Everything I Wish I Knew Before Playing NFS Unbound (Pursuit Tactics, Maximizing Money and More)

This video goes over all the tips, tricks and methods I wish I knew about when beginning my Need for Speed Unbound playthrough. It covers everything from small QoL tips, to bigger methods that can net you extra money in every er race or help you escape the cops!

0:00 Intro
0:29 Car handling
1:21 Campaign Tips
1:56 Maximizing Money
2:55 Failing the qualifier
3:23 Side mission tips
3:55 Gas Stations
4:10 Missed Safehouses
4:22 Pursuit tips
6:46 Nitrous tips
7:37 Race Payouts / car rewards
8:45 Jump control
8:55 Style/upgrades tips

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[babtanian]

Another thing I found was that cops seem to spawn much more frequently along your route if it is mapped; just like in Heat. Often times, it seems better to just drive where you need to go without setting a route.

[bennyb.]

DRIFT TIP: Regular nitrous helps extend the drift by a LONG way, but Burst Nitrous also increases traction and makes you grip up and crash into the inside of the corner. For drift events and takeovers, make sure to dump your burst nitrous just BEFORE a corner, enter a gear high, and lay into the regular nitro as you slide. You can pull off massively long drifts like this and EZ all the events even on hardest difficulty.

[MomirsLabTech]

Also spend all your money in the prologue as you won't retain that cash after the prologue is over. Learned that the hard way 😔 lol

[loekos]

regarding helicopters in pursuits - i've found that on top of hiding in tunnels, hiding in the thicker forests also seems to help you avoid getting spotted by them (at least if you turn off your engine too).
i've only tried this in one pursuit so far but i managed to hide myself from helicopters twice while doing it

[LardoAG]

Another tip: some cars are acceleration beasts, but have low top speed, like Lotuses, so they slay on technical tracks, but are sometimes impossible to win a highway race with, even when maxed out for a particular class. There’s no rubber banding that I noticed, so if your top speed isn’t high enough, you’ll lose. That’s why your tip about trying to upgrade one car is not always good. Sometimes you need to have separate speed, grip and drift cars of the same class to win every race.

[a_passing_cloud]

Tip for the boost tank: you can change the sound that the yellow bar makes when you fill up a meter, so you have an audio cue to listen for instead of having to look

[meisterwu]

Oh man.. Thanks for that incredibly valuable tip at 5:16 with the undercover racer auxiliary upgrade. I spent most of my first few hours playing this game online, and since there are no cops there, of course, that upgrade isn't there either. So at some point when I was out and about in the campaign, I naturally just assumed that the upgrades there were all the same. In fact, I might never have discovered it myself, or at least wouldn't have guessed what a huge difference it makes. It really is a literal game changer.
So thanks again for that. I really appreciate it!

[MarcKristofferDatEvoXfan]

Fun facts
- Grip is actually faster than drift in some cars, as far i know these are the lotus, the porsches, the evos, gtr's and sti's that are in or over a class, and hypercars. Basically, everything that's on the grip side of the slider like in the video.
- If your car is too high and its not because of having a widebody, you can lower your car with road suspension and road tyres, these are usually the better parts to run anyway so you get the benefits of a better car and better styling.
- Tyres have different offsets, mainly because they are differently shaped. Offroad looking tyres might just use the stock Criterion tyres' offset.
- You can abuse police chases in an aggressive way and earn money by doing so, specially near the start of the game. Getaway driver doubles the payout for escaping the police, and so does having someone trying to get to their safehouse in your car, if you join both in a heat 5 chase and stay nearby the drain you can repeatedly escape the police and get 10k each as a reward.
- For online, since there's a lack of cops you can use different nitrous mods to your advantage. Depends on the car and your driving style but you can choose between faster burst nitrous filling by gripping or drifting and by near misses or jumps.
- The cars earned through the story are accessible in its original form in online too, you cannot bring your bought cars from story mode into online.
- Regarding helis, you can turn off your engine out in the open without getting spotted in cooldown or in freeroam, you can abuse this so much near the endgame.
- If you're getting spotted by the police, you don't have undercover racer in your car and you're going at a considerable speed, you can knock them out by ramming them head on preventing a chase, just don't do it on the suv's unless you're driving a really heavy car yourself.
- Knocking racers out also gives you full burst nitrous just as if you knock out a police car.
- If you struggle in online, get back into story mode and get the cars offered in meetups with big buy-ins, they're usually good cars to use online too.

[ileutur]

Even though I hate its visual gimmicks, Unbound is the first modern NFS to win me over. Having arcade physics that don't feel like floaty garbage and an actual sense of progress is something I've been desperately hoping for for over 10 years at this point. I see people here are determined to hate it just because of the reputation of the previous 5 games and that's pretty sad, because this is definitely a step in the right direction.

[Patrioticmonkie]

I found that pulling your left stick down while in the air really helps on not landing funky and spinning out. 8:52

[yung_weaver]

Especially useful for grip builds: you can extend grip turns by weaving left and right after most turns for that sweet 3 burst nitrous.

[Az]

7:36 These car rewards are carried to multiplayer mode, so I'd recommend doing all of these for a better starting point in multiplayer mode as nothing else from the story/campaign is carried over.

[ptrcrispy]

Turning your engine off will keep you completely off the grid from helicopters, and at least decrease the search radius of all street units.

[justicealistair]

Collecting the 100 Bears net you a BMW. It’s pretty useful in the 2nd week. Also gets you a lot of money.

[hoboryan]

So one thing of note; when you fail to have the money for the qualifier, you do not "reset" to friday; you are returned to Friday. Might seem like a small detail but you do not get put back to where you were before. If you had 100k starting the friday, lose all of it, "restart from friday" and all of that money will still be gone. This could be a good thing too if you need to save up but just a warning.

[zeebaka]

A small thing I can add is that with betting, especially on higher difficulties, pay attention to the race type and the strengths of the AI racers. Easy bets on a corner king race can lose you money on speed races.

[sanmarinyo]

I might be wrong but if you just used up your gas station repair, escaping the cops will automatically remove your cooldown. So you get a free car repair as a reward for escaping them. (It might depend on the heat level. Because it definitely works for heat level 5.)

[isntavailable]

For anyone just stsrting out, the tip at 8:13 is the one you wanna pay extra attention too. I been playing Heat last month or so and on its hardest difficulty it is much easier than the story difficulty on Unbound at the very beginning anyway. Until you get a couple upgrades but I still find myself not tak8ng 1st place on occasion.

[yaboiijebus]

the crash physics in this game are kinda funky sometimes, they remind me of the og underground physics so i dont hate them, they take me back to the good ol days specially now that we have the eclipse back

[MMcGee]

I'm also finding that just full sending through the map terrain like Forza can help with the cops to an extent. As long as you don't hit any dead ends.