The Trackblazer Item You Aren't Buying (Should You?) | A Mathematical? Analysis

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Hello everyone, Berb here.

[00:00:03]Hear me out a moment. There is actually something here. Today I'll be talking about the cat food. I know for some people they believe it is a very bad meme joke item, but I'm here to say there is a subset of the community that this is the most important item that you must buy in certain situations.

[00:00:22]There's two sides to this video that you might find value. If you are a cat food believer, I'm here to explore why you believe the things that you do. I'm not invalidating what you believe, but I'm here to show the non-cat food believers the reasons why you believe in the cat food. If you are not a cat food believer, this video is meant to give you an opportunity to have empathy.

[00:00:45]Empathy is understanding the beliefs of others and the feelings of others. And this video is going to explore why something that seems so illogical as buying an item that barely gives you anything can give you measurable success in your Uma careers. Okay?

[00:01:04]I had this video slated for a lot later because honestly this is not the most important topic in the world. However, there were events yesterday that this has become incredibly relevant for.

[00:01:17]Yesterday we had the winners semi-finals of Uma League.

[00:01:22]We had Team Velocity versus Uma Party going head-to-head into a battle of 5 v 5 in a race to 25 points to try to get into winners finals, I believe. And basically it was a bunch of front runners on Team Uma Party side versus a Sayun Sky and a bunch of back liners on Team Velocity, which means that for Team Velocity, the strength of the front runner is basically their way to fight and put fight against all of the other front runners of Uma Party. So there's a lot of pressure on the person that picks up the saying sky and that person would be none other than pick. And as pick was going through this career as the casters were going and watching pick train because of the importance of how good this saying sky build would be pick would get a scholar's hat run. And those casters would seem somewhat confused why in picks inventory there was both a scholar's hat that he would not go and use as well as a yummy cat food that was also not being used. And that is what we are going to explore today is why pick and other people proceed to keep stuff like the yummy cat food and the scholar's hat in their inventory as long as possible.

[00:02:42]Mathematically the cat food gives you barely anything but it does give you something. It does give you five bond with Yayoi Akikawa, the director. It is technically 25% of the way to a threshold that gives you plus one more SP per tap on Yayoi. However, because this does max out you only are you only the only thing that's relevant is the way up to max bond. Basically all this does is it shifts over the 2233344 skill point taps one to the left. So for a grand total of basically two skill points over the course of the entirety of bringing her bond all the way up. Now that is if you go and use this immediately when you get it. Now this brings it to two skill points or point two skill points per coin. To put it in perspective just the skill point part at 50% race bonus of a hammer is worth 10 skill points at 40 coins which means that it's basically twice as effective at generating skill points compared to the cat food and in fact this is a best case for the cat food and a worst case for the hammer because the The bond also increases with literally everything in the game. Certain races will do it. If you get any sort of events, any scenario events, sometimes the director bond increases as well. You get it end of year. You get a thresholding. There's mood ups throughout the game that do it, too. So, the director bond that you're grabbing, even if you put it immediately, it's going to be much less than two skill points. It's probably in the realm of a half skill point to one skill point.

[00:04:15]Which goes to prove that, objectively speaking, isn't this just a bad item that gives you nothing that you're spending 10 coins on?

[00:04:24]Kind of.

[00:04:26]The purpose behind it, I believe, that the Cygames intended this for was before they realized that, "Hey, we overtuned races." The intent of this scenario was you weren't necessarily running 30 to 35 races, which would pump Yaya's bond all the way up. Instead, you would need to go and get your director bond up for best junior year, classic year, senior year, Umamusume. And throughout this process, you may have trouble. So, this is sort of the fail safe to say, "Hey, you need 10 bond with your Yoy? Just through tapping, because you probably aren't racing." They weren't intending you to race more than a race or two. So, you may need that five bond to hit the threshold to upgrade your ultimate.

[00:05:11]That's was the intent for Cygames, but because we race so much, we don't really need it. So, I think it's like 20, 60, and 80, I believe. 20, 40, and 80, I think, for the three years. And if you're not racing that much, you can kind of see how five bond might actually be worth that little 10 coins that you're doing.

[00:05:31]Today, I'll be talking about the Korean cat food tech, as it was explained to me. This may not be the actual name for it, but the story goes is that, "Hey, when the Koreans when the Korean server released, or the East Asian non-Japanese server released, when they were in make a new track as they called it, and a Korean and a cat food had appeared in shop one, you buy it. And the reason is that at that point, your run is now blessed, and it will be a good run. Okay? That is the Korean cat food deck. It's quite easy.

[00:06:07]You spend 10 coins, and you now have a run that is blessed.

[00:06:11]This is superstition. However, what I'm here to say is we put the label superstition on things that we don't personally believe, or we believe to be outlandish.

[00:06:22]Let's take a superstition, and let's bring it and say, "Hey, it's still otherworldly, but it kind of makes sense." Well, now we've entered the realm of spirituality.

[00:06:31]We basically said there's something that is outside of our control that we don't fully understand, but we believe it is plausible. You add this to a doctrine in which you need to be followed, and it becomes something very familiar to us, which is religion. This is not exactly what I'm going to be talking about, because this isn't really the channel to talk about whether something is true or false like this. However, we cannot ignore that both religion, spirituality, and superstition molds the way that society goes exists today, and also the choices that people make. And that is because people believe in it. It's as simple as that.

[00:07:12]Religion has power because people believe in it. Spirituality has power because people believe in it. And superstition has power because people believe in it. If you believe in something, it will affect the decisions and choices that you make. And that is neither a good or a bad thing on its own. And I'm not here to say anything further on that topic.

[00:07:34]The thing is is that this is not always a conscious decision. Sometimes, you just believe things in your subconscious that you do not understand that you're doing. It is not just an act of decision to go and believe these things.

[00:07:49]It's called false validation in the terms of Uma Musume, I think. You run something you have tried a strategy and it worked.

[00:07:58]You try it again and it works and you try it again and it works and then you change one little thing about it and then you crash and burn. But then you go back to it and it works again and you may logically believe that hey, the thing that I'm doing does not seem optimal. It seems very bad for me to do this, but it always seems to work out.

[00:08:19]Eventually, you're going to build up these layers that form into this belief in superstition or spirituality or whatever you want to call it.

[00:08:31]Take this example for you. If you do not believe in cat food, think of the last hat run that you did.

[00:08:38]You got the scholar's cap. What happens after you get the scholar's cap or when does the scholar's cap appear? It's when your run is crashing and burning, right?

[00:08:47]Now, logically speaking, why is this happening? Well, the fast learner cap is very expensive at 280 skill points and a lot of times you're overextending to buy this thing because of the potential the high roll. If you're buying this item, you naturally are high rolling in essence because those could be used for items that give you more stats and stuff.

[00:09:06]That's the logic behind it, but it happens over and over again.

[00:09:11]And it can't always be because you're making a logical choice to high roll.

[00:09:18]So, then you start exploring things like hey, maybe it's a spell that's cast on me, something otherworldly. Or if you don't believe in that and saying hey, I'm the most logical person ever. Well, you know, maybe Cygames put something in the code that when I have a fast learner run, those are always the worst runs that I do, so it balances itself out.

[00:09:37]And suddenly, we're in the realm of conspiracy theories. And they're not even that bad of conspiracy theories.

[00:09:44]It's something that could possibly exist because it is unknown.

[00:09:49]We are filling in the gaps of our knowledge with things that make sense based on our experiences. That's all this is. And it's not much difference to believe that, "Hey, fast learner runs are more tough than regular runs, not just because of the SP, but because there could be something else on the back end of this game, than it is to buy that um to buy the cat food at the start to make sure your run goes well.

[00:10:16]The thing is is that now if you believe that and you have so many runs with fast learner of it appearing in the worst positions possible, your subconscious choice has amplified your reality. And whether you notice it or not, you will remember the runs where you have hat runs that crash and burn a lot. You will remember every single one of those. Whereas before, if you didn't believe it possibly, you won't.

[00:10:48]I I don't really know how else to put it. It's just you are actively aware of things happening when you subscribe to these things. So, for you, it may just be real because it does have an effect on your gameplay, okay?

[00:11:05]Pick didn't pick the scholar's cap. He didn't use it till the end of the run because you can think of it this way.

[00:11:11]It's Schrödinger's fast learner run. He could forget to use the scholar's hat.

[00:11:17]From what I've been told, it took a little bit of yelling on uh on the uh climax race number two. But he did end up using it. But he used it at a point at which he believed would not mess up the run any more.

[00:11:31]And because of that, his choices he made during the run probably were better and lower stress as a result. This is not just a hey, technically when you pop that scholar's cap, you have immediate advantage and there's no reason not to do it. But the reason not to do it is hey, if you're going to make bad decisions because you believe in something that when you prop that thing, this run is going to tank, it may be better to wait until you need to buy skills. Put it in perspective as well.

[00:12:04]Pick also has zero clocks and had zero clocks left on the run. So, this was a very, very high tipping point and what happened?

[00:12:16]Team Velocity beat Team O'Party in an absolute ridiculous sweep. 27-8.

[00:12:24]Two podiums, 1-6. It was race number five. Um one of the biggest blowouts.

[00:12:32]Now, could you say it's because Pick didn't grab the scholar's cap and he got the yummy cat food?

[00:12:38]If he wouldn't have gotten the cat food, would they have won 27-8 or would the gold chip gotten a couple first places?

[00:12:45]Would the Marzensky not getting those on three times? There's so many things in this game that could happen due to RNG that we can attribute to things that don't logically make sense, but you know, maybe they are. And that is how conspiracy theory starts. How is how superstition starts.

[00:13:02]One final point. If you are 100% believe that hey, the person I'm talking to that believes in it doesn't do it for the spirituality. Well, there's one more thing that happens when you buy this cat food. You spend 10 points for practically no value. You are literally making a non-optimal move. 10 coins is not very much and doesn't really have an effect on the game except making it not optimal, which means you have officially bricked your run. And when you bricked your run, you can relax and just enjoy the game. And when you enjoy the game, you make better decisions. You lower the stress of the run. So, if you don't believe in any of the spirituality and you don't believe that anyone should believe in the spirituality, you can instead say that buying the cat food is indeed the low cortisol move.

[00:13:55]Take care, everyone. Burb out.