Top Drives: The ultimate guide by Redline - Top Drives

Table of contents

• What is Top Drives?
• How the game works
• Campaign and events
• Different race scenarios
• Understanding & reading car cards
• Car upgrading & ‘servicing’
• Packs and drop rates
• Prize cars
• Tyres and surface guide
• Challenge mode
• Final word

What is Top Drives?

Do you play Top Drives? I sure do, and it’s beautiful. Top Drives is a free to play Top Trumps style racing game developed by Hutch games, it is available on both Android and iOS, the game revolves around collecting cards and beating opponents. It has an extremely diverse car list of almost 1000 vehicles at the time of writing (Sep 11, 2018). You can read my previous Top Drives blogpost, a review and basic rundown by clicking here. (It’s a much more condensed version of this post)

How the game works

Top Drives revolves around collecting and racing cars, you collect them by winning events, beating campaign bosses and of course, packs.

You select a hand of five cars from your garage and use them in races, your RQ level (the bit that says ‘103’) determines the total value of cars you can have, as each car has it’s own RQ value (3-30). This is shown in the bottom right corner.

You assign a car from your hand to each race scenario based on the conditions, opponent and of course, what the race actually is. Once you have assigned all five cars you watch each race to see the outcome, the cars are both driven by bots. When you win a race you are given up to three stars depending on how much you destroy your opponent which are used to unlock new races.

Campaign & Events

The game is divided up into three main parts:

• Campaign
• Events (multiplayer)
• Challenge (will touch on later)

Campaign is the first part of the game, it is great for getting cars in preparation for challenge and events, each section of the campaign has it’s own boss which you beat to get a high level car to add to your collection.

Each section consists of eleven races, ten normal ones and one boss, in order to gain access to the boss race you must first complete each of the ten races to at least one star. Once the boss has been unlocked you can race them and get their car, which is pictured next to them.

Once you beat the boss, their car is yours but it doesn’t necessarily mean you have unlocked the next level set because they are unlocked with stars attained from races, a good strategy is you use your newly attained boss car to gain some stars from old races, for example replaying the first race you got one star on to three stars.

Events is basically multiplayer where other people race against each other’s hands, events reset each day with more becoming available as others expire. The Daily Event is a non restriction event and other events do have restrictions, whether it be RQ or car type. You can win prize cars and packs from completing these.

Events require tickets to play, you get tickets by either paying 100 gold or waiting thirty minutes for one to recharge, you can only have five tickets at a time (per event) so use them wisely and don’t lose. Tickets are good because it stops people from gaining an unfair advantage in events by just playing them over and over. If you press start but don’t actually select a race and just back out you will still lose a ticket and your car will also be one race closer to having no services!

Once an event expires it will disappear from the events screen and give you your prize when you go back onto it later, as it needs to do some calculations to figure out who gets what. Upon returning you will be greeted with a screen that looks like this and you will then open your prize.

Different race scenarios

The game features an incredibly diverse list of race scenarios, scenarios can include but not limited to:

• Drag races (1/4 - 1 mile)
• City Streets with speedhumps
• City Streets without speedhumps
• Hill Climbs
• Rally cross circuit
• Indoor and outdoor karting tracks
• Twisty and fast circuit
• Slalom test

All of these scenarios present unique challenges to overcome, a good example being the indoor karting circuit, it is made up entirely of 90 degree turns with short straights and demands a car with high grip stats, on the opposite end of the spectrum we have Test Bowl, a huge circular track were both cars race to the end, whoever has the highest finishing top speed wins regardless of who finished first.

Other races with more technical outcomes are Hill climb and Slalom test, on Slalom test the car’s weight seems to be more important than grip, a good example being the Caterham 360 beating the Lotus 340R on Slalom despite having 93 grip compared to the Lotus’ 97, it takes the win because of it’s lower weight.

City Streets comes in three different flavours, normal, Monaco and Tokyo, the Monaco and Tokyo city streets do not feature speedhumps. Speedhumps are a very important factor to think about when going into a race, if your car has a low ride height, it will slow down to an almost dead stop to get over it which can be devastating for close races, remember to always properly read your car card!

Upon winning races you will be taken to an end screen of fifteen cards, where you pick up to three cards at a time, based on how many stars you attained in that race. The cards give out cars, RQ, gold and cash, this makes it a great way to attain new cars, especially later on in the campaign when ultra rares are being dropped. The game lists the brands and rarity of cars in the collection in the bottom left corner, the names highlighted in the colour of the rarity it will drop.

Understanding & reading car cards

Car cards are incredibly simple to read, the main things you want to look at are grip and acceleration, top speed is only important in drag races. Below is a labelled card to help get a better understanding of what everything means.

The car’s rarity and RQ increases depending on how good of a car it is, the car rarities (with RQ ranges) are:

• Common (Grey) (RQ 3-6)
• Uncommon (Green) (RQ 7-10)
• Rare (Blue) (RQ 11-14)
• Super Rare (Yellow) (RQ 15-18)
• Ultra Rare (Red) (RQ 19-22)
• Epic (Purple) (RQ 23-26) (But some Audi Epics go up to 30RQ)
• Legendary (Gold) (RQ27-30)

There is more to the card than just the front, if you tap it, it will flip it over, revealing more stats on the back. Vital information is on the back such as the car’s ride height, fuel type, and crucially, whether or not the car has ABS and Traction Control, cars without it will absolutely suffer in wet and offroad conditions, ride height also helps off road performance. Traction Control and ABS do not affect the car’s dry on road performance. Nothing else on the back is really important unless there’s some sort of event with entry requirements such as EV’s only.

Ride height can be:

• ‘High’ (Best for hill climbs and off-roading)
• ‘Medium’
• ‘Low’ (worst for certain races)

Tyre type and drivetrain is incredibly important, there is no difference between FWD and RWD cars handling wise, 4WD cars do have better wet and offroad handling than 2WD cars. Tyres and surfaces will be explained in detail later in the post as they go hand in hand but the tyre types are:

• Standard
• Performance
• All Surface
• Off Road
• Slicks

Car stats can be improved by upgrading and fusing, which segways nicely into the next part of this guide.

Car upgrading & 'Servicing'

The best way to make a good car great is by doing upgrades, you do this in three categories:

• Engine, Increases top speed and acceleration by normal amounts
• Weight, increases speed, acceleration and grip by small amounts
• Chassis, increases grip by normal amounts

Below is a normal Lotus 340R compared to a maxed out one, a contrast is certainly there.

When upgrading a car money can only take you so far, after three upgrades in each category you will need to fuse three cars in order to unlock the next upgrade stage, you can only fuse cars of either the same rarity or one below, for example if I was upgrading a Rare and needed to fuse it, I can only use other rares or Uncommons. This makes Legendary cars almost impossible to max out because you need Epics or other Legendaries in order to access the new upgrade sections.

Once you have fused three cars, you wait for it to complete (literally takes over 8 hours with high end cars) and can then buy three more upgrades for the chosen category. each car can only be fitted with 24 upgrades when there’s actually 27 upgrades but only being able to fit 24 encourages strategy and makes it so not every car is alike, so do I upgrade a car for grip (‘233’)? Or do I upgrade it for speed (‘332’)? The most common upgrade path is (‘323’) which gives a good balance. Some upgrade path examples are listed below. (Source)

A car can only be raced ten times before needing a service, depending on the rarity you will have to wait different times or pay an amount of gold to skip the wait, like with fusing. Servicing is only really a problem if you’re bashing campaign but it can be very annoying at the wrong time. Waits range from one minute on commons to twelve and a half minutes per race on legendaries so it’s not too bad.

Packs and drop rates

The main ways to attain packs on Top Drives is through packs, packs come in five different flavours which are:

• Plastic ($3,250 / 59 gold) (5 cards, but Uncommons are very common in the last cards)
• Steel ($7,500 / 129 gold) (At least one Uncommon or better)
• Aluminium ($15,000 / 239 gold) (At least one Rare or better)
• Ceramic ($32,500 / 499 gold) (At least one Super Rare or better)
• Carbon Fiber (1,499 gold only) (At least one Ultra Rare or better)

There are other genres of pack, such as ‘Premium X cars’ which are just filtered ceramics that give out cars of the listed genre only but cost $42,000 instead of $32,500. There are also X5 & 10 Ceramics and Carbon Fibers but these can only be bought with gold or won through events, with the Carbon Fibers being the rarest, only coming up for sale or as a prize occasionally.

Pack Drop Rates:

(Pack rates source: Hutch Support)

Ceramic is by far the most popular pack on the game, due to it being attainable through cash, each pack follows a rule of every car will be better than the last in terms of RQ score.

Prize cars

Not every car in the game is attainable through packs, some have to be won from special events which makes them incredibly rare and desirable. Prize cars tend to be the crown jewels of car brands, some examples include:

• The Mazda 787b
• The McLaren P1
• The Porsche 918 Spyder
• The Audi Quattro S1
• The Volvo 850BTCC

When a prize car is going to be available there will normally be a multiplayer event (assuming the end prize will be a McLaren P1) called “McLaren P1 prelims”, after that will be the “McLaren P1 semifinal” and then finally, the “McLaren P1 Final” where the top eight players will recieve a carbon fiber pack, some gold and cash and a McLaren P1” There are normally manufacturer restrictions on these events.

Tyres and surface guide

Not only does Top Drives feature a diverse range of races but it also features a diverse range of surfaces, these surfaces are: (in order of how extreme they are)

• Asphalt
• Gravel
• Grass
• Dirt
• Snow
• Sand
• Ice
  (All of these except sand can be wet which makes them more extreme)

Top Drives also features multiple tyre types, these are:

• Slick
• Performance
• Standard
• All Surface
• Off Road

You want to use the right tyres for the right scenario so here’s a basic rundown of what to use and where.
ABS and Traction Control are extremely good to have when offroading!

Asphalt:
Any tyre, there is no difference between any of them in terms of traction.

Wet Asphalt:
Standard Tyres or a 4WD car with performance tyres if you absolutely have to.

Gravel:
All Surface tyres are recommended but standard tyres will work pretty well too.

Grass
All Surface or standard tyres are recommended.

Dirt
With dirt you want to be using all surface or standard tyres, but if the dirt is wet you want off road tyres as a surface being wet will absolutely ruin you.

Snow
Off road or all surface tyres are strongly recommended but if you absolutely have to, standard tyres will work okay enough.

Sand
Off road or all surface tyres are strongly recommended but if you absolutely have to, standard tyres will work okay enough.

Ice
Offroad or all surface tyres are pretty much the only two options here as ice is the most extreme surface type in the game.

Hill Climbs and Motocross tracks
For these you definitely want to be using an SUV with 4WD and high ride height. Low ride height rally cars will get stuck and DNF due to the extreme angle of the hill and humps on motocross.

Miscellaneous tips

• Offroad tyres on wet asphalt are awful and you will get absolutely annihilated
• 4WD performance tyres cars (e.g. R34 GT-R) are passable in drag races, although they will have bad launches, they can actually beat RWD offroad tyres rally cars such as the 240z and Escort Rally Spec
• Higher end SUV’s with traction control and ABS can and will beat rally cars on slalom tests despite having less grip, this is because of them being 4WD and having TC and ABS
• Slick tyres have extremely high traction loss on anything that’s not dry asphalt
• Most races will include either a wet or offroad situation, be sure to put this into consideration when building a deck

Challenge Mode

Challenge mode is the restriction event, which gives out (mostly) okay prizes every week, challenges start Sunday evening and conclude Friday evening, it is not a multiplayer event and it will be hosted by a character from campaign, so it’s a good idea to look at what their stage was to get an understanding of what kind of races and restrictions it will have.

Each challenge is broken up into five parts (although there was one with three parts that gave three slightly better prizes each round) with five races each, totaling twenty five races. Every fith race (indicated by a dot on the bar) will give you the ‘Next prize’ which is normally $5,000, $7,500, Aluminium pack, Ceramic pack before the final prize which is typically an Ultra or Super Rare card.

Challenges can be incredibly hard to finish thanks to the restrictions on both RQ and car categories, for instance the current challenge requires 3x 90’s cars and a hand of under 60RQ has me stuck as i’m writing this. Tickets for challenge take three hours to recharge one compared to just thirty minutes on multiplayer so you don’t want to waste them. Tickets on challenge do not get used if you don’t start the race, this allows you to preview a race before selecting a hand which is nice.

Final Word

Top Drives is a great game, one of the best racing games out there thanks to it’s unique approach to gameplay, and addictive card collecting. I urge every single one of you who hasn’t played it to go and play it, you will love it.

Download Links

• iOS
• Android

Websites used for info on this post

• Top Drives Club

• Hutch Helpshift

• Elliot.R34
  (This post took 8 hours to do)

This content was originally posted by a Car Throttle user on our Community platform and was not commissioned or created by the CT editorial team.