Hill Climb Racing 2 Tips, Cheats & Strategies: Your Complete Guide to Win More Races

Hill Climb Racing 2 is the sequel to Fingersoft’s original arcade-style racing hit, Hill Climb Racing, or, as the company likes to call it, the “most addictive and entertaining physics based driving game ever.” Once again, lead character Newton Bill will be returning to challenge the whole world, facing “unique new challenges in unique environments,” with a good number of cars available. You can defeat more opponents and collect more bonuses in this Android and iOS game so that you can tune your car and reach higher rankings, and when it comes to improving your ride, there are different parts to tune as you make your way through the game. Once again, it’s going to be all about the in-game physics when navigating each of the many environments.

That’s the game in a few sentences, and it pretty much shows you what you can expect should you download this title for your Android device or iPhone/iPad. But how can you win more races in such a way that you can get the parts that you need and tune them properly? How can you unlock more vehicles? How can you ensure yourself of success regardless of the game mode? We will be covering all that and more in this complete Hill Climb Racing 2 strategy guide.

1. Know The Basics

Before anything else, we should orient you briefly on the basics of the game, mainly the controls you will need to use when jumping. The left pedal is used to tilt the nose downward, while the right pedal is used to tilt the nose upward. Know how to balance the use of both pedals when timing your jumps, and try to make as flat a landing as possible.

Those pedals serve different purposes when you’re on flat terrain, meaning not having to deal with any jumps. Use the left pedal to hit the brakes, and the right pedal to step on the gas. Again, it’s going to be all about balancing the use of both pedals, so you’ll want to experiment with different styles when it comes to the use of the left and right pedal on your vehicle.

2. Experiment With The Features

When talking about the style of driving that suits you the best in this game, the best thing to do is to experiment as much as possible. Your first race should be thought of as a trial race of sorts, a race where your objective is to get a feel of the game and its controls, and to see which settings allow you to balance your vehicle without making it go way out of control. This is your chance to figure out where you stand in terms of play style, so don’t be afraid to make mistakes in your first race.

3. Starting The Race

When starting a race in Hill Climb Racing 2, you should keep an eye on the meter pointer the moment the countdown shows the word “GO.” It’s best to hit the gas once the meter pointer makes it to the green area of the RPMs. And while it won’t give you too much of a boost as it normally does in other racing games, you will, at least, get a slight boost. This should be something Fingersoft may work on in future updates.

4. Spend Your Coins On Upgrades

As you progress forward in the game, you will earn more coins, which are the game’s common currency. You can use those coins on a variety of things, but the most important thing you should spend them on are on upgrades. Engine upgrades improve your ride’s speed, and grip upgrades allow for better power optimization on the ground, particularly when climbing hills, and more importantly, better traction for your tires. Suspension upgrades improve the ability of your vehicle to make jumps, and make it more stable when you’re moving at a fast speed. Lastly, AWD upgrades allow for improved delivery of power to the front or the rear wheels, regardless of which set of wheels hits the terrain first.

5. Grinding For Coins – What Should You Do?

If you want to have enough money for those upgrades, you’ll want to look into grinding, or farming for coins. The best way to do this is to try for as many first-place finishes in the multiplayer races as possible, and to do so by using a highly-upgraded vehicle, may it be your stock truck or a newer one. Playing Adventure mode, which is the game’s endless mode, also helps – we will talk about this mode in greater depth later on, but for now, we suggest playing it for the most part early on due to the generous coin drops if you make it far enough. Lastly, we suggest performing tricks when it’s possible to do so. You can earn coins for having a generous amount of air time, as well as by doing wheelies, flips, and other in-game tricks that allow you to do some fancy stuff with your truck.

6. Which Upgrade Should You Choose First?

You will get the chance to customize your ride after you’ve completed your first race without crashing. You can also customize your character, though the choice of character customizations is purely cosmetic in nature, with no bearing on the gameplay. And when we say customizing your ride, we’re still talking about upgrades here. At the point you finish your first race without crashing, you should have around a thousand coins, give or take a few, to spend on your upgrades. So which upgrade should you work on first?

We would recommend resisting the temptation to upgrade your speed first. Balance, after all, is key to winning more races, so with that in mind, you should look toward upgrading grip before anything else. Upgrading your engine first will give you more speed, but that speed isn’t going to do you good if it only results in crash after crash after crash.

7. You Want A Balanced Vehicle

Your first instinct may be to play around with the upgrades and try to make your vehicle specialize in one area over the others. But in most cases, you should be trying to make your vehicle an all-rounder, with no one statistic upgraded far above the others. Besides, it’s not a good idea to focus on one stat exclusively for a number of other reasons. For example, mainly upgrading your engine will result in your vehicle being extremely hard to control during the jumps and other non-flat ground situations. And if you upgrade grip or AWD above the others, you won’t be able to make the most of those upgrades until you’ve powered up your engine.

8. Try Your Best Not To Crash

Hill Climb Racing 2 comes with two game modes, namely the more casual Adventure mode, which features endless driving, and the more in-depth Cups mode, which allows you to take part in multiplayer races. Regardless of which mode you prefer, you should try your absolute best not to crash. That means your vehicle should not land upside down, and once that happens in Adventure mode, your endless run will come to an end. Likewise, your current race will end if you crash in Cups mode, and you’ll get a “DNF” (Did Not Finish) credited to your name, an automatic fourth (or last) place, with zero points.

Keeping all of that in mind, it’s still important to avoid being too conservative when you’re racing. There will be times when you will end up crashing, whether you like it or not. But it’s also important to try not to crash, and arguably more so than earning coins or any other aspect of the game. And, as a little bonus to what we have just told you, your multiplayer opponents can also crash, but that will just slow them down. From your point of view, you are the only one who can crash and get a DNF, so you’ll still have to be on the lookout for the other racers, even if you notice them crashing.

9. You Can, However, Crash Your Way Past The Finish Line

The only one time you can crash and still get away with things is if you crash once you’ve crossed the finish line. But take note that this to happen once you’ve crossed the finish line; you can lose control as you’re ever-so-short of the finish line, but the key thing here is crossing the line before the crash animation is over.

10. Be Prepared For Rougher Terrain In Adventure Mode

Adventure mode, as we explained, is the mode you want if you’re looking for a more casual experience, one where the main (and only) objective is to get as far as possible without crashing. But while you have other human-controlled trucks to deal with in Cups, the main challenge of Adventure would be the rougher terrain. That would require a more nuanced approach to using the gas and the brakes, as you will also have to conserve gas usage (fuel is used even if you’re not moving) and probably use a less speed-oriented approach; you might even have to tune your truck down and prioritize Grip and Suspension. But worry not, as any upgrades you made in Cups will still be applicable in Adventure.

Additionally, Adventure Mode comes with four bonus stages that can be unlocked by paying coins. These stages include new challenges, and will also allow you to earn more coins which, as we explained, are best used when trying to upgrade your trucks even further.

11. Watch Ad Videos To Unlock Common Boxes

The game will reward you for winning races by giving you a free box that comes with some goodies inside. Depending on the rarity of the contents, the boxes will take about two to eight hours to unlock automatically. But since nobody likes to wait, you can watch ad videos to unlock those boxes immediately. Of course, this only applies to the common boxes, but even if the word “common” in terms of rarity suggests something boring and unappealing, you will still get something worth using. More often than not, you will earn coins as your reward, allowing you to have more money to spend on vehicle upgrades.

12. More Freebies – What Can You Expect?

Aside from the standard prizes for winning races, you can also get a free prize box on an hourly basis; make sure you’ve got your notifications turned on so you can be informed about your hourly prize when it happens. This is a common prize box, however, so don’t expect anything eye-opening here. Winning ten races, on the other hand, will get you a red box, which comes with rarer goods inside. You will have to wait about 13 hours or so before the game will allow you to earn another red box.

13. How To Get More Premium Currency

Gems are Hill Climb Racing 2’s premium currency, and you can earn more by opening the boxes. That’s actually where you can get free gems in most cases, and you’ll know your chances of winning gems are good if you’re dealing with a particularly rare box that takes quite a while to open.

14. How To Stay On The Ground While Downhill

It can be tricky to keep your tires on the ground once you’re on a downhill slope. This may require you to make adjustments while your truck is still in midair, so when you’re trying to land your truck in these hilly races, you should try your best to land as parallel to the ground as possible, or horizontal to it in the worst case. If the latter happens, you will, at the very least, remain on the ground and not flip over, though the downside here is that your truck will slow down, and maybe even grind to a halt. But if you do land parallel, you will land as you’re on a downhill slope, which should allow you to let off on the gas a bit, due to the downward trajectory giving you the additional speed and momentum that you need.

15. How To Unlock More Trucks

If you’re hoping to unlock more trucks in the game, all you have to do is to win more and more races in Cups mode. That will allow you to increase your rank, as you can get new vehicles once you’re at Bronze III, Silver I, Silver II, and Gold I. You can also reach Platinum, Diamond, or Legendary ranking, and that means it’s safe to expect more trucks to be added to the game as Fingersoft keeps updating it; remember that it’s still relatively new!

Some of the trucks (or vehicles) worth checking out include the Super Jeep, which is best for farming coins in Adventure mode, as it’s extra-durable and can protect your character’s head. The Motocross is a good vehicle for those hilly levels, or any level that may also include water and other obstacles that could throw you off your guard. Lastly, the Sports Car is definitely not a truck, or even an off road vehicle in the truest sense. But its unusually fast speed, stability, and control makes it a great choice for certain Cups races.

16. Stick With What’s Tried And Tested

We understand that it can be quite a tempting proposition – you’ve unlocked a new vehicle, so why not take it out for a spin and see how well you can do in Adventure mode and in the Cups? That’s all well and good, but if you’re racing for success, it’s best to stick it out first with your old vehicle, as chances are it would already have a good number of upgrades. As you use this tried-and-true old truck, complete more races and play Adventure mode as often as possible, and use the coins you earn to upgrade the newly-unlocked truck. Alternately, you could still stick to the old vehicle if you really like its look and driving feel. Why gamble with something new when you’re doing well enough as it is with what you currently have?

If you should go for another vehicle, we recommend the Super Jeep – as we said in the above tip, it’s more durable than the standard jeep. It also comes with its own roll cage, which should keep you safe if you get into some minor crashes. It also happens to be much faster than a stock Jeep.

17. Fuel Isn’t A Concern In Cups Mode

When we talked about Adventure mode, we talked about how fuel is one of your key concerns when you’re competing in there. But in Cups, fuel won’t be that much of a worry anymore, as the races are typically too short for you to run out of gas. Dark Roads are one exception, as these would require you to choose the path that has the fuel (the other one doesn’t). Sure, you’ll have to balance a lot of things in Adventure to make sure that you don’t run out of gas, but in Cups, it should seldom be of concern to you.

18. What Happens In Ranked Mode?

Ranked mode is the default sub-mode when it comes to Cups, and racing in this mode allows you to rise up or go down in the rankings, which are more like tiers, e.g. Bronze I, Silver I, Gold II, and so on. Winning races will naturally allow your rank to improve, while losing races will drop you in rank. But don’t worry about dropping too far down in the rankings if you lose one race – the effects of losses aren’t as pronounced as the effects of wins. And as you rise up the rankings and move up from tier to tier, you will unlock new levels and new vehicles alike. Rankings, in addition, are determined by your total number of rank points, and not those of your opponents, which makes for a rather unusual mechanic in the game.

One thing you may or may not do while racing in Ranked mode is to exit a race while it is still in progress. This process is known as rage-quitting, and it won’t just reset the stage, but also nullify any rank points you could have gotten. Still, it seems like a good way to get a new Ranked race if the one you were given isn’t exactly conducive to your play style, so rage-quitting isn’t entirely a bad thing here.

19. Benefits Of Racing In Unranked Mode

Want to take your trucks out in Hill Climb Racing 2 without having to worry about any kind of pressure? Try Unranked mode, which is essentially your practice mode, the mode where you don’t have to worry about finishing first place, or lasting as long as possible. There will be other trucks in this mode in ghost form, meaning they will be transparent as you make your way through the course; as such, you cannot crash into them.

Why else is Unranked such a good mode to play in? For one, wins in Unranked will still count toward the ten races you need to win in order for you to get a red chest. Secondly, you won’t win or lose rank points if you rage quit, or exit a race while in the middle of it just because you’re behind and have virtually no hope of winning.

20. What Should You Spend Your Real Life Money On?

Of course, it’s best to play the game and succeed at it without having to spend any real money. But if you’ve got some spare cash to throw around, you can buy the $4 package, which comes with legendary Jeep paint, new Jeep wheels, no more ads, and 500 gems. The first two features are purely cosmetic, of course, but the third one eliminates the (necessary) inconvenience of having to view in-game ads, and the fourth one represents a ton of premium currency.

This wraps up our detailed game guide for Hill Climb Racing 2. If you know hints for the game, that we haven’t mentioned in this guide, let us know in the comment section!