Racing feels good. There’s something inherently primal about racing – the way the world warps around you, the rush of wind on your face, your heart quickens, and in your mind, you know that you need to win. And now, you can experience those emotions from the comfort of your mobile device via Asphalt Legends Unite.
Asphalt Legends Unite – previously known as Asphalt 9: Legends – is a racing game where you’ll not only race (obviously) but also collect cars, build up your garage, establish your career, and turn yourself into a racing legend. As with other racing games, Asphalt Legends Unite combines fast, frenetic racing action with a large array of collectible and customizable cars and soundtracks meant to get the blood running. Seriously, Bottom of the Deep Blue Sea and Legendary have been stuck in my head for who knows how long now.
Asphalt Legends Unite is available on the Google Play Store, the App Store, and on PC via Steam or the Microsoft and Xbox Store. For reference, I’ll be using screenshots from the mobile version for this guide.
There’s a lot more to Asphalt Legends Unite than just winning races. In this beginner’s guide, we’ll be going over the basics of the game, from learning to pilot your way to victory, to building your career and making sense of the various blueprints, tokens, and currencies Asphalt Legends Unite gives you.
In particular, we’ll be talking about:
- Driving School – here we’ll cover the basic controls and maneuvers, such as drifting, nitro, and barrel rolls, that you’ll need to get ahead of your rivals.
- Racing 101 – the race interface, fuel, career goals, progression, multiplayer, events, and more.
- Tune-Up Time – here we’ll talk about upgrading your vehicles, unlocking new cars, customization, and garage levels.
- Financing Your Races – the different currencies and what you can use them on, as well as where to get freebies.
Lastly, if you’re looking for a TLDR, feel free to jump to the “quick tips” subsections.
Driving School
You thought you could escape driving lessons because this is a game? Nope! In this section, we’ll be going over the basics of controlling your car, from control types to drifting, nitro, and other maneuvers.
Quick Tips:
- There are two control modes in Asphalt Legends Unite mobile: manual and touchdrive. Manual is trickier but may be better for more experienced players; touchdrive is good for newbies. As this is a beginner’s guide, I’ll stick to touchdrive.
- During touchdrive, acceleration and turning are automatic.
- Drifting is a core mechanic in Asphalt Legends Unite. To drift, hold down your brakes (left button) while turning. While you can drift any time you’re turning, sharp turns (indicated by arrows) present prime opportunities to do so.
- Drifting builds up nitro and can knock down other racers. Drifting also cancels nitro.
- You can spin roll by tapping the brakes twice on the ground and in midair (respectively). Spinning counts as drifting, meaning it builds up nitro and can knock down other racers.
- Drifting isn’t always the best course of action. When taking wide, easy turns, for example, drifting will likely cost you speed while your opponents will quickly clear the curve. Knowing when and where to drift is something you’ll pick up as you gain more experience.
- While in touchdrive mode, you can see what each path offers you. Be sure to nab whatever would help you most – long stretches of flat road, for example, present easy opportunities for an efficient nitro boost.
- Nitro is represented by the yellow bar at the top of the screen. Nitro builds up as you drift. Using nitro boosts your top speed and acceleration, allowing you to cement your lead or catch up.
- There are several ways to use nitro:
- Tap it once for a Single or Yellow nitro boost.
- Tap it once, then one more time outside the blue zone for an Orange or Imperfect Nitro.
- Tap it once, then once more time inside the blue zone for a Perfect Nitro.
- Tap it twice when the bar is full for a Shockwave. Shockwaves last for a very short period of time but massively boost your speed and acceleration.
- The speed boost from nitro helps facilitate knockdowns if you ram into enemies. In general, the speed boost from anything except a Single Nitro will do it.
- Barrel rolls happen automatically when you drive up a curved ramp. The number of barrel rolls you’ll do is influenced by your speed but more importantly how you approach the ramp (in general, more ramp time = more rolls). Manual driving mode is better for barrel rolls than touchdrive since you can control your steering, allowing for more ramp time.
- When knocked down, you’ll respawn after a quick period of time. You will, however, lose your speed and acceleration.
- It’s possible to knock yourself down. Be careful when attempting barrel rolls and spins in midair or approaching ramps with low speed or a bad angle.
- Asphalt Legends Unite rewards players for technical expertise. Once you’re done with this beginner’s guide and have some experience under your belt, don’t be afraid to look up videos and ask questions on more advanced topics such as perfect drifting. Remember to also search for Asphalt 9 when doing this as that was this game’s old name.
Basic Steering
Let’s start by talking about controlling your vehicle. On the mobile version of Asphalt Legends Unite, there are two control modes: manual control and touchdrive.
- Manual control is the more skill-based operation method, where you’ll have to move your phone around (as in actually tilt it) to turn and perform other actions. Use this mode if you’re up for a challenge or if it feels better for you.
- Touchdrive is the default control scheme for mobile. In this mode, you can control your car with a simple series of swipes and taps. During touchdrive, acceleration and turning are automatic.
The rest of this section will proceed based on touchdrive mode.
Drifting and Spinning
Drifting is one of Asphalt Legends Unite’s core gameplay mechanics. Luckily, it’s nowhere as difficult (or dangerous) to do this in the game as it is in real life.
To drift, all you need to do is hold down the brakes on the left side of the screen while your car is turning. Note that while on touchdrive, you can only really drift on sharp turns, as indicated by arrows like these…
…so take the opportunity to drift when you can.
If drifting isn’t your thing, you can also do 360 spins by double tapping on your brakes. Unlike drifting, you don’t need to be turning to do these; like drifting, this will cost you some speed.
Drifting is an important skill to master as not only does it allow you to take turns better, but also:
- Generates nitro as you drift. Skillful drivers will know when and where to drift to build up their nitro to take the lead.
- Knocks down other cars if you smash into them while drifting. This is known as a Drifting Knockdown. It’s really easy to do this with spins.
- Drifting is required for certain career mode quests, because why not.
- Drifting is used to cancel nitro, if you used it by accident or if you need to turn it off for some reason.
However, drifting isn’t always a good idea. For instance, drifting in wide, easy curves will often cost you speed as you’d be able to make the turn even without drifting, and since you’re hitting the brakes when drifting, you’ll be losing speed. Knowing when and where to drift is something that can only be learned via experience, so be patient and take the time to learn about your vehicles and the track.
If you’re on manual mode, you can drift as you wish as long as you’re turning. Be wary of losing speed and weigh the speed loss against the nitro gain!
Path Selection
While using touchdrive, you can swipe left or right to select your path, if there’s a divergence. Luckily for us, each path icon will show what that path offers.
Be sure to pick whichever path will help you most in the race. Moving very fast already? Jump off a ramp. Want to play catchup? A long, flat stretch of road will help you play catch up.
Nitro and Shockwave
Nitro – nitrous oxide, if feel like researching the topic – provides a large speed boost that will come in very handy in making sure you get one of the top placements in a race. Your current nitro level can be seen at the top of the screen as a yellow bar.
As mentioned earlier, you recharge your nitro bar by drifting. There’s no second nitro level – once it’s filled up, you’re not getting any more nitro.
Now, there are several ways to use nitro:
- You can tap the nitro button once to engage nitro as a one-and-done affair. You’ll maintain your speed boost until you’re out of nitro. Also called Single Nitro or Yellow Nitro. Boosts your speed by a decent amount.
- You can tap the nitro button once, then tap again outside the blue zone for an even bigger boost. Known as Imperfect or Orange Nitro. Provides a massive burst of speed and acceleration – great for catching up when you’ve been slowed.
- You can tap the nitro button once, then tap it again when the bar is in the blue zone to activate Perfect Nitro. Also called Blue Nitro. This is a stronger version of Yellow Nitro while providing a little more speed and acceleration, making it perfect for taking rough terrain or sharper curves.
- You can double tap the nitro button when it’s full to activate Shockwave. Of all the nitro moves, this one gives the best speed boost while protecting you from knockdown – making it an excellent tool for both catching up or securing your lead, especially in multiplayer. Note that Shockwave has a very short duration!
Note that nitro also paves the way for knockdowns: ram an enemy at a high enough speed (usually any nitro above Single Nitro will do it) and you’ll send them spinning.
Barrel Rolls
Barrel rolls are another trick you can perform. As with drifting, this isn’t just for show: each barrel roll gives you some nitro, allowing you to maintain your lead, and more importantly, your speed.
Doing a barrel roll is simple: just drive up a curved ramp. Curved ramps are indicated by this icon:
Depending on your speed, you’ll automatically do a number of barrel rolls. How many barrel rolls you’ll do are dependent on your speed but more importantly, how you approach the ramp. As with drifting, this can get very technical, so don’t be afraid to look up video tutorials on how to perfectly clear ramps with as many barrel rolls as possible. One piece of advice I can give you is that if you’re looking to do more barrel rolls, you should switch to manual driving mode as manual steering will help you maximize ramp time.
Knockdowns
Since you can knock enemies down with spins and Shockwave, it stands to reason that the same thing can happen to you!
When you get knocked down, your car will tumble about helplessly, effectively slowing you down. After a very quick period, you’ll respawn back on the road, though you’ll have to accelerate again.
Aside from getting knocked down by other players, there are ways to do this to yourself. Watch out that you don’t attempt any fancy ramp tricks while your speed is low or spin in tight or cramped areas – not only will you look stupid, but you’ll also lose a ton of speed!
Learn from Veterans
Asphalt Legends Unite is a mechanically complex game, and while we’re covering the basics in this guide, you’ll run into harder and harder challenges the more you play. Don’t be afraid to seek the advice of veteran players, especially when it comes to advanced topics as drifting perfectly. And if you’re looking for more advanced tips and tricks, be sure to search for Asphalt 9 as well as it’s the same game as Asphalt Legends Unite.
Racing 101
Sure, races are simple – all you really need to do is come in first. However, there are a lot of things that stand between you and that goal. In this section, we’ll break down all the info you need to go into races smarter and better prepared.
Quick Tips:
- Races in Asphalt Legends Unite are short affairs, at most taking a single lap. You can see the estimated amount of time to complete a race on the loading screen.
- Each race has different goals and a recommended numerical rank. You can enter a car with a lower rank though expect to have to struggle to win.
- During a race, the info panel on the upper left will show your position, how much of the track has been completed, and a track map with player position markers.
- Each stage in the single player campaign (seasons) has a number of flags you can collect. Each flag has a different condition.
- By collecting flags, you unlock new stages in campaigns as well as open up new campaigns for you to race in. Flags also grant a large credit award when you first get them. Ideally, you should take the offer to watch an ad to triple your credit earnings when you get a flag, if it appears.
- Each season has some guaranteed cars, allowing new players to quickly build up their collection as well as get some solid cars.
- If you fail to get a flag, you can run a stage again as long as you have the fuel to pay for it.
- Whenever a car races, it loses one unit of fuel. Once it’s out of fuel, it’ll automatically refuel and can’t be used while being refueled.
- You can manually refuel cars – which costs less time than automatic refueling – but note that manual refueling timers are the same no matter how much fuel the car is missing.
- Refueling is on a per-car basis; you can race with a car that has fuel while another is refueling.
- You can watch ads to halve refueling time.
- Cars are automatically refueled if you don’t open the game for 8 hours.
- Multiplayer is divided into three: World League, Season Series, and Private Room.
- In both the World League and Season Series, you’ll compete for ladder positions with other players. Winning a race earns you points while losing costs you some points. Your league will also change based on your position.
- In both the World League and Season Series, you gain Series Points whenever you participate in a race, which grants you rewards at certain thresholds. You get more Series Points depending on your league placement (i.e., Silver League players get more points).
- You earn rewards at the end of the season based both on your league placement and if you landed in the top 10,000 (World League) or 2,500 (Season Series) players. The World League is long, while the Season Series only lasts for a week.
- Private rooms are mostly for fun or practice with friends.
- Note that multiplayer has several differences from single player mode:
- Player cars are harder to knock down and can knock you down.
- Lag and connection stability can interfere with the experience.
- Opponents will actively be trying to win.
- Some races now have laps.
Race Basics
You could wade into a race with the best car and come out on top, but a little bit of information gathering makes for a smarter and better racer.
First, consider this: races in Asphalt Legends Unite are either completed by reaching a particular point or by finishing one lap. Each track has an approximate amount of time to complete a single lap, which is usually based on a car of the recommended race rank. You can see this during the loading screen, to the left.
Now let’s have a look at the race info panel before selecting a race.
To the right, we can see the goals as well as the recommended rank. Goals are the objectives required for obtaining each of a level’s flags (more on those in a bit); if you need a better description of what each goal entails, you can tap the info button. Recommended rank is how much numerical rank is recommended before tackling the stage; nothing’s stopping you from attempting it at a lower rank, but you’ll have a rough time.
Next is the actual race panel. There’s a lot of information available to you if you glance at your UI during a race. Pay close attention to the upper left part of the race interface…
…as it has some vital information for you. Namely:
- Your current position in the race, out of how many racers. In the image above, I’m in first place out of six.
- Track distance covered. Shows how much of the track you’ve completed, and by extension, how much is left. This race is 78% done.
- The map. This also shows the position of both you and your rivals. In the image above, it’s neck and neck, with almost everyone else closely behind me.
Last is the results screen, where you can see how you did, how many reputation points you earned (important for clubs), and most importantly, get paid based on how well you did.
Note that you can sometimes watch an ad to triple your credits earned!
Flags
Each campaign stage has different conditions for earning each of its flags. These can be seen to the right of the stage select screen or in the opening cutscene of a race.
Once you finish the race, you’ll collect the flags you earned. You’ll also earn a large one-time credit bonus for each flag you get. Since the bonus is quite large, I strongly recommend that you watch the after-race ad to triple your credit earnings whenever you get a flag.
As a new racer, your priority should be to earn flags in career mode. The more flags you earn, the more stages and campaigns – called seasons – you unlock, and the more newbie resources you get. Most importantly, each season has a number of guaranteed cars up for grabs, which will allow you to get a solid start on your collection and hopefully find one that you really like.
Flags can only be earned once from each flag objective. If you fail to get a flag objective, don’t fret – you can always go back and replay a stage as long as your cars are gassed up.
And speaking of gas…
Fuel
As expected, there’s a stamina system of sorts in Asphalt Legends Unite. That system is fuel, and each time you race with a car – no matter if it’s the single player campaign or multiplayer – it loses one unit of fuel. A car’s current fuel level can be seen in its profile – it’s to the right of the upgrades button.
While annoying, it’s important to note that fuel is on a per-car basis.This means that while one car is refueling, you’re free to race with another car!
Cars can be refueled either automatically or manually. Automatic refuels are done when a car runs out of fuel and incurs a longer timer than usual. Manual refuels, on the other hand, always take the same amount of time no matter how much fuel is left in the car’s tank. Fuel timers can be halved by watching ads or paying tokens (don’t do this), but you can also skip them by not opening the game for eight hours – meaning you can play the game, go to sleep, then have full tanks on your cars when you open the game the next day.
Multiplayer
Once you’ve earned your spurs in the career and have a decent selection of cars – as well as earned enough flags – you can jump into multiplayer.
There are three kinds of multiplayer races in Asphalt Legends Unite: World League, Season Series, and Private Rooms.
World League is the “standard” multiplayer mode. Winning races increases your ladder standing while losing lowers it. Each race also awards you a certain amount of series points, based on your placement and current league, and you get rewards at certain thresholds. This means that even if you don’t score well in your races, you’ll still walk away with some nice goodies. Everybody goes home happy.
As you gain points on the leaderboard, your league will change, with the lowest league being Bronze while the highest being Legend. You’ll obtain additional card packs at the end of a season, based on your rank, as well as an extra reward if you manage to breach at least the top 10,000 in the leaderboard.
However, the World League is strict when it comes to which cars can enter. Each league only has specific cars that can join in. If you don’t have any of those cars, you can choose to use a rental car, though it’ll naturally be less powerful than if you owned and upgraded that car yourself!
The Season Series is much more relaxed than the World League. The same basic rules apply: you gain ranking when you win, you lose some when you’re defeated, and you earn season points per race – the higher your league, the more points you get. You’ll also earn rewards at the end of a season (and more if you reach at least the top 2,500), though, unlike the World League, the Season Series hands out credits and tokens. Lastly, Season Series cups only run for a week at a time. You’d better get racing if you want those prizes!
Most importantly, however, there are no restrictions on which cars you can use in a Season Series, allowing for a more casual atmosphere that you can join at any time.
Lastly, there are Private Rooms. These are pretty much for when you want to play for fun with friends or clubmates. In a private session, you can change multiple settings, such as which racetrack to play on, how many laps, what ranks are restricted, and so on.
Now, note that multiplayer races in Asphalt Legends Unite are very different from the single player campaign. For one, all your opponents will actively be trying to win, so they won’t waste time doing nonsense drifts or tricks. Secondly, player-controlled cars are muchharder to knock down and can knock you down. Lag and connection issues are also a problem in this mode, so try and ensure you’re on a stable network. Last, some races now have laps – the number of which will appear on the loading screen.
Tune-Up Time
By now you’ve got a few races under your belt – well and good. But while you’ve got the basics down, your cars can be better, faster, and stronger. Honing your skill is one thing, but without performing regular upgrades on your cars, you’ll be left in the dust. Here’s a breakdown of how to hone your machines to be the best they can be.
Quick Tips:
- You can pay credits to upgrade a car’s 4 stats: top speed, acceleration, handling, and nitro.
- A car has a rank, which is based on the values of its 4 stats. There’s both a numerical and letter rank. Letter ranks are usually just used to restrict which cars can enter events.
- To unlock cars, you’ll need to buy card packs. The store offers several card packs:
- You can watch an ad to open an ad pack. Limited by number of available ads.
- Premium packs require tokens. You get five premium packs for free whenever your garage level increases.
- Classic packs are free but can only be claimed every 4 hours. You get 2 bonus packs per day if you have the season pass.
- Some chapters offer card packs in their rewards.
- Career races often give out uncommon blueprints as a one-time reward for getting all flags.
- You need to collect a certain number of blueprints to unlock a car – this value differs from car to car. Once you have enough, you can unlock a car.
- Blueprints are also used to increase a car’s stars. Starring up a car increases its maximum rank, raises the limits of its upgrade stages, and unlocks new customization options.
- To star-up a car, you essentially need to pull a duplicate of it, meaning you need to gather its blueprints again.
- Star-ups are gated by rarity; blue cars can have 3 stars, purple cars can have 4, and orange cars can have 5. This means that rarer blueprints have a higher growth ceiling.
- There are uncommon, epic, and legendary blueprints in each letter rank. Be sure not to neglect them as different events accommodate different letter ranks.
- Your garage level is your player level.
- Each garage level adds more blueprints to the pool of blueprints you can get from packs.
- You also get five premium packs for free whenever you gain a new garage level.
- To raise your garage level, collect more cars, and star-up/upgrade the ones in your collection.
- By raising a car’s 4 stats and giving it more stars, you’ll unlock the ability to use import parts – essentially consumables that raise the relevant stat by a smaller amount.
- To equip rarer import parts, you’ll need to continue raising the car’s upgrade stages and stars.
- Import parts come from card packs – the ad pack is a good source of these.
- Certain cars in each season can be overclocked, which gives a powerful temporary buff. Overclockable cars will have an orange clock icon with an arrow on them.
- Overclocking requires overclock chips, which can be earned from events or bought from the shop.
- You can customize any of your cars with different paint jobs, accessories, decals, and more. Some cars require certain star ranks before you can customize some of their features.
Stats and Upgrades
The first and most basic way to make your cars better is by upgrading them. Before we do that though, we must understand what the car stats are in Asphalt Legends Unite and what each of them do.
Each car has four stats:
- Top Speed:the highest speed this car can attain. The value here is the actual top kmh or mph of that vehicle, depending on your settings.
- Acceleration: how quickly this car gains speed. A high acceleration means a car can swiftly reach its top speed, which is important at the start of the race and after you lose speed – whether via drifts or knockdowns.
- Handling: how well this car turns. Better handling means tighter turns, which means you’ll have a speed advantage over cars that need to drift to surpass cramped curves. Very important for difficult tracks!
- Nitro: this one is a little confusing, but the general consensus is that it affects nitro acceleration and nitro duration.
Each car has a rank, which gives you a general idea of how well a car performs:
Ranks are scored both numerically and by letter grade. The numerical rank shows the current as well as maximum growth level the car can currently achieve. The letter rank, on the other hand, shows the general quality of the car; the lowest letter rank is D, while the highest is S. Note that higher rank doesn’t necessarily mean a car is automatically better than those below it; a well-built D-rank car will often surpass a fresh C-rank one. Letter ranks are more often used for judging which cars can enter events rather than as an indication of performance.
Now, upgrades. Upgrading your car is easy: all you have to do is tap on the “Upgrades” button, tap on the stat you want to upgrade, pay the credits, and bam – better performance. Do note that this gets expensive very quickly, so try to focus on some good cars or your favorites.
While upgrading cars is easy, there are a few things you should know. Take this picture, for instance.
- As you can see, there’s a “+21” in green beside the numerical rank. This shows how many rank points I’ll get for performing this upgrade.
- Each stat (on the left) has a stage below it. This shows how far along you are in upgrading that stat. Keep in mind that higher stages are gated by star-ups.
Lastly, note that you can’t upgrade cars indefinitely. Car upgrades are constrained by their rarity and the star-up system.
Card Packs, Stars, and Rarity
To both unlock new cars and increase the stars on your cars, you’ll need to buy card packs. You can access card packs via the store on top of the screen. If you get taken to another menu while in the store, tap on the black box to the left.
There are three pack types for sale:
- Premium packs contain a wide variety of blueprints. You need to spend tokens to buy these packs, but you get a guaranteed rare (epic/purple) card if you buy five packs at once. You also get five premium packs every time your garage level increases.
- Ad packs are free (apart from watching an ad) and contain a huge pool of blueprints – including import parts and credits or tokens if you’re really lucky – though you’ll likely get uncommon blueprints from it. It can drop multiple blueprints at once, but let’s be real: you’ll likely only get one blueprint per ad. You can only watch so many ads in a day before it runs out.
- Classic packs have a good pool of blueprints and distribution of rarities. Unlike other packs, these are completely free, but you can only claim one every four hours. If you have the Unite Pass (season pass) you get two extra Classic packs per day.
Apart from shop packs, there are other ways to earn blueprints:
- You get individual uncommon blueprints as one-time rewards for earning stage flags.
- Some chapters have free card packs.
- Events can also give you blueprints.
- Once you’ve unlocked the Legend Shop (to unlock it, finish stage four of the Class D Novice season), you can buy blueprints and import parts directly. Bear in mind that the shop refreshes every so often, you can manually force a refresh at the cost of some tokens, and each purchase increases the cost of buying more of that blueprint.
When you get a pack, you’ll immediately open it.
The results screen will show what blueprints you got and how many of those blueprints were in the pack. The numbers are important as you’ll need to gather a certain number of blueprints to unlock each car, which you can see on the garage screen:
As you can see, unlocking cars requires a lot of blueprints.
Blueprints aren’t just needed for unlocking new cars. To star-up a car and unlock further growth potential, you essentially need to pull a duplicate of that car, meaning that you’ll need to get even more blueprints. Hope you’re watching those ads and that you have good luck.
When a car gains a new star, its numerical rank is raised, its upgrades can reach higher stages, and more customization options become available. This means that starring up is absolutely necessary for cars to keep up with harder challenges and tougher foes.
However, even star-ups have their limits as a car can only undergo a certain number of star-ups based on its rarity. Cars come in three rarities: uncommon blue, epic purple, and legendary orange. You can see a car’s rarity in its card.
Uncommon cars can gain three stars, epic cars can have four, and legendary cars can gain five stars. This means that the rarer a car is, the higher its potential.
Note that each letter rank has a different set of uncommon, epic, and legendary cars. As you’ll need cars of different ranks to enter into different races, don’t forget to upgrade even your lower ranked cars!
Garage Level
Next, your garage level. This is essentially your player level in Asphalt Legends Unite.
Raising your garage level is important for improving your collection of cars as each garage level adds new blueprints to the card pool of all card packs. Essentially, the higher your garage level, the better the cars that can drop. And, as I mentioned earlier, you get five free premium packs every time your garage levels up.
Increasing your garage level is simple, too – all you need to do is collect more cars and star-up and upgrade the ones you have!
Import Parts
A car’s default parts can only carry it so far. Sure, they can be upgraded, but imported parts can take their performance so much further.
As you upgrade a car’s four stats and raise its stars, it will eventually gain the ability to equip import parts. Import parts are essentially consumables that slightly boost the relevant stat while also giving a minor rank boost; think of them as mini upgrades that allow you to fine-tune how your car works.
Do note that there’s a maximum number of import parts a car can take, and that lower-rank uncommon cars usually can’t accept legendary (orange) import parts. Also, once you spend an import part, you can’t get it back. This isn’t a problem with uncommon parts that start dropping more frequently as you play the game, but be careful when it comes to budgeting your epic and legendary parts.
The higher the upgrade stage and stars of a car, the rarer the import parts it can equip. A higher upgrade stage also allows you to use more import parts, as can be seen below:
Import parts can be obtained from card packs – most especially the ad pack.
Overclocks
Certain cars can undergo an overclock, a temporary buff that improves all of their stats and rank.
To overclock a car, you’ll first need to earn Overclock Chips. These can be acquired mostly from joining events (which you should be doing anyway) or can be bought from the shop. Once you have enough chips, simply navigate to the upgrades screen, then tap the Overclock button at the bottom of the four stats.
Which cars can be overclocked depends on the current season. Cars that can be overclocked will bear this icon:
While temporary, be sure to take advantage of overclock buffs while they’re active. Rest assured that your rivals will be doing the same!
Customization
Lastly, you can customize your car with various paint jobs, decals, and accessories. To customize a vehicle, tap on the car/paint icon to the right of the upgrades button.
This menu will allow you to change the appearance of your car, from its body color to the type of tires it has and so much more. Bear in mind that these are purely cosmetic (meaning they don’t affect performance at all) and that some cars require more stars before certain customization options become available.
Financing Your Races
Lastly, let’s talk about managing the game’s currencies, the item shop, and of course, where to snag some freebies to accelerate your early game progress.
Quick Tips:
- The two main currencies to keep track of are credits and tokens.
- You’ll earn most of your credits just by racing. Don’t forget to use ads to increase the number of credits you earn from winning flags.
- Tokens are premium currency that are mostly used for buying card packs. You can use them to pay for some QOL stuff though I highly discourage that.
- Tokens can be earned from daily quests, challenges, events, and more.
- Daily goals net you a small number of daily tokens. Finish enough daily quests to claim the combo reward.
- Challenges are essentially achievements. They don’t give many tokens, but you’ll clear them just by playing.
- Sponsorships are a selectable login reward. Note that once you pick a sponsorship, you can’t change it until you either clear it or it expires.
- Sponsorships are a nice free way to get blueprints for certain brands. Alternately, you can use them to farm credits and tokens.
- The season pass is essentially the battle pass. Complete missions to earn experience; get levels to gain rewards. There’s both a paid and free version.
- Daily Events are a great way to harvest resources. Racing in Daily Events uses up tickets; these regenerate over time.
- Special Events feature unique cars that are usually hard to get. You’ll need specific support cars to participate here though.
- Clubs are basically guilds. Earn reputation just by racing (multiplayer races earn more rep, and you can’t farm reputation on season stages that you’ve already completed); once you hit certain reputation milestones, everyone in the club will be able to redeem a reward.
Credits versus Tokens
There are two main currencies in the game: credits and tokens. You can see both of them in the top part of the screen. Each of them has their use cases.
Credits are essentially gold, and are earned in a variety of ways but most commonly by completing races. They’re mainly used for upgrading cars, equipping import parts, and buying stuff from the Legend Shop. Despite only being used for these things, you’ll constantly be low on credits. Don’t forget to use ads to multiply your credits from earning flags!
Tokens, on the other hand, are premium currency that are mostly used for buying card packs or blueprints, once you unlock the Legend Shop. You can also use them to skip refuel timers (don’t do this), skip event objectives (why), and buy credits (SERIOUSLY don’t do this). Tokens can reliably be earned in game by completing daily goals, challenges, participating in events, and more.
Daily Goals
As with most live service games, Asphalt Legends Unite features a series of daily tasks that you can complete to get a small amount of resources – in this case, tokens.
Each completed goal nets you a small amount of tokens. In addition, completing enough goals also gives you that day’s goal combo prize, which is a nice extra.
Challenges
Challenges are Asphalt Legends Unite’s version of achievements. They can be accessed in the same panel as your daily quests.
By completing certain tasks, you’ll be able to claim a small bounty of tokens. It’s not much, but it’s there. Each time you complete a challenge, it’ll become harder to complete it again – though the payout tends to increase. For example, you get one token for doing 10 barrel rolls; once you turn that in, you’ll get a challenge to do 40 barrel rolls for two tokens.
Sponsorships
Sponsorships are essentially login quests that give you extra rewards for logging in a certain number of days. What’s especially nice about them is that you can choose your prize.
To pick a sponsorship, go to your daily goals menu, then tap on Sponsorships on the left, and finally, pick one you like. Note that you’ll need to double tap to confirm that you want a sponsorship – the first tap will warn you that once you’ve accepted a sponsorship, you cannot change it until you’ve either completed it or the time to finish it has lapsed.
There are always four sponsorships up for grabs. The first three sponsorships involve a specific brand, which will give you blueprints of a car from that brand, as well as resources, while the fourth sponsorship always gives you both credits and tokens. Pick whichever sponsorship will give you what you need!
Season Passes
Naturally, Asphalt Legends Unite has a battle pass – this time called a Unite Pass.
By completing missions (which you can find in the same area as daily quests), you can earn battle pass experience; accrue enough experience and you’ll get a new level and reward. As with pretty much every battle pass, there’s both a free and paid version, though even the free version will net you some goodies such as credits, tokens, blueprints, and card packs.
Daily Events
Daily Events are a fantastic way to earn not just credits and tokens, but also blueprints, overclock chips, card packs, and more. You can access the current daily events from the main menu.
Daily Events are solo races (against AI) where you’ll often need to meet specific goals to unlock more loot. Unlike normal races, you’ll also need to fork over race tickets. Most daily event races require two tickets per race, but this cost can vary. Tickets regenerate over time, you can hold ten at once, and you can watch ads or pay tokens to replenish your ticket stash faster.
Special Events
Special Events allow players to unlock unique cars just by playing the event stages.
The catch with Special Events is that you need to own specific cars to be able to play the stages. If you have them and can play the stages, go for it.
Clubs
Clubs are Asphalt Legend Unite’sversion of guilds. By joining a club, you’ll be able to put your reputation to good use, as clubs receive rewards based on the total reputation earned by their members at the end of each season.
As I mentioned earlier, reputation is earned when you complete a race, so all you really need to do to help your club out is to keep playing. Do note that multiplayer races give more reputation and that you don’t get reputation from clearing season stages that you’ve previously completed!
The Legend Begins
The road to becoming a Legend is long, arduous, and full of challenges. Don’t be daunted by failures and setbacks – finish one race at a time, and rest assured that each time you pass the goalposts, you’re one step closer to becoming a legend yourself. After all, legends change the game – but even legends had to start from the bottom.
That concludes this beginner’s guide to Asphalt Legends Unite, and I hope that I was able to help you get a better grasp of the basics. If you have any corrections to make or are feeling generous and want to share some of your knowledge with completely new players, feel free to leave your mark in the comment section below!