Hey all,
I might be late to the party, but I wanted to explain to a friend of mine, who’s new in Horizon 3 Online, what Online Adventure is. This new gamemode for Horizon 3 has resulted for me in many fun hours, epic racing, great moments and lots of banter. Also, the credit and exp gains are very meaty, too. I think I’ve gained about 500 levels and lots and lots of credits from playing this a few hours in a week. So because there’s a lot going on to make your Adventure sessions better, here’s my guide. Hope you like it.
DISCLAIMERS:
-I am a player just like everyone else. I happen to be ranking the top of the Adventure boards regularly, play with a lot of friends who think I’m a great racer, so yes, this is all my experience, but I’m far from inexperienced. Not my words, but words of multiple Star Level and ItMe veterans.
-Your opinion may vary upon my points but if you want to respond on that, keep it polite. Make sure we all learn from it, and not just show off your e-peen because you’re an almighty Forza God. We, at least I, am here to teach people, not to show off my holy racing.
-Use this as a guide to get better, not to be a Forza God. Good racing starts with you.
With that out of the way, here’s what we’re going to discuss today:
-What is Online Adventure?
-Which cars do I need?
-Don’t do this!
-Perks and tricks
-Conclusion
What is Online Adventure?
Online Adventure is a mix of various online racing. You can vote for the disciplines yourself: Asphalt Racing, Mixed Surface Racing, Cross Country Racing, Street Racing, Playground Games, and anything goes (a mix of all disciplines). The racing is divided in classes: D500, C600, B700, A800, S1 900 and S2 998. X Class is not included in Adventure.
After the class and discipline gets picked, you need to chose a car. There is no restriction upon car classes, just the tuning score. So you can use any car you like, as long as it is tuned between the borders of the class you’ve voted for.
The Adventure has started! The events take place in legs of four. Between each event, you need to drive to the event in question. The faster you get there, the more exp you collect. Also in racing, you need to race clean and fast in order to get exp. Exp matters, considering it’s the “currency” on which your spot on the board depends. This means that getting first place in a race is no guaranteed first place on the leaderboard. Collect as much exp as possible!
The one who collects the most exp on all four races and the drive inbetween the races, wins the leg. First place gets 30.000 cr, second place 28.000, third place 26.000, etc etc.
After the legs are done, new voting starts. And the cycle restarts.
Which cars do I need?
As specified, you can use any car within the tuning score limits. However, tuning matters. Here’s some tips to tune your car carefully for Adventure.
I do recommend to use certain cars for certain disciplines. For asphalt, use a “street car”, but for cross country a SUV or truck is recommended.
Example: for S1 900 asphalt I have a few sports cars at my disposal, as well as a few saloon cars (which I just love because they’re cool imo), my most used S1 asphalt cars are: 2017 Nissan GT-R, 2017 Porsche Panamera, 2003 Porsche Carrera GT. For S1 Cross Country, I tend to use the 2012 Porsche Cayenne, 2015 Subaru WRX VT15r, or 2007 Toyota Hilux AT38. The shape of the car matters considering the terrain thrown at them. You want a car for Cross Country to be able to take the giant jumps etc. For asphalt, you want an aerodynamic car.
The tuning however, is not specific to any discipline. Here’s how to tune your car according to my rather succesful tuning formula. Experience learns 
-AWD
I know not everyone is a fan of making all your cars AWD, but in this case it’s highly recommended. Launch, corner acceleration and handling matter.
-Power
Don’t bother too much with tire upgrades. They add a lot of class upgrade while they don’t have as much effect as power upgrades.
-Engine swaps
Not necessary. On some cars it works well, on other cars it makes the car handle too radical, resulting in very awkward driving. You should definitely experiment with this one, but for most cars I recommend using the stock engine and adding power and if possible, aspiration tuning. Use turbo’s in the most cases. If it still makes the car too radical, use a supercharger.
-Class limits
Let’s take A-Class as an example. You definitely don’t want a car like the BMW M4, which is A800 as standard. Any adjustment will make it S1 class, which you don’t want.
Also don’t take a car in a too low class. Any D-Class car, if it can reach A-Class at all, will be too hardcore. An ideal situation is a car which is either top of B-Class or slightly higher, or half-way B-Class.
-Tuning process
Here’s the magic formula as to how I tune my cars, when NOT assuming an engine swap.
- Go to conversions. Make the car AWD and if possible, add a (twin)turbo.
- Go to drivetrain. Max all these upgrades. A good gearbox matters, first and foremost for being able to tune the gears. This is not always necessary but in some cases it can help you a lot to do tune them.
- Go to power upgrades. Add as much as you can in terms of horsepower. Don’t exceed the class limit! If you can max out the car in its class with solely power upgrades, go to step 4.
If you maxed out the power upgrades, but still have some class points left to fill, you can proceed to handling upgrades. Prioritize rollbars and weight savings. If this still doesn’t do the trick, add suspension and/or brakes. And lastly, add front tire width. This results in better handling and adds a few class points, too. - “fillers” are parts that rarely add to the tuning score but do change the car’s handling significantly. These are: intercooler (power), oil and cooling (power), anti roll-bars front and rear (handling), rear tire width (tires), rim size (tires).
- Parts you rarely need: tire compound upgrades (tires), rear spoiler (aero). I rarely use the front splitter too, but that is effective, just not as effective as the tuning class score increases would suggest. Also, it ruins the car’s aestetics, if you ask me.
- adjustments (tuning)
I rarely use tuning, but I do adjust the gears here and there. If the build is well executed, you can make long gears by decreasing the “final drive” parameter towards “speed” rather than “acceleration”. This way the 0-100 kph time decreases, while adding top speed. Top speed matters in some cases whereas you can achieve the same acceleration figures without decreasing the top speed.
Don’t do this!
These are the things I recommend you NOT doing to try and gain in Adventure.
-Car rent
You will commonly encounter players driving the same car in stock config and stock paintjobs. These are rental cars, which means that Horizon gives you certain cars within the class limits. A nice idea for new players, but once you get experienced, these cars are not useful. They’re mostly not tuned towards the class limits, and more importantly have a limit on credit and experience earnings. Building a car yourself is slightly more expensive, but way more profitable.
-Racing etiquette
To make the experience complete, don’t try your hands on “asocial driving”. This means ramming into players, tailgating them to limit your own braking, cutting their corners, etc. Your personal gain doesn’t at all weigh up to the ruination of other players’ race. Remember, clean racing matters. If you ram into another player, chances are high that you ruin their skill- and clean racing chain. This means the player gets less score for something he couldn’t help. Racing is fun together, so give other players the opportunity to race clean.
Accidents happen. If somebody deliberatly rams into you multiple times, he’s probably being mean. But don’t spend the entire race trying to ruin another man’s race if he happened to have rammed into you once at a certain point. He could’ve been pushed, or just made a racing mistake which happens. It’s part of the game.
-Race to win
As said before, clean racing wins the leg. It’s entirely possible for you to not have the fastest time but still gain a lot of exp because of your clean and skillful racing. Don’t try the craziest tricks, like ramming into walls etc, to get the first place. If you want to win, race the best, but never forget to race clean. Especially don’t involve other players into your own attempt to be fast, but not clean.
-Randoms
Adventure racing can be a great activity to watch and spectate with your real-life family and friends. Or listen to (driving) music while playing is nice. However, if you do either of these things, be sure to mute your mic/headset. It’s annoying and distracting to have constant noise which is unnecessary. Muting players mid race is not very easy.
Perks and tricks
Online Adventure has a lot of obvious, but also a lot of non-obvious gains. Here’s my favorite few:
-Tense racing
If executed well, you can have some incredibly close and tense racing with people you might not even know.
-Friends
I’ve met multiple people because of their clean racing and/or mutual respect towards behaviour in the mode. You can easily join the same session by adding eachother on Xbox, which will make Xbox racing fun (yes, thanks for all this, Taras, if you’re reading this 
)
-Fun, fun, fun
Never forget to have fun. It’s a fun mode, with tense racing and relatively high rewards.
Conclusion
I made this guide to ensure more fun and gain to your Adventure experience. But never forget to experience it yourself, and try out a lot of things. The fun is what you make of it. Try to be nice, think of other players and keep tuning cars. I hope this adds to your experience. (Kind) feedback, questions, and other remarks are more than welcome.
-Polestar [ItMe]