Blackridge Spirit Festival

It's time to celebrate our traditions!

The ***Blackridge Spirit Festival*** is a 7 day special event introduced in the Steve Aoki update. It's the first special event to be held in the update.

## Plot

**WARNING: SPOILERS**

The Blackridge Spirit Festival, one of the biggest festivals in the dark neon lit city is back. This time, Kelly is eager to take home the title of "Spirit Champion" and decide to bring the player (who has yet to seen the glory of the festival) along.

She introduces the player to her latest "rare catch": a Lamborghini Centenario LP770-4. And asks the player to take the car to Novato Bay and try it out.

On the way to the festival, the player and Kelly encounters three members of the Blackridge Royals: Edge, Sofie and Ajax; and they were far from happy about seeing the player in a superior car. Despite their lousy attempts to convince and threaten the player to turn around, he/she and Kelly pushed on.

On the way to the festival through the mountains, Kelly reveals that this Blackridge Spirit will feature multiple types of races and she'd signed up for all of them. When the player and Kelly has cut through the city and arrived at the festival, they found Tyler there waiting for them. Kelly departs, looking for a flywheel upgrade; but even when the first event starts, she has yet to return. Leaving Tyler and the player with no choice but to race in her place.

Day 2 has arrived but there's still no sign of Kelly, Tyler is starting to panic and decide to report it to the BRPD and the festival's security. Day 2 is sponsored by Chip and involves Xtreme Racing Championship styled obstacle courses. On the way, the player encounters a very confident Ajax, in a (surprisingly) modified dark red Lamborghini Aventador. They player, as expected, beats the trust fund kid with no struggle. In the next race up on the mountains the player is challenged by Shane, who's driving an identical Aventador. After barely making to the Legend of Spirits challenge in time (with Tyler remarking how crazy Kelly was in signing up for so many races), the player sets a new time record and rushes off to Chip's final round of challenge. There, the player encounters no other than his almighty smugness Edge, who is driving ANOTHER dark red Aventador. Despite all his initial trash talking, Edge was eventually struck speechless when he looses to the player.

Day 3 involves a Proving Grounds event held by Ivy. And thankfully, the Royals and their intimidate looking Aventadors are nowhere in sight. However, there's a new problem - the BRPD decided to interfere and started arresting players left and right, much to Tyler's confusion as the Festival is a legal event. Upon locating the player, they started to give pursuit as well. In desperation, Tyler once again called for "security", who managed to talk Officer Rivera (who's apparently unaware of the festival) out from interfering. Despite all the disruption, the player managed to set a new time on the Legend of Spirits challenge and claim 1st place in the Proving Grounds event.

Day 4 has arrived, and still no sign of Kelly. This time, the event is the "Demon's Run" (a shrunken version of the Devil's Run with only 18 participants) held by Coach. After overtaking long time rival Joel (who thankfully is driving a F1 LM instead of those dark red Lambos), the player comes across Edge again. Edge gave a few badass boast about how he has "plans" for claiming more trophies and how the player will regret it if he/she doesn't stay out of his way. Nonetheless, Edge was left in the dust just like the old times.

However, just when it seems that things are going in favour for the player. He/she learns that the mountain road was blocked by a fallen tree (which Tyler suspects of foul play from Edge), forcing the player to take a detour through Novato Bay, where they encounter a very frustrated Tsuyoshi (who's surprisingly still in his old 650S) who rage quits after being overtaken by the player. At downtown Blackridge, the player comes across Shane making some suspicious remarks about how "the chumps don't know what hit him". After leaving a baffled Shane breathing in the Centenario's exhaust fumes, the player takes another detour to complete in the Legend's time trial, before making it back just in time to overtake Sofie (who is unsurpringly in another one of the Centenario's lesser brother) and claim the Demon's Run trophy.

On Day 5, Tyler is starting to suspect that Edge and his lackeys are the ones behind Kelly's disappearance as her car is more powerful and advanced than practically everything else in the Festival, but still baffled by how the player - the better driver - is still in one piece.

Day 5 consists of short distance sprint races held by Bridget Montane. As the races are quite short, the player has more time to spare, allowing them to take part in a fun race hosted by Dwayne. But just as he/she is en route to the next sprint race, the player encounters a scene of chaos, caused by a Ford Model 18 hotrod which suddenly takes off and smashing everything in its way. The player and Tyler chases it across the city before finally catching up with it in the mountains, where they discover that the Model 18 appears to be an autonomous car, and that Kelly's cellphone (with a drained battery) is lying on the seat. The phone and the car was handed over to the security who hoped to find some evidence of the one behind the sabotage. After that, the player manages to make it back in time for both the time trial and the final 2 sprint races. Claiming 1st place in the process.

Day 6 is the most stressful day so far, as the player must take on every race type he faced on the first 5 days. Thing were tight, but were uneventful for the player... until (s)he faced Bo and his 2006 Ford GT in a Head2Head sprint race, where the player snagged an easy win because Bo's gears somehow locked up. Things got even more suspicious when Josh showed up and reported that his car was stolen, the it got worse in the Chip's Challenge final where Maya's Nissan GT-R suffered from brake issues and failed to stop after the race. This causes Scarlett to suspect the player and Tyler of sabotaging the participants cars. Tyler tries to blame Edge but Scarlett wasn't convinced and warned the player that their score will be erased if he/she is caught cheating. Tyler started to feel nervous and double checked the player's Centenario to make sure it wasn't tampered with before heading to the final Proving Grounds event and face an exceptionally smug Edge who called the player a cheater. As expected, Edge ended up eating the player's dust and once again cried about foul play. But the player is crowned victorious by Ivy nonetheless.

Day 7 is, if possible, even more frantic than Day 6. As the player needs to engage in the final round against the most skilled participants of the Festival. At first, everything seems to be going smoothly for the player, while other members of the Blackridge Royals jumped on "the player's a cheater" bandwagon, everyone else is rooting for the player to win. Then Tyler noticed a suspicious pattern: every time a host mentions a Royal member in an Aventador, he/she always refer to it as "THE Aventador" instead of "(insert name)'s Aventador". Together with the player, Tyler forces Edge to pull over and confess his plan in front of Scarlett: Edge not only gave his lackeys identical cars but also identical IDs, this enables them to use the lack of scrutiny of the event organizers to have more than one racer to enter an event to earn extra points, allowing the Royals to be placed on the top of the leaderboard even with only mediocre results. Edge was caught red handed and his goons were disqualified, but he denied that he had anything to do with the various sabotaging.

However, even with the cheaters caught, anomalies keep on pooping up. Not only was Kelly still missing, but the BRPD is back at it AGAIN and ambushed racers in the Demon's Run, Tyler and the player managed to get away but Slade wasn't so lucky. And on the final stretch of the Run, the player comes across Dillion who runs out of fuel just before he crosses the finishing line, turns out someone sabotaged his Lotus and caused a fuel leak, but Dillion decided to give a shot at finishing the Run over chasing after the vandals. With Dillion's help , the player along with security managed to catch up with and apprehend the perpetrators: who are no other than Isabella and Shadow - two of the Renegade crew's most loyal members. With a little "convincing" from Tabansi, Shadow gave away their leader's position - up on the Blackridge mountains, prompting the player to intercept him. After forcing Jaxon to a stop, they **find Kelly in the passenger's seat**.

Turns out Jaxon is actually Kelly's brother and "kidnapped" her to get her out of harms way. Jaxon's plan to cause chaos in the festival was not to let anyone in particular win, but to get back at the Dusthowlers by making them appear as incompetent on their first job with the organizers and therefore ruining their reputation.

With the cheater rooted out and the vandals caught, the player rushes back to take on the Spirit Legend, defeating him and claiming the title as Spirit Legend. Also, thanks to the player's hard work through out the 7 days, the title of Spirit Champion was also rewarded to him/her. Making the player the first racer in history to claim both titles. Out of gratitude, Kelly rewarded both the player and Tyler - the former with the Lamborghini Centenario and the latter... with a promise of treating him better.

## Summary

Unlike previous Blackridge Spirit events where players drive their own cars to earn blueprints for the prize car, this special event has players drive the prize it self. This event is by far the most complicated special event to be ever held in the game, as it involves elements for nearly every special event held before: obstacle races in Xtreme Racing Championships, secondary objectives in Proving Grounds, marathons from Run events, legend time trials in Pursuit Legends and drag races in Unleashed.

The event last for 7 days. Each day featuring different themed events. The first day is the introduction, the second day feature XRC events, the third Proving Grounds, the fourth a miniature Devil's Run, the fifth drag races, and a mix of all of that on the sixth and seventh day. This makes the event the most diverse and complex event ever held in Need for Speed: No Limits. At the end of each day, the player takes on the Spirit Legend and the Centenario's predecessor: the Lamborghini Veneno. Like in Pursuit Legends, the player doesn't need to defeat the Legend on the first attempt, all that's needed to do is to improve the player's time, which will eventually become quicker than the Legends'.

## Strategy

* Loose-2-Win:
	+ On day 1, the best choices for farming event credits is the second and fifth race.
		- For the second race, the player can net around 2,000 event credits, try and tailgate the opponents as they travel much slower than you do.
		- For the fifth race the player can net around 3,000 credits but need to exercise more caution as the time limit for the race is very loose, try wall grinding to reduce your speed and avoid installing too much performance parts and make the car too fast.
	+ Day 2: stick to the second to last race with the Spirit Legend, it's easier to loose this time as the time limit is tighter.
* It's possible to beat the Spirit Legend on the very first day. Launching the car perfectly is important, also keep your drifting angle from being too great as it will cause a lot of speed lose.
* If you are struggling to break down a PR wall, focus more on top speed related upgrades (engine and turbo) as they bring the largest increase in PR.
* If you are struggling with the sprint races on Day 5 and beyond. Gather some more acceleration and nitro related parts. Also, perform short drifts and fire off small bursts of nitro when racing. But avoid drifting in large angles when the Centenario has picked up speed.
* When driving the horrendously slow Toyota AE86 on Day 5, its important to use nitro to gain extra speed. To accumulate nitro, drift in small angles when you can, and try your best to near miss traffic cars and draft your opponents. Fire off nitro on straight lines for maximum effect.
* The first Proving Grounds event on Day 6 is exceptionally hard. It's advised to stick in the middle lane after the first corner to score near misses easier.