Week two of the event ended today, and it's been a bit unfortunate for me - I didn't have enough time to complete the last three races, with literally a bit over a minute to spare. The final stage gave seven blueprints, so I decided to drop some gold and buy out for 350. Generally, I consider 50 gold for a good blueprint a fair price. With the two preceding races I didn't have time to do, my stash is now down to 1500 gold, so I'll be restocking in the coming weeks, unless there's a really compelling reason to spend on.
Car requirements
The final race had a PR requirement of 639, which is again pretty close to a fully-upgraded Mazda, so we can expect that trend to continue in the remaining two weeks. The races started at entry level again as well, both to leave at least some blueprints for beginners, and, of course, tempt everyone into gold purchases.
The number of races was about the same as last time, with 22 in the last 24h at the upper end, but definitely doable without raising VIP levels.
Again, I didn't spend any of the event cash on crates, since they cost 6000 instead of the regular 5000 for standard crates. I converted 60000 cash at the end, which got used, together with the collected components, on upgrading the Ford Mustang.
Upcoming week 3
The next car is going to be the Mustang, and I'm still unsure if the Mustang Hoonicorn event car can be used or not, so to be on the safe side, I'm currently farming for regular Mustang blueprints and parts. We can expect the need for almost full upgrade again, which is almost impossible during the event, so all preparation goes into that.
I'm planning to follow the strategy again of using the parts and cash for the BMW M4, once week three is over.
Payment motivation
It makes sense, from time to time, to reflect on the methods the publishers are using on us to get us to pay real-world money ingame. Being aware of those makes it easier to resist.
For this event, we've got:
- VIP levels for additional tickets - by requiring a relatively high number of races to be completed in a short timeframe, it actually needs some scheduling to get that done on the standard 5 ticket base, but definitely possible
- Steep difficulty curve - races going from < 300 PR to > 600 PR within three days lead to "early successes" for under-upgraded cars, but then the pressure kicks in rapidly
- Component temptation - crates give useful upgrade components, but by far not enough to actually pull off any significant upgrades, leading to pressure to spend gold on premium crates
- Event cash can't be used for upgrading, so there's a steep need for real cash.
In summary, that means we can't do much in terms of upgrading during the event, and need to be prepared. With that expectation in place, we should be able to avoid these temptations easily.
Also, never lose track of what the actual prize is - we're talking about, at best, a level 4 hypercar, with seven possible levels and no ordinary track for getting additional blueprints. While very nice, it's certainly not going to be the most powerful item in the game, especially since we need some very decently upgraded cars, all the way up to sports class, to even get there.
So I'd take this all as a "nice to have, but not the end of the world if we miss something". Definitely not a reason to pay real money for gold, if you don't have a stash around, in my opinion.
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