Frequently Asked Questions

Resources

Chest info

The info on the relevant hcr2info/chests page may help.

Shop questions

Items that can be purchased with gems in the shop include:

daily epic and legendary parts,
chests, and
coins.

The game has has three principal currencies, namely: coins, gems and scrap (tickets are arguably a currency too - but due to their extreme scarcity, special tickets should only be used for team events i.e. rather use gems when given a choice).

What is the implicit exchange rate between coins, gems and scrap?

I estimate:

1 gem = 160 coins, and
1 scrap = 20 coins (ignoring any profit margin)

Is it better to use gems for cup chests than buy chests in the shop?

Yes - about 85% cheaper. This is particularly clear for rare chests which cost 200 gems in the shop but only 32 gems in the cup, and epic chests which are 400 gems in the shop but only cost 48 gems in the cups.

Is it better to use gems for cup chests than buy coins in the shop?

Yes. 5000 gems buys $750,000 coins in the shop. However, spending 5000 gems on cup chests should result in at least $1.2mm coins, 7.2k common parts, 812 rare parts, and 64 epic parts - not to mention the possibility of legendary parts and paints/skins.
The one advantage of the shop is speed, as it takes time to run the cups to obtain the chests.

Would it be cheaper to buy cup chests, scrap the parts, and then use the scrap to create the needed epic/legendary part than buy that same needed daily epic / legendary parts in the shop?

Probably not as the process of scrapping destroys 90% of the value of the parts. However if 10% or more of the parts received from cup chests would be of value and thus not be scrapped then it would be better to buy cup chests.

Is it worth using coins to buy daily common($10k) and rare($50k) parts in the shop for scrap purposes when available? And if so, is it possible to increase the likelihood of their availability?

Yes. it makes sense to convert from a less limited currency (coins) to a scarce one (scrap/parts) despite the unattractive exchange rate. This assumes that the common / rare parts are available in the shop, which would not be the case if the player has already maxed that part or has sufficient parts already to do so. The good news is that with a little bit of planning, effort and sacrifice it may be possible to increase the likelihood of parts showing up in the shop. It is more worthwhile to do so for rare parts than common as the payoff is five-times greater. The trick is to ensure two things:

Not to max rare parts unless really necessary, i.e. keep on level 9 (or lower) if possible.
Have less parts in inventory than is required to max that part e.g. not have more than 99 parts if at level 9.

What is the best way to spend real money on the game i.e. what would be the best value per “real dollar” and how best to time purchases?

Buying a VIP subscription is generally the best value.
This can be improved further by timing the purchase to be near the end of the month (but not right at the end to avoid losing a free day when the next month is a short month) so that two full premium passes can be realized, and then canceling the subscription and resubscribing every two months, thus earning two premium passes per month of VIP purchased. Also it is slightly better to buy near end of odd months (e.g 28 Jan, 28 Mar, 28 May …) to obtain a few extra days as you avoid going over February month-end.
Make sure to open all your free/ad cup chests and use your daily free team and public event tickets before subscribing - as well as before the time the subscription expires. These reset and you should obtain more free chests / tickets. if you start the VIP (after you have used your free tickets) on the first or second day of a public event, then you should be able to double the public event tickets when the subscription ends the following month i.e. it will also end on a public event day.
if you would like to progress even faster then you would have to use additional money in a less optimal way e.g. VIP every month.

* I have spared you the details of the analysis, but it is available on request.

Other

How strong are the various vehicle roll-cages verses each other?

So I did some rough testing of the durability of the various vehicle roll-cages. Basically I estimated how long in seconds it took for the roof to fail when upside down. Results as follows:

Hill Climber 6+
Scooter      5+
Mk2          6s
Tractor      5+
Motocross    3s
Buggy        5s
Sportscar    3+
Monster      7s
Rotator      1½s
Diesel       1s
Chopper      4s
Tank         8s
Snowmobile   3+
Rally        3s
Formula      2+
RacingTruck  ½s
HotRod       3s
CC-EV        0s (4+s RC10)
Supercar     7s
Moonlander   1s

”+” means “at least” (my roll-cage for that vehicle is not maxed)

Reddit FAQ

The following was copied and pasted from the Reddit FAQ website on 5 March 2021

General

How to copy the game progress to other devices / play on multiple devices.

Connect your game to any Facebook account in the ingame setting menu; either your own or a new random account. Here you can find a guide to create a Facebook account without using any mobile number. Once your game is connected to a Facebook account, you can login to Facebook on any other device and load your game again. Look to it that you use the same game version on your old and new device; otherwise there might be a loading problem. You can find the current version of the game in the bottom right corner of the settings (e.g. “1.19.3”).

Android and iOS should always have the same game version out, +/- a few days of release. Only the Windows version might be outdated, because Fingersoft has problems with the releases for that system. So, for example, if you play on Android with game version 1.20.x, and the current Windows version is outdated with version 1.18.x, you have to wait till the release of minimum 1.20.x for Windows to play on a Windows phone. Your game is always connected to the highest version you have played with and can’t downgrade.

You can also play on different devices parallel, if you’re connected to Facebook. When you play on another device and you switch back, you’ll get, at the start of the game, a popup to play either the local save or if you want to load the cloud save.

Changing Facebook accounts without deleting the game.

If you want to log in with a different FB accout you don’t need to delete the game. Just do the following:

Log out from the ‘old’ FB account on the device; on HCR2 and FB app.
Log in with the ‘old’ FB account on another device.
Go to ‘settings > security and login > where you’re loggin in’. Either you click ‘log out of all sessions’ or pick the device you want to log out of.
Reopen the game and you can connect a new account.

FB integration can be found in another menu. ‘settings > security > apps and websites > logged in with facebook’. You can delete FB integration here, but beware that it is permanent.

Counting method of event races on Driver’s License.

The Event races are NOT the number of tickets that are played. This number increments at EVERY new attempt made within a single session (basically every time you hit “Retry” or “Exit/Race”). Typically, in the Moon event, we just have 1 or 2 Event races per ticket, while in the Long Jump event, we likely have 7 or 8 Event races per ticket.

Player ID.

To see your player ID go to settings and click on the game version, which is written in white on the bottom right corner (e.g. 1.20.3 (380/333).

Reason for many people named New Driver.

The New Driver name is common, because it’s the default name, that the game gives you at the beginning. These people aren’t bots. They just haven’t changed their player name yet. So they are shown in the lists as New Driver; or as translated versions of this, like Neuer Fahrer for the german version of the game.

Reason for no Finnish version of the game, although Fingersoft Ltd. is a Finnish company.

In Finland everybody speaks English as well as Finnish. Finns would play the game in English anyway. Like the first thing everybody there does on a computer, is to switch the Finnish Windows version to English.

Release date of HCR2.

Hill Climb Racing 2 was released to Android devices on November 28th 2016, to iOS in December 2016 & to Windows 10 on March 23rd 2018. (wiki)

Start date of playing HCR2.

A good indicator on when you first started playing HCR2 can be found in the achievements list of Google Play. You go ingame to your player profile on the top left corner, select Achievements and then the green/white icon on top. There you can find all achievements with dates. The oldest date of your first achievement should be the date you started playing.

Number of people playing HCR world wide.

u/Fingersoft_Rhys (Fingersoft Community Manager), 2019-03-21 on Discord:

The HCR franchise has over a billion downloads and around 50 million MAU (monthly active users).

Usage of third party software to tamper with the game is not allowed.

u/Fingersoft_Rhys (Fingersoft Community Manager), 2018-12-14:

We do not allow this kind of thing within the game, as it is in violation of our TOS, which you can read here.

By playing this game you agree to the Terms of Service, which state among others, that:

You agree that you will not, under any circumstances […] do anything else that Fingersoft deems not to be within the spirit of fair play

Updates

Game version you’re currently using.

To see your game version go to settings. The game version stands in white on the bottom right corner (e.g. 1.22.2 (390/348).

Reason why some people get the update earlier then others.

Fingersoft releases updates, like most companies, in a staged rollout. With a staged rollout, each update reaches only a percentage of users at first and over a few days everybody will get the update. New and existing users are eligible to receive updates from staged rollouts and are chosen at random for each new release rollout. This method is used as a test phase to avoid breaking the apps or possibly the phone of many users, which would result in a harsh reaction by Google.

Friends

How to generate your own friends link.

Select the ‘friends’ tab ingame
Go to the ‘daily’ or ‘weekly’ tab and select ‘add friends’ in the bottom left
Select ‘send link’ and save it somewhere in a text file (I directly save it to my dropbox for example)
Give this friends link to your friends, so that they can add you (or post it in the subreddit, if you want to get added to the friendslist)

How to add friends on Android/iOS.

If you want to add someone, open a friends link in a browser on your phone (reddit apps do not work for me) and everything is done.

How to add friends on Windows 10.

Unfortunately most third party browsers don’t support custom http link handlers in Windows 10. You can either:

Press Windows+R or right-click Start menu -> Run, then paste the friends link there and press OK
Open the friends link in Edge (Microsoft’s browser).

Limit on how many friends someone can have.

As far as i know there is no limit. Besides a high number, which most likely is an integer with the power of 2 minus 1, as is usual in program coding.

Many friends might cause lag.

Some YouTubers with many friends, get massive lag, when accessing friend leaderboards. They have to wait minutes to load all those scores. But this only occurs if you have thousands and thousands of friends, so don’t worry to much about it.

Clans

Clan of the developers.

Search for “Fingersoft” in the team tab.

Number of people playing HCR2.

u/Fingersoft_Rhys (Fingersoft Community Manager), 2019-04-11 on Discord, after Clan-Update v1.25 was released:

Our servers are currently engulfed in the fiery flames of about 40 million people wanting to try out the fancy new teams update.

Parts

Is there a way to get parts fast.

Not really. You get your basic income by fulfilling the daily tasks and by keeping a chest running in the cup section 24/7. It’s enough to have a steady progression, but it will take a few years to max everything. You can always push your progress by buying bundles in the shop or by getting a monthly VIP subscription.

Do some legendary parts drop deliberately later than others.

Not to my knowledge. Each legendary part drops with the same possibility. Random drop means that for some legendaries you can wait for quite a while, while you max out others rather quick.

To get a specific legendary part faster, you can buy one part in the shop for 500 gems. Every day the shop offers another legendary part. All legendary parts are on rotation in the shop. With v1.19 there are 48 different legendary parts out there. This means that you can buy each part every 48 days. If you get the first legendary part of a kind you like, you can max it with scraps.

Best parts for Rally Car.

For racing: really depends on the track. Most useful parts are Fuel boost, Coin boost, Turbo, Landing boost, Wings, Tires and Start boost.
For adventures: likewise, depends on the map. Most helpful parts are Tires, Turbo, Coin boost, Fume boost, Wings. Landing boost can work as well but it requires practice.
For Farming: Just equip the Magnet instead of one of your 3 parts and drive on Desert Valley or Mountain. Or repeat Hill Climb cup (unranked). Don’t forget to do your adventure challenges.
For Events: Wings and Thrusters on Long Jump events, racing parts on Time Attack events, Tires and Turbo and/or Coin boost and/or Fume boost on Hill climb or Chasing events (the Wheelie boost has its moments), Air Control, Magnet and Tires on Moon or Stunts events… (for Moon or Stunts events you might want to use the Buggy instead. For Long Jump event, the Bus or the Diesel with Thrusters of course).

Gold

Getting coins takes longer in HCR2 compared to HCR1.

u/Fingersoft_Rhys (Fingersoft Community Manager), 2019-01-04 on Discord:

The economy in HCR1 is, in a single word, broken. However because its a single player experience and the only competition is with yourself, and the only progression is against your last distance - its ok.

HCR2 is a different kettle of fish. Its online, a “game as a service”, has multiple game modes, direct competition with others, many things to spend money on and many ways to make money. It has a more balanced economy. It’s not perfect, but we are working on it.

Is there a way to get gold fast.

You can always grind extra gold by doing cups (and climbing the leaderboards) and/or doing adventure mode (and trying to beat the community records).

If you can afford the extra attempts, try to get the chests in the weekly events. Champion and legendary chests provide nice amounts of gold and parts.

Always try to get as far as you can in adventure tasks. Because the amount of gold you get in adventure task reward chests scales with the distance.

Best way to farm gold.

Best are adventure challenges. You get 1,400 coins for the first 500m that don’t even take 1 minute. Then the extra 400 coins you get every 500m are really worth it, and this adds up to the coins you collect through the map. Adventure challenges with a maxed Rally car net up between 50k and 90k per hour depending on the map (with a slower vehicle, the rate might be lower, like 70-80% of what you can make with the Rally car, but it’s still worth it). However, that’s just for the time of the challenge. Once challenges are done, grinding is of course limited to the regular coins clusters in the map.

For regular grinding, Hill Climb cup is good. In the adventures, Desert Valley and Mountain are the best 2 maps. The first one because you can go fast and grind at a faster rate. The second one because it features a much higher concentration of coins than any other map.

For your daily cups it might be good to equip the part magnet to grab any extra coin you can get. I, for example, drive all cups with Rally Car (CB,M,WT).

Good investment for gold.

According to this you should get the Dune Buggy, when it’s available, and max it. After that you can max the Rally Car, which is good for adventure mode and cups.

I would unlock all adventure maps and vehicles, as soon as possible. You don’t have to spend gold on the other vehicles at first, just slowly upgrade the first upgrade and part levels by watching videos. With all vehicles and maps you’ll be able to do all adventure tasks and you’ll get your invested gold back eventually.

After you’ve maxed the Rally Car, i would save gold until you get a vehicle specific adventure task. Then you can use the gold to upgrade the needed vehicle a bit. This way you’ll get further on the adventure map, which will result in more gold for the task. You can basically repeat this until everything is maxed.

Gems

Good investment for gems.

The best way to spend gems is probably to buy extra attempts in events to get the 3rd and 4th chest. Besides that you can use gems to speed up the process of running chests in the cup section.

Or you can buy stuff in the shop. For example: there is a random legendary part in the shop every day. If you’re hunting for any legendary part, and you don’t have luck in chest drops, you might want to buy the first part here. This unlocks the option to level up that part with scraps.

It’s also a good investment to buy more legendary parts there, if you use them to level up and not scrap them. Because scrapping reduces the value of a legendary part by the factor 10. If you use it, it’s worth 4,000 scraps. A part in the shop costs 500 gems. With 500 gems you can also open about 42 3-hour or 16 8-hour chests. A 3-hour chest drops on average 23 common and 2 rare parts, which equals to 33 scraps. An 8-hour chest drops on average 50 common and 10 rare parts, which equals to 150 scraps. This means, that by opening chest with 500 gems you can get on average only 1386 and 2400 scraps, respectively (and some gold and maybe better drops or skins).

Chests

Maximum number of legendary parts.

In all chests except Season chests, the legendary drops always give you x3 parts, from one single type and for one single vehicle at a time.

For the Season chests, the content depends on the rank you reached at the end of each month. The lowest includes x2 legendary parts, whereas the highest gives you x6 legendary parts. In the chests offering x4 and x6 legendary parts, those will be arranged two by two, from multiple types/vehicles.

Shop

Number of daily offers in the shop.

u/Fingersoft_Rhys (Fingersoft Community Manager), 2019-04-15:

We have actually changed the way that the daily deals work now. We haven’t nerfed the number of rewards or anything like that, but instead, we are making them more reactive to how you play and what vehicles you have, and what you have maxed or close to maxing e.t.c

The new system is in its infancy at the moment, but hopefully, it makes for a better experience for everyone.

Cups

Are we racing against people or bots in cups.

In cup mode you race against people, but not live. Meaning you race against prerecorded ghosts from other people. This way you don’t have to wait till the opponents have finished their races and can start the next race right away.

Tactic to beat bosses in cup mode.

Bosses in cup mode are hard. To avoid losing points in a failed attempt to beat a boss, force close the app before you actual lose the whole cup (e. g. when you’re 0:2 down in a 3-race cup). After restarting the game you’ll get another chance with a boss; often with another boss on another cup. Try this again and again until you beat the boss.

Meaning of different borders around the logos for cups.

The frame color and pattern refer to the level at which a cup can be unlocked. In Time trial, cups are shown in the order they are unlocked:

Hill Climb, Big Air: even bronze frame, no corners (= unlocked at bronze level 1)
Dark Roads: even bronze frame with corners (= bronze level 2)
Cup in the Woods, First Snow: checked pattern bronze frame with corners (= bronze level 3)
Challenger, Desert: even silver frame, no corners (= silver level 1)
…

Following the same principle, gold starts at Winter cup, platinum at Interstate cup, diamond at Epic Hills.

Season cups are not sorted in this order. In your example, I can tell that Backwater cup is unlocked at platinum 3 (checked pattern platinum frame with corners), Finger GP is unlocked at diamond 1, More Mines at diamond 3.

Can I win cups with any vehicle.

Yes. Just use whatever you feel like driving. The matchmaking should give you beatable enemies.

u/Fingersoft_Rhys (Fingersoft Community Manager), 2018-11-09:

Matchmaking is very complicated.

The TLDR is that the system does everything it can to place you against people of your own skill level, more or less.

A lot of things go into calculating this. The game will always place you with vehicles of a similar speed and upgrade level. So its possible the game has calculated that you have a high skill level and is giving you skilled rally opponents, even though you are new to the car. The only way is to just keep racing - The balance will check itself after a handful of matches once it figures out how skilled you are with the car.

Are the chests in the cup section random.

No. They rotate in a 111 chest sequence. (read here)

Will I get better seasonal rewards with Legend 1+.

No, you unlock the best possible reward with Legend 1. Anything beyond Legend 1 will give you just more gold, you will climb in the leaderboards and you might improve your personal records.

Reason why you might lose to a driver with the same time.

u/Fingersoft_Rhys (Fingersoft Community Manager), 2019-01-04:

The game calculates further decimal points of time, but it only displays 3 100ths of a second to reduce visual clutter. It still arranges you in the correct order.

Adventure

Is it possible to try adventure tasks again.

No, and yes. For every adventure task you only get one attempt. If you die or your app closes, you get the chest level you’re currently holding. Only at the start of the level, before you got chest level 1, you can go out again and change your parts for example. Once you get the chest level 1, you’re stuck with this part setup. But, it is possible at any time while you’re still alive to hit the pause button and go for the retry option. This will restart the level. At first you start with the chest level of your last attempt, but once you hit chest level 1 again, your chest level will change to 1 and you’re in a regular run. This is very useful for vehicles which don’t die easy. For example the Rally Car. Even when you flip your car over, you’ll probably lay on your rollcage for 1-2 seconds. in this time, you can go for another attempt, if you’re not satisfied with your chest level. Or when you jump over a fuel can and realize, that you don’t have enough time to go back.

How to get beyond position X on map Y.

Either ask in the subreddit, how people were able to do it or watch replays ingame. There you can see, which parts people have used to get past something or to get feel of how to do drive.

Desert Valley: how to get beyond the damn lava pit.

You drive onto the bridge and immediately back. The bridge will fall down. Then you can drive/fall diagonally downwards to the pathway. Maybe accelerate again, when your front wheel hangs a bit downwards over the lava pit.

Will there be a moon map like in HCR1.

u/Fingersoft_Rhys (Fingersoft Community Manager), 2019-03-07 on Discord:

A moon adventure would break HCR2. It would destroy the economy and cause a neverending spiral of escalation in prices. It happened already in HCR1, and we learned from that. Have you ever opened HCR1 as a new player? The prospect of unlocking even all the maps is insane. Millions and millions and millions of coins.

We know people like it, and we are experimenting with several ideas on how we can use the moon - but a straight up moon adventure map is never going to happen.

Events

Are we racing against people or bots in events.

Events run from the server in real time. Each time you play you are played into a lobby with up to 100 other players, who are also playing at that moment.

Update v1.25 brought team events. Everybody gets a highscore for themselves, but is competing in a leaderboard with real players of course.

How are there different skins in events, although i can’t change the skin.

Everybody sees him-/herself in the default skin. The replays of other racers are giving random skins, it seems.

Vehicles

Fastest vehicle.

u/Fingersoft_Rhys (Fingersoft Community Manager), 2018-12-06 on Discord:

As of v1.21 the Superbike has the fastest acceleration and the highest possible top speed in the game.

Reason for maxed vehicle being level 77 and not 80.

One might think, that a maxed vehicle should be level 80, because you have 4 upgrades with 20 levels. But after you buy a vehicle, you start with 4 upgrades on level 1, while the vehicle level is only 1, not 4. Then you add 4 times 19 levels, which results in level 77.

Bus parts, which stay active, after breaking off.

Like the Kiddie-Express in HCR 1, the Bus will lose sections after too much movement. First the hull will break off, then the passengers will leave their seats one by one and finally the rear wheel section will fall off, until only the core front wheel section is leftover.

The parts are affixed on both sections, front and rear wheel. When you lose the rear wheel section, you will lose the optical effect of the now missing part, but not necessarily the impact of that part. For example the Coin Boost is mounted on the rear wheel section. When you lose that section, you lose the optical effect of the white swoosh lines when you collect coins, but the coin boost is still active. When you drive on a flat surface, you will see that the max speed goes up while collecting coins.

You can see this more clearly with the Overcharged Turbo part. You obviously lose the exhaust when you lose the rear section; as well as the flames when the OT triggers. But you will still get the boost, when the turbo is triggered.

Moonlander’s different shapes.

The Moonlander (ML) will change it’s shape depending on your driving style and the terrain. If you drive slowly and try to climb a hill, the ML will change into an arched form, so that you’re able to climb steeper hills. If you drive fast on flat surfaces, the shape of the ML will change into a plane form, so that you’re able to drive faster. The shape will change faster by evolving the B.R.A.I.N upgrade.

To flip the two left wheels of the ML in a vertical position, you have to hold accelerator and brake for first two seconds of the countdown before a race is starting. It it then possible to drive the whole ML in a vertical position on the left wheels alone.

If you hold brake and accelerator down for the whole countdown before a race is starting, the ML will uncouple from the whole wheel section and you will be able to fly in the dome section alone. You’ll run out of fuel pretty quickly though. You need to max the B.R.A.I.N upgrade to unlock this feature.

-><-

When you bump the dome, which protects the driver, too many times into other objects, the ML will lose the dome.

Physics

Effect of accessories.

u/Fingersoft_Rhys (Fingersoft Community Manager), 2019-04-23 on Discord:

Props have an effect on physics, but not in any meaningful way that will effect race times. I there is physics simulaton on a prop (i.e. with the scarf or on a hat), then it will make a tiny difference (more weight).

It is very important to remember that when our physics engine is simulating the weight of a car (roughly one tonne or much more) it is also simulating the weight of a hat (maybe 80 grams). That tiny bit of added weight is so miniscule next to the mass of the car (close to one, one millionth), that it will in no way effect your race times. Anyone who claims that changing your outfit will improve or worsen your times on the leader boards ís simply incorrect.