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Blackridge Spirit starting
Blackridge spirit week 1 review and analysis
Blackridge Spirit week 2
Blackridge Spirit week 2 review and analysis
Blackridge Spirit week 3
Blackridge Spirit week 3 review and analysis
Blackridge Spirit final week
Blackridge Spirit end result
I've actually skipped the Christmas event, since I was quite busy, and the gold impact would have been severe. The prize was a Lamborghini Huracan, which is a seven-star super car. The event would only have given blueprints up to level 5, I think, leaving two levels to be maxed out. At a price of 400 gold for 5 blueprints, and a suspected need for 40+ blueprints for the last two levels, I'd have looked at paying 3000 plus gold to max that one out. Blueprints for event cars are usually only available in the event market (during the event), or in "limited time" crates at some future point, at a huge cost and gamble. So if you really care for that car, you probably want to try and max it.
My top car currently is still the M4 F82 Razor, from the "Return of Razor" event. I didn't know about the blueprint rule then, so it's at six stars and stuck at a 768 PR, which has pissed me off somewhat. I'm building the Mercedes AMG to supersede the BMW, but that's still at the early 700s.
But I digress. So there's a new event coming up, apparently a "4 week run", which would be way longer than previous events. You can be sure they'll be making it as hard as possible to get through that without spending gold, but the prize is a 4-star LaFerrari hypercar.
Again, the event rule applies, so I'm expecting that to be even more expensive than the Lambo last time. We'll see. But the requirements are interesting, seems like we'll be racing our own cars, not the event car (and then win it at the end). Not clear at this point if these are the four cars for the four weeks, or only the first week, but listed so far are:
- Toyota 86
- Mazda RX-7
- Ford Mustang
- BMW M4
I've been working on the Toyota the past days, and I'm sure as hell hoping that my M4 Razor can stand in, since the regular one is still at 500-something. Then again, that's a couple of weeks away, that's a lot of time. But looks like I've got my farming schedule cut out for me, and will have to put the AMG levelling on the backburner again.
Anyway, if I make it through this one, I'll probably end up with the four star version - no farming for event car blueprints, so I'll leave that as is, unless they have a very reasonable gold price in the event market (fat chance for that to happen).
I've never been much of a racing / simulator player, more of a strategy guy, but this actually looked fun, so I started with NFS
about two months ago.
The attraction naturally isn't in a good simulation (we are, after all, playing on a device of about 5 inches diameter), but it's good-old leveling up, unlocking new cars, modding with a bit of fake multiplayer competition mixed in.
The game has the usual trope of "multiple currencies" - we've got "cash" (which accumulate as we go), "Gold", which is much harder to come by, "visual points" (to spend on modifications) and "tournament credit".
Gold, the main "exchange for real-world money here" hook, can be used in a variety of ways. Mostly it's the "trade money for time to progress" ploy, with a couple of annoying greed-traps for good measure.
Let's have a quick look around to see what's what. Please note, I'm two months in (level 68 as of this post), so I've probably unlocked some more stuff than you'd see when you start.
The main "story mode" is the "underground", where we're following a familiar plot of "dark horse rookie genius driver boosting through the ranks". Story mode levels are gated by XP.
The second main racing arena is "car series", sets of increasingly difficult races, limited to certain cars, presented as "more legal, less street cool" (NPCs actually bully you about it).
There are regular "tournaments", which are limited to a certain range of cars, and cover the game's multiplayer checkbox. Attached is a "tournament market", where we can trade tournament credit for stuff.
Certain themed "special events" offer a single-player challenge, usually to get special, themed cars.
Unsurprisingly, we have a "garage", where we can make our cars faster, and a "modshop", where we can make them prettier.
In the "loading docks", we get upgrades (a limited free amount per day), or we can buy upgrades in the "black market" for cash or gold.
Lastly, there's a "showroom", which is utterly useless in my opinion. There was an inactive "tuner" area for a while during a glitch in one of the last updates, which may be a future feature in the pipeline.
The "limited resource" trope here is fuel (for underground / car series), and tickets for tournaments and special events. They recharge over time, or (you guessed it) you can buy them for gold.
Lastly, for today, let's take a closer look at gold. We get a small amount of gold by completing daily tasks, usually of the "do thing A for N seconds / Y times". Most car series chapters offer gold on completion, same with the special events.
Then, of course, there's the part where the publisher would like you to whip out your credit card and actually just go and buy some of that useful gold, thank you very much. I find the prices in the shop area actually utterly outrageous, except for the "monthly" subscription, which costs $3 (don't be fooled by the regular price tag, they have "sales" every now and then) and gives you 50 gold a day (requiring collection), amounting to around 1500 gold over a month. Compare that to the top tier of "instant gratification", which gives about 3k gold at a whopping $160 price tag. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind this to be there per se - maybe some people swim in money and literally don't care, and I'm ok with that. But personally, I'm staying well away of any of the "instant" ones. So far, I've spent $6 for two month packs, and I think that's all I'm going to spend here, feels like a fair price for the game to me.
What do we need gold for? Bloody well everything can be bought. Fuel refills, skipping tasks in special events, top-tier upgrades, you name it.
My strategy for gold is not to spend it, mostly. I've currently got about 2k stashed, and the only thing I found you really need is the garage storage capacity. Here's how that works: you get parts you can put into cars, and other parts you can put into parts to upgrade those. They are obtained from winning races, buying them on markets and out of crates in the loading docks. All those parts need space, which we have woefully little of. Given that the higher-tiered cars need an awful lot of parts to level up, buying more space is an absolute necessity. You get 5 permanent storage slots for 30g.
I'm expecting to need my gold stash once I reach the "super cars" / "hyper cars" sections, as well as for buying upgrades for event cars (more on that later). So far, I'm at the "sports" range, and haven't really needed any gold to get there.
Next up, I'll be talking about the upgrade system.
Hey folks!
This is the first post, so I'm going to drop some lines on the idea behind this blog.
When I was younger, and had ample time for gaming, I'd pay for my games, then got a nice cardboard box with floppies, and later, CDs, usually a manual and other goodies. It felt like something of value, worth spending money for.
Today, I have more money than my younger self, but way less time. While understanding the pitch of free-to-play mobile gaming, and probably considering myself part of the target group, I was initially appalled by the feeling of endemic ripoff-ery in these
games.
But after a recent conversation with another old-time gamer, I realised that there's actually a challenge in here. Devising a strategy to have fun while not paying outrageous amounts of money sounds fun in itself.
So this is what this blog is going to be about - strategies for casual mobile gaming without getting ripped off. I'll be playing one game at a time, since time is in short supply.
