Forza Horizon 5 is one of the best racing games out there, and if you’ve just picked it up, you’ll know that this game throws a ton of content your way, whether you choose to play offline or online. If you’re new to the series, it can get a bit overwhelming, but with these tips, you’ll be able to make your way through the Horizon Festival and level up quickly like a pro.
Know your car classes
Most offline races in Forza Horizon 5 are quite lenient in letting you choose your car, and the game itself is liberal in giving out new cars at a regular interval. However, car selection becomes critical when you head online and when you start checking off Horizon Playlist objectives. Online races are locked to certain vehicle classes, so it’s best to have one car you like that maxes out each vehicle class. For example, for A class events, ideally have a car close to an A800 rating. This is the upper limit for A class, just like B700 would be the upper limit for the B class. It’s also important to have cars that excel in each terrain and discipline. So make sure you find great road, drift and off-road cars across multiple classes in your collection.
Stick with your favourite cars
There are over 500 cars in Forza Horizon 5, and while the game wants you to give them all a try, there’s a lot of benefit in identifying your favourites and sticking with them. You earn skill points for pretty much everything you do in the game, and these can be used to unlock perks for each car. So pick a handful of cars you like and unlock perks for them that give you additional XP, skill bonuses, wheelspins, and more. This perk investment will make it a lot easier to unlock skill points more easily that you can then invest in other cars. Bonus tip: Look for cars marked as AWD, or all-wheel drive. Most of these cars – like the Mitsubishi Lancer or Nissan GT-R, handle really well and are quite capable in road and off-road events.
Get race-ready
It could happen that your favourite cars are fun to drive but don’t really keep up with the competition. Rather than ditching that car, you can tune it to perform better without losing what you love about it. You can do this by downloading tune setups created by the Forza community. Downloading tunes is quick and doesn’t require any technical knowledge. So you could easily tune-up an B650 car to max out at B700, or even bump it up to a higher class. Just keep in mind that once you do move up through a class, that car will no longer be available in B class events. Tune setups are also great for Festival Playlist challenges that often require specific car types and classes to complete.
Don’t believe the brake indicators
Forza Horizon 5 offers driving aids in the form of racing line and brake indicators. It’s a good idea to keep the brake indicator guide on so you know when you’re nearing a turn, but don’t follow it blindly. The brake indicators are often too conservative and will encourage you to go off the gas and brake way sooner than you should. So take that guide with a grain of salt and push yourself to brake later than it suggests. This will help you shave off valuable seconds and get a leg up on the competition.
This isn’t Burnout
Forza Horizon 5 leans more on the arcade side of the racing spectrum, but this isn’t as forgiving in its car physics as games like Burnout or Need for Speed, where you’re encouraged to keep the accelerator slammed at all times. While some cars are happy to drift around corners and stay tidy, others will spin out of control. As a rule of thumb, keep in mind that time spent drifting is usually time lost. Instead, learn to brake early enough so you go smoothly into a corner and are able to make a speedy exit, using drifting purely as a way to adjust your car’s position, if at all. Save your Tokyo Drift fantasies for the drift events.
Shutterbug
Forza Horizon 5 has a robust photo mode and sees the return of Horizon Promo, which rewards you for photographing each of the game’s 500-plus cars. You’ll notice a camera icon above cars as you drive around – this is to indicate a car that you are yet to photograph. Be sure to pull up the camera and photograph these cars to check them off the list when you spot them. But driving around and tracking down all the cars can seem impossible. A quicker way around this is races. Jump into photo mode at the start of each race and photograph the entire starting grid. This way you’re photographing several cars at a time and you could well check off 10-plus cars in one photo.
Race online to level up quick
You’ll level up pretty quickly in Forza Horizon 5 because, unlike many other online games, higher levels don’t require progressively more XP to unlock. In fact, until you hit prestige at level 200, each level requires just 15,000 XP to unlock. You might think you’re levelling up just fine by playing through offline career events, until you hop online to see other players already at prestige levels 1 and 2. This is because the fastest way to level up in Forza Horizon 5 is to hop online. For instance, you might earn around 15,000 XP from completing two career races, but in the same amount of time, you could rack up over 30,000 XP from participating in an Eliminator event online. Even standard online races grant far greater XP than the same race against AI.
Unlock ‘legendary’ cars
Festival Playlist is Forza Horizon 5’s version of seasonal challenges. These are collection of limited-time events and objectives that you can complete in order to unlock cars and other items. Each season allows you to unlock two hard-to-find cars, so make sure you keep an eye on the Playlist objectives as you drive around, because some of them are as simple as destroying cacti.
Chase down XP boards
XP boards are a great way to level up quickly if you prefer to mostly play offline. These are strewn all over the game world – some in deviously elusive locations – and grant you anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 XP each. Hunting these down is also a great way to discover unique locations and landmarks in the game. As you drive around to find them, you’ll also go a long way towards the game’s road discovery objective, which rewards you with XP each time you drive on a road for the first time.
Fast travel anywhere
Forza Horizon 5 is quite generous in handing out cash, and with the game also giving out new cars regularly, you might manage to save up quite a bit of money. One of the best investments you could make is buying the Buena Vista villa once it becomes available. Aside from giving you an additional location to customize your character and fast travel to, as a bonus, it unlocks the ability for you to fast travel to any road on the map. And once you smash all the fast travel boards, you’ll be able to fast travel anywhere for free.
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