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General Information

Basic information for full game speedruns everyone should know.

Slang​

Camera or Cam - Photo Ticket milestone, also referred to as speedtraps by some, which can be confused for speedtrap races.

Chase - Cop Chase or Police Pursuit

Quick Escape or QE - A pursuit that only lasts a few seconds with the goal of completing Pursuit Evasion milestones.

Manual Izzy - A chase on Izzy started from the blacklist menu. Intermediate and Expert routes start most chases by encountering cops during a race. Can be applied to other blacklist members.

Double Izzy - A strategy where two cop chases are done on Izzy, both starting from a race. Can be applied to a few other blacklist members like Jewels.

Taz Cure - Manual chase on Taz with a specific route. Most runs used to fail at getting cops during Race 3 on Taz, which is called Taz%.

Cooldown Strat - Entering cooldown one to three times at the start of a chase to increase the spawn counter. The first four cop cars have a separate slower spawn timer and cooldown strat helps getting around it.

Cooldown Bug - When the pursuit continues from cooldown mode without the player being seen. Usually caused by a cop car exiting roadblock formation.

Rhinos - SUVs on conditions 3, 4 and 5 that appear in front of the player to take them out with a head-on collision.

Lights - A roadblock on condition 3 containing only Light SUVs. This can also refer to the vehicles which appear as part of rhino attacks.

Heavies - A roadblock on condition 4 containing only Heavy SUVs. These also exist on condition 5, but they are less valuable than standard Federal roadblocks.

Miscellaneous​

The game can crash during pursuits in specific areas. Most notably on highways and the stadium in Rosewood, especially on heat 4 and 5, but heat 2 and 3 aren't completely safe either. Crashes may happen on a manual Sonny chase when spawning the third cop car.

If you change settings before a run, restart your game, otherwise the upgrade shop will be empty. Exact cause is not yet known.

Your car has double grip in reverse gear. It is very useful to get out of bad situations.

Rain does not affect physics, it is purely a visual effect.

You can buffer directional menu inputs during animations. As an alternative, you can use the scroll wheel on the mouse to cycle some selections quickly while hovering over them.

Use the mouse to select boss markers and make sure to click near the centre. Never choose the first one, it plays a spinning animation normally. Clicking on the edge of a marker might select it, which means it is going to spin when chosen.

If you open the map, your mouse might become invisible. Open it again, and move the cursor outside the map to get it back.

Unless you need to start a race from safe house, it’s faster to return to free roam and use the blacklist menu there to start races, chases or cameras. Up to 0.5s timesave each time. Restarting a race on the finish line and returning to safe house is faster if you need to start a race from safe house.

It’s faster to challenge a boss from free roam if you have already received the challenge sms before. This happens on Double Izzy or Ming.

Lap Glitch​

In game version 1.2, changing the lap count of a circuit or the number of opponents of a KO within Quick Race affects the race in Career.

The number of each event refers to their position in the All Regions list. The same system is used for everything else that is part of a list in the game.

The order of certain lap glitches matter! Starting with circuit 14 is important, since a different order would cause one of the Sonny races to lose their lap glitch.

There are two types of lap glitches: the carry-over lap glitch aka global lap glitch and direct lap glitch. The global lap glitch is shared between many events because they use the same inherited value. Direct lap glitches are those we need to apply for each event during the speedrun, because they have their lap count explicitly specified. Common global lap glitches are circuit 14 and KO 1.

Lap Glitch is only active in the current session. If your game crashes or you close it, the lap glitches have to be reapplied. After a restart you need to perform a global lap glitch, then the direct ones from the boss you are currently on. Examples: circuit 14, 18 and KO 14 on JV. Alternatively, you can lap glitch an event from the boss you are on, which normally does not require one. Examples: KO 12 then KO 11 on Ming, or circuit 24 then 23 on Bull.

Entering certain races from another boss like Kaze 2 and Vic 1 cancel direct lap glitches. Make sure to only start events from another boss either before lap glitching or after you've completed all directly lap glitched races. All races from a different boss with NumLaps set cause this.

Black Edition includes an additional circuit race, which offsets all circuit lap glitch values by 1. This means circuit 1 with Black Edition is circuit 2 in the All Regions list.

Tuning​

Steering tuning only changes your input mapping, not the car itself. Not recommended to change, unless you are absolutely sure it actually helps you. Avoid at all costs with digital steering (aka buttons)! Can be useful on the Elise when using negative handling. For me, +2 steering with -1 handling helps make the car feel more responsive and natural. But make sure to test various settings, the best one depends on your preference.

Handling tuning has a big effect on acceleration, not just handling. Lower handling gives acceleration and vice versa.

Max ride height is used, because it only changes ride height, and not centre of gravity, drag, or downforce. The result is less speed loss on bumps without any downsides.

Car swaps​

Switching to Sonny’s car is not worth it, because even that little heat level matters.

Despite having all ultimate upgrades, Ming’s Gallardo is slow, worse than the Golf with a junkman or two.

The Lotus Elise is the fastest car in the game alongside the Porsche Carrera GT. The Elise is much more useful for full game speedruns, as it unlocks earlier and costs a lot less.

Car swaps are viable thanks to a message on Bull after the fourth completed race where the heat level of our current car is set to 5.

Inputs​

Don’t hold the throttle until the SMS appears when you buy your first car, or spawn after beating a boss. In most cases, when you hold throttle during spawn, you get stuck for a bit.

Steering​

Your race times will be a lot slower without analog steering, especially early on in the game. You can lose 3-5s per race in the first half of the game.

The fastest known method to make use of analog steering is to “smooth steer”. When starting to turn, use an increased amount of steering input briefly then quickly but gradually reduce it to the bare minimum which allows the car to make the corner or stay on the intended line. Minimize the use of big sudden steering inputs, since this rubs off a lot of speed.

Throttle, lifting & braking​

You want to stay on full throttle whenever possible. In most cases lifting during corners is only used as a correction. Knowing when and how much to slow down using brakes or just lifting helps setting up for the perfect corner entry speed.

Perfect start​

Use analog throttle and hold the revs in perfect start range. Wait about a second after perfect start before going full throttle, otherwise you cancel your perfect start bonus (unless you already had full throttle when perfect start happened).

For an even faster perfect start, begin holding nitro before the race starts. Doing this correctly your car will shoot forward, plus you make better use of nos by using it as soon as it is available. This is not useful when starting behind a car, since you would crash into it. In those cases, wait until you steer clear of it. Optimal RPM for prologue: 5600; Elise: usually 5400

Drags​

Drag races depend a lot on a good start, especially with the Golf. The fastest way to launch depends on your current upgrades. On the Izzy drag you want an analog perfect start. On Baron with pro transmission you want a rev drop perfect start. On Baron with race transmission and on Ming you don't want a perfect start at all due to excessive wheelspin. Overheating your engine massively reduces its power output, making it easy to lose drag races!

Perfect start examples

Speedbreaker​

Activate speedbreaker for a few frames or tenths on specific jumps to keep more speed. Alternatively, using a tiny amount of steering input during landing can also mitigate speed lost when landing.

Jump speed loss mitigation example

The main use of speedbreaker is in pursuits against cops. It doubles the mass of your car, making it much tougher in collisions.

Speedbreaker can also be used to stop or reduce sliding. In very specific cases, you can increase exit speed slightly by activating speedbreaker at the correct time for a few frames.

You can recharge speedbreaker by going above 160 km/h (100 mph) or by drifting.

Drifting to recharge speedbreaker

Pursuit basics​

  1. Do NOT outrun your cops! You need to keep most of them because one of your main sources of bounty is destroying cop cars. If a few of them get stuck or are too slow it can be fine to lose them, but doing so too often removes a lot of potential bounty from your chase.

  2. Make use of the Combo Bounty multiplier. Destroying any police vehicle will start or reset the Combo Bounty timer which lasts for 10 seconds. The multiplier is increased by 1 for each vehicle destroyed up to a maximum of 3. This is crucial for bounty generation. Destroying police vehicles one or two at a time when you have a large number of cops remaining is a huge waste. You should collect as many cops as you can and lead them all into a pursuit breaker to maximize the bounty reward - we call these waves. The maximum number of cops that can follow you at a time is 4 on Condition 1, 5 on Condition 2, 7 on Condition 3, 8 on Condition 4 and 10 on Condition 5. This means you usually want 5 or more cars to be destroyed at the same time. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, try and destroy cop cars while the combo is still active, for example when a roadblock appears behind a pursuit breaker.

  3. Use speedbreaker during collisions. The mass of your car is doubled while speedbreaker is active. You want to make use of this in almost every collision, especially against cops.

  4. Look at the minimap often so you can keep track of your cops, spot roadblocks and remember which pursuit breakers are still available. If you ran out of pursuit breakers within an area, go somewhere else. Pursuit breakers can respawn during a chase if you go far enough away from them. This is usually why we drive up to the intersection next to the stadium with the blocked road.

  5. Understand that speedrun chases can get very complex and you need to learn a lot to be able to improve: AI behaviour and pursuit tactics like rolling block, pit, etc., how each car reacts to collisions normally and as part of a roadblock, where cops and blocks spawn (these are in fixed positions) and much more.

    • AI: Cops follow the player much easier at medium or high speed. Going too slow only confuses them as the game can't figure out where the player is trying to go. Learning about their pathing should be priority. They take certain corners in a really weird way, or try to cut ahead of the player using a different road only to get stuck.
    • Collisions: Condition 1 and 2 cars are difficult to flip, but have low health. Side impacts are preferred and angle is not needed - smash them with a nearly perpendicular hit. Condition 3, 4 and 5 cars can be flipped with relative ease especially within blocks by hitting the rear quarter panel at a slight angle. Light SUVs can be difficult to flip as they slide around a lot, and usually require high angle front or rear quarter collisions. Heavy SUVs in blocks are usually easy to flip as long as you have some angle, but outside blocks they require much more force.
    • Spawns: The game usually tries to spawn cops and roadblocks in the direction the player is heading. This doesn't always work correctly and certain areas often spawn blocks away from the player.

Run Archives​

Community Archive & Balathruin's Archive

Any% WR Progression​