Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is the latest kart racer from the blue blur. As the name implies, this time the focus is on racing across different worlds, with Travel Rings warping you and your fellow drivers into new dimensions mid-race.

If you want to conquer these cross-dimensional speedways, you'll need to go fast. Our Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds guide will help you put together the best custom kart, plus reveal the fastest way to earn Donpa Tickets (which you use to unlock new vehicles) and how to earn the Master Plate and fill it with shiny new Gadgets.
 

How to upgrade Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds’ Gadget Plate

Before you start customizing your vehicle and Gadget Plate, your priority is to complete as many races as possible. There are various ways to do this, but you should complete all of the Grand Prix cups first. The full collection of eight cups will allow you to upgrade your Gadget Plate to a Gold version, which offers five of the six slots. After that, you'll only need to complete 16 more races to reach the Master Plate. Note that you don’t need to win, you just need to finish races

The quickest way to do this is in Online Play, as races are generally a lot faster and you can quickly load into races one after another. Alternatively, you can replay Grand Prixs against different rivals or at higher speeds, although they will be more challenging. 

Once you have the full Gadget Plate, you can start tuning your build using specific passive and active Gadgets to gain a variety of buffs, which we will go over a little later on in this guide. 
 

How to get Donpa Tickets quickly in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

As you finish races and unlock your Gadget Plate, you'll also be racking up Donpa Tickets, which are used to buy new parts for your vehicles. 

You gain Donpa Tickets for almost everything you do in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, but there are some key ways to speed up the acquisition of Donpa Tickets. For instance, finishing first nets you an extra 10 tickets. 

If you want to really speed up the process though, focus on collecting the Red Rings in Grand Prix. There are five Red Rings scattered around each track, and there are 24 tracks in the game. You don’t have to collect them all in one race, but after you have collected all of a track's Red Rings at least once, you'll get 30 Donpa Tickets—for a total of 720 tickets if you collect all the Red Rings in the game. This is a huge boost to your initial Donpa Tickets stockpile, and vital when you start customizing vehicles, as some of the parts cost several hundred tickets. 

After completing the main Grand Prixs, you will also unlock Friendships. This menu allows you to gift Donpa Tickets to individual characters to unlock unique cosmetics. Ignore this initially, as they will demand a lot of Donpa Tickets from you. Instead, you want to build a vehicle (or better yet, vehicles) with the best stats so you can win more races.
 

Understanding stats: speed, acceleration, handling, power, boost in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

When it comes to your character and vehicle choice, you want to choose a character that plays into your racing strengths and how you like to play. The Grand Prix gives you a good chance to get acquainted with different characters and determine whether you prefer a kart and character that can reach the fastest speeds, accelerate quickly, handle better around corners, knock opponents out of the way, or rapidly generate boost. 

These five categories—Speed, Acceleration, Handling, Power, and Boost—are the foundation for vehicle customization in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. 

To start, each character leans into a particular strength. For example, the heavier characters like Omega and Dr. Eggman start with a higher Power stat, while quicker characters like Sonic, Metal Sonic, and Espio have a higher Speed stat. 

Vehicles are also divided into these five categories, and can complement a character's innate stats. If you give Dr. Eggman a pre-built Power vehicle, then his Power stat will be almost maxed out. The same goes for the likes of Rogue, who will have an extremely high Handling stat if you also give her a Handling-based vehicle. 

But you can also offset a character’s weaker stats. For instance, Speed-based characters usually have weak Boost stats, so pairing them with a Boost-centric vehicle will create a more well-rounded build. Another good example is giving a Power character a Handling-based vehicle to ensure they are able to take the optimal racing lines in competitive races and Time Trials. 

There is no right answer when it comes to which characters and karts to use. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, as you would expect. But in online modes, it is generally better to have a more well-rounded character so that you can keep up with opponents, take shortcuts or tight turns, and withstand attacks or shunts from other racers.
 

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds’ vehicle parts and customization explained

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds’ kart customization reveals its full potential when you start digging into the individual vehicle parts. Instead of choosing a pre-made vehicle, some of which can be unlocked in the Race Park mode, you can choose to modify and craft your own kart. 

Here, you can use the Donpa Tickets you have hoarded from racing to buy individual vehicle parts—bodies, trunks, and wheels—to min-max each stat. You can’t mix and match parts from across different vehicle categories, but you can choose to lean into each vehicle category's strengths. 

For example, the parts available to Handling-based vehicles can also enhance overall Acceleration and Boost, allowing you to have a vehicle that goes fast right from the start of a race, takes corners tightly, and generates boost quickly when drifting. The only catch is that you are likely to be bumped around quite easily unless you pick a Power character that can offset the poor Speed and Power stats. 

Creating an all-around vehicle is important for online modes, enabling you to focus on other areas in your Gadget Plate. Do note that the most expensive parts aren’t always worth buying, as the stat bonuses you get from them aren’t sizable enough. 

On the other hand, modes like Race Park and Time Trials lend themselves to building a min-maxed stat vehicle that takes corners tighter (by focusing on Handling) or maintains a higher top speed (by boosting the Speed and Acceleration stats).
 

How to pick Gadgets in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds 

Okay, back to the Gadget Plate, which is the second major component of build crafting and customization in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. The Gadget Plate allows you to modify your vehicle with a variety of passive and active buffs. Each Gadget takes up a different number of slots in the Gadget Plate depending on its strengths. 

Smaller buffs like Extended Slipstreams (which enables slipstreams to happen more often) only take up one slot. More powerful abilities, like being able to switch the two items in your inventory around, take up three slots. Some Gadgets grant entirely new abilities—like allowing you to use a Warp Ring to spawn on the person at the front of the race, or causing enemies that collide with you while drifting to spin out of control—and are great if you want to shake things up online or against some of the tougher rivals in Grand Prix and Race Park.

Gadgets are unlocked in a number of ways. Some are earned through ranking up in online matches, but most are unlocked in groups every time you complete 16 races after earning the Master Plate. 

So what to choose? You could lean into your vehicle's strengths by enhancing its stats even more, using Gadgets in the Stat Upgrade or Machine Type Kit categories—although this isn't always the best use of slots.

You can also compensate for some of the stats that are lacking in your vehicle build. If you haven’t focused at all on Handling and Boost stats, you can use upgrades like the Drift Charge Kit, which makes the drift gauge fill faster and improves handling. Another good choice is Ultimate Charge, which grants a fourth drift level—and when using that Level 4 boost, you become invincible. You can even pair them together to create an ultimate Boost and Drift build. 

If you find yourself constantly getting shunted online, you can offset this with Collision Boost, which gives you a momentum boost when you collide with another vehicle. Pair it with the Quick Recovery Gadget, and you can go into online matches without having to stress about enemy attacks. 

Point being, there is a lot of flexibility in the Gadget system. Use it to enhance your strengths as a racer, complement your vehicle setup, or give you an edge in offline and online races. You can create five Gadget Plates and swap them between races, so it pays to experiment and discover what works best for your race style.

It isn’t always clear what you should and shouldn’t use in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, as there isn't much in-game explanation for how to utilize the different Gadgets and vehicle parts. Hopefully this guide has helped demystify how to max out a vehicle's stats and offset its weaknesses (or play into its strengths) so you're set up for success—whether you race offline, online, against Time Trial ghosts, or your rivals.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is available now on the Epic Games Store.