So you’ve bred or purchased a brand new foal and now it’s time for your horse to begin it’s Zed Run racing career.
But where to now?
It all starts with the Maiden Stakes Tournament where your horse can take its first shot at some prize money.
This is just the beginning though.
From there it can progress through various race capped tournament formats.
(Under 100 races/under 250 races/under 500 races/Open weekly Premier)
For a talented horse with a strategic jockey there is an exciting journey ahead as you vie for a share of the $50,000 weekly prize pool and progress through the tournament circuit.
Below is an outline of the various stages of progression and the current prize pools available at each stage from procreation to OG Racer.
Stage 1) The Maiden Stakes – Weekly $10,000 prize pool.
After running your horse in its Griffin Race it will reveal its class and level information.
It is now ready to run in the free entry Maiden Stakes Tournament.
At the time of writing this article, the Maiden Stakes has $10,000USD in weekly prizes available.
To be eligible your horse must have 21 or less career races so if you have a decent horse you should be able to enter and hopefully qualify for the finals of this tournament for 2 weeks in a row.
(If it’s a really good horse you might even get 3 shots at Maiden glory and prize money!)
Look for the under 21 race tab for qualifying races -these will be free to enter.
Stage 2) Under 100 Race Tournament – Weekly $10,000 prize pool.
Once you have moved on from your Maiden Stakes adventure the next step in your horses early career is the under 100 race tournament.
Just like the Maiden Stakes these tournaments have $10,000USD up for grabs each week.
Things get a little more serious here though as the qualification races for tournaments outside of the Maiden Stakes are paid entry races.
As you will be risking money to qualify, be wary when deciding if your horse is ready to run in these tournaments or if it is talented enough to risk money on at all.
Depending on the quality of your horse you have several paths forward here.
If you landed a high level horse (level 80-99) or the horse shows signs of quality VARIANCE then you may be ready to run in the under 100 race tournament right away.
If your horse performed well in the Maiden Stakes and you’ve discovered it is performing well in the under 100 race tournament qualifiers (And Sit N Go Tournaments if running in them) then you could decide to run it concurrently in the under 250/500 race tournaments for further prize money.
Bare in mind though that the competition might be stronger in those tournaments so patiently running your horse in the under 100 race tournaments over a number of weeks could be the safer and more profitable option.
If you didn’t get instantly lucky with your breed all hope is not lost.
Perhaps the foal landed at a lower level or was born with mid or low VARIANCE but it still shows potential.
If so, your next option might be to hit the “Sit N Go” training circuit in order to gain some XP and much needed levels.
This will help make your horse more competitive.
Even if you did get somewhat lucky with your breed you may still want to do this to ensure your horse is more competitive or more dominant in the under 100 race tournament while it is eligible to run there.
The Sit N Go events have some good XP on offer but if you would like to speed up the leveling process even further you always have the option of boosting your horse to increase that XP gain.
This will raise your horses levels even faster.
If you’re unsure if your horse is worth entering in the under 100 event or worth levelling up, or you would just prefer a free option to gain more XP, you can instead enter the free weekly premier tournaments.
These have massive XP gains available and are financially risk free but they can also use up a lot of races in qualifying so there is a trade-off to racing in them.
Just like real life horse breeding, not all horses are born as competitive racers, and so your last option is one for the horses that can’t compete in paid competition.
A career farming XP.
Sometimes you breed a dud and If your horse doesn’t show much promise in the Maiden or in Paid racing then you might want to race it exclusively in free races.
Here it can earn you stable XP that you can use to boost your more competitive horses, or that you can sell to earn money to put towards your race fees or breeding costs.
If or when you think your horse is ready to run in the under 100 race tournaments look for the under 100 race symbol – these will be the lowest cost paid entry races in each class.
Stage 3) Under 250 Race tournament – $12,500 prize pool.
After your first 100 races are run you could say your horse has officially come to the end of the early stage of its career.
You’re now ready for the under 250 race tournament.
At $12,500USD this segment of tournament racing has the highest weekly prize payouts so you really want to make the most of your time competing here.
Entry fee’s for races will remain the same in some classes and will increase in others but two things that will increase across the board in the under 250’s are the prize pools and the level of competition.
By this stage the number of highly levelled and max capped horses you will be competing with will begin to increase.
If you don’t have a lot of VARIANCE and haven’t taken advantage of the Sit N Go’s or Free tournaments to boost your XP/level you may really want to consider doing so now before attempting to challenge for the finals.
If you do have a highly levelled horse or a lot of VAR you could consider also running in the under 500 race tournament and in rare cases if you have an upcoming monster, you could even consider running in the no limit weekly premier too.
This would give you an increased chance of taking home some prize money each week but remember, every Sit N Go race or weekly premier race is one race less you can use to compete in the under 250 race tournament.
If your competitive enough, you have the opportunity to earn money in the under 250 race tournaments for weeks or months to come, so consider remaining eligible here as long as possible!
(Your time for the under 500 and open Premier Tournaments will come soon enough.)
Stage 4) Under 500 Race tournament – Weekly $11,000 prize pool.
If you’ve hit the 250 race stage of your horses career and have been competitive to this point you have a pretty damn good horse.
It’s now time to join the under 500 race tournaments.
Across the board the entry fees for qualifying races will increase and you will have a long runway of 250 races in which you can compete for some pretty juicy weekly prize pools.
At this stage of the journey your horse had better have very high VAR or be close to max level because most of the competition will be.
This will also be your horses first taste of a slower recovery rate which you can learn more about HERE
Stage 5) Weekly Premiers – Weekly $7,000 prize pool.
If your horse manages to remain competitive and in the hunt for prize money all the way past 500 races, congratulations, you have a special pony on your hands.
It’s an OG racer.
You’re now deep in to your horses career and will be running with the best of the best in class.
No race caps, it’s open season for any horse that wishes to enter.
The entry fees in the qualifying races are higher again, high enough in fact to win some pretty good money in the qualifying rounds if things go your way.
Being amongst the best in class you may also want to consider topping up your weekly earnings by racing in the Sit N Go tournaments depending on what variety is available at the time.
If you made it this far you might also want to seriously consider breeding a new foal from your champion horse.
Perhaps it has the genes to create offspring that can reach this level of the game too?
C1 Notes.
Amongst the classes in Zed Run Class 1 stands alone as a unique beast.
If you take a look at the examples below, the C3 horse is at level 374 and requires 2301 XP to move to the next level and the C2 horse is at level 474 and requires 2367 XP to move to the next level.
Then if you look at the C1 horse it is at level 675 and requires 16492 XP to move to the next level.
As you can see the difference between levels in C1 is FAR greater than in other classes.
In other words, the quality gap between horses at different levels is FAR greater than in any other class.
Unless you have off the charts VARIANCE you don’t want to run a 530 against a 610!
Please keep this in mind when deciding if your horse is going to be competitive in the weekly Class 1 tournaments as you’re putting your money on the line.
Because of the vast difference between levelled horses in C1 there are highly segmented Sit N Go tournaments in that class such as 501-550/551-600/601-650.
Keep an eye on the level of competition in each of your C1 weekly tournaments and use these Sit N Go’s accordingly to maximise your chances before entry.
Sit N Go strategy
At the time of writing this article the Sit N Go tournaments are a new and an evolving aspect of the game.
Currently the XP multipliers can be excellent for levelling up horses for the weekly tournaments and there is also money to be made competing in them.
Going forward these tournaments could offer varieties and formats that are better suited to some horses than the weekly tournaments are.
They may even grow to be the preeminent type of tournaments in the game.
Outside of massive flagship events I personally hope that happens.
For now, I would suggest you keep an eye on what Sit N Go tournaments are on offer and build your strategy accordingly as they evolve.
I’ll be back as things change to offer what insight I can.
Before I wind up this article, I’d like to say thanks for taking the time to read it.
I create Zed content because I love and enjoy the game and with that in mind I’d ask anyone that appreciates it to give it a share on social media.
A big thanks to anyone who does!
See you next time around.
Keep racing!