General Tips for "Hakkyuu no Kiseki" Mode

See the translation of the official Konami Hakkyuu no Kiseki FAQ for some additional information.

Starting Out #

Choosing the right prefecture #

The game doesn’t exactly tell you this, but some prefectures and regions are much more difficult to get tournament success in. Just as in real life, if you’re in an area with a dense population, there are a lot more talented players, more schools, and more of a challenge to make it out of the local tournaments to the national tournament and to Koshien.

So, for your first time playing, pick a rural area. Some people say that Okinawa is a good choice to go simple. I personally chose Aomori (青森) because it’s one of those smaller areas, and just because I like Aomori. Seafood, apples, winter weather, what’s not to like?!

More information about prefecture selection

Training Ground Level (グラウンド) #

Ground level is very important early on in your run. When you start, your school baseball field will have a bunch of weeds and will be lumpy and gross for players. By leveling up the ground, in addition to just looking nicer, players will progress faster in practice.

Your ground starts with “white soil” (白地). Once you hit a ground level of 40, you’ll get “black soil” (黒地). Really, the effect of switching to black soil is that the soil item you buy from Yorozuya will have to match. So in the beginning, don’t buy any black soil because you won’t be able to use it for a while, and once you level up to black soil, stop buying white soil because you won’t be able to use it anymore. Some soil provides additional benefits like improving practice in the rain (look for 「雨」 in the description for rain and 「雪」 for snow).

Leveling up the ground can be done with soil that you can buy from the store, which usually levels it up by +1 at a time. You can get bigger benefits by buying equipment like weight machines, a batting tee, a tire to drag behind for strength, a ball with knobs on it to train fielders on bad hops, etc. Those give larger ground bonuses that will be noted in the item description. Those items can wear and break over use, but more on that later.

Regular Operation #

Player Personalities #

Player personalities affect how they’re able to develop. For example, “normal” personality has no benefits, so players with that personality will develop at standard rates. On the other end, “genius” personality (天才) allows players to develop all aspects at higher rates. If you play games in the tactical strategy mode where you select cards to handle situations, the personality will affect the special, non-standard cards you can choose for them. And when you use the player messenger system during games, personality will affect the type of bonus they give the hitter or pitcher that receives the message.

You can change a player’s personality using the right book from the items screen on the smartphone. You can see your players personalities from the roster screen in the smartphone, on the additional pages. In the image below, Okudaira’s personality is in the third column (性格), showing cheerful (お調子者) personality. (Also on the page is the study/scholarship level - 学力, birthday - 誕生日, hometown prefecture -　出身地, current mood - テンション, title - 称号, reliability - 信頼度, and scout rating - スカウト評価.)

Player Reliability (信頼度) #

Players have a reliability rating that appears as segments of a gauge that looks kind of like a ruler. Players with higher reliability will get better special skill cards in the tactical mode of play, and when you send them in as messengers, the effect will be stronger. You can find reliability from the additional pages of the smart phone menu’s roster screen, and in the lineup order page when starting a game.

You can increase this rating for players by playing them in games. Even short appearances in games will give players bonuses, so if you’re in a practice game against a weak team, consider giving the first year players a start or a pinch hit appearance. Just like a coach in real life, you need to develop the younger players, so don’t just sit on the juniors and seniors to play your way to success. The freshmen need experience, too!

Also, as you might expect, more important or tougher games provide bigger reliability development. Practice game appearances are nice, but tournament appearances are better, and the higher national tournaments are better than the lower prefectural or regional ones.

Training Settings #

You can set specific or general training individually for each of your players, and you can set it once per week. This is in contrast to Pawa Pros where you can only set training once per month. All players can train hitting, fielding, pitching, or other aspects. More on what the options are elsewhere, but make sure you’re actively setting the training that you want your player to level up. Also, try to set training as specifically as possible.

The “omakase” (おまかせ/お任せ) options are tempting because you can set and forget for a while, and your player will balance the benefits within whatever category. For example, “batting omakase” (打撃おまかせ) will evenly practice “contact vs. right”, “contact vs. left”, and “power”. Similarly the generic “omakase” will practice batting, fielding, recovery, etc. But, when you do that, you might find that when you execute a week’s practice, no one will really get any points up for a practice activity, or they’ll progress a lot slower. So try to set training a little more targeted.

It’s also tempting to only practice the obvious options, like contact, power, and fielding for field players, or velocity, control, and stamina for pitchers. But you should learn about and develop some of the deeper options, like batting trajectory (grounder, line drive, fly ball, high fly ball), pitch break and sharpness for pitchers, and recovery for everyone. Recovery (回復), in particular, will help your players get back to 100% between games and get less tired when you have a long string of practices without a day off.

Defensive Skills #

There are several separate defensive skills to upgrade:

• 捕球 - glove skills, i.e., catching the ball cleanly
• スローイング - throwing accuracy, but not throwing strength
• 肩力 - “shoulder strength”, i.e., throwing strength.
• 守備 - general defensive ability, e.g., reaction time, better routes to the ball

Defense is a lot tougher to see the obvious benefits of while you’re playing. It’s obvious when a player makes a glove error or a bad throw and you see the ! pop up, but it’s less obvious when your player just doesn’t react fast enough and can’t get to a ground ball, or can’t move to a fly ball fast enough. Just have faith that better ratings in these skills will be less frustrating when you’re actually playing the games, and when you’re in the simulation mode, some percentage of base hits will be converted into outs and you’ll give up fewer runs when you don’t control the action directly.

Like in real life, you can hide bad fielders at the less important defensive positions (corner outfield, 1B, maybe 3B).

Also, for catchers, their separate catcher rating will affect pitcher stamina. Having a low rated catcher will result in your pitchers eating through their stamina faster, or not hitting their top speed, or even pitches breaking a smaller amount.

Messengers and In-Game Coaching #

You can send messengers in from the dugout to talk to the batter or pitcher, giving them a bonus to one of their stats. You can get to this from the pause menu. Older players will give higher bonuses, as well players with higher reliability.

If you’re late in the game and really need a base hit, for example, but you’ve got a D/E rated hitter at the plate, sending in a messenger to buff the contact rating can give you a big bonus.

Some possible bonuses:

• Improvement to contact
• Improvement to power
• Better mood
• Special attributes

Be careful how frequently you use them. You get three each for batting and pitching in regulation, plus one for each extra inning you play. The CPU never uses them while it’s simulating, so they’re always available for you. You can only use a specific player as messenger one time per game, so if you’ve got 2 guys who raise the contact rating and you’ve already used them, they’re not available for your third usage.

Player Specialization #

I unfortunately have a tendency to try to turn every player into an all around strong player who can bat for average, hit some homers, field and throw well, and recover at a reasonable rate. But don’t feel like you have to develop every player like this. There are advantages to having role players that are good in certain situations.

For example, if you have a first year that comes in with, say, D running and G contact and power, you could develop those Gs up to Ds by graduation time. Or you could lean hard into speed and baserunning, and give them some bunting skills and make yourself a killer pinch runner and squeeze bunter for late-game situations. Or if you have someone with decent contact and good power, but nothing else, maybe press the strong aspects with power, trajectory, and related special skills, and if you also develop defense so they’re not a liability in the field, you have a real slugger for the middle of your lineup. Having some role players on the bench can give you an edge late in games when you desperately need one run to win a game.

Annual Activities and Other #

Scouting and Recruiting #

In the winter, you’ll be able to go scout players from around the country. In the beginning, you’re limited to your own prefecture, but soon, you’ll expand to your local region, adjacent regions, and eventually nationwide! Lots of scouting aspects are affected by your school rating, so when you go from weak to soro-soro to middling, to strong, to famous, you’ll be able to scout more often, you’ll be able to see more players overall in the scouting screen, you’ll get better information about players, and players will be more likely to respond favorably to your scouting and matriculate at your school.

The scouting map screen shows the breakdown of players by position category: pitcher (投手), catcher (捕手), infielder (内野手), and outfielder (外野手). You’ll also see the prefecture colorized by special skill with similar kanji notations.

Picking a prefecture to scout in is final for the scouting session. You can’t choose a prefecture, see the players, and then back out and choose another one. You’ll have to wait for the next scouting session to look somewhere else.

When you get to the players, you’ll see a star rating for each player. This generally correlates with starting ratings and abilities. Below the star rating, there are separate ratings for pitching, batting, power, recovery, and a notation about what events they’ve participated in, like a prefectural tournament, or national tournament.

You can choose only a single player to scout in a session. Selecting them means meeting them and asking them to come to your high school to play ball. Players themselves will decide whether they want to do that, and after choosing them, you’ll see a note about how the scouting was received by the player. If the reception was bad, they probably won’t attend, but sometimes you get surprised. Generally, early on, your little nobody school with no fame and no tournament success won’t attract the better or top players, so don’t go out there trying to get the 5-star talent early on. Build up with some 3-star players for a year or two, win some tournament games, get a player or two drafted, and then you can attract the better players.

Professional Draft and Other Player Graduation #

Draft #

Once a year in November, the NPB draft is held, and if you have strong enough players, they might get drafted into the bigs! This is affected by the scout rating of the player, which you can find in the smartphone roster screen on the additional pages. Having players drafted brings some prestige to your school, making scouting easier.

Also, one of the weekly activities is going to watch a game. Your team might go out and see one of their old teammates play and get an excitement bonus from that.

When your drafted players finally graduate after the third semester the following spring, you’ll have the chance to register them as players to be used in other game modes. Make sure you set the jersey name text before finishing the registration if you want them to have their names on their jerseys. You can also choose to not register them, or to change the team they play on.

Other Player Graduation #

Players who aren’t drafted go on to get other jobs. There are nine other jobs that they might start a career in:

• pro baseball stadium,
• convenience store
• bookstore
• sports store, sports stadium,
• “home center” (Home Depot, Lowe’s, Bunning’s, etc.)
• hospital
• unknown 1 (I haven’t unlocked this one)
• unknown 2 (Or this one…)
• university

When one of these jobs is filled by a graduating player, it becomes available as an activity card in the weekly activities. Choosing one of the activities has a related event and effect on the current players. For example, going to the book store could give you a new book to apply to a player, and going to the convenience store could give you energy drinks to restore player stamina. The more players graduate and work those jobs, the higher the level of the facility, and the better results from events.

Overall Progression #

You’re not going to win Koshien in your first year, or your second, or probably your third. At least, not unless you min-max everything or get insane luck from scouting and development.

From Twitcher and Youtuber @ShaeMan625:

This is the last real piece of advice but just have fun. Take your time and understand you are going to lose a lot of games and that’s okay. You won’t have a powerhouse over night. I’m in season 15 in my main save file, 400-some odd games played and we have an 80% win rate yet we’ve made only 6 Spring and Summer Nationals in that time and only won 2 of each, both coming in years 9 and 10. We’ve won plenty of prefectural tournaments but yet we can’t win the easiest nationals in the Fall Meiji Jingu tournament. It’s okay to lose with a great team. Sometimes the draw just doesn’t favor you. Take the time to train your players and prepare for the next tournaments.

Also, the mode doesn’t end when you win Koshien. This is an open-ended mode where you can keep playing for many many years, so even if your goal is just to win Koshien, your seniors will still retire and you can go on to play the next year and compete again. It’s entirely up to you to define your actual goals for winning.

Usability #

The game lets you edit your players, uniforms, flag, and more. If you know Japanese or want to learn your players names with the kanji, have fun! You can probably learn the most popular 100 kanji for names in a month or two with some practice. Or feel free to go in and edit your players names to use the romaji alphabet so you can read them easier. Or change the names altogether! Some streamers out there rename their players after folks in chat or donors or other community members. Do whatever you want there to have fun and make it more interesting!