So I haven’t put much time into finding exploits like I did with Horizon 2 as it’s not nearly as hard to farm credits in Horizon 3, but here are my credits and skill points farming methods. I haven’t noted the rates for each method per hour but will be calculating them shortly. But the rates vary greatly from player to player. Farming experience is similar to farming credits and works in the same way. You just have to use an HE car with an XP boost instead of a credits boost.
I do have a relative thread for Horizon 2 just in case anyone still plays it.
Below are the paragraphs about credit farming. Since these focus on farming credits, you’ll need a good HE car with a credits boost. These cars do not double both the lap/finish reward and the difficulty reward. They just double the finishing reward. Thus, if you have your difficulty set up to at least 100%, you will be gaining an additional payout (for the finishing position), but the number of laps is what matters.
Important Notes:
- Each Skill Point is awarded at 100,000 skill score and you can only earn three skill points per chain. Thus, 300,000 is the maximum score for three. Divide that by whatever multiplier you’ll be at and that is the score you must get up to to hit the 300k cap and earn all three skill points. So for a normal chain with 5.0x multiplier, the player would have to rack up 60,000 score before banking. For 6.0x (with the perk), it’s 50,000. And so on.
- Skill chain XP maxes out at 100,000 skill score, giving the player 10,000 XP. In singleplayer, while in a convoy it is possible to earn 11,000 XP per chain if you have the perk activated.
Goliath: This is a campaign race unlocked after a player upgrades the Byron Bay festival to level five (fully upgraded). Once you have unlocked it, the rest is pretty self explanatory. The laps are pretty time consuming, though. I average around ten minutes per lap with an X class 2017 GT (with the Lamborghini swap). You can use another player’s exhibition setup (if connected to Xbox LIVE) or create your own just like any other campaign event.
NOTE: So I have crunched the numbers for farming Goliath even though there are several YouTube videos on the matter. Assuming you’re using a Horizon Edition car with a credits boost along with the “Double Down” perk as well as having your difficulty set up to on (or over) 100%, you could make over a million credits per hour for six laps. (At ten minutes per lap. You may have to alter the formula to fit your stats.) The final output is four times the credit reward. Formula below:
x: CR Reward (43,197)
y: additional multiplier (+1 for each element) :: HE car and perk | y = 2 ;; HE car or perk | y = 1 ;; neither | y = 0
z: difficulty bonus (percentage)
reward = x + xy + xz
Auction House: Look for a car that you can buy for under the AutoShow price and buy it. Use the “Mechanic” perk to get the next upgrade for free. Upgrade that next car with a powerful setup and tune to your liking. Then paint it. Try to paint it decently, I usually try to imitate real world designs. Put it up on the Auction House and set the start bid just over what you bought the car for (that way you make a profit from the start) and set the buyout a little higher. This takes some experimentation, looking at what players will buy out certain cars for (or up to), etc. At times I’ve made ten times what I paid for the car I bought through the Auction House. The trick to making mass profit with this method is using that perk for every upgrade, which usually requires players to farm skill points.
Head-To-Head: These are the races you start when you drive behind a drivatar in campaign and race them. This can be quite profitable, as well. I recommend going to the airstrip and starting races there. Most drivatars I’ve raced there follow the exact route shown when the race begins. And, as odd as this is, the finish line may be placed on the road right next to the main airstrip (assuming the game judges race distance by miles of road), so you just have to veer off to the side and finish. At times, I’ve finished races in less than ten seconds for the same reward as I would get when winning any other head-to-head. As long as you use an HE car with a credits boost, you’re golden from there on out. In addition, if you have the perk unlocked (it is one of the few perks accessible early on in the game), you can encounter “Pro Drivatars”. These work just like the ones in Horizon 2. With all of this talk about credits boost cars, most of the time players will have their cars fully upgraded and tuned. I have found that this does reduce the frequency of encountering pro drivatars, but in lower class cars (anything below S1) I get one almost every ten minutes. If you use a lower class car around the airport and just happen to find a pro drivatar, there’s 50,000+ credits right there in less than 30 seconds.
Side Tip: Don Joewon Song has a tune for the '74 Corolla. It’s C class but can go far beyond 230mph and from what I’ve just found is a drift monster as well. This is a great car for smashing three-star drift zone goals as well as farming pro drivatars (so long as you can win each race, that is).
Below is the method I use for farming skill points. This is essential if you’re using the Auction House to make mass profit.
Skill Points: Some Horizon Edition cars give specific skill boosts. The general types are drift and speed. But the Horizon Edition RAM Runner gives a destruction boost, which I assume adds onto wreckage skills (also maybe sideswipes?). These cars are targeted towards players that have specific skillsets. For example, the vast amount of drifters in Forza games will want to go for the car with the drift skills boost. Whereas otherwise the drag racers or freeway racers will (likely) go for the speed skills boost or generic skills boost cars.
Going into the HE cars with the general “skills boost”, these just add a small bonus percentage onto every banked skill. Essentially, you’d just go about racking up skill points like you would normally, they just get your score up quicker.
For drift skills boost cars, they add a bonus to each drift skill (as well as sideswipes and drift taps). My skill point farming method has always been to drift and now with the HE cars with drift boosts, I almost always go for the M3 or 22B, but sometimes the Corvette or Focus. Go to the airport and drift up and down the airstrip. This was a pain in Horizon 2 and somewhat still is in Horizon 3 as drivatars are somewhat unpredictable and may turn suddenly and smash into you, forcing you to lose your skill chain. Make sure to not pass 50,000 skill points with a 6.0x multiplier (where you have the perk). If you’re limited to the original 5.0x multiplier, go up to 60,000 and stop. This is necessary because you can only earn three skill points per chain and each skill point is earned at 100,000 skill score.
For the HE cars with a speed skills boost, run up and down a long stretch of road. Not necessarily as fast as possible. Ultimate speed skills are only banked after your car has gone past 200 mph. Speed skill boost cars add a bonus to each speed skill banked (not in addition to near misses like I had previously thought). Keep in mind you have to keep your speed up to continue obtaining the speed skills, but as stated before, this does increase the risk of you losing your chain due to weaving in and out of traffic.
Below is TDM SilverArrow’s method for farming XP and skill points:
Now, going into my findings after testing this a bit:
- It is generally better to use a skill boost car rather than an XP boost car. Comparing the pros and cons of each also requires each individual player to count in their racing preferences. With an XP boost car, it will take longer to build up the skill chain to reach the 100k cap for XP, which also poses a possible greater loss because if you lose any skill chains during the event, that’s more XP lost in that run.
- With a skills boost car, you can build up to the 100k cap very quickly. The challenge with any large skill chain is keeping it up long enough to bank. You do not get the double XP like you would with the XP boost car but it takes much less time to build up to the score cap.
- The “XP Bump” perk does not apply to bucket lists as they are not campaign races.
As far as Rivals go, I’m sure the method from Horizon 2 would work with Horizon 3. But I haven’t looked much into Rivals yet, so if anyone has any input as to how it compares to farming Goliath, let me know.
Extra Notes:
- I will be racing one lap on Goliath with the XP Bump perk while attempting to bank as many skills as possible. With triple skills XP, it should be a hefty turnout. The thing that’s likely to throw me off is not losing the chain. I’ll post the results here tomorrow.
Also, a further note on this thread: a lot of people complain about how hard it is for them to earn mass credits in almost every Forza title. Some people have reasoned out between the original Horizon to Horizon 2 within the last year. Now with Horizon 3 out people have to reason between Horizon 1 and 2. Some people have thrown out the fact that the bonus boards no longer yield a discount on upgrades (towards a final goal of 100% free upgrades in Horizon 1 that was not present in Horizon 2). However with the perks in Horizon 3, especially where players can get a one-time 5% discount on any car in the AutoShow (as opposed the the permanent 10% discount perk from Horizon 2) or a completely free one-time upgrade from skill points that they must earn (whereas there was nothing like this in Horizon 1 or 2), I feel that the credits and skill systems are well balanced. Not only those because the perk from Horizon 2 that awards fast travel anywhere was ported over and there are 50 fast travel boards (also ported over from Horizon 2) Essentially, this combines the “fast travel anywhere” paid DLC from Horizon 1 along with free fast travel. That being said, both this thread and the one relative to Horizon 2 are in good mindset towards players that have the old 250 GTO fever.