bad, Normal, Good, and Excellent. Set Bad to -3, Normal to 0, Good to +3, and Excellent to +5. ["No" under Ability would be -3 as well.] Then add up the scores for each recruit.

Scouting Candidate List showing five players

Using the example from the screenshot above, we'd have:

• Mizushima: 0+0+3+5+0 = 8
• Ozeki: 0+5+3+3+0 = 11
• Hongoh: 0+0+5+3-3 = 5
• Kohgo: 3+5+3+/+0 = 11
• Tamura: -3+0+3+3+0 = 3

From here, two candidates--Ozeki and Kohgo--are joint top, but one of Kohgo's attributes (Energy) wasn't known. That means his total score could still be higher than 11 (if Energy is either Good or Excellent). But better still, his scouting difficulty rating is two stars while Ozeki's is only one star. This suggests that Kohgo is better (because "harder to scout" signals "better"), so his Energy rating will be Normal at worst and probably Good or possibly even Excellent. In this case, I'll recruit him.

Once you've decided to recruit a specific player, just select Scout Player and the game will tell you how he responds. You'll get one of three reactions: Positive, Mixed, or Negative. Positive means he will join your school (I've never had a recruit with a Positive reaction fail to enroll). Mixed means he might enroll, but it's not certain. I've seen about 40% of recruits with a Mixed reaction enroll. Negative means he almost certainly will not enroll. Across multiple careers I've only ever seen one student with a Negative reaction enroll at my school.

However, if you don't get the "yeah Coach I'm all in!" response you want, you can actually scout the player a second (or even third) time in the hope of changing his mind, assuming you haven't hit your max scouted players:

https://preview.redd.it/ki30aejlacqh1.jpg?width=2563&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=88215850b5ea7c6420d79c7a5fe5cac8b2b28b88

In this example, I received a Mixed reaction from Kurano the first time (which the game characterized above as "Normal") and chose to scout him a second time. He switched to Positive the second time, so I successfully landed this recruit! You can do this with any recruit whether the original result was Positive, Mixed, or Negative (but for obvious reasons it doesn't make sense to re-scout someone who had a Positive reaction). Each additional visit improves the response by one level, so someone with a Negative reaction will require two additional trips to change to Positive, and each of those trips counts against your limit of scouted players. By visiting Kurano twice, I was only able to recruit a total of five players that offseason, and in a different playthrough, where I had a five-star aspiring pro with a Negative response, I was only able to recruit four players because I used two visits on him.

When you're back at your high school, you can see information on the players you've already scouted at any time by accessing the Phone menu and then selecting X/Square. This will show you the players you've recruited and their responses. This is useful for double-checking which positions you've already filled and whether or not you need to visit any recruits a second time to improve their reactions. Again, you can only visit a recruit a second time if you haven't scouted your maximum number of players (and you still have scouting visits left and are still within the scouting window).

This is the general process you'll follow during every scouting visit until you've hit your maximum number of scouted players (or scouting visits) or you reach the Graduation Ceremony in early March.

Choosing a Pipeline Prefecture

There's another approach to choosing a prefecture, and it's based on their representation in the NPB Pro Library. If you haven't explored it yet, it's accessible from the Hakkyu no Kiseki main menu, and it's where you're actually registering the pro players that your players and opponents admire and have as role models.

The prefectures with the highest number of entries in the Library are:

• Kanagawa: 66
• Osaka: 57
• Tokyo: 54
• Hyogo: 42
• Fukuoka: 38
• Hokkaido: 35
• Saitama: 35
• Aichi: 34
• Chiba: 26
• Hiroshima: 25

The average quality of recruits in these prefectures, whether they're pro-inspired or not, tends to be higher than in other prefectures.

Scouting for Regens

I mentioned earlier, in the section on attributes, that some players may have an orange "Has a Player Role Model" tag. These players share a family name (and sometimes both names) with a real-life pro in the NPB Pro Player database that I touched on in the previous section. These players will start their high school careers with higher stats, abilities which reflect their real-life counterparts, and are often (but not always) among the best recruits available in a given prefecture.

You can use this information to your advantage if you want to have the second coming of Ohtani Shohei or Oh Sadaharu on your team. If you have a particular pro in mind, you just need to know in which prefecture he went to high school. Ohtani went to high school in Iwate, while Oh went to high school in Tokyo. Once you know the prefecture, you will concentrate your scouting efforts on that prefecture until a player with the appropriate last name appears. Unfortunately, once you visit a prefecture for the first time during a scouting season, the players are "fixed", so getting the regen you specifically want will likely take quite a bit of time and save scumming. Make sure to save before you visit the prefecture for the first time.

Rather than dive further into this, I'll direct you to two community posts where u/iaberton15 and u/Intelligent_Set_2081 have provided specific information on popular players:

• Through some testing I finally figured out how to get Pro-Regens on Hakyuu no Kiseki : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Regen question : r/EBaseballProspirit

Welcoming Your New Players

Once you've finished recruiting and the calendar turns to April, it's time to welcome your players to the team. After the Welcome Ceremony, you'll find out how many of your recruits actually followed through and enrolled in your school. As I mentioned above, I've never had a player with a Positive reaction fail to enroll, while I've only had one (out of 20 or so) player with a Negative reaction choose to attend. Players with Mixed reactions joined around 30% of the time.

The game will tell you which of the scouted players actually enrolled, but won't tell you what their reactions had been, so if you want to gauge this for yourself you'll need to write down their reactions before the Welcome Ceremony takes place in early April.

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

And with that I've completed this guide on scouting! Thanks so much for reading! I know it was a long one, but it's been a popular request and I hope that it has proven useful for you. If you have any feedback, comments, or questions, please comment below and we'll all talk it out together! 😄

So in theory if I were to write guides for Hakkyu no Kiseki, which ones would you want to see? As I've played this mode for the past week I've made more than a few neat discoveries, but rather than just start with those I'd rather focus on something that's of interest to everyone.

My initial ideas:

• Deep dive on the Town and the functions of the different locations
• Scouting guide
• Practice command guide and recommended approach

I don't plan on providing a comprehensive "this is how to build a winning team" guide because u/RyqQuezy already has (Hakkyu No Kiseki In-Depth Guide, Here It Is! : r/EBaseballProspirit) and you should read that. I read it, and it's why Meisei are now a Super Powerhouse. :)

Those of you who've read my Star Player guides know how I operate. I go deeeeeeeep and try to systematically explore every nook and cranny so I experience everything that I can. If I do write more guides (and forgive me for continuing to maintain the fiction that I might not actually write guides :)) it'll be more of the same.

If you're interested in a specific guide, whether one of my ideas above or something else, please say so in the comments. I'm not saying that I'll do every guide that's mentioned there, but if there's an obvious interest in a specific guide, I'll prioritize that. I mean, I would totally prioritize that if I were writing guides.

Hey everyone! (for the third time tonight :))

This is a simple post: a catalog of all the formal and mini-guides I've written for Star Player. I'll ask the mods to sticky this or something, but for now, this is the whole set of them. I don't plan on writing any more guides for Star Player (because do we really need any more?! :)) but I'm not going anywhere and will keep commenting and contributing to the community.

• Star Player - 10 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player Guide #1A - Non-Player Relationships (Complete) : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player Guide #2 - Other locations : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player Guide #3 - Time Management Mini-Guide : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player #4 - Dating Mini-Guide : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player Guide #5 - Attribute Progression : r/EBaseballProspirit (the actual guide 5)
• Star Player Guide #5 - Restaurants (work-in-progress) : r/EBaseballProspirit (actually guide 6)
• Star Player Guide #7A - Fielding Attributes (Carry-Over Abilities) : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player Guide #7A - Compendium Table : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player Guide #7B - Pitching Attributes (Carry-Over Abilities) : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player Guide #7B - Pitching COA Compendium Table : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player Guide #8 - Changing the Commentary Name in Japanese : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player Guide #9 - Optimized Build Order v1 (Fast Ramp and Completionist pathways) : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player Guide #11 - Post-Game Free Actions : r/EBaseballProspirit (actually guide 10)
• Star Player Guide #11 - Social Stats (Non-baseball Stats) : r/EBaseballProspirit (the actual guide 11)
• Strong Points and Carry-Over Abilities Demystified! : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Star Player - random observations and oddities : r/EBaseballProspirit

Wow. Looking at them all in a list like that ... I have done a lot of writing about this game! And it also reinforces how I am kinda bad at numbering and labeling. :)

Enjoy!

Note: This is just the compendium counterpart to the Pitching COA post here: Star Player Guide #7B - Pitching Attributes (Carry-Over Abilities) : r/EBaseballProspirit.

I've posted this separately as a markdown table to make it easier to search, even though I think it looks awful. It's the same information as the other post, just in a different format.

Attribute	Type	Rating	Set Carry-Over Menu Description	Unlock EXP	Unlock Conditions	Notes
Bunt Hunter+	Fielding	+	Faster response when fielding bunts. (Requires Pitcher, First Baseman, or Third Baseman Affinity)	300	Appear as either pitcher, first baseman, or third baseman: +30	Requires Pitcher, First Baseman, or Third Baseman Affinity.
Pickoff+	Fielding	+	Skill at pickoff moves	150	Each batter retired with runners on first, or first and third: +10	Surprisingly less common than Pickoff++. If you see it, grab it as a high priority.
Pickoff++	Fielding	+	Skill at pickoff moves	300	Each batter retired with runners on first, or first and third: +10	Requires Pickoff+
Reflexes	Fielding	-	Slower reaction to liners back to the mound	50	Appear in game as pitcher: +50	This is the negative version of the trait. Reflexes+ is the positive version. Requires Pitcher Affinity
Reflexes+	Fielding	+	Quick reaction to line drives hit toward the pitcher	300	Appear in game as pitcher: +30	Requires Pitcher Affinity
AM Threat	General	+	Performs well in day games	N/A	N/A	Cannot be learned
Aura	General	+				Requires Presence.Not available on any pitcher on default NPB teams.
Fly Fisher	General	+/-	More likely to induce fly balls	300	Each out with fly ball: +10
Presence (Relief)	General	+	Overwhelming presence puts pressure on the batter when relieving	300	Pitch a scoreless relief outing: +15 / Hold or save: +15	Description on ability reads, "When pitching in relief, powerful presence puts pressure on batters". Appears in Candidate List and Set Carry-Over menu as "Intimidator"
Prime Time	General	+	Performs well in high-stakes games	N/A	N/A	Cannot be learned, but can be added to player via the Prime Time Cleats (available at the Sporting Goods Store)
Support	General	-	More likely to receive run support when pitching	50	Appear as pitcher: +50	This is the negative version of the trait. Support+ and Support++ are the positive versions
Support+	General	+	More likely to receive run support when pitching	300	Be the winning pitcher: +50
Worm Killer	General	+/-	More likely to induce ground balls	300	Each out with ground ball: +10	Appears in Candidate List and Set Carry-Over menu as "Grounder Pitcher"
Base Lock	Rating		Harder to steal against	G-E: 50 / D: 60 / C: 150 / B: 300 / A: 600 / S: 900	G-E: Each hit given up with runners on first, or first and third: +50 / D-S: Each batter retired with runners on first, or first and third: +10
Durability	Rating		Less prone to injury during the season	G-E: 50 / D: 60 / C: 150 / B: 300 / A: 600 / S: 900	G-E: Each out: +50 / D-S: Each out: +3
Poise	Rating		Maintains composure even after giving up consecutive hits	G-E: 50 / D: 60 / C: 150 / B: 300 / A: 600 / S: 900	G-E: Give up hit with runners on base: +50 / D-S: Each batter retired with runners in scoring position: +10
VS Jam	Rating		Stability when runners are in scoring position	G-E: 50 / D: 60 / C: 150 / B: 300 / A: 600 / S: 900	G-E: Give up hit with runners in scoring position: +50 / D-S: Each batter retired with runners in scoring position: +10
VS Lefty/Righty	Rating		Performs well against left-/right-handed hitters	G-E: 50 / D: 60 / C: 150 / B: 300 / A: 600 / S: 900	G-E: Allow hit by lefty: +50 / D-S: Each left-/right-handed vatter retired: +10	Skill will be for the platoon advantage (opposite side to your throwing arm)
Auto Heat	Release	+	Able to throw powerful pitches even without a perfect release	300	Each Best Pitch thrown: +2	Not sure what "Best Pitch" means. Doesn't seem to refer to Perfect Pitches based on my observations, even though that's the obvious correlation. / Description on ability reads "Throw with a good, stable release"
Brushback	Release	+	Increase pitch power when throwing inside	300	Each strike on inner half of the plate: +2 / Each out with inside pitch: +5	Description on ability reads "Improved control of inside pitches"
Cookie Toss	Release	-	More likely to throw down the middle on release failure	50	Bad pitch: +50	Description reads, "More likely to miss down the middle on a bad pitch"
Failproof	Release	+	Less likely to throw down the middle on failure release	300	Complete appearance without allowing a home run: Outs x+3	Unlock condition is worded strangely. It means 3 EXP for every out you record in the appearance as long as you don't give up a home run.
Late Launch	Release	+	Holds the ball well, making release timing hard to read	300	Each Best Pitch thrown: +2	Not sure what "Best Pitch" means. Doesn't seem to refer to Perfect Pitches based on my observations, even though that's the obvious correlation.
Metronome	Release	-	Pitch velocity is inconsistent	50	Allow hit with a fastball: +50	This is the negative version of the trait. Metronome+ is the positive version.
Metronome+	Release	+	Ability to consistently maintain pitch velocity	300	Each fastball pitched: +2 / Each out with fastball: +5	Description on pitch reads "Pitch at consistent velocity"
Spin Leak	Release	-	Fastballs tend to have side spin, making them easier to hit	50	Allow home run: +50	Description on ability reads "Fastballs are more likely to have spin leak and be easier to hit"
Wild Heat	Release	+/-	Can throw powerful fastballs but with reduced control	300	Each fastball pitched: +2 / Each out with fastball: +5	Description on ability reads "Able to throw more powerful fastballs but at the cost of control"
Choker	Scenario	-	Fails to perform when victory is within reach	50	When pitching in the 9th with a lead, allow 1 or more runs: +50 / When pitching in the 5th as a starter, allow 1 or more runs: +50
Dr. K	Scenario	+	Increased pitch power when ahead with two strikes	300	Each strikeout: +7	Description reads, "Performance improves with two strikes". Appears as "Strikeouts" in Candidate List and Set Carry-Over menu
Gear Shift	Scenario	+	Gets fired up when runners are on base in a tie or close lead late in the game	300	Each batter retired with runners in scoring position: +10	Description on ability reads, "As a starter, pitching improves from the 6th inning on when runners are on base and you are tied or leading by 3 runs or fewer." May be a different description if you have Reliever or Closer affinity.
On Call	Scenario	+	Maintains ability even when entering mid-inning as a relief pitcher	300	Enter game as a reliever: +30
PM Threat	Scenario	+	Performs well in night games	N/A	N/A	Cannot be learned
Power Sense	Scenario	+/-	Goes all out against strong batters	300	Each batter retired with runners in scoring position: +10	Description on ability reads, "Perform better against strong hitters"
Second Wind	Scenario	+	Improves condition as the game progresses	300	In start, pitch 6 or more innings and give up 3 or fewer runs / Pitch complete game: +25 / Pitch shutout: +35
Slow Start	Scenario	-	Struggles early when taking the mound	50	Allow home run: +50
Unshakable	Scenario	-	Stability when runners are on first or first and third base	50	Each hit given up with runners on first, or first and third: +50	This is the negative version of the trait. Unshakable+ is the positive version
Unshakable+	Scenario	+	Stability when runners are on first or first and third base	300	Each batter retired with runners on first, or first and third: +10	Description on ability reads, "Improves composure when runners are on first, or first and third"
Unsteady	Scenario	-	Easily loses composure from small triggers	50	Allow walk: +50 / Hit batter with pitch: +50	Description on ability reads "Pitching falls apart very easily"
Zone Loss	Scenario	-	Control decreases when reaching a 3-ball count	50	Allow walk: +50	Description on ability reads "Control worsens when pitching with three balls". Appears in Candidate List and Set Carry-Over menu as "Walks"

Hey everyone! I can't believe I'm finally finishing this last guide! Over the past week I've finally dove into a proper pitching playthrough, and I've completed (as best I can) the Pitching counterpart to the original Carry-Over Abilities guide I did a month ago. The original guide, Star Player Guide #7A - Fielding Attributes (Carry-Over Abilities) : r/EBaseballProspirit, includes a lot of information which is relevant to Pitchers, and I don't plan on rehashing all of that. I'll briefly summarize the main points and then get into some observations and the abilities. This guide will be quite a bit shorter than the original 7A as a result.

Two important notes:

• I thought about including information on pitches, but in the end chose not to include them here. Several other redditors (especially u/butteredpopcorn10 and u/OK-Helicopter-8204) have posted excellent information on the topic in the community, so I encourage you to check out these threads, ask questions there, or start your own conversations on the pitching paths.
  • Pitch List P2 - Velocity Catalogued : r/EBaseballProspirit
  • Is there a complete list of pitches with their characteristics? : r/EBaseballProspirit
• Pitchers will still see Fielders COAs in their Candidate Lists because they still swing a bat (at least in the Central League and on occasion in interleague). You can, in theory, learn Power Hitter, Run Maker C, or Takeoff+, but doing so instead of improving your pitching skills is not time well spent. If you're a two-way player you'll obviously need to balance the two, but this guide will focus entirely on Pitching COAs.

I also recently dug into the whole "Strong Points" versus "Carry-Over Abilities" question, and you can read about that here: Strong Points and Carry-Over Abilities Demystified! : r/EBaseballProspirit.

Summary of Carry-Over Abilities

Again, this section is a summary of the information in the original Carry-Over Abilities post linked at the top. For more information, I recommend giving that a read!

Carry-Over Abilities (also referred to as Strong Points, Special Abilities, and attributes) are those labels you see underneath the pitcher and batter during a game and on the player cards in Player Relationships, the Player List in League Info, and other menus. They're characteristics, both positive and negative, which improve (or degrade) player's in-game abilities and make them unique.

You acquire Carry-Over Abilities from other players, from manuals (which you can get at the Batting Cage and Karaoke), and if you put in a lot of time and effort, eventually from Ken Yano (Baseball Data Corp. Employee). You can also acquire some skills via equipment, but they're lost when you change equipment.

Acquiring is only the first step in actually having your player gain the ability. Once you've acquired a COA, you need to learn it, and you do so by performing in-game actions which can range from simply appearing in a game to doing very specific things like hitting a walk-off home run or retiring batters with runners on the corners.

Some COAs will upgrade others (Support+ replaces Support) and some have prerequisites (you can't learn Pickoff++ unless you already know Pickoff+). I'll detail these in the table at the bottom of this guide.

Carry-Over Acquisition Order

Obviously, since this is your player, you can acquire and learn COAs in any order you want. But there are some general approaches which have stood the test of, well, I can't really call it "time" since we've been playing this for all of two months. :)

• The best Pitching COAs, in my opinion, are Auto Heat, Dr. K, Failproof, Late Launch, Metronome+, Second Wind, and Support+. These improve your ability to strike batters out, help your stamina, increase your run support, and prevent mistimed button presses from making your pitches into meatballs over the heart of the plate. I recommend prioritizing these right away.
• Be very cautious when going after Auto Heat! When you maximize a player, there's always a chance that one of his COAs will evolve into an "upgraded" version. However, the "upgrade" of Auto Heat is Wild Heat, which improves fastball velocity at the cost of control. Most players agree that this isn't a good tradeoff, so when you're about to maximize a player to get Auto Heat, save your game so you can revert to that save in the off-chance that Auto Heat evolves into Wild Heat. Unless, of course, you want Wild Heat. :)
• As with the Fielding approach, in my first year I'll also look to upgrade Base Lock, Durability, Poise, VS Jam, and VS Lefty/Righty at least one letter. General COAs outweigh situation-specific COAs, because they're always active. Gear Shift is a good COA, but it only applies in close games in the late innings. It won't help you in the first or second inning like VS Lefty would.
• Pickoff+ is actually less common than Pickoff++, despite being its prerequisite, so grab it if you have the chance.
• Aura doesn't appear on any player on the default rosters for NPB. The only player who has it on any roster in the game is Ohtani Shohei (of course), specifically the version on Team Japan 2023. It does appear on new players, can evolve from Presence when you maximize a player friendship, and you can add it to existing players via boosts. You can always add it to a player you create in Spirits Mode as well.

As a reminder, with the "lettered" items (Base Lock, Durability, Poise, VS Jam, and VS Lefty/Righty), you can acquire them in any order but can only learn the next letter in the progression. If you have Base Lock D and want to get your player to Base Lock A, you will need Base Lock C, Base Lock B, and Base Lock A. Since you can acquire them in any order, it makes sense to prioritize Base Lock C but if you happen to see Base Lock B or Base Lock A, you can opportunistically grab those since you know you'll need them eventually.

There are three COAs which you can't learn, even if you maximize friendships with players who have them. They are the infamous:

• AM Threat
• PM Threat
• Prime Time

You can actually get Prime Time onto your player via the Prime Time cleats (available at the Sporting Goods Store) and of course you can create a player in Spirits which has two of the three (AM Threat and PM Threat are mutually exclusive, for obvious reasons). There are apparently three more called Spring Performer, Fall Performer, and Season Sprinter, but I've never actually encountered them in Star Player or Spirits. They may be unique to other modes. If you know how to access them, though, I'm very interested! So leave a comment with the details, please. :)

Carry-Over Compendium

Similar to the Fielder counterpart, I've grouped the Pitching Carry-Over Abilities into five sets:

• Fielding
• General
• Ratings (the "lettered" items)
• Release
• Scenario

They'll appear here in that order. As with last time, in this article I'm including the COAs as a series of screenshots and then a table list in a separate post accompanying this one. Click the images to see the full details. If the images aren't your jam, you can see a text version here: Star Player Guide #7B - Pitching COA Compendium Table : r/EBaseballProspirit.

Before moving on to the actual lists, I do want to say a few last things:

• Regarding the lettered items, I've never seen a Pitching lettered item higher than A. We know that one Fielding attribute (Game Calling) has a learnable S-tier COA, so I've assumed that it's theoretically possible that others will have it, and the threshold of 900 EXP from Game Calling S would likely be the same for the others. If you spot an S-tier Pitching COA in the wild, send me a screenshot!
• Not every + skill seems to have a ++ upgrade. There's a Pickoff++ and a Reflexes++ but I've never seen, for example, a Metronome++. A community member did mention working on Support++ but I didn't see it on any of the players on the default rosters for the 2026 NPB teams (nor on any of the Team Japan rosters). That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that I wasn't able to verify it myself.

The columns are relatively straightforward, with the possible exception of "Rating". This reflects the color of the box next to the COA in the Candidate List and on player cards. If the icon is purple, it means it's considered bad and gets a -. If it's pink, it's considered good and gets a +. If it's half and half, it's of mixed advantage and is labeled +/-.

Fielding

https://preview.redd.it/tgm73vyxf6oh1.png?width=2423&format=png&auto=webp&s=05ffaf3421ae3dc0c162a2d2021f1490aa19399c

General

https://preview.redd.it/gcf3iey2g6oh1.png?width=2430&format=png&auto=webp&s=b54f3d7501c6380d831b462472151527ca50f3ab

Ratings

https://preview.redd.it/h3xibzr5g6oh1.png?width=2430&format=png&auto=webp&s=376465c408e283d70fc69b26e466946909d27343

Release

https://preview.redd.it/n9c3uzxui6oh1.png?width=2427&format=png&auto=webp&s=44e2f4434614bff2a691e7b6cf5e90206e797b53

Scenario

https://preview.redd.it/urogizblg6oh1.png?width=2431&format=png&auto=webp&s=8dce5b0549b575e771a268eca1da7e4df8e5e8da

Conclusion and Parting Words

At this point, I've written something like 15 major guides on Star Player and while I probably could squeeze out a few more, I think I've covered everything which really needed a guide. I've enjoyed this game mode so, so much, but that Hakkyu no Kiseki mode has been calling my name for a month now and I think it's finally time I went over to see what the fuss is about!

I write these guides for everyone, not just myself, and it's my sincere hope that you found something in it that improves your Star Player experience. Whether you've been playing since release or you just started the mode, you should be able to find something here.

Thanks for reading! Play ball!

Hey everyone! Not a guide this time, but instead a post (more like an essay :)) on a question that I fielded last night on the Carry-Over guide. It's been asked a few times and I spent some time on it this morning (because I am both OCD and infinitely curious) and I think I worked out a good, simple answer to the age-old question:

What's the difference between Strong Points and Carry-Over Abilities?

The simple answer is that they're the same, but the game refers to them differently depending on where you encounter them. Most players will encounter the phrase "Strong Points" at two specific times: player creation and in the pre-game loading screens. But you'll see them refer to "Carry-Over Ability" repeatedly throughout your player career once he's active (like on the Training menu). This leads me to believe that the way Konami regards this is that the actual ability is the Strong Point but the process of acquiring it is the Carry-Over Ability mechanism. It's this distinction that goes some way towards explaining the thing that everyone brings up: the help text on the loading screen.

This is the "offending" help text:

https://preview.redd.it/4v512dtqrwnh1.png?width=1160&format=png&auto=webp&s=3ccd6d7fdddd912c8c5839f19fe84adccc74e17c

The wording implies that you can somehow change Strong Points before a game to sort of customize your player for the specific game ahead, like using different loadouts in a FPS based on the map type or your squad. And you actually can, in a sense!

In my guide on Carry-Over Abilities (Star Player Guide #7A - Fielding Attributes (Carry-Over Abilities) : r/EBaseballProspirit) I mentioned that while you're actively learning a Carry-Over Ability, the game treats it as a part of you. In other words, at that point the game views it as a Strong Point. If you've set Tough Out as your active Carry-Over, the game treats you like you have Tough Out. But what if in the next game you chose to set, say, Consistent? Then you'd no longer have Tough Out but would have Consistent. You've just changed what the game treats as your set of Strong Points. You've changed your loadout, so to speak, and that's how you can "use Strong Points before a game to boost your initial attributes". "Weak points" obviously refers to things like Weak Out or a low rating like Run Maker F or Bunt E. [This opens up another possible interpretation, which is that Strong and Weak Points are just categories of Carry-Over Abilities.] It's an imperfect analogy, since in this case your "loadout" consists of one temporary Strong Point (your currently-set Carry-Over Ability) and all your permanent ones, but it gets the point across.

If the game were consistent in using a single term like "Strong Points", we wouldn't have this confusion, but they actually use quite a few different ones! As mentioned above, the game refers to "Strong Points" in that help text and initial character creation process. The related Training menu is called "Carry-over Settings" and lists the actual abilities as "Carry-Over Abilities" while the player cards in Private Life > Player Relationships and elsewhere refer to "Attributes" and "Special Ability". I obviously have no insight into why Konami may have used so many different descriptors, but I'd love to see how the Japanese version of the game handles this. Do they use different phrases in different places, the Japanese equivalents of Strong Points and Carry-Over Abilities? Or is this a translation issue, where different translators came up with different phrases for the same thing? Or perhaps is it a case where the translators changed their approach while localizing and just didn't go back to make all the references consistent? I don't think we'll ever know, but honestly it's not going to keep me up at night. :)

I suppose in a sense I'm part of the "problem" by using the term COAs in all of my guides, but given the way players experience these, I think it makes the most sense to call them COAs and not Strong Points. "Hey go look at your Strong Points on the menu that doesn't ever use the word Strong Points." :) I'm not going to change any of the guides, and I'm going to consistently refer to COAs just because it's the simplest and most straightforward way to talk about them.

As usual, I spent like 12 paragraphs on something that could have just been a single sentence: "Strong Points are just Carry-Over Abilities by a different name". But once I start digging into something I just can't stop, and the result is yet another essay on Star Player! :)

Summary: Social stats influence Star Player events and control access to six NPCs. You increase social stats with Hobby Items and visiting specific locations. You don't gain any on-field benefits from social stats but the overall experience changes and becomes more rewarding.

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

Hey everyone! It's been about three weeks since I posted my last guide, mostly because I thought I was pretty much done with new guides for Star Player. [I know, I know, I still haven't finished that promised Pitching Carry-Over Abilities guide yet ...] But as I've continued with my second full playthrough with a fielder (Ohshima), I realized that I never really talked about the social stats (Intelligence, Initiative, etc.). During my Ohshima playthrough I actually noticed something which I feel is pretty important, and that prompted me to put together content for yet another guide. [And this guide is the actual #11 guide. The one on post-game free actions is labeled #11 but should actually be #10. At least I think so. I'm genuinely not sure if maybe that really was #11 and this should be #12. I am apparently really bad at both counting AND labeling. :)]

So what are the social stats (or as the game sometimes calls them, non-baseball stats)? What do they do? How do you improve them? Why would you even want to? Read on to find out everything (that I think) you need to know about social stats!

The basics of social stats

The five social stats--Intelligence, Initiative, Communication, Critical Thinking, and Creativity--show up under My Info > My Data and range from 1 to 10. You increase them through two primary activities (Hobby Items and Other locations) which I'll talk about in more detail later. They serve to "round out" your ballplayer into more than just an arm or a bat, usually in the form of side events which periodically liven up your playthrough.

When you first create your Star Player, your choice of starting point influences your initial social stats scores. Your social stats are initially set to 1, but you're given additional points to allocate as you see fit. If you start as a high schooler, you get one additional point. A college player gets three, a corporate ballplayer gets five, and an independent leaguer gets four. [Yes, the corporate player gets more than the indy baller.]

If you choose to use a rostered or custom player (Hakkyu no Kiseki or Spirits import), you'll receive five points to allocate to social stats (just like if you created a corporate player). [Thanks u/Intelligent_Set_2081 for confirming the custom player piece!]

Regardless of how many points you get, I'd recommend allocating somewhat evenly but prioritizing Intelligence, Critical Thinking, and Creativity over Initiative and Communication. I'll explain why later in this guide, but for now, let's talk about the most obvious manifestation of your social stats: your encounters and relationships.

Social stats and Star Player events

Social stats don't influence your play on the field but do have an effect on your relationships and the events you see as your career progresses. [The game explicitly mentions this in one of the pre-game help texts titled Events: "A variety of events await. Some events are more regular, while others are linked to your stats or star level."]

As you rank up your social stats, those recurring events will change in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. For example, as your Initiative increases, the recurring offseason event where you teach aspiring ballplayers will see more and more positive results. Similarly, as your Communication score increases, you'll do better in the TV panel program. Not every event revolves around social stats, of course, but those that do will change over time. You'll see the "best possible" outcome for each event only when you've maximized the relevant skill (and in many cases only after you've reached specific Star Player thresholds, as with the fans at the ballpark during pre-game and in the Park on game-day mornings).

Your Intelligence, Communication, and Creativity also seem to increase your ability to connect with teammates and your manager if you choose "Talk to Another Player" before a game. You'll still see the "Teammate X lost focus" type of message (at a frustratingly frequent rate) but you won't struggle to explain or understand concepts like Defensive Theory to them.

I have not observed any link between social stats and friendships with players. How much you fill a player's friendship bar seems to be tied exclusively to your star rating and your Star Player level.

NPC Unlocks

In my opinion, the most important reason for focusing on social stats, at least until four of them reach level 5, is that no fewer than six non-player relationships (NPCs) are gated behind social stats in some way:

• Miho Takamatsu (Nutritionist) unlocks the day after you reach Intelligence level 5
• Tomohiko Omura (Doctor) unlocks the day after you reach Critical Thinking level 5
• Kazuya Doi (Interpreter) unlocks the day after you reach Communication level 5
• Mai Maebara (Artist) unlocks after you reach Creativity level 5 and see a specific lecture at the Event Hall ("Express Yourself Like an Artist")
• Soichi Morimoto (Teacher) unlocks after you reach Creativity level 5 and see a specific lecture at the Event Hall ("Elite Coaches Reveal: How to Unlock Your Leadership Potential")
• Shinji Adachi (Consultant) unlocks after you reach Creativity level 5 and see a specific lecture at the Event Hall ("Talk like a Conversation Coach")

Each of these NPCs provides a useful boost in the form of an upgradeable skill. For more information on each of the NPCs and their skills, see my detailed guide on NPCs here: Star Player Guide #1A - Non-Player Relationships (Complete) : r/EBaseballProspirit. Of these NPCs, I feel that Takamatsu (the Nutritionist) is the most important since fatigue management is a constant concern if you have your practices set to Intense.

You'll notice that the NPCs are gated behind only four of the five social stats. Three are gated behind Creativity with one each gated behind Intelligence, Communication, and Critical Thinking. Initiative doesn't seem to be a gate for any of the NPCs, which is why I mentioned that you should emphasize Intelligence, Critical Thinking, and Creativity during your initial Star Player build. [In the next section I'll talk about why you don't need to emphasize Communication even though it's a gate.]

In addition, one of the three girlfriend candidates (Ano) won't accept a marriage proposal unless your Creativity is level 5 or higher. Since Creativity level 5 is also the gate for three NPCs, this is something you'll want to do either way, but I just wanted to call it out explicitly here. Neither Risa nor Runa requires a specific social stat (although Runa requires all Hobbies to be level 3 or higher). If you're curious about the dating side of the game, I covered that here: Star Player #4 - Dating Mini-Guide : r/EBaseballProspirit.

Increasing social stats

Your two primary sources for progressing your social stats are consuming Hobby Items (Books, Movies, Video Games, and CDs) and visiting various locations (the Fishing Pond, the ESL School, etc.). You also get a small boost to Communication every time you talk to a player or non-player, and that adds up over the length of a career. [Side note: the Communication boost is the interesting observation I made during my Ohshima playthrough that prompted me to write this guide.] Getting this regular boost to Communication means that you're likely to maximize it several seasons before any of the others, which is the reason I say you don't have to explicitly focus on Communication like the others. You also seem to get a random social stat boost in addition to Communication every time you talk to Saito (Sports Journalist). I didn't observe any additional stat boosts from other NPCs.

If your goal is just to unlock all the NPCs, you can boost Intelligence, Critical Thinking, and Creativity reasonably quickly by visiting the ESL School, Game Cafe, and Event Hall on Free Days (and the Game Cafe on weekend nights). When you're in a city where you haven't unlocked those locations (presumably in away cities), you can consume Hobby Items which focus on those specific social stats. [I haven't made a list of all the Books, Movies, etc., but you can see what stat they boost via Private Life > Items and during post-game free actions (PGFAs).] The ESL School also boosts Communication, which as I've mentioned several times will automatically progress as you talk to players and NPCs. And of course if you just want the NPCs, you don't have to worry about making progress against Initiative which doesn't gate any of the NPCs.

If you're a completionist and plan to complete the Star Tracker, you should take a longer-term approach. The Hobby Items alone won't grow your stats enough to get you to level 10 in all five social stats, so you'll still need to visit locations to "top up" the attributes (except possibly Communication). The Movie Theater is the best "all-around" location for boosting social stats, as it's available on weekday nights, not just weekend nights, but other locations give bigger boosts to specific social stats. These are the best locations for each of the five social stats:

• 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 it comes to the Hobby Items, prepare to spend a lot of time on these. A long time. Like, 16 seasons or more! There are 50 of each of the four Hobby Items and they're released in groups of five with each season (so you'll see five in your first season, 15 in your third, 40 in your eighth, and so on up until your 10th season when everything will be available). Some Hobby Items will grant you +5, others +10, and a handful +15. There are also five "stat books" which grant a whopping +80. I actually don't know what triggers their appearance (if you do, please comment!!!) but they've always been there on my second visit to the Bookstore. [Side note: these don't count towards the "Read 10/20/30/40/50 books" in the Star Player tracker.]

If you choose to go the completionist route, I'd consume Hobby Items during PGFAs, and alternate between increasing friendships with teammates (for Carry-Over Abilities and Practice EXP) and visiting locations like the Event Hall. Again, you only need to progress four of the five attributes to unlock the NPCs, so get those done first and then continue progressing all the attributes. You'll almost certainly maximize Communication several seasons before any other, and since Initiative doesn't gate an NPC, you can let it lag the others if you want. If you finish all the Hobby Items before you maximize your social stats, you use PGFAs to progress social stats at the Movie Theater, which is available every night in any city where you've unlocked it and which has options for every social stat, and you can also progress social stats at the Manga Cafe, Game Cafe, and Arcade, which are usually available on weekend nights (and sometimes during the week). I detailed the locations and their stat growths in this guide (Star Player Guide #2 - Other locations : r/EBaseballProspirit) and also covered some similar ground in the optimized build guide (Star Player Guide #9 - Optimized Build Order v1 (Fast Ramp and Completionist pathways) : r/EBaseballProspirit). If you need more information, those will probably give you what you need.

A lingering question on unlocking locations

There's also a possibility, which I haven't been able to test to my satisfaction, that some of the Other locations are blocked until you've progressed specific social stats. This is just a theory, but it's supported by two observations:

• Numerous gamers have reported that certain locations never appear when they Take a Stroll in the early game even after repeated restoring and rerolling. In my testing I've seen many but not all of the locations show up in March and April 2026, and others have corroborated my findings. I've never seen the ESL School in Mar/Apr, for example, but have seen the Shopping Street and Arcade. However, it's not clear if the locations show up automatically after you progress social stats, make progress towards related Hobbies, if it's based on the progression of time, is linked to your number of appearances, some combination of these, or something else entirely. As you can probably imagine, it's pretty hard to test this if I have this many variables to deal with (and I can't isolate them all).
• One of the pre-game loading screen help texts implicitly states that social stats will make more locations available to you. The item "Non-baseball Stats" says, "Not only does your player have baseball stats, but also stats unrelated to baseball that impact his ability to meet more people or visit more places, which improves as these stats increase." Since we know that six NPCs are gated behind social stats, it would make sense if certain locations were hidden until you reached a certain level of a particular social stat.

Unfortunately, I am just not interested in putting in the work to further explore this. Whether if you're just trying to unlock all the NPCs or complete the Star Player tracker, you'll be able to unlock every location at some point.

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

So, there you have it! Another guide in the books, metaphorically speaking, and my sincere hope is that there's something in this for everyone, whether you're just starting or you've been playing since release.

Play ball!

Update: u/Liam35_ points out that LB/L1 does the same thing so we're spoilt for choice in skipping unwanted dialog. ;)

I don't know if this is documented in-game anywhere, but I accidentally discovered that you can fast-forward dialog in Star Player by pressing X/Square instead of pressing A/Cross every time it pauses. I'm using it in pre-game, post-game, with NPCs, during cut-scenes with the girlfriend candidates, everywhere there's dialog. It also has the nice effect of not accidentally letting you select Rest on a Free Day. :)

Sharing in case it helps anyone else!

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!

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

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".

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

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!