Forza Street Advanced Guide: Everything You Need to Know About Car Customization, Energy Packs, Rewards and Upgrade and Spotlight Events

Forza Street, as you may very well know, is the latest mobile installment in Microsoft’s iconic Forza series, and it has been available for some time for both iOS and Android device owners. Forza Street, which is one of the few mobile gaming titles from the company responsible for productivity programs/apps such as Office (and everything within), allows you to collect a “legendary” lineup of up to 67 cars.

The game features an immersive story mode with a “mysterious” plot, but beyond that, you can “race on your own terms” and quickly master the easy, one-tap system for getting off to a good or perfect start, braking, or hitting the gas pedal, with the game doing all the tough stuff for you while you focus on your timing.

Although the races in Forza Street are extremely easy once you’ve gotten your timing down and have mastered the art of letting go of the brakes and hitting the gas at the perfect time, any game that comes with such high-end graphics and allows you to collect dozens of real-life cars with realistic performance comes loaded with features.

Granted, the features in this game aren’t as plentiful as those in other high-end racing titles, but since our first Forza Street guide focused mainly on Story Mode, our second guide will focus mainly on the three other game modes available, as well as some other features that you may find useful as a slightly more advanced player. That said, let’s get to those Forza Street tips and strategies, which we suggest checking out if you’re at Collection Level 8 to 10 or thereabouts.

1. Compete In Upgrade Events to Make Your Cars Better

It’s all well and good to earn those Tuning Kits through Story Events, may it be after getting Challenge Cards scanned or simply picking them up in between races. Those Tuning Kits, once applied to the car of your choice, will increase their PI and make you more competitive as the competition ramps up, but they can only take you so far. By this, we mean that Forza Street will prompt you once your car’s tuning has been maxed out for its current level, thus capping its PI until you are able to come up with certain car parts, such as exhaust parts from tuning level 1 to 2. So how do you get these parts anyway?

Once you’ve maxed out tuning level 1 on one car, the game will tell you about the Upgrade Events, which can also be accessed by hitting on the Race button on the bottom right corner of your screen. Once you’re in the Race menu, tap on the third button that says Upgrade, and you’ll be able to view a variety of different events you can compete in to get the parts you need to improve your cars’ tuning levels. The general Upgrade Events can be found in the extreme left — the ones that reward you with Exhaust Parts are the easiest to take part in, though you’ll need to have some cars with at least 460 or 540 PI respectively to be competitive in the events that reward you with Intake and Brake Parts.

Depending on the day of the week, you can also take part in specific Upgrade Events that could win you more Tuning Kits or Chips for redeeming cards, depending on the class that’s featured for the day — that’s on top of the class-specific car parts, Credits, and other goodies you can win after defeating the boss driver. Upgrade Events for the Muscle class are held on Mondays and Saturdays, Street events on Tuesdays and Sundays, Sports events on Thursdays and Saturdays, and Super events on Fridays and Sundays. Wednesday is for the Wildcard Upgrade Events, which include prizes that could cover more than just one class, as the name suggests.

Compared to the general Upgrade Events we mentioned above, these are a bit harder, so make sure you’ve got at least one car per class (preferably one Classic, Retro, and Modern car each, per class) that’s rated with a 500 PI or better, for instance, if you want to have a fighting chance of beating the top drivers in the Intake-centric events! (This figure, of course, increases if you’re racing for Intake or Brake parts.)

Regarding the types of resources you can collect or earn in Upgrade Events, these include Upgrade Tickets, which can be redeemed for Upgrade Cars in the store, Wrenches (you will need them, as there will come a point in a day where the game will charge you at least 10 Gold to buy a minimum of 5 Wrenches) , Credits, and once you’ve won the “boss” race (of which there may be multiple to choose from), new parts for your cars.

Aside from the parts we mentioned, you can also get Suspension, Engine, or Transmission Parts if you collect enough chips for a Pro Upgrade Card — in specific, you’ll need 5,000 Pro Upgrade Chips in order to redeem one of these cards. Class Upgrade Cards, on the other hand, are available for 15,000 Class Upgrade Card Chips, and they guarantee the same types of parts (Suspension, Engine, Transmission), but this time, specific for a certain class. These parts will come in handy once you’ve truly gotten your cars’ tuning levels up, so don’t worry about them if none of your cars are at higher than tuning level 3.

2. Spotlight Events Give You A Chance of Winning Specific, Rarer Cars

Chances are, if you’re in the intermediate stages of the game, you’ve been increasing your Collection Level by using your Gold to buy new Premium Cards, or redeeming the Chips you’ve won in Story Mode to get specific Cards for a certain class or era. These are supposed to yield two- or three-star cars, but in most cases, as one may expect from games that use the gacha system, you’ll be getting the former far more often than the latter.

And that’s not to mention the Free Cars you can redeem once per day — these are guaranteed one- or two-star cars, with the one-stars popping up more frequently than two-stars. So how can you get yourself a rarer vehicle without having to go through all those two-star cars through the usual method?

Once a week, Forza Street launches new Spotlight Events, and these give you a shot at winning a Rare vehicle (we’ve yet to see events for Epic cars) as opposed to the Common ones you’re probably used to getting. Just to get the rarity topic out of the way, cars in the game are further classified into Common, Rare, and Epic categories — these mainly pertain to how often they will be among the possible cars you can unlock, but Rare and Epic cars also generally come with more stars and a higher PI than a Common ride would. And as far as the Spotlight Events go, the name says it all — one specific car is spotlighted per week as the reward you can win once you collect enough Spotlight Chips and redeem it for a Spotlight Card.

Like most of the Upgrade Events we discussed above, Spotlight races are a bit harder than the Story Mode races you’re used to, as the cars you’ll be facing in the events are typically rated at PI 460 or higher. The game will reward you with an automatic 1,800 Spotlight Chips in the tutorial stages — you’ll need 2,000 in order to redeem the car in question.

But as we mentioned above, it may be a challenge to win those remaining 200 chips if your cars aren’t up to speed compared to the rest of the competition. But you need not worry if you’re unable to complete the weekly Spotlight Events with enough chips for a card — unused chips will be converted to other resources, such as Credits and class or era-specific Chips, for instance. (In our experience, we got 900 Modern Super Chips for those 1,800 unused Spotlight Chips from the previous week’s event.

Spotlight Events become available once you reach Collection Level 10, thus giving you enough time to get at least one car ready for the races — though just as a reminder, it is recommended that you have at least two or three cars ready for Spotlight Events to make sure you’re covered for era-based restrictions.

3. You Can Also Buy Limited Edition Cards Via The Store’s Spotlight Option

Once you’ve gotten 2,000 Spotlight Chips, you can go to the in-game store (again, that’s the third-to-left icon on the top left of your screen) and tap on the Claim button in the Spotlight option in order to get your Spotlight Card. But aside from that, you also have the option to buy limited-time cards that allow you to win a guaranteed two or three-star car, with a guaranteed Spotlight Car by the 10th scan. If you’ve got a lot of gold saved up, are fancying the car that’s currently spotlighted for the week, but don’t think you can realistically complete the events, this could make for a good alternative, albeit an expensive one.

Just how expensive, you may ask? While it costs 50 Gold to buy one Premium Card, the price for one card via this method is a whopping 85 Gold. You also won’t get the bulk discounts that are available once you buy 10 Premium Cards (450 for 10) — five cards here will cost you 425 Gold, while 10 will set you back by 850! Additionally, the available cars will largely be the same as the ones you would see when you’re scanning a Premium Card.

Keeping those things in mind, we would only suggest taking this route if you really, really like the car that’s being offered in the week’s Spotlight Event. Otherwise, if you’re simply trying to unlock more cars, add to your collection, and increase your Collection Level, you’re far better off spending 50 gold a pop (or 450, if you can afford 10 Premium Cards in one go) via the Premium Card sub-menu.

4. Win More Rewards By Defeating Other Players In Rivals Mode

Reaching Collection Level 8 will unlock the Rivals feature, which is the game mode that allows you to compete against other Forza Street players from around the world. Based on our experience, regardless of game, human players are naturally more intuitive and less predictable than AI opponents, though in this case, you don’t necessarily need to worry about your car not being powerful enough to defeat your opponent. That’s because the game’s matchmaking system will pair you against a player whose car’s PI is similar to that of the car you’re using for the race.

Fortunately, the matchmaking in this game appears to be quite reliable, so you likely won’t be getting paired against a 460 PI car, for instance, if you’re entering a car with 440 PI. Conversely, don’t expect any creampuff opponents either, such as a 430 PI car getting crushed by your well-tuned, three-star 460 PI ride.

Depending on how many cars you have for a specific class and/or era, you will only have so many chances to compete in Rivals per day. That means each qualified car can only be entered one time — this may be irrelevant, though, given the solid matchmaking that we’ve observed so far. Races in Rivals work exactly as they do in other modes, but aside from the fact that you will be racing against human opponents, there’s one other key difference — the points system.

If you win the race, the points you will include a base score for simply winning the race (for instance, that’s 250 if you’re in tier 1), a score based on your opponent’s PI (the higher their PI, the more points you earn in this category), the race’s overall difficulty (harder races means more points), the number of perfect starts, brakes, and gas during the race, and a bonus if you decide not to use your boost at all during the race. Losing the race earns you zero points — not even a consolation score for simply taking part in, and finishing the race.

As you earn more points, you can get promoted to another tier once you reach a certain threshold — that’s 400 to jump into Tier 1, 3,500 into Tier 2, and so on. Rewards for promotion may include the usual — credits, chips, and tuning kits — though you may also end up winning some gold at certain points if you race frequently enough and beat enough rival players to get promoted to higher tiers!

Rivals events — the 1 v 1 Quickplay options you see on the right side of the mode’s menu — reset once a day, while seasons reset once per week, and if you come to think about what we said earlier, having a large car collection could actually help you here! Just don’t fall into the trap of upgrading each and every vehicle you have in order to be competitive in Rivals. It’s all about PvP competition here, not about having a better car than your computer-controlled opponent, so this offers a test of raw skill more than any other mode in the game!

5. How To Customize Your Car’s Appearance

Naturally, changing the appearance of your car won’t do anything to help you win more races, improve the car’s stats, or give it certain buffs or power-ups. But if you consider how common it is to be facing the very same car in a race, regardless of mode, with the opposing car typically sporting a stock paint job if you’re playing in Story Mode, there are merits to changing your car’s color or adding a few wrinkles to make it look different.

You can access this feature by going to the cars menu (second to left on the upper left corner), tapping on any of the vehicles you’ve already unlocked, and tapping on the paint icon on the lower right of the car’s snapshot. (You can also scroll left or right from one car to the next by tapping on the left and right arrows, or tap on the heart button to designate a car among your favorites.)

Once you’re in the customization section, you will see three separate buttons — Manufacturer Paints, Custom, and Mods. The first option lets you choose among the available color choices offered by the car’s manufacturer — for example, the 1971 Nissan Skyline 2000GT-R, being a classic car, only has three colors to choose from (silver, red, or brown), though other cars, especially the newer ones, tend to have more available options.

The Custom section allows you to choose a pattern to go with the new paint job, with a new pattern made available each time your car increases in star rating. This feature is not available for one-star cars, but reaching two stars would unlock a camouflage pattern, and reaching three makes the diamond pattern available, and so on.

Finally, you can kick your customization up another notch with the Mods section — just like it is in Custom, no modifications in this section are available if your car only has one star. If it has two, you can change the vehicle’s wheels, and if it has three, you’ll get new wheels, as well as a second color added to your existing color scheme.

For instance, our three-star Ford GT was dark blue when it first arrived, but you can change its color to yellow via Manufacturer Paints, then add some black stripes by tapping on the three-star option under Mods. This is also going to add some new, attractive-looking wheels, albeit in a different design from the wheels that are available if you tap on the two-star option.

As a bonus tip, tapping on the “i” button next to your car’s PI rating, as seen in this menu, will pull up a brief description and backstory for the car that’s currently selected, along with the year in which it was released, its era, and the automaker’s home country.

6. Save Up Your Energy Packs For When You Really Need Them

We haven’t discussed Energy Packs in full detail, but these are among the rewards you can earn for leveling up, along with the obvious ones that include credits, gold, class and era-specific cards, and new features. As far as we’ve observed so far in Forza Street, the only way you can earn Energy Packs is by increasing your Collection Level, and this in itself means you should be saving them for a rainy day, instead of spending them willy-nilly just because you have them!

You can use an Energy Pack by tapping on the energy counter on top of your screen and hitting the Use button under Energy Pack or Full Energy Pack — the former would give you an instant refill of 5 Energy, while the latter replenishes all your Energy instantly.

Aside from saving Energy Packs for those intense racing sessions and long events that include multiple paths (especially the harder ones), there’s another important thing you need to keep in mind when it comes to these resources. And that’s the fact that you cannot use a regular or full Energy Pack if your Energy is all filled up!

This isn’t one of those games that allow you to stockpile more Energy than your current limit, so don’t expect your Energy to increase to 60/30 if you’re currently at 30/30 and are planning to use a full pack — the game will immediately notify you that that isn’t possible.

There you have it! This ends our second guide for Forza Street! Stay tuned, as we may share more tips and strategies for the game in the near future!