Tournaments

Hi folks!

The tournament races is one area of "Need For Speed" that we haven't taken a closer look at yet, so let's see what we can gain, and where the "traps" are - the hooks to get us to pay real-world money.

Structure

Tournaments are time-limited events that have their own "fuel" - race tickets. The standard amount is five tickets, recharging slowly (about 1h each), although I've seen sudden full recharges occasionally.

Usually, the range of cars is tightly restricted - from "all street cars" to "only Ford Mustangs". There is a single track that's being raced.

Winning a race gives you points, losing a race removes points (usually about 1/4 of the potentially won points).

Ranking

There are 15 ranks or levels. By gaining points, you can rank up to the next level, which gives you an increasingly valuable prize. The higher level you get, the more difficult opponents become, and the more points you need to get to the next level.

Independent of levels there's a "global rank" of all players participating in the tournament. When it ends, you'll get a prize depending on your rank in the global highscore.

Multiplayer

Tournaments are set up as a kind of multiplayer experience - you compete against other players, real people, mixed with the regular AI opponents. But don't be fooled, you're not actually racing live against other people. If you observe the driving behaviour of your opponent, you'll quickly realise that you're racing against the usual AI player, using a real player's car.

To repeat, you're not racing against other people - you're racing against other people's cars, driven by the computer player.

Tournament credit

Usual prizes include cash, visual points, gold for the top ranks and tournament credit. This is a special kind of currency that you can use to shop in the tournament market.

This market is somewhat unique, in that you can't convert gold - you really need the tournament credits to do anything here.

The market contains similar items to the black market - materials, parts, blueprints. With one exception: There are two "tournament cars" in the game, which you can only get by buying the respective blueprints in the tournament market.

Tournament Cars

These cars are the "Toyota Supra" and the "Ferrari F40". The Toyota is especially important since the Tuner Trials change, because you need this car to race for rare (blue) conversion kits, which you need in turn to upgrade rare (5-star) to epic (6-star) parts.

Fortunately, you only need 15 blueprints for the basic Supra, and it's just about enough to race for kits, with a bit of skill. Before the Tuner Trials, the price was at 300 credits per blueprint, which has since been reduced to 166 (500 for 3). So make sure you save up some for this car, as you need it for progressing through the game.

That aside, the parts are usually hugely overpriced (ranking in the thousands), while you can often grab a bargain material for 10 or 20 credits.

Highscore

But let's get back to the highscore list. If I'm diligently racing (making use of most of the free race tickets), and provided that I have a car to get me through to racing till the end, I can normally make it into the top 200.

This is a far cry from the top 25, which is where you usually start getting gold prizes. So we'd have to spend a fair amount of gold on ticket refills (90G for another 5), or real-world money on the game's VIP system, giving us more tickets at some points.

This is obviously the hook to get us to pay up - competitiveness, and once we start spending gold in larger quantities, we're pressured to make it to the top to "recover our losses". As usual, it helps to be aware of how these things work, in order not to get pulled into them.

Given that the game is keeping a lot of state offline, I wouldn't be too surprised if the top people were using cracked versions to provide enough gold for tickets. Can't prove that, of course - at some point, I'm going to run a trial to see if it's actually possible to make a "net profit" out of buying tickets.

Strategies

So, now that we understand how the system works, what's the best way of getting some fun out of it, without unnecessarily reaching into our wallet?

First up, compete, but don't gamble. Use your free tickets to get as much as you can out of the tournament. You'll find that there's actually quite some fun in seeing how far you can push.

Racing

Since you drive the same track over and over, you can try to optimise your time. In the beginning, you'll often have a more powerful car than your opponent, so take note of the time you're making at the end of the race, and the difference towards the opponent's time.

Over the course of the tournament, you should be able to get 500ms to a second better than your initial time, by timing nitro boosts correctly, driving tight corners and whatever other tricks you have.

Once the opponent's car gets close to yours in terms of PR, your best bet is to start driving dirty. You can predict the AI player's position, since they drive "shortest distance / no drift". Push them into the track side, close their corners, have them rear-end you - lots of fun ways to keep them from winning, even if their car is equal or better than yours.

Choice of opponent

You have three choices - an opponent from your level, from one level up, or two levels up - someone from two levels ahead gives over twice as much points as someone from your current level.

Here, keeping an eye on the opponent's time pays off - you'll know if you can still keep racing for maximum points, or if you're no longer standing a chance.

In the end, like all other features, this is supposed to be fun - so treat it as such. Happy racing!

Blackridge Spirit - End Result

Hi folks!

After a month of furious racing, the Blackridge Spirit event has ended. For me, it has been such a close call! In the end, I didn't have the power on the BMW M4 to make it through:

My BMW had a final PR of 675 - in the end, I've been lagging too far behind with upgrades. I had to buy out the second-last block (again, very close, just 10 behind the required PR), which got my stash down to 500 gold.

I've been racing to the last one - made it through race 12, even against a PR difference of close to 100, with all tricks I could come up with. But in the end, buying out the last race for 15 blueprints would have cost 750 gold.

That's a fair price in my book, and I would have paid, if I had the stash. But I wasn't going to pay real-world money - $15 to get enough gold isn't worth a single star on an event car for me.

It's these kind of situations where the game can exert maximum pressure on you, and it's important to take a step back, analyse the situation objectively, and judge if it's worth the price. For me, I could imagine some way more interesting things I could buy for $15.

What's next

All in all, this was a fun event, but quite exhausting, especially that it hit my weaker, secondary cars. So for now, I'm left with a three-star LaFerrari, and will continue where I left off - upgrading my Mercedes AMG all the way, to see if it gets me into levels 15 and 16 of the story mode.

I'll need the Viper as well soon, to farm the Tuner Trials for legendary materials, and I'll need to grow my gold stash back, so I'll be having a break from the high-intensity events for a bit.

Congratulations to everyone who made it through to the final stage, and to completion!

Blackridge Spirit Final Week

Hi folks!

The final week for the Blackridge Spirit event has started. If you've completed all races so far, you'll already have the three-star LaFerrari. This last one is to get it up to stage four - and we still don't know where we will eventually get the final blueprints.

The car for this one is going to be the BMW M4 F82. Here's what I'm starting with:

Now, you might notice that this one isn't quite as staged up as my previous ones. The reason for that is my M4 Razor event car - since it could substitute for most things so far (car series, tournaments), there wasn't really a reason to spend time on the regular M4.

Which is now coming back to bite me, since in this one case, I can't use the M4 Razor. Bollocks. Given that the previous week ended up with a 739 PR requirement, I'm fully expecting to have to burn through my gold stash to buy this one out.

Ah well, that's what I got the stash for in the first place :)

Bridge instakill

Hi folks!

there's a pretty deadly combination in some race tracks - jump ramps and low-hanging bridges. Be very careful when you're racing there, because hitting a bridge is an instakill, unlike hitting sides of the track or pretty much any other obstacle head-on.

You can hit an oncoming car at 400 km/h, but it'll bounce off your hood, cost you 25% health, and slow you down quite a bit. Hit a bridge while in the air, and you're toast.

You can even hit a stationary obstacle, like a wall, head on - which will reduce your speed to almost zero, and most likely cost you the victory - but it won't do much more than put a few scratches on the paintjob. Not with bridges, though. Bridges are vicious.

The danger here are the jump ramps, especially in combination with nitro boosting. Always head dead-straight across the ramps, even the slightest spin or drift will edge-case the physics engine and send you skywards.

Doing that without a bridge can actually be quite hilarious, especially if you can manage to still win the race. Gives a bit of cash for airtime, too. But bridges kill. Beware.

Need For Speed No Limits - Beginner's Guide

Hi folks!

Here's a strategy for getting through the first stages of the game, without spending much (or any) real world money, and without getting frustrated.

The first car

You'll be starting with a Subaru BRZ, which gets you through to Level 2, where you can race for Golf GTI blueprints without having to upgrade much. I'd recommend the Golf as your first car, for a couple of reasons:

• It has 5 stages, so the maximum part level you'll need is rare (blue). 
• As a street class car, it doesn't take too much to upgrade
• It can reach a PR of 631 when fully upgraded
• It has two bars of "green" RPM, so a perfect start is all but guaranteed

Gold

You'll get some gold income via the daily assignments, as well as the car series races. There is absolutely no reason to spend it at this point, you should rather build up towards a stash of 1000 to 2000, which you can use later.

Real money

If you want to spend real money on the game, I'd recommend getting one or two monthly gold cards. You can get them for $2 to $3 when a "sale" is on, and each gets you around 1500 gold over the course of a month, which you can stash for later.

Upgrades

You'll be getting some parts and materials via car series and underground races, as well as the loading docks. You can spend some cash on additional crates as well - always by the 5-pack for 20000, so you get one free.

You'll need the Ford Fiesta to race for common upgrade kits in the Tuner Trials, and the BMW M3 to race for uncommon. Some kits will come in via loading docks and regular races as well.

An alternative to using upgrade kits is to max out the stage for the Golf, or any other street car. Once that's done, you no longer need upgrade kits here, since you'll get uncommon or rare street parts instead of blueprints.

Underground races

With some racing practice, the Golf can get you all the way to Level 11. That's where you can race for BMW M4 blueprints. The opponent is somewhat above the maximum PR for the Golf, but the race has plenty of drifting and jumping opportunities, as well as a long track, so you shouldn't have any problems farming this.

The next car

The BMW can get you way beyond 700 PR, so it's a good setup for the next stages. At this point, you'll be having a hard time actually getting to the XP levels required, so it's a good time to start building up some other cars, and use all the parts you've collected.

Tournaments

While you could pick up some tournament credits with the Golf when they let you, now that you're building up your fleet, you should be able to get some out of most tournaments. This is important, because you need the Toyota Supra for upgrade kit races, and that's a tournament-only car.

Events

Now here comes the time when you can actually use your gold stash - event cars are often quite powerful, but tend to be hard to get, or you need a decent chunk of gold to buy the missing blueprints.

I've got my M4 Razor that way, which has been with me for really a long time.

Have fun

What you do next is really up to you - you can work towards completing some car series, getting ahead in the tournaments, pushing towards story mode - whatever looks most fun at the time. This is, after all, a game :)

Blackridge Spirit week 3 - review and analysis

Hi folks!

The third week of the Blackridge Spirit event is over, and that was a tough one. I ended up with a fully-staged-up Ford Mustang, but that wasn't enough for the final PR requirement of 739. I had to buy the last race out, but I think the price of 500 gold for 10 blueprints is still fair, compared to previous events, where we easily had to pay 80 per blueprint.

So, after this week, we actually got to take the beauty for a spin:

She drives beautifully, and even at stage three and without any materials added, she's already faster than my fastest previous, the M4 Razor.

Analysis

So far, they've been consistent with the event races - my main problem was that I was betting on being able to upgrade my parts during the race week, and focus on blueprints beforehand. But then, they threw the Tuner Trials in, which meant I was short on both cash and conversion kits, since farming no longer worked in car series.

The PR requirement and difficulty curve has been consistent, so I'm expecting a final requirement close to or above 800 for week 4. My M4 Razor has a PR of 768 with all-epic parts at maximum, so it should be somewhere around that.

I'm planning ahead for the conversion kits, and I'm very busy farming right now, since my regular M4 is nowhere near that level. Unfortunately, I don't have spare sports parts to switch out the ones from the M4 Razor, that would come in handy now. Anyway, fully expecting to have to buy out the final race again, still within my gold stash.

The car looks like it's worth it - very close to the Koenigsegg, although it's unclear where we'll be able to get the rest of the blueprints. Only downside is that, since it's an event car, we can't do anything to modify it, not even the colour.

Then again, it is a Ferrari.

go for gold - daily assignments

Hi folks!

Gold, as well all know, is a critical resource in Need For Speed. It's the "second currency", the one the publishers try everything to get us to pay real money for, and, given the topic of this blog, that's what we're trying out best to avoid doing.

Besides the gold prizes for races (mostly in car series and events), the best way to get a decent daily income is to complete "assignments", so let's take a closer look at these.

Assignments

Here's the full list, with the possible gains:

Assignment                       gold     xp
--------------------------------------------
win 12 races                     2        25
nitro boost for 60 seconds       1        10
drift 800m                       2        25
use 20 fuel                      2        25
open 5 free crates               2        25
win 5 races in the underground   2        25
win 3 tournament races           4        40
get airborne for 30 seconds      2        25
complete 9 daily assignments     5       100
win 3 races in car series        2        25
rebuild 2 parts                  3        50
install 3 materials              1        10
win 2 tuner trial races          4        40

If we were to get these all done, we'd be at a grand total of 32 gold and 425 xp. Not bad! But we usually won't be able to do that, since not all of them are achievable all the time. Still, let's take a closer look at each of them.

• win 12 races - that's pretty much a given, each 10 fuel should yield between 3 and 5 races, so check in three times a day, and you got that one done.
• nitro boost for 60 seconds - same here, comes automatically with some farming
• drift 800m - I did mention the importance of drifting, so this should be done after the first race :)
• use 20 fuel - again, a no-brainer
• open 5 free crates - given that the number of free crates one gets per day is at least 5, that's not hard either
• 5 underground races - farm for blueprints, and that's not a problem
• 3 tournament races - now, that of course only works if there's a tournament on, and you have a car to race with. So that's usually an optional one.
• airborne for 30s - that's quite a long time, but usually comes with farming, since the easydrive autopilot does go for jumps, if not for drifting.
• 9 daily assignments - that's what we want to get to every day
• 3 car series races - we farm car series for conversion kits, so if you're currently not after those, maybe not something we get every day
• rebuild 2 parts - that's a bit more rare to get
• install 3 materials - that one is more common
• 2 tuner trial races - this one just came in with the update. Nice that they haven't upped the total number of achievements from 9 to 10 for the 5 gold bonus, so here's another easy one for the daily list

Conclusion

All in all, if you're playing intensively, you can avoid paying outrageous amounts for gold in the shop by ticking these regularly, especially the 5 gold one.