New Player Walkthrough Part 2: Getting Started

Original article written by Madelene Gilbert posted 15 years 3 weeks ago

Getting Started:

Ok, by now you should have read through the walkthrough. Now’s your chance to get used to navigating the actual site itself. Let’s start with the home page.

You can find all of the important main links on the left hand side in the blue menu. Most of these are pretty straight forward. “SIMformation” is where you can find new player info and a link to the walkthrough. “Owners” will give you a list of every owner in the game, as well as a picture of their silks (if they have any) and their current bankroll. “Buy Horses” will take you to the sales page. “Racing” will take you to links for entries, results, stakes schedules, info on bonus series, etc. Also, there are help links for race and track conditions, surfaces and equipment. Definitely check this out! “Breeding” will take you to links for stallion lists organized by stud fee, as well as game point options like creating a horse or reserving a name.

The side bar also includes links to the Feature Races, Archives, Game Points and Contact. These links are not available from other pages like the others are. You can find those links above on other pages (like your My Stable page) on the blue navigation bar at the top of the page.

Back on the homepage to the right hand side is a list of Quick Links. These include the Auction, Calendar, Entries, Workouts, Stakes Schedules, Farms and Tracks, etc. Most of these can also be found on the other pages in smaller print under the main blue navigation bar at the top of the screen.

Also on the home page is the post time for the latest race day, Steward’s notes about upcoming or happening events, the latest Feature Race articles and Upcoming due dates (located under the Quick Links to the right).

Be sure to scope out the site in its entirety.

Also make sure you know how to navigate your My Stable page. There are a lot of links on there and many of them are new. Most are explained in the walkthrough, but now’s a good chance to review.

First thing you see under your name is your money and your game points (or GPs) if you have any. Clicking on either value will take you to the transaction pages. The money page is the exact same as the My Money link.

Under that are your trainer stats for the year. It should be in this format—
0: 0 – 0 – 0 Win-0.0% OTB-0.0%
Stakes Wins: 0 I Maiden Wins: 0 I 2 yr old Wins: 0
The first number is how many starts you’ve had so far in the year. That means how many times your horses have run. The next three numbers with the dashes are your wins and places. Your win percentage is just that—the number of wins divided by the number of starts. OTB, or on the board, is how many times you’ve finished 1st, 2nd or 3rd, and the percentage is the number of finishes divided into the number of starts. Stakes wins is pretty straightforward; Newbie stakes wins at Trial Park DO count for this too, so that’s always something to shoot for. Maiden wins is how many of your horses have broken (or won) a maiden race. Once a horse has won a maiden though, they loose that status. 2 yr old wins includes any win by a 2 yr old, maiden win or otherwise. So you technically can get two points for those categories if you have a maiden 2 yr old win. Make sense?

A note on player stats: don’t get discouraged if these seem low to you, particularly in your first year. A win percentage below 10% is perfectly fine. In fact, you can be sure that quite a few older players don’t have much better stats. Nothing is going to happen to you or your horses if you don’t reach a particular number. These are for your entertainment and for marking your own progress throughout the game. Although it’s always nice to see how other people are doing, these stats don’t necessarily indicate how “good” a trainer is.

Underneath the trainer stats is your player status. It will say “Player since: date”. That’s the day you joined. It will also say “New Player” Status or “Junior Player” Status if you have that. Those statuses remain for one full SIM year and expire during the week of your “Player since” date. The SIM racing year consists of 16 weeks, so if you joined in Week 6, then your status will expire that same week in the next year. Also, your SIMperior expiration date is on the same line.

And underneath your status line are your stable links. These should all begin with “My” something. Be sure to check out all of these links for future reference and easy navigation. Also note that if you need to change any personal settings, go to My Profile to do so.

Now, you can’t very well start earning money and accumulating mass amounts of wins without any horses. That’s next to impossible here in the SIM. So, Part 3 will take us to the sales page with some tips on buying your first couple of horses.

---

Back to Racing articles