Need for Speed Unbound – Before You Started: Workarounds and Tips

Things I wish I knew before I started.

Useful Tips and Workarounds

All credit goes to Badgerp!

Changing cars without ending your session or running a race

To change cars without ending your session, go to a Meetup (the yellow icons where you start races from) that has a race in the car class you want to change to. For example, if you’re in a B class car and want to change to A class, find a meetup with an A class race.

After entering the meetup, choose the race but don’t start it! Once you get to the screen where you place bets, back out of the race and out of the meetup (just keep tapping escape or B or whatever your back button is). When you leave the meetup you’ll be switched to the vehicle you chose for that race you didn’t start.

Easier scores in drift races and showdowns

Before you enter the meetup that contains your drift race or showdown, pause the game and go to Handling Tuning in the pause menu. If you’re not in the car that you plan to use for the race, then follow my earlier section in this guide on how to change cars, then come back to this.

• Move the Handling slider as far over to the Drift (right) side as you can (Default is different per car and your preferred style, but I recommend more grip than drift for races and cop chases).
• Move the Downforce slider all the way to the left (Low (Default is set to the middle)).
• Turn Traction Control to “Off” (Default is off, but I recommend On for races and cop chases).

This will make your car super slippery, which can make getting big drifts (and thus big points) much easier. Not all players enjoy the slipperiness, so make sure you change these settings back to default (listed above) before doing other types of races.

If your car’s Handling slider is very small, upgrade your Differential. It won’t increase your car’s stats at all, but it will increase the size of the handling slider.

Another tip here, your Handling slider actually changes the overall rating of your car (the number next to your car’s class, for example: A 200. Watch your car’s rating as you move the Handling slider and find the sweet spot that gives you the highest rating, this is probably the best overall setting for normal races.

Escaping cops – lesser know tricks

1. Intentionally drive off of ledges into the water, when the cops are close to you. They’ll follow you into the water and be destroyed, but you will respawn and be able to continue escaping.
2. When they put up a roadblock, don’t avoid it, use it. Roadblocks are a great way to kill cop cars, just drive through the cone section, and at least one or more cops will hit the trucks and explode. Naturally, you need to be able to tell the difference between a spike strip and a normal roadblock (spike strip roadblocks have way bigger gaps between the trucks). Don’t drive over spike strips. But the non-spike strip roadblocks are great for peeling off a few cop cars.
3. Don’t worry about the helicopter. Get rid of the cars. Once the cars are gone, you can easily hide from or even outrun helicopters. Find any area with even the slightest overhead cover, go under it and wait, the chopper will lose sight of you and then run out of fuel and leave.
4. Avoid getting stuck in a low-class car. For example, if you’re at heat level 5, you may want to skip doing B races since you’ll get dumped into your B car. There’s an earlier section of this guide that shows you how to change cars without racing or ending your session, that can work as well, but you need to be near the right meetup…so it’s still wise to avoid putting yourself in a bad car in high heat.
5. Cops don’t actually detect you in the radius displayed on the minimap. They detect you in more of a circle, and it’s smaller than the cone on the minimap. They can detect you from the side, even outside of the cone you’ll see.
6. If you’ve gotten out of sight, but there are cops everywhere, or you’re still in “Escaping…” status, enter a meetup. This will clear out the cops, repair your car, and fully “Escape” you. You can then just leave the Meetup without performing any races.
7. The pause menu map shows cops further away than the minimap shows. When you enter a chase, you should open up the map and see what you’re facing.
8. Drive through every gas station you find (this will put them on your map). When you first get in a chase, you should open your map, find the nearest gas station and drive to it (during the chase). Always start a chase with a fresh repair. Frequently you’ll get caught in a beat-up state after a race, you don’t want to start a chase that way.
9. Always do nighttime “delivery” missions (where you take a person to a safehouse, you get randomly called about it and it then has a red shield icon on the map). These unlock safehouses, which spawn you closer to Meetups at the beginning of a day/night and are additional places to escape to.