3-Stars Drifting for Dummies

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 4 FH4 Discussion
1

Do you suck at drifting? I do. I prefer rally and automatics. For weeks I just managed to pull off 7/20 drift zones with 3 stars and neglected the rest till there was not much more left to achieve.

This weekend I found the cure: the 1977 Holden Torana A9X with the tune AWD Drift by XtremeEnergizer

The problem with drifting in FH4: aggressive power slides in strong AWD cars won’t do the trick for most zones and three stars anymore. With some you still can, but it takes a perfect line, luck, lotsa rewinds and even more time.

If you try to drift with automatic you will face the next problem: you won’t shift past the first gear most of the time and that’s bad for speed and the score multiplier - three stars are next to impossible in many zones.

The solution: fake manual shifting
My solution is pretty simple and takes only little practice and no struggling with shifting.
Settings: ABS on, Traction off, Stability off, Manual Shifting, Rewind on, Xbox One X: performance graphics mode

Despite its AWD setup, the Torana A9X Drift tune allows for enough power and torgue to drift in higher gears and profits from the additonal handling by AWD.

Instead of learning to shift, you simple start in 3rd gear and stay there. A bit of speed, short use of handbrake or sudden direction changes under full throttle and you’re drifting.

No need to shift, simply regulate with the throttle and focus on your steering. If you have much momentum, don’t go full throttle, else you lose too much grip and slide too far to the edge of a curve. Once you feel comfortable, you should try to shift to 4th on wide curves.

The tune works for both, tarmac and gravel. In only a few hours I was able to beat all missing zones with three stars. Sure, the scores won’t compete with serious drifters, but that wasn’t the goal.

8 Likes
2

I’ll have to check it out later. Currently I’ve hit every available drift zone but still can’t get that pesky level 10. Mind, I did most of them over winter and the dirty drift zones were awful.

3

Good advice pal!
The first day i had the game ive complete all of those on 3 star, althought using a Dodge Challenger Hellcat for asphalt and a Porsche Panamera for dirt one.

As for to torana, many muscle car with awd drift tune can also do it, you may picked your prefered one.

4

Alright, got my level 10 anyway. Don’t think I’ll ever get all the stars. The keep-it-in-one-gear method might have helped, and the car is fine, but the popular tune I downloaded didn’t handle well. But I didn’t feel like tinkering with tuning or switching to one of my cars that I had setup for drifting. Lazy days.

5

Formula Drift Viper, AWD Drift Tune, everything standard including automatic, traction and stability off, feather the gas and ebrake, easy 3 stars on all drift zones. Some are a little more work but it was overall not too bad. I’m in the top 1-5% on a lot of them :slight_smile: tip of the day, the more ya know.

4 Likes
6

That was the first thing I tried in the drift zones. I absolutely hated it and had no luck with it. This didn’t surprise me, though, because it’s a Viper after all.

7

Just gotta practice and get better as I noted feather that gas don’t gotta go crazy fast! AWD helps so much! I SUCK at rear wheel drive drifting. I wish you luck! You can always check the leaderboards and see what other people use! A lot are the Viper lol.

8

I did them all with a combination of Ford Fiesta GRC or RS200 with auto transmission, just get enough speed before entering the zone and start to drift before the zone begins. The only exception was the “S Bends” zone which had me swearing incessantly. I used the Formula Drift Viper for that one, manual transmission, 4th gear and a lot of trial and error. I think I had over 300 skill points to spend once I’d finished doing them though…

9

Added the tuner and tune name:
1977 Holden Torana A9X with the tune
AWD Drift by XtremeEnergizer

Car plus upgrades cost just about 300,000 CR total, so it’s a rather cheap way to beat the drift zones.

1 Like
11

I love you buddy! I tried a million times to 3-star the S-Bend with the Drift Viper without success. Managed 94k with the Holden on the second try, going downhill. Thank you so much!

12

THIS. I suck at drifting, but used this combo to 3 star the remaining drift zones and get my achievement. As also stated, manual shifting, and keep the car in 3rd gear!

Enter the drift zone sideways for a headstart on the points. Use the rewind A LOT to make sure every corner and every part of the track is drifted efficiently. Win!

13

I haven’t tried drifting the Torana in FH4 but it was my go to car when I was a beginner and started tackling the drift zones in FH3. It’s a great car because it is so light, yet you can cram a big V8 into it and it has superb handling.

It is kind of cheating to use AWD though, and RWD is much more fun imo. If someone wants to learn “real” drifting (RWD) I would recommend the Fiata (Fiat 124 Spider) as a starter car, and then move on to the Ford FPV Limited Edition Pursuit Ute, and when you master that then grab the Ferrari F12tdf to chase after those really big scores. Those are the easiest to drive beginner, novice and expert RWD drift cars that I know of in the game, also I have tunes for all of them.

2 Likes
14

Drifting is so damn easy in this game seriously… In Forza 7 it actually takes some skill

15

Get back to us when you’ve 3-starred all of them then, which I see from your achievements you aren’t close to doing yet.

I got 3 stars in most but some of the dirt ones are eluding me so far. So narrow and so little room for error. I will try the OP’s advice. At least thank god the NPC cars are ghosted unlike FH3 which I’ve given up trying to get all the stars on.

2 Likes
16

A mic drop would have been appropriate here.

3 Likes
17
18

I’ll throw in another vote for the formula drift viper. I’m terrible at drifting, but did the seasonal objective in about 10 minutes with it. 2nd gear. It can achieve a negative angle, which makes no sense but earns tons of points.
I scored highest mashing the throttle rather than feathering, though - only letting up to swing the front around.
Also, the AWD viper seemed to keep scoring points when 2 wheels were off the track, which is also strange. Could have been still tallying prior points I suppose.

19

I find it so hard to drift with a wheel. Use a controller and it’s much easier! This shouldn’t be.

It’s one thing to get 3 stars with a car and tune of you choice. but getting all the stars in the drift club story, yuck.

20

I’ve used a combination of cars and techniques. I managed to completed drift club 1 and have 18 of 21 stars in drift club 2. I got 3-stars on all the drift zones on fortune island but only 7 zones on the main game. I have taken a break after the drift club. For drift club 1 I kept traction control on for the most part and did manual and used either 3rd or 4th gear depending on the car and surface. Same with drift club 2, the viper and bmw are impossible to keep under control without traction control on, for me anyway.

For the regular zones my go to is the hoonigan mustang or the gymkhana 10 escort cosworth. Those I have mostly done with tcs off but on the next go around I may switch it up, again manual shifting and throw them into 3rd or 4th from the start are the trick. I downloaded drift tunes for both of them but don’t remember which ones, they were popular tunes though.

I’m still not a fan of drift but this is the first time my struggling has yielded some reward. It will remain my least favorite part of the franchise, except for multi or co-op play as those are just ridiculous wishful thinking on the part of the devs and do not understand the basic selfishness of the human race.

1 Like
21

I was in the same boat. I would leave drifting to the last thing to complete and then painfully work my way through to get 3 stars, however one tip I can give, is practice drifting on the sand flats near the castle. Because it’s flat, you can finally learn how to control the drift using both the throttle and steering. My problem drifting was always throttle control. I tended to always try to control the drift using steering exclusively.

In fact, I learned by accident simply trying to earn skill points.

Slippery drift zones that go up or down are definitely hard and AWD is a huge help if the tune balances the power effectively between the front and back. The right tune will have just enough power to the front wheels to help you straighten out.

However, in this release, the Formula Drift cars are quite nice. I’ve been playing with them and for once easily got 3 stars on all but a couple of zones in one or two passes and that is not normal for me.

A good rule of thumb to make it easier is if the drift zone has higher grip, you need higher horsepower. Lower HP is better for slippery conditions. The drift zone “Thicket” was the one I struggled with until I used a mid-HP BMW with AWD.

I’m actually starting to enjoy drifting now that I’m getting the hang of it.