Farming

Hi folks!

Last time, we had a look at the upgrade / "tech tree" system. Unsurprisingly, we'll follow this up with the "farming" aspect of NFS.

Most commonly, we get upgrades by winning races. You can progress through the underground / car series races, which give you parts, but very quickly, you'll hit a wall there, since races get increasingly demanding in terms of car performance.

Some races are repeatable, though. They won't have a guaranteed upgrade, but give you three to choose from, out of a specific range for that race. It's a game of chance here, since they're shuffeled and hidden before you get to choose. You can pay gold for getting the other two, but we're not falling for such simple marketing trappings. Patience is the virtue of the thrifty gamer.

Going through the level-up process is somewhat tedious, and hugely time-consuming, so here's my strategy on how to make the most of this not-so-fun task.

Don't wildly spray your upgrades across all cars. Focus on a car, either one that gets you ahead in game progression, or that's needed for tournaments / special events. That way, you can target farming races to the parts you need.

Grow garage space and use crates. You get 5 standard crates for free each day, or you can buy 5 for 20000 cash (never buy individually, as the 5 pack is discounted). Early in the game, that's a lot of cash, but as you progress, cash is easier to come by (e.g. at my current level farming underground races, I often get between 8000 and 14000 for a single race). You do need that cash for fitting in upgrades, as that gets rather expensive in higher tiers, but make sure you buy a regular extra 5 batch to save time.

Here's a tip that's not immediately obvious: get one car per class (street, muscle etc.) staged to the max quickly. That's a lot easier in street, as they have less stages and require less blueprints.

Why, you ask? Well, the repeatable race in the underground that gave you car blueprints, no longer gives them, for obvious reasons, once you've maxed out the car stages. Instead, you get parts. Yes, the big 6, like engine, turbo etc, not the little upgradey-slotty ones. I've only done this for street so far, but I do get both uncommon and rare parts, which is the highest tier for street. That allows skipping hours of tedious farming, by just going into the higher tier directly. And you can sell the parts you don't need, which means lower-paying races suddenly can yield 3000 for an uncommon part, which you can then invest into crates again.

If you're looking for conversion kits, these are in the repeatable car series. Hoard those if you get them, as some of the higher tier upgrades need a metric crapload (1.5 imperial fucktons) of them. I've got level 6 epic parts that need 25 epic kits to upgrade to legendary. Did I mention the importance of spending your gold on storage, and not willy-nilly?

Don't sell off parts easily. That fuse you had 5 or 6 of at some early stage, and sold them? Guess what, your sports part now needs 9 of them to get the next star. Some crap is more common than others, like input shafts or flywheels, and tends to clog up the shelves rather quickly. I tend to have four to six of these around, and sell off excess. Also, keep an eye on car parts you may not need anymore, because all cars from that tier have been upgraded beyond.

In the early stages of the game, farming can help you memorise the tracks, which is really, really important for winning more difficult races, as a single mistake will usually cost you the victory. 

Later on, you can use the "easy drive" feature, which is basically an autopilot. You should have powerful enough cars to have the computer player win without you having to keep an eye, so you can do other things in the meantime and just farm through a fuel fill.