LEGO 2K Drive might be a great arcade racing game to introduce your kids to, with its simplified mechanics and easy-to-understand controls, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few tips you should keep in mind if you want to reach first place a lot more often. With that in mind, we’ve put together a few tips that you should be aware of when exploring the block-based world of Bricklandia. If you need a bit of help hitting pole position, these are the 10 beginner’s tips you should know while playing LEGO 2K Drive and its Story Mode.
1. Drifting Is King
As you’d expect from an arcade racer, drifting is an important aspect of winning races in LEGO 2K Drive. Holding down the left trigger will allow you to slide around corners, earning boost power as you do so. You can also earn boost power by destroying objects, which can often be littered around the track, but there are plenty of moments on certain tracks where there are no objects in sight. Throwing your car sideways instead is an always reliable method, plus it allows you to go around corners in style.
2. Class Division
Unlike other open world racing games, which allow you to upgrade your vehicle’s stats throughout the course of the game, LEGO 2K Drive’s vehicle stats are tied to the user’s level progression. As you earn EXP and level up, your natural top speed, acceleration, handling and car health all increase. Each car also has their own personal strengths and weaknesses, but generally speaking, just leveling up will improve all the cars in your garage.
As you level up, you’ll move from Class C to Class B and finally, Class A, which will see the level of your competition increase too. Being a higher level will mean that you’ll be more likely to earn gold medals in the open world challenges, which can be quite challenging to do well in at Class C. The more powerful boost options you unlock at Class B and A alone can be a real difference maker.
3. Focus On More Than Just Racing
Even though you’ll only do well in those challenges when you hit the higher class divisions, it’s still worth completing challenges and earning the best medal you can whenever you discover them, as everything you do in LEGO 2K Drive will earn you EXP and cash, both of which are incredibly valuable. Completing races is still probably the most lucrative activity in LEGO 2K Drive, but completing challenges and quests, along with finding collectibles, is just as important when it comes to leveling up.
4. Play To Your Strengths
A unique aspect of LEGO 2K Drive that sets the game apart from other racing games in the genre is the fact that you switch between three different vehicles depending on the terrain. Naturally, you’ll swap from a Street vehicle to an Offroad vehicle if you’re on roads or dirt, and heading into the water will switch you to an aquatic vehicle.
What makes this feature important is that a lot of the tracks allow for players to take certain routes or shortcuts using one of the three different vehicles, so if you know that you’re a better driver with your Street car, or your Off-Road vehicle has better stats, try to stick to those terrains.
5. Perks Are A Game Changer
While general upgrades aren’t a part of LEGO 2K Drive, being able to assign perks is, and they can fundamentally change and improve different aspects of your racing experience. You’ll start with one perk slot in Class C, but as you progress through the game, you’ll unlock two others, with each slot offering different perks and benefits. Class C perks are usually small boosts your powers, while Class B and A perks offer bigger changes, often with some kind of trade-off.
In order to earn perks, you’ll need to win races or complete quests, and once you’ve unlocked the perks, you can equip them any time in free roam from the pause menu. Some perks will pair well with certain vehicles, but it depends on how you want to play. You could use perks to shore up any weaknesses that your vehicles may possess, like a lack of speed or acceleration, or you could make your strengths even stronger.
6. Weedkiller
Perhaps the most important tip of this list concerns weeds, brown plants that can be found in all of the game’s biomes. Whenever you enter a patch of weeds, your vehicle will slow down to a crawl, allowing other vehicles to easily overtake you, but there’s a way you can get rid of them for good. You’ll just need to do a bit of legwork in order to do so.
In order to unlock the ability to remove weeds, you’ll need to complete a quest in Big Butte County for a farmer. The farmer in question will ask you to borrow his lawn mower to remove some pesky weeds, and once you’ve done so, you’ll be rewarded with his lawn mower as a playable Off-Road vehicle. It’s worth using that mower to explore the open world, as cutting weed patches not only removes an obstacle from getting in your way, it also replaces the patch with crystals that give you boost power. Unfortunately though, you can’t remove weed patches mid-race, so make sure you scan the surrounding area of a race or challenge before attempting it.
7. Use Loadouts To Your Advantage
As mentioned earlier, you’ll be able to switch between three different vehicles depending on the terrain, and in order to make this possible, players can create loadouts that feature different vehicles and perks. You can access all three of these loadouts from the pause menu, and you can easily make them work for you.
Some good uses of loadouts could be to focus on vehicles that are excellent at certain traits, such speed or acceleration, which will naturally make them suited to different tracks, or you could opt for loadouts that are focused on either racing or exploration. Sticking the lawnmower on one loadout for instance is a great way to ensure you can get rid of any pesky weeds as you discover them.
8. Building Is Usually Better Than Buying
It wouldn’t be a LEGO game without some kind of building mechanic, and LEGO 2K Drive doesn’t disappoint in that regard. Players can create the vehicular masterpiece of their dreams, using a wide variety of LEGO bricks, with additional props and flair that you can decorate the vehicle with. You can also select the engine type you’d like to have, which follows the same archetypes as the other, official vehicles, but it’s worth noting that building a vehicle is often cheaper than buying one with the same stats.
A lot of vehicles share the same stat archetypes with each other, and that extends to the engine types that players can equip on their created vehicle. Purchasing these archetypes for your custom vehicle is also massively cheaper than purchasing a car from the Emporium, so if you don’t mind being a little bit imaginative and sinking some time into the creation, you could save a lot of cash.
9. Replay Races For More Rewards
The main pursuit in LEGO 2K Drive’s Story Mode is to earn flags by winning races, and with enough flags, you can enter the three Grand Prix events. Complete those three events, and you’ll earn the medals you need to compete for the Sky Cup, thereby finishing the Story Mode. You can only earn the flags or medals for these races once, but you can return to complete the race in a different class, and doing so will earn more rewards, including new perks or new decorative items for your vehicles. It’s worth being thorough.
10. Chinwag With Your Rivals
One last little tip that can help earn players some more cash and EXP by doing basically nothing is by talking to your rivals at each race location. Every new rival you interact with will net you 50 Brickbucks and 50 EXP, which doesn’t sound like a lot but could be the difference between a new car or a level up. Either way, it’s there for the taking, so you may as well grab it.
LEGO 2K Drive is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X & S and Nintendo Switch.
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