Forza Horizon 5 tips and tricks

The Forza Horizon 5 festival has landed into the explosion of colour that is Guanajuato City, and though we will miss the Scottish Highlands and all of its exploratory availabilities, the brand-new Mexican landscape is waiting for our arrival, containing many events to be discovered.

We have been absolutely hammering it over the past weekend, and it’s finally available for everyone. So put your seatbelts on, get the camera ready and join us in our expedition of tips and tricks, to improve your visit within the latest Horizon spectacular.

Don’t forget to buy upgrades

Starting out with the best tip to on your vehicle performance is by upgrading your car, as there are a lot of possibilities to be had with any vehicle and its potential usage. Want to make a Reliant Supervan into a drag race monster? Easy. Chuck a bunch of upgrades on it, and watch it reach up to 200mph on the main Festival Drag Strip. Fancy trying something different for drift zones? Not a problem. Jump into the BAC Mono, put on a drift tune set, and glide your way to 3-stars.

If you’re not fond of tinkering with setups, pre-made tunes are readily available and take seconds to apply. On the start menu, go to the cars tab, select ‘Tune Car’, select ‘Setup Manager’ on the bottom left, and then ‘Load Setup’. You will see a whole load of recommendations with a description of the type of setup at the top left. There’s the ability to search through tunes as well, filtering down to find a setup that’s perfect for your need.

While we’re on the subject of upgrades, it is also a good idea to create a catalogue of class cars for the Horizon Open races. These require a class limit with their own specific types, so for example, a cross-country race with A-class vehicles. Make sure you have road and dirt specific cars within each range from S2-998 to C-600, otherwise you’ll be stuck with a bog-standard Ford Focus in the low 700s.

Drifting made easy

First things first, which car to choose. A few favourites seem to be the Toyota Supra, Caterham R500, or any Formula Drift car, but there are a lot of different vehicles out there with the availability to drift. Remember that BAC Mono drift car we mentioned earlier? Yes, this car really is able to 3-star every single drift zone with our drift setup.

The setup code is 800 337 554 if you would like to try it out for yourself.

After you’ve chosen your car, we’ll adjust a few things on the assists, which can be found in the settings menu and then the difficulty tab. Turn traction and stability control off, and shifting to manual. This will let you chuck the car around corners, but does require some practice to keep it on the road. With some familiarity and rehearsal, you should be able to control it fairly well through the corners.

There is a lot to teach when it comes to drifting, but we’ll keep it short and digestible for you. An easy method is to keep the car in a low gear, keep your speed at a manageable pace, and use the e-brake. Try to balance the throttle and pay attention to your steering. Too much throttle and the car will spin or run off the road, whereas too little, and it won’t slide.

If you’re struggling to make it through a zone, a good place to practice is at the Los Jardines roundabout. Try to drift around the roundabout while also picking a lane to stay within. Remember, drifting takes a lot of time and practice to perfect. Keep trying, and those 3-stars will naturally land on your lap.

Use the rewind feature for stunts and boards

Whoever had the bright idea of putting a bonus board on an electrical pylon deserves a stern talking to. However, I guess it is a fun challenge to take on, good on you matey. While attempting to demolish every board and PR stunt is a feat on its own, it’s made a lot easier with the rewind feature.

Thankfully the game doesn’t punish you for using this, so feel free to use it as much as you’d like to. It’s very helpful when attempting ridiculous challenges such as smashing the pylon board, as there is no way anyone can do this on their first attempt. Line up the jump and try to land on it. If unsuccessful, hit the rewind button and adjust your speed and steering if needed until you’ve succeeded.

While we’re on the subject of bonus boards, here’s a nice quick tip about searching for them all. Every board in the game plays music, so keep an ear out while in free roam. If you do come across a board that isn’t in sight, turn the radio off, and follow the music. It stops the moment you demolish the board.

Rewinding can be especially useful for PR stunts too. If the take-off has been messed up at a danger sign, rewind and adjust the steering. Smacked a tree on a Trailblazer? Rewind. Taken a corner too fast in a Speed Zone or Drift Zone? Rewind. Keep trying until everything has been accomplished, there isn’t a limit to how many you’re allowed.

Invest in properties to unlock perks

As is the case with the previous festival, you can unlock added perks from houses. These should not be discounted, as they can be very useful for your journey. One such bonus is given to you for free at the start of the game from Casa Bella Villa, which unlocks the availability of Skill Songs, which provide a double-points boost to your skill score.

Other houses that have bonuses include La Casa Solariega, which unlocks double Forzathon points earnings, Hotel Castillo that unlocks a daily wheelspin for free, and Buenas Vistas that unlocks the use of fast travel. The latter is incredibly useful, meaning you’re able to teleport to any road on the map, and has its price reduced depending on how many fast travel boards you’ve smashed.

Quick Horizon Promo Captures

One more property with a helpful perk is the Lugar Tranquilo house, which unlocks Horizon Promo. This perk involves taking pictures of every different car within the festival, that can be used to unlock rewards. Simply open up photo mode, take a picture of a car, and it will give you a reward.

If you come across a car that you have yet to take a picture of, a helpful camera icon on the nameplate shows up, and disappears once a photo has been captured. It will become harder to find new cars to capture, but thankfully there is an easy way of getting many different cars in a quick way.

Simply jump into a race with a certain car and class, and the field should be varied with different cars. Start the race, enter photo mode, and take a picture. Then, quit that event and start a new race with a different car. You should be able to fill out that photo album in no time at all.

Skill score farming

Every vehicle in the game has a car mastery tied to it, which contain different rewards and bonuses. They can unlock free wheelspins, XP unlocks and also others that help out with gaining skill score.

A good place to farm the said feature is to pick an open area that’s filled with breakable objects. Any area will do, but we like to choose the area around the base of the volcano, Descansar Dorado. This place does contain a few large rocks but contains a whole heap of cacti, trees and scenery to decimate. Ultimate wreckages, drifts and air are all useful in chaining together a gigantic skill score, but make sure to bank them regularly just in case of an accidental collision.

If you have yet to unlock the accolade named “Skill Champ” that requires a skill chain of 1.5 million, this is the best time to attempt it.

Use drone mode to find barns

Plain and simple, this tip pretty much speaks for itself. Searching for the secret cars – aka Barn Finds – can be tricky and tedious if you’re unable to locate it within the purple area, but thankfully the drone cam is here to help. This is located in the start menu, creative hub tab, and then “drone mode” on the bottom right.

Using the drone can help locate a barn without climbing over obstacles, or becoming stuck in scenery, but it doesn’t seem to go very high annoyingly. Once located, head to the barn and unlock your brand-new vehicle. Quick and easy. But if you are struggling to complete all of the Barn Finds, we have a guide for that.

Don’t forget Accolade rewards

The focus for every superstar within this new festival is the Hall of Fame. How do you reach the top? Well by unlocking accolades of course. These require specific tasks to complete, such as completing every story mission, unlocking every festival, or even buying a car from the auction house. What you may not have noticed in your journey is that there are a bunch of rewards to be gained from said accolades.

These do pop up in the game when unlocked, but tend to disappear quickly if you’re not paying attention. However, you can find out what rewards you have unlocked, by going into the start menu, and then selecting accolades on the right side. If you have a reward available to be collected, it should show up on the top-right of a box, and also shows a sheen animation if it’s unlockable.

You will have to select each individual accolade to unlock these rewards. So, if you’re from Playground Games and are reading this article, could you be so kind as to add a “Collect all rewards” button on the accolades screen? It would be very helpful!

One other quick tip concerning accolades, if you pin a task and it specifically points to a certain event, it will add a route to your map, leaving out the tedious task of manually searching for it on the map. A very helpful and quick way of finding where you need to go.

VIP Perks

For those that have a VIP membership, there are some things available to you, that you may not have noticed.

First up, the car voucher. This enables you to buy any car on the Autoshow for free, for one time. If there is a specific car you would love to own, you can use it on that, or you could go for the most expensive item on the market, that being the Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe, available for a small loan of 30 million credits. Using the voucher on this vehicle also unlocks a bunch of accolades related to buying cars, and if you really wanted to, you could even sell it on the auction house for a significant quantity of credits.

Secondly, there are two free houses available for VIP members, being Lugar Tranquilo and La Casa Solariega, each containing a perk that we’ve previously mentioned. One of these houses may have a price tag on them, which can change to “Free” once you’ve paid a visit.

Diversify your interests, try everything

There is an overwhelming number of things to participate in during your stay at the festival, so it’s very important to try many things. This is basically just another way of saying “have fun”, but we really do mean it. You can lose hours of your time blasting through everything, so it’s very important to try everything at least once.

Try messing about with tunes if you haven’t tried that out, go for bonus boards on your way to the next race, try out cross-country races if you’re a road racer, jump into Horizon Arcade while attempting a Danger Sign, the list goes on.

With a gigantic map comes gigantic opportunities, and the festival is sleepless. Do whatever you want, whenever you want, because this stay is going to be a memorable one.

So those were just a few tips and tricks we’ve gathered throughout our time in the Mexico landscape. Do you have any helpful tips like these of your own? Let us know in the comments section below and don’t forget to read our full Forza Horizon 5 review.