Victory guide for beginners

This guide tries to provide a good starting point for Victory beginners. I'll try to cover the first steps in the game, while giving out tips and advices to understand the whole process!

Introduction

Greetings everyone! I'm Michael (M3Honsho in the game), Victory moderator and beta tester since day one! I'm not the best player, or most successful, or most artistically talented, but I think I have a lot of experience with this game, and with this guide I'll try to help new players with their initial choices, giving them an insight on what they are doing!
Please note that my account was levelled BEFORE some major changes introduced, so the order of this guide may not be the same than the order of in-game choices; still, they should be all covered! But enough talking, let's get started!

Victory Basic Concepts

As the last discussions on the forums showe uncertainty about some aspects of the game I'll try to define some of the main aspects of Victory.

First of all, Victory: The Age of Racing is NOT a simulator. The description and the game trailers say that it has Realistic Physics, but this is not the equivalent of being a simulator. Victory is driven by a different idea, and the idea is that all kind of people should be able to play and have fun, from the absolute beginner to the expert. Beginners have lot of driving assists, and the game is not badly unforgiving on mistakes, everyone can jump on and do a couple of laps without too much trouble. Still good trajectores, gas control, good car developement and setup make a lot of difference, and only the really good players can always compete at the top and aim at the World Records. By extension you should not expect to lose control on every turn if not perfectly taken, but at the same time you should not expect to go full gas into turns like some Need for Speed (for example, nothing wrong with them).

Then we have the payment model. Yeah, originally Victory was meant to be free to play, but the model has changed (and will remain this, no shady stuff): Victory is a Buy to Play game, without any monthly fee or in-game transactions. You can get everything by playing, there's no real money stuff in the market and the economy has been tuned from the old beta days to be quite more generous, so don't be shy to spend your money!

Car Class

When you launch the game for the first time you'll be asked the Car Class to start with. In this game each class is quite unique, so I'll give a brief explaination of them:

• Legend: this class is inspired, both performance and appearence-wise, by '60 Formula One racing cars. The handling model is what you expect from an older and heavy car: quite slow compared to the others, without much grip due to low aerodynamics and high weight, but quite forgiving with driving errors.
  
• Classic: Classic class resemble the '80s cars. They have better performance than the Legend, but worse than Formula; cars are improved in weight and aerodynamics but are not extreme, they handle better at higher speeds but the handling is quite technical, and they often suffer from understeering.
  
• Formula: here we go, modern F1 cars! VERY fast, great aerodynamics, very good grip and lightweight! But their speed combined with the low weight translates to the necessity to do very good racing lines and punish every mistake!

Probably by now you'll be saying: all good, thanks, but since I don't know anything about the game, what's the best class to start with?
Well, my personal opinion is that Legend class is the best to start with. It's true that they have no aerodynamics features (so everything related to high speeds is very hard, cornering as the first thing), but their slow speed makes them forgiving even if you are doing mistakes and most suitable to learn the tracks and the handling model of the game! Also, since the raw engine power is low, you'll have to deal less with power oversteering and traction problems.

Just a bottom side note, even if you are selecting a class to start with (and you'll probably should stick to Legend class to get the grasp of the game), after completing the first steps in the game you'll be able to buy a car from (and also, you'll automatically have in your garage a basic model of) every class! So don't worry too much about this choice!

Choose your Team

Did you select a car class? Good! Now it's time to select a team to do your career with! The career is basically a set of quest to do while playing to unlock the top car of the team, but I'll explain that later. As you can see from the screen, there are three teams to choose from (these are Formula teams, every Class has three different ones). Each of them has a different performance distribution, a certain tires provider and a different engine brand.

As a beginner should you care for the stats or search for the "most poweful" team? In my opinion no, and that's why.
The three teams are actually balanced, and none of them has a clear advantage in absolute terms (one can be better on certain tracks, but for sure not on all of them). Also remember that car creation and development is a huge part of Victory, and usually Team Cars are worse than the user generated one (usually - it means that after getting some experience you can develop a more "extreme" car suited to your style and shave seconds from your best laps). It doesn't mean that they suck, but their function is to give access immediately to a competitive car at a low price - probably you won't get near a World Record with them.

Anyway, after choosing your Team (and pressing Continue), you'll be brought to the track to test the car! If you like it, press Continue, otherwise Back and choose another team until you find your favorite.


Good, you chose your team! Now you *should* be prompted to choose the car to buy (I write should because that's what happened when I reset my career, so should be in this order for you too, but I'm not 100% sure). If you are prompted to choose the Performance Group first, my advice is to read the relative section of the guide first, because I'll cover it there. If not, then you'll have to choose from three cars which one to buy. My advice is (if you have enough credits) to buy the most expensive one, because they are from the same performance group (it means that they'll compete in the same races) but the third one is the most powerful of the pack. If you cannot afford it, just buy the first one in order to save some credits - the difference between the first and the second is very small!


And here we are! Choose your race number (it can be modified later, so don't worry) to show on your car, complete the transaction and finally you'll have your very first ride!


Also, a nice animation will show your updated driver license completed with the new team's logo!

Beginner Tip: again, don't pay TOO much attention to the team selection, since you can change it later on. Try anyway to choose one to stick with (meaning one you like), since any change will reset your career progress for that Class and you'll lose every car bought from that team and any visual items you installed on those without refunds.

Main Menu

There we are! You are now part of a team, have you first car, and can finally explore the beautiful world of Victory! The main menu is the hub from which you can access every single thing in the game.

The very top bar (with your Driver Level, Race Points and Experience) and bottom bar (or Social bar, including Public Chat and Race Chat, Friends, Online Users and Personal Messages) will be with you everywhere in the game, including the races, so get accustomed to them!

Below the top bar you can see a series of buttons: in order, from right to left, we have the Quit Game button, the Options, the Achievements (soon to be integrated with Steam), the Engagement Points window (I'll cover it later); then in the center there are the Driver Sheet, the three Team Careers and the Microtransacion Market.

The next bar is your garage because it shows all the cars you have, along with the group and the PP on it, and allows you to create a new one; you can scroll it on the left and right if you have too many cars! If you click on one of it it'll be shown on the background and a little popup will appear, giving the details about PP distribution, Tires, Engine, PP, Performance Group and letting you access in order, by using the four little buttons, the Car Sheet, Car Development, Car Paint Editor and Accessory Market.

Last, but not least, the Activity Bar! From here you can enter the Hot Lap Challenge mode or join one of the various Live Events, which are dynamically generated based on the number of online players and their experience level! It's very useful to jump quickly into a race, and they usually offer nice rewards!

Engagement Points

Engagement Points are a little nice feature introduced with the first Steam release. Translating to MMORPG's language, it's the Daily Quest equivalent for Victory!

Basically, playing an Online Race grants 1 point for the next day, while not playing one day removes 2 points. Every 5 points you'll recieve rewards:

• For 10, 15 and 25 points you'll recieve a +10%, +20% and +30% Credit Boost respectively
  
• For 5, 20 and 30 points you'll receive a Bronze, Silver and Gold Mystery Box, which can include Boosters, Widgets, Credits or even special cars!

Honestly, at this time I do not know the probabilities, the content of a box or anything else, so this is just an overview! Keep an eye on updates (or on the forums) to learn more about this feature in the future!

Performance Groups

Performance Groups are very important in Victory, even if you are not willing to create a custom car, so in my opinion it is better to cover them immediately. You'll encounter Performance Groups while creating a car, in the events, while joining a race or creating one.
But before telling you about Performance Groups, I need to explain what are PP. PP means Performance Points, they are the "stats points" of a car. When you create one, you'll have to allocate the PP in the various areas of the car (Power, Grip, Brakes, etc.) to customize it. A user-created car can have at the moment a maximum of 60 PP.

So, now that you know that, I can tell you that there are 4 Performance Groups:

• G3: Group 3 includes cars from 0 to 40 PP
  
• G2: Group 2 includes cars from 41 to 50 PP
  
• G1: Group 1 includes cars from 51 to 60 PP
  
• G0: Group 0 have only cars with 70 PP

What? 70 PP? But you said that you can allocate only 60 PP!
True: the 70 PP ones are Elite Cars, which are unlocked when you finish your career with a team! At the moment only those cars are part of G0.

NEW STUFF: well, here I used to leave some tips on which car to buy.. but with the new restrictions everything has changed! From today the game has single group restrictions and Team Car restrictions! So where to start from? Well, at the moment is quite indifferent, since you should buy a car for every group.. in my opinion if tou wish to build your own card you should start from G3 or G2, since they'll cost less and you are not "wasting" too much money. As for the Team Cars, the choice is yours! But really, from today every car will be useful in some events, so there's no "skippable" group or anything!

Team Career

As I've explained before, from the Main Menu you can access your Team Career(s). As you can easily see every Career (there's one for every class) is divided into three parts, corresponding to one of the three Performance Groups, and for each of them you have a series of task to complete. If you hover over one with your mouse, as shown in the screenshot, you'll be given a description of the task along with the reward.

One important aspect of the career is that, in order to advance or complete the tasks, you must drive one of the cars associated with the group! In other words, you must have one Team Car belonging to each Performance Group in order to complete the career!
When you want to buy a Team Car, you just need to click on it; its cost along with the Performance Point distribution will be shown. Keep in mind that for every group you can select between three different cars, with the first one being the cheaper and slower and the last one being the most expensive and faster.
My personal advice is always to buy the most powerful one for every group, since it'll make the process of completing the tasks a little easier.

A nice circular border will show you the progression of your career; when you'll complete it your final reward will be finaly unlocked: your Team's Elite Car! It's a 70 PP beast and the only one belonging to the Performance Group G0. Keep in mind that probably the best drivers with custom 60 PP cars will be able to beat it, but it's still a huge performance boost from the G1, a tangible reward for your efforts and will be one of the best cars to enter Team Events! So don't rush it, but just have fun and learn the game! You'll eventually complete many of the tasks, leaving the last group to be completed in a little time!

Game Modes

At the moment Victory offers five different game modes: one for Single Player, two for standard races and two for Live Events.

Hot Lap Challenge

Hot Lap Challenge is the only game mode playable alone, and you can access it in the main menu by clicking the respective button on the lower left on the screen. Before racing you'll be prompted to choose the car you want to drive and the track you want to race in. Hot Lap Challenge is a hybrid between a practice mode and the time trial: you'll have infinite time and laps, can pause the game, modify your setup everytime you want and such. Still, as you can see from the screenshot, you have a Challenge: if you do consecutive regular laps (without hitting a wall or exiting the track) you'll gain credits and experience, but in order to be eligible your lap time must beat the target time in the lower-left window! Every 10 successful laps the challenge level will increase, along with the difficulty and the rewards! Completing for the first time a challenge level grants you an achievement, while successfully doing 100 laps will also reward you a title!

Quick Race

Quick Race mode is.. well, a race! Nothing fancy, first one to reach the finish wins! The server may modify some parameters like the tracks to rotate from, the number of laps, whether to toggle collisions on or not or the (eventual) Performance Groups limitations.

Handicap Race
Handicap Race is exactly the same as Quick Race, with one little difference: the winner of every race will be assigned "Handicap Points" (1 or 2, depending on the number of drivers, up to a maximum of 5) which will negatively affect his/her car's performances. Handicap Points will grant the bearer extra rewards at the end of a race, and will be lost with a bad placement.

Grand Prix

Grand Prix mode is one of two modes limited to Live Events (which cannot be created by users but automatically generated). It's a race on one track but can host up to 8 drivers (against the 6 of a normal race) and usually extend for a bigger-than-usual number of laps. The rewards are bigger than a normal race and it's worth partecipating when such events are available.

Hot Lap Party

Hot Lap Party is a multiplayer Hot Lap Challenge: there's a time limit for the event (usually 15 or 30 minutes) in which you can freely set your time with the same rules of the Hot Lap Challenge; still, in this mode you are competing live with other players, and on the upper right corner of the screen you can see the leaderboard updated in real-time. You are not rewarded for Regular Laps here, but you'll be rewarded at the end of the event. Keep in mind that you can freely exit and enter the event (and even do other races within the time period), but you can use only one car.

Beginner Tips

• If you encounter difficulties in the races try the various Car/Track combinations in Hot Lap Challenge, since you can freely experiment without the pressure of competition.
  
• To get some fast cash run Hot Lap Challenge: every Personal Best grants you 400 Credits, and Personal Bests are registered by car!
  
• Before creating a personal car try to get the grasp of the game using Team Cars: to give you a comparison, the best G1 Team Car costs 7800 Credits, while a custom G1 car costs 12600 credits (and you'll have to add at least the Engine and Tires cost, plus if you wish the cost of Paint Job and the Visual items).
  
• If you like your custom car but are unsatisfied with the performances it's better to reset the PP distribution rather than creating a new one: you'll maintain your visual items and spend much less. Keep in mind that every subsequent reset will cost more.
  
• Good racing lines are a must to improve your times: the best strategy is to brake early and accelerate as soon as possible during the corner. Slow enter, fast exit.
  
• Try to adapt your custom car to your driving style, but if you want to see what the best drivers are using head to the Registry available on http://victorythegame.com, where PP distributions of EVERY car are freely visible. Engines and Tires are not though.
  
• Try to play without Driving Assists (you can leave on racing line and breaking points markers). Of course this will bring you more difficulties at the beginning, but you'll be competitive much faster.
  
• Try to race at least once a day in order to earn (and avoid losing) Engagement Points. Free things are always nice!
  
• If you are low level try to join Driving School servers or event (limited to drivers lower than level 10), and advertize it in the Public Chat so other people can join!
  
• You can edit your Team Cars' number, or give a name to your Custom Car, in the Car Sheet page from the Main Menu.
  
• Levels are just a measure of experience: everything is unlocked since your first minutes in the game! Levelling up does not unlock anything.

I did not cover car creation in this guide since in my opinion it's something that should not interest people in the first couple hours of Victory. Of course, I'll soon make a guide about Car Creation, Development and Stats to introduce you to the best part of this game.

Changelog

• v1.2 - Minor changes to include the changes to the economy and the new team / group restrictions
  
• v1.1 - Added the Basic Concepts and Beginner Tips sections, removed Car Creation section, rewritten the Game Modes section, other minor fixes
  
• v1.0 - First version of the guide, Victory Patch 0.10.167

[MkOne]

when u make ur own race (I do) How do u start it what do u pressssssssssssssssssssssssssss

[someone1252]

how do a reset

[[Observer]]

How do i change my nationality

[gpt.swag.gpt]

can you do a tutorial about pp and making cash please?

[Rufus]

Great guide, thanks. Seems like a decent game but it's not for me because of the point system. I simply don't have the time to play every day or even every other day which means it's completely stacked against me.

[wafoofi]

How can I change my racing driver name ?

[wafoofi]

how do I see my racing profile on internet ?

[Luke]

great guide btw

[Luke]

may i ask for help? when i open it it goes to a menu with a power button in the bottom left corner and after a few mins,a thing shows up it cant connect to server. ?????

[MUDMAN_1986]