Guide For Real Racing 3

Real Racing 3 is the popular car racing 'Freemium' game from Firemonkeys/EA Games on and IOS. It's great fun to play, has generally excellent graphics and gameplay but can occasionally be incredibly frustrating both in it's freemium implementation and general play.

I'm a mid level player, I don't have an enormous amount of time to devote to the game but unfortunately, the type of game means you need to play a little and very often to really get anywhere. As such, I've put together a few tips that may not be immediately obvious to new-ish players to give yourselves a helping hand for later on in the game.

Gold

You’ll find this on every single forum, tips article and street corner. If you have any intention of finishing the game, hoard, hoard, hoard your gold. Some (an increasing number) of the cars can only be bought for gold, the R$ option isn't available. These range from 20 gold at the low end to over 1000 gold for some of the high end cars.

To put it in some perspective, because I’m not an obsessive player, I’ve missed some of the offers that allow you to win the cars. I’m looking at the following bill for cars in gold just now:

Porsche Cayman GT4 – 280 gold

Maserati Granturismo MC Stradale – 360 gold

Hyundai 120 WRC – 119 gold for upgrades to get the PR high enough to race

Shelby ’66 Cobra 427 – 180 gold (100% in V8 Naturals)

Many of the final upgrades to cars are also only in gold. The McLaren MP4-12c will cost you 65 gold to buy and a further 72 in gold (minimum) to fully upgrade as well as the cash for the lower end upgrades.

When you start getting to high end cars there are two costing over 1000 each and another three or four at close to that.

20% Unlock Discount

When you first unlock a car in a series, you are immediately offered a 20% discount bonus regardless of whether the car costs cash or gold. The discount is a one time offer only. RR3 does occasionally put up better discounts on cars but it tends to be in the region of one or two a month. These special discounts also include cars which you already own and cars which you haven't yet unlocked and therefore can't take advantage of in either case.

Although better than full price, you should think very carefully about accepting the 20% off if the car costs gold. If you don't need the car to progress the series (i.e. it belongs to a sub series or isn't specifically required to get to the next level up) you're probably better off hording the gold you would have spent in order to buy cars that you must have to get to the next level. Saving up 20% of 150 gold is a lot less than saving up 20% of 1000 gold because you couldn't afford the more expensive car.

Know the Price Before Unlocking Cars

This is very important if you are to take full advantage of the 20% unlock bonus. You can look up the cost of any car on the Wikipedia page of full car information here. If you know the cost, you can avoid unlocking the car until you have either the cash or the gold to buy it.

Tip: you are better off unlocking a car mid series than by unlocking a car by unlocking a new series. Sometimes the 20% unlock bonus does not appear when the car is bought as part of a new series. This means that if a car is available in a sub series that you have access to and is a car that you would unlock as the first car in another main series, you are better pursuing the car in the sub series.

Payout

Gold payout for leveling up does increase, but not by much. Payout is 20 in gold for level 50 to 75, 22 in gold for 75 to 99 and 25 gold for 100 to 124. The kicker is that leveling up takes immeasurably longer at higher levels.

Level 75 will take you about 94,000 fame points to level up. Most of the full tracks lower in the series give you between 1,000 and 2,000 fame points meaning you’ll need to do some 47 races to level up.

Across the entire game you’ll need somewhere around 13,000 in gold just to purchase the cars (full price & more as FM keeps adding cars). Use the gold only for buying cars that can't be bought with cash and absolutely essential upgrades that can't be bought with cash.

Skipping levels that you really can't manage in the car give aways could be permissible if you win the car in question, but only if it's less than it'd cost you to purchase the car in gold. Hoard the gold.

Not fully completing levels is also advisable. In some cases, where the gold required to update the car to the correct PR is more than the amount you win completing the level, you're best leaving it at 75% complete.

Cash Payout Races

Some races pay out slightly more per minute or per race than others. Here are my favourite tracks, depending on the time you have available or your inclination to sit there running a car around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for 20 minutes.

Pro/AM Lower Level Cash

You can get more money by finding endurance races that you can keep going for long distances. In the Pro/AM Section, under the V8 Naturals, look for the Speedrush TV Epic Global Round 1 (window 7) and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Endurance.

With the Lexus IS F (2013) and some reasonable upgrades (I’ve got 22/28) around 15-20 miles is achievable. This can get you around R$50,000-60,000 with the Manager and the 100% daily bonus. It’s a lot longer and more boring than the Pro Mount Panorama Cup but if you’re not at the Pro stage, it’s a reasonable pay out.

Pro Races

In the Pro Section, under the Pro/AM super car club, look for the Turbo Burst Australasian cup (window 16) and the Mount Panorama Cup race.

I can complete this 4 lap race at 1:51 per lap for a total of 7 minutes 24 seconds racing with the Nissan GT-R Premium (R35).

It costs the entire car to finish the race (I’m both a sloppy and needlessly aggressive driver) but with the 100% day bonus and the (free) Master Manager, the payout is just short of R$71,000 with a further R$8000 in clean race bonus.

I tend to lose about R$1,000 in penalties and a further R$1,025 to service the car, but a R$77,000 payout for seven and half minutes of racing is the best I’ve come across so far.

With the Master Agent and the 2x fame, you also collect 6400 in fame points. It’s not the highest available in fame but it’s definitely on the side of reasonable.

Requirements:

*Access to the Pro tracks

*Nissan GT-R Premium (R35)

*Access to the Manager at Pro level.

*100% free daily bonus

More Dough

In the Pro Section, under the Supercar Masters Series, look for the Mastare Global Pro Championships Round 1 (window 16) and the Suzuka Circuit Cup race.

I can complete this 4 lap race at 1:54 per lap for a total of 7 minutes 36 seconds racing with the Audi R8 V10 Coupe.

Payout is higher than the Mount Panorama Cup race but it's also slightly more difficult (I think) to win. It's still easily winnable, but I can't just switch off and win.

Fame at 7400 with the agent is also higher.

Expert Cash

In the Expert Section, under the Accolade Open, look for the Mastare Global Championships Round 3 (window 22) and the Suzuka Circuit Cup race.

I can complete this 5 lap race at roughly 1m 46s per lap for a total of 8 minutes 48 seconds racing with the BMW M3 GT2 ALMS.

On account of the relatively high traction to speed ratio, the race is quite winable with high speed cornering and has a good payout.

With the 100% day bonus and the Manager, a cool R$140,000 is a welcome bonus.

Fame is around 5800 base rate with up to 23,200 on good days :-)

Time Cash

The weekly time trial is also a surprisingly good source of cash very early on. You can easily get into the R$5000 group and in the opening Amateur level, this is not inconsiderable. UPDATE: the cash prize has been considerably upped, with R$500,000 now being group D prize and Gold for groups C, B and A. Definitely worth participating now.

You'll also find that as you go, past performances count against the current time trial so you'll get to the point of already having done all the tracks. You'll be entered without entering or only have to race one race and get the cash when it ends.

Time Saving Tricks

Time is the kicker in this game. You play a few races, trash your car and have to wait hour until it's ready to play again. You can speed this up with gold but it'll cost you, eventually real money if you're too impatient. Here are a few minor tricks to maximising cars and time.

Delivery Time

New cars take a certain time to be delivered but you can upgrade them while this is happening. The early upgrades tend to only take 10 minutes to half an hour but some of them can take a lot longer so use the delivery time to receive a modded car.

I tend to do this only if I’m sure I’ll use the car a lot. There’s no point in fully upgrading a car you’ll only use for three races. You can also upgrade during maintenance.

Car maintenance will be the biggest drag on your time. Here are some tips to get the most out of a car before each maintenance cycle:

Run in-event timetrial tracks with damaged cars. You can’t ‘lose’ the race so it doesn’t really matter how quick you do them. In this way you’ll get one more race out of a car before you put it in for maintenance.

1 lap will cost about 1/3rd of the car and a clean 3 lap race is easily possible without requiring maintenance afterwards.

A 4 lap race will usually cost you most or all of the car. Melbourne seems to be the exception here, possibly because it’s impossible to be ‘off-track’on account of the barriers.

A drag race, speedsnap and autocross are usually short races and will cost you 1 to 2 ‘bars’ of car condition.

Try to run the car down to 0 or 1 bars of condition above degrading the car performance then go for the longest, most rugged race you have. You’ll totally trash the car but only at the expense of the last bar or so of conditioning.

Cheats

Here are three methods I would consider to be cheating. I class them so because they alter the way you play the game in a way not intended by the developer. They don’t involve any kind of hacks and are simple.

Flight Mode

Turn on Flight Mode on your phone. This will cut the connection to ‘real’ racers time and you’ll only race against the AI cars. They’re slower and more stupid and a lot easier to beat. You’ll also get shorter distances in endurance races and longer times in autocross.

Do go back in with either wifi or data turned on as your game ‘cloud’ saves every now and then. Note: this doesn’t work every time; apparently there are some later races where the AI is much better than real racers.

Close the Game

Minimise the game on your device mid way through the race and force close RR3 to close if you’re doing badly in a race you must win. I discovered this when the game kept crashing.

You’ll get to keep your daily bonus amount and any Manager, Agent or Mechanic promotions you might have applied against that race provided you close the game before the end of the race. They’ll then be applied against the next race you choose.

This will not help you with time trial races; you lose the drive ticket as soon as you start the race regardless of whether you complete the trial.

Note: This can create corruption within the game so only use if you’re not fussed about deleting and reloading the game. You should be able to do this on all ios versions, perhaps on Apple devices too.

Time Traveller

There is also a cheat to do with altering the time on your phone. You'll need to completely close the program first, i.e. forced close to make sure it's not running at all. Then you put the phone in Flight mode (no wifi either), set the phone to manual time and alter the time to whatever is required to complete the maintenance period on the car.

E.g. if it’s 3pm and your car says 2 hours to finish maintenance, if you manually alter the time on the phone to 5pm, the maintenance will be finished.

RR3 is very suspicious of behaviour like this and repeatedly tells you that something is wrong and to connect your phone and refresh the time. If pushed too far it appears you’ll also lose the 100% daily bonus and it’ll reset you back to 20%. In short, you might want to avoid this unless you’re really desperate.