Sonic Speed Simulator - Fearless: Year of Shadow - Dark Rider Event Guide

[Ryannumber1gamer]

A new week is upon us, and to coincide with the Sonic X Shadow Generations announcement from Summer Games Fest earlier today, it seems we've got a new tie-in event that not only brings Radical Highway into the game as a brand new drag race area, but you'll be able to complete several missions in order to earn yourself some Shadow-related items. Not only can you earn a Summer Shadow variant (right in time for the season), but you can earn a Dark Rider motorcycle mount as well.

As always, we'll break it down task by task, starting with the Dark Rider, and finishing with Summer Shadow. So let's jump right in!

Dark Rider Task 1 - Level a Chao 50 times - REWARD: 60 Min Magnet Boost

A relatively easy task to accomplish, but one you'll need the resources for. You can either choose to legitimately level up a chao you want to use, which could cost a lot depending on which one you're levelling (Red Hero Chao especially consume a lot of resources), or you can do what we'll be doing here, which is getting the cheapest possible Chao and level up.

You're going to run over to the first vending machine in Green Hill that goes up to Epic, and summon for two blue chao specifically. These are the most common types of Chao, and therefore the least resource heavily to upgrade. Once you've got them, run over to the Chao upgrade machine in the centre of the vending machine area. Of course, if you already have two common tier chao, you can skip this part and go right to the upgrade machine.

From here, upgrades will require higher and higher numbers of rings, and every five levels, you'll also need to pay up Red Star Rings in order to continue leveling up your Chao. In total, you're going to need - if you choose to fully level up two Chao, which is the least time-consuming method:

5,427,602 rings

30 Red Star Rings

Event chao also affect it with their boosts, so if you have Chocola or Red Hero Chao, you can also cut down on the amount of level ups required.

Alternatively, if you're really pressed for resources, you can also summon 10 Chao, and level them up each 5 times a piece, which will drastically reduce the prizes for the upgrades, but heavily increase the amount of time required in order to summon for all of the Chao + upgrade all of them, but it's a viable option if need be. Either way, once done, you'll have your first piece to the bike - the Frame.

Dark Rider Task 2 + SUMMER SHADOW VARIANT MISSION: Complete 20 Races - REWARD: 225 Red Star Rings

For the next requirement, you're required to finish 20 races to attain the Exhaust of the bike. It's clear why this is here - it's to incentivise you to try out the new event. Luckily, this also gives us the perfect chance to complete the bonus event mission and obtain our Summer Shadow variant as well. 

Like other Drag Races, this race is extremely short, so 20 of these shouldn't take too long, and as Shadow is your only opponent in this particular race, that also means you're guaranteed to contribute to the ten wins against Shadow required for the unlockable variant.

The drag race does have a catch, in that you'll be racing on the Dark Rider against Shadow + any other racers who happen to enter whilst you're here. Luckily, Shadow's AI is pretty bad, so you're practically guaranteed to win. Each race in my experience takes about 40 seconds, so this'll be over in less than 20 minutes. Radical Highway is more or less a straight line, so just make sure to keep hitting hoops for boosts, and you might even finish faster, and you'll even earn race tickets for each win, and even rebirth energy for the Shadow Androids + Metal Sonic events if you still need it.

Even better - once again, event boosts do apply, so if you even have Chocola via the Chao School event, you'll cut down the grinding to just 10 races, meaning that you'll have this done at exactly the same time you unlock Shadow

That said, make sure to go to your settings and ensure you are not set to return to Race World upon winning. Radical City's race ring has not been added to the world yet, meaning you'll be stuck dealing with race voting. You just want to set it to take you back to Green Hill and reenter the ring after every win.

With all that set, upon finishing ten wins, you'll see the character notification informing you of Summer Shadow being unlocked (The dreams of Hawaiian Shirt Shadow is finally real), and upon 20 wins, you'll earn the exhaust, and 225 Red Star Rings for your trouble!

Dark Rider Task 3: Complete 20 Time Trials - REWARD: 225 Red Star Rings

Next up on our collection agenda is the engine, which requires us to finish off 20 time trials in order to beat, a more of a time consuming task than the races IMO, but luckily, we can still utilise a existing event to make it much easier. For this one, we're heading back to the Diamond Terminal, which is now further into Green Hill, just past the action race stage.

If you followed last week's guide on how to complete the Diamond Heist event, as well as gathering the new music notes - you'll recall one of the missions last week was to complete 3 time trials. That's perfect, because one of those trials is easy and automated, being easily done within 30 or so seconds a piece, if even less. On top of that, Chocola should also chop down the amount of time trials required down to only 10 as well. So we'll be using the same time trial repeatedly - Time Trial 1 in Diamond Terminal:

This will take you on a very easy and almost automated path through Diamond Terminal, and it being one of the shortest time trials (in my experience) also helps massively. We are just going to rapidly spam this single time trial over and over again and we'll be through within 10 or so minutes. Just keep hitting 'Run Again' at the end of each run.

Once you've done it ten times with Chocola, or twenty times without, you'll have earned the engine, plus another 225 red star rings for a cool 500 RSR so far.

Dark Rider Task 4: Level Up Character Mastery 5 Times - REWARD: 225 RSRs

Unfortunately, this one is going to be a pretty annoying mission to complete, because it's just really, really time consuming. In order to raise character mastery levels, you need to run a certain amount of meters with a character - with level 1 being full blown 1 million. The other way to get XP for it is using fast friends that're levelled up, although in my experience, it's really not worth doing that.

Luckily, with Chocola in play, we only need three character masteries, which gives us two options to tackle it. You can also of course use the levelled up chao from the previous task for mastery XP too.

Option 1: Multitasking

Multitasking is as easy as it sounds, really. If you have any grind in the game that you still haven't done - be it hunting treasure in No Place, or gathering Air and such in Metal City Raceway, you're going to head there, and just do what you do.

As you're doing your grinding, you're going to pick any character specifically - Mastery Level 1 - as this is the fastest grind to do - so we're going to focus on simply getting 3 characters up to Level 2, rather than focusing on one or two. 

You can check mastery level at any point by entering the character menu, and hitting the character you're playing as currently. It's also worth checking through your menu to see if there's any characters you have been working towards, but haven't actually levelled up yet, as they don't level up until you manually do so.

---

Option 2: Autorunning

This is as you would expect - using autorunning in either Green Hill Zone, or Lost Valley in order to have the game play itself while you're doing something else. I would recommend Green Hill in particular, as there's no active AFK timer here, so you'll run indefinitely, whereas Lost Valley teleports you back to Green Hill after 15 minutes.

Either way, just keep letting the game autorun for you, and do periodic check-ins by claiming your stuff and exiting autorun in order to check your mastery level. 

---

No matter which option you choose, you'll want to ensure three different characters are each ready to evolve into Mastery Level 2 - once you've done this, you're going to head back to Green Hill Zone and run over to the fast friends stand, where you'll see the Character Mastery stand in the left corner.

Evolve the three characters you've chosen and gotten their level up gauges filled on, and the mission will complete, netting you the Front Fork part, and another 225 RSRs. 

Task 5: Evolve x5 Fast Friends - REWARD: 

Luckily a lot easier compared to the previous tasks. Evolving fast friends is actually quite easy - all you need to do is run over to the fast friends area, and go to the vending machine, and keep summoning until you get any six fast friends (One to keep, 5 to fuse into the kept one).

Since we specifically only want fast friends as well, and don't want to need to waste time dealing with clearing out box space, you're going to also use the auto-delete function to automatically delete any Chao. Just click on any of the Chao, and hit the Auto Delete that pops up. You'll know it's done right as a big X will be placed on them. In short, your vending machine selection show look like this:

From here, all you're going to do is enable the Auto function for summoning, and let it just keep going on until you get 18 fast friends - these will be used to fuse and evolve your fast friends. I would highly recommend using this chance to also get Chocola at least up to level 2 if you haven't already, and make sure Chocola is locked. You don't want to lose him during this.

Once that's done, you're now going to go to the Fast Friend evolution station to your right from the vending machine, and start inserting your Fast Friends. Once again - if you haven't done so already, your first fast friend you want to level up and keep is Chocola (ignore the higher requirements, my Chocola is already level 2):

As you can see, based on what level the fast friend you're trying to evolve is, and the level of the fast friends you're trying to fuse into it is, your chances of a level up will change depending on it. In this instance, Chocola has a medium chance since it's a level 2 being fed with level 1s (In this case since Chocola is already level 2 for me). 

As you can see, if it's successful, you'll get a nice visual of it, so you'll know it works. If you have some extra RSRs to burn, you can even keep going on a medium chance and try to get Chocola up to level 3 if you want.

Otherwise, if you want the easiest means of finishing this, put a level 1 fast friend into the fusing tube, and add five more to be fused - this will give you a guaranteed rank up.

Repeat one more time, and the event is officially finished! You'll obtain your wheels, and another 225 RSRs for your troubles, and finish the event.

Conclusion:

Upon finishing the event and going back into the event missions, you'll get a pop up showing that not only have you earned yourself the brand new Dark Rider mount, the first motorcycle mount in the entire game, but on top of that, you'll gain 2000 RSRs for the trouble, meaning you got a grand spanking total of 3000 RSRs out of this event. 

Head into the menu, and you'll find Shadow added to your character select:

And head into your mounts, and you'll find your new motorcycle here as well:

Now there's only one thing to do - which is to enjoy the spoils of your work. Head to New Yoke City, find the best empty street you can, and make your celebratory Akira reference.

With that, that's another event guide done and dusted! As usual, let me know if it helped by leaving a like and a comment, and I'll see you all next week (for real this time, I don't think they added any music notes this time around).

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I wanted to make a quick addendum to the guide because for once, they’ve changed quite a lot now that it’s hit live servers. Shadow’s requirements have been tripled up to thirty races to unlock him, his AI has been heavily overturned to the point I’d say he might be the hardest race opponent to beat, and the event podium has now been added to Race World.

[Maple Syrup]

Ugh, I finished the first three tasks, stuck on the fourth. Well, I'll leave it up to autorun! Thanks for the help!

[gogs]

So, I disagree with some tips here, first of all fast friends helps a TON in my experience when it relates to character mastery, ofcourse lower levels may not help that much, but a 3 stars and up already provide major differences (getting a character to 2 stars takes about 5 minutes for me).

Also, if you have Cyberstation unlocked, then just use the vending machine there for FF, not only you can get Red hero chao there (it gives +6 event stat when fused) and the crimison wisp (+20 luck when fused), but you won't be spending Red rings while trying to get FF, thus allowing you to use the saved Red rings to upgrade more FF.

And lastly I normally go for emerald hill time trial 1, you can finish it under 25 seconds pretty easily, specially with faster characters like Neo or Super Sonic.

Outside of that, great guide and I hope I helped or at least gave a new perspective.

[Sonictrainer]

My only nitpick is that you can't grind on the suspension bars of the bridges in the Drag Race... 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

1 minute ago, gogs said:

So, I disagree with some tips here, first of all fast friends helps a TON in my experience when it relates to character mastery, ofcourse lower levels may not help that much, but a 3 stars and up already provide major differences (getting a character to 2 stars takes about 5 minutes for me).

Also, if you have Cyberstation unlocked, then just use the vending machine there for FF, not only you can get Red hero chao there (it gives +6 event stat when fused) and the crimison wisp (+20 luck when fused), but you won't be spending Red rings while trying to get FF, thus allowing you to use the saved Red rings to upgrade more FF.

And lastly I normally go for emerald hill time trial 1, you can finish it under 25 seconds pretty easily, specially with faster characters like Neo or Super Sonic.

Outside of that, great guide and I hope I helped or at least gave a new perspective.

For the record, the reason I suggest some of these things is because Cyber Station has quite a high requirement for new players to unlock, and the resources for fast friend levelling can also be pretty extensive, especially if you want to save RSRs for getting new characters whenever they rotate into the store. On top of that, if you have a good Fast Friend line-up already, I believe that also helps level your mastery even further. 

The time trial wouldn't really matter I'd say, but while the GHZ one could be slightly faster, Diamond Terminal is also more railroaded, meaning that quite a lot of the work is done for you with rails and boost pads, which is why I recommend it personally. Of course however, it's all up to personal preference.