Mario Kart World brings the classic casual racing game into the open world, with a host of other changes including larger lobbies. Many of these changes have raised the difficulty of the game, but there are some important things to note to make things go smoother for you in races and free roam.
These are some of the best tips and tricks for Mario Kart World.
Character Selection
The characters with the best acceleration and handling are ideal choices. This includes the ‘baby’ characters and a handful of other small creatures like Goomba and Dry Bones. Their maximum acceleration will be between two and a half to a full three bars. Handling will be more than two bars. Characters with these two stats at their highest will control better on the tracks, and in the event of a crash, will recover much faster as well.
Kart Selection
Once again, vehicles with the highest acceleration and handling should be favored. Three bars of acceleration and over two bars of handling are ideal. Eventually, you can begin compromising acceleration for a balance of speed, but always retain a high handling stat.
Rocket Start
Timing your start during the countdown at the beginning of the race can give you a massive burst of speed. Nailing it perfectly can provide you with the most benefit, while failing it will set you back with a failure to start. The trick is to watch for the number 2 during the countdown, and hold accelerate the very instant that it fully materializes on screen. Listening for the beep that accompanies each countdown number can also be used to get the timing down perfectly.
Coin Collecting
In order to make up for your heavy slant towards acceleration, you will need to make use of whatever world pickups you can to boost your speed. Coins are the most obvious choice as they are strewn across the track. Try to acquire the ones along the most optimal route rather than the coins that will cause you to lose time. Of equal importance, every 100 coins unlocks a random kart from a selection of 30 locked vehicles.
Turn Smart Steering Off
While good for beginners since it keeps them from straying off the track, Smart Steering hinders the use of track shortcuts as well as the highest level of mini-turbo–the pink/purple ultra mini-turbo. Enabled by default, you can navigate to the controller settings to turn it off.
Mini Turbos
Drifting and wallriding are how you charge up your mini turbos, with the duration you hold it determining which of the three levels you get: regular (blue), super (orange), and ultra(pink/purple). The higher the better, and high acceleration characters and karts will see the greatest benefit from this.
Item Directional Aim
You will automatically fire your pickups in a given direction based on their type. However you can instead choose to override that by pushing or pulling the left stick forward or back while using the item. This can come in handy as you strategically sabotage racers in front of you, or defend yourself from attackers behind you.
Mushrooms
These pickups come in particularly handy for two particular instances: skating across offroad/mud sections which would otherwise slow you down quite a bit, and evading blue shells a split second before they land on you.
Hang Back
Due to the increased grid size of the races and the RNG nature of the pickups, being in first place right from the start of the race is no guarantee that you will also end the race in first place. Your best strategy to stay in the game is to be in the middle of the pack, tactically using pickups to snipe the frontrunners, until near the very end when you finally edge out the rest.
Farming Outfits
Outside of competitive racing, in free roam you will be spending a lot of time trying to acquire new outfits. You can simplify this process somewhat by swapping characters freely through the menu. Collect the food, then hit rewind, switch characters, and repeat from the start.
Those are the ten best tips and tricks for Mario Kart World.
