EA Sports WRC Guide: Tips For Your First Career Steps

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A major feature of the new EA rally game is its career mode. With so much to do, here is a guide to best enjoy the first season of your EA Sports WRC career.

Image credit: EA Sports

Last week, EA Sports WRC came out to mixed reviews. Whilst we enjoyed our initial time with the title, the official launch met a collection of unhappy fans due to a sizeable number of performance issues and bugs.

But with a new patch out now looking to fix said framerate and stuttering downfalls (although only succeeding partly), it is time to enjoy what the game has to offer. For many, the main focus of the title will be its career mode. In fact, EA Sports WRC certainly captures inspiration from its sibling title, the F1 franchise.

In the EA Sports WRC career mode, one takes on the role of an amateur rally driver setting up a privateer team. With help from a benefactor, you can rise through the WRC ranks, in the hopes of claiming a top class Rally Championship. However, there is much more than aiming for the top series.


Throughout a season, there are many historic rallies to compete in, with championships on the line. Success in these will also please your benefactor. You can also form a high-flying team. Rather than focusing on one’s own achievements, a team can run a second car for a teammate. Recruiting engineers and drivers can also be a big part of the game.

With so much to do and little explanation in the early hours, navigating one’s first season optimally can be tough. Luckily enough, we have completed many rounds of many championships and, most importantly, have committed some mistakes we know not to do again. So here are five tips to achieve success in your first EA Sports WRC career mode season.

EA Sports WRC Career: Focus Up​

In any given week of the EA Sports WRC career mode, there can be up to half a dozen rallies to compete in. Of course, you can only take part in a single event per week. However, the scale of possibility on offer can be confusing.

This is why an important tip is to focus on just two championships in your first season. Sure, you can maximise your various benefactor budgets and run up to three cars, depending on their cost. But running too many championships will easily lead one to either miss rounds, or lose where they are.

Benefactor Page in EA Sports WRC Career Mode.jpg


Instead, simply commit to the pair of series your benefactor wants you to race in for your first season. This means you will get to know your opponents on a deeper level, allowing you to play more of a Role Playing Game style. By doing so, you will also feel a greater sense of progression throughout the different seasons of your career. At the end of the day, progressing and a feeling of growth is the whole point of a racing game career mode.

But the most important reason to commit to a minimal amount of series in your first season is that it will enable our next point: preparing your team.

Early planning​

When first starting up your EA Sports WRC career, the game puts the player as the principal of a new team. Newly formed, the squad is made up of a benefactor, Team Principal – the player – and Chief Technician.

But after completing a selection of rallies, one will discover that building up said team is important. Throughout a calendar year, the game offers opportunities to purchase new vehicles, expand one’s garage, hire engineers and grow the team’s maximum number of members.

Build up your team early.jpg


By owning more cars, you can compete in all the events your benefactor wants you to complete. Furthermore, bringing more engineers to a given event allows for reduced repair costs and times. Therefore, in shorter service areas, having an additional mechanic onboard will allow you to repair that radiator that otherwise sends you over the allotted time.

Early on in the first season, there are few events to compete in. This is the perfect time to hire new team members and prepare one’s fleet. For example, the first of many Manufacturer Hospitality events takes place early on in the season. A good idea would be to skip this event, in lieu of hiring a mechanic prior to the first WRC event.

Start your WRC career low​

Before setting up their team, the opening menu asks players where they would like to kick off their career. In EA Sports WRC, a career can start at one of three levels on the World Rally Championship ladder; Junior WRC, WRC2 and WRC.

Whilst it would certainly be fun to hit the track in the top class, with the cars’ hybrid power, it is not recommended. In fact, both the WRC and WRC2 seasons are more intensive throughout the calendar. Furthermore, the cars cost more for the benefactor.

EA Sports WRC Career Mode Ford Fiesta JWRC.jpg


Therefore, one would suggest taking part in the Junior WRC class for the first season. This will allow more time to build up one’s team, with fewer events to compete in. Furthermore, the slower cars will provide a great first rally experience in EA Sports WRC. This means the first season can almost be considered a tutorial season.

After completing this first year in the WRC paddock, you will better know how to navigate the career mode. This will allow for a more fun time at the wheel of the higher echelons later on.

Season 1: Keep things short​

In the same vain as the previous top EA Sports WRC career mode tip, we recommend keeping the first season’s rallies short. In fact, the Difficulty screen allows players to alter event length. Whilst it would be fun to take part in full-length rallies even in JWRC, we suggest keeping things short in season one.

EA-Sports-WRC-Ford-Fiesta.jpg


Part of the attraction to this game are the high-flying, hybrid boost Rally1 cars. So getting to the top class in as few hours as possible may be beneficial. In fact, quitting one’s career early is certainly a possibility after spending too much time in the underpowered Ford Fiesta.

In the Short Event Length option, the career mode sets all rallies – including historic events – to two stages. Those that venture to the Medium length will take part in five-stage rallies.

Do not be afraid to change settings​

Throughout this guide, we mention that one’s first season is all about preparation. In fact, keeping the year short, joining at the bottom rung of the ladder and getting one’s team set up is all about making future seasons easier. However, this particular tip is all about making the EA Sports WRC career more enjoyable.

A new game, it will obviously be difficult to perfect one’s settings immediately. Every player will want to play the game in their own way, with unique settings, assists, difficulty and length. Therefore, do not be afraid to alter settings throughout your first season.


For example, perfecting the AI difficulty rating is sure to make WRC2 and WRC championships both challenging and fun in your future seasons. Therefore, do not be afraid to spend the first season dialling in this setting. In our EA Sports WRC bugs article, we pointed out that altering AI settings in the middle of an event can cause issues. However, in the latest update, this is one issue that should have disappeared.

Elsewhere, whilst we recommend running a shorter first season, changing event length from one series to another can be fun. For example, the main focus of your season should be the World Rally Championship. However, the benefactor does ask to compete in a select number of Manufacturer Hospitality events and historical series. So why not run these secondary events as shorter rallies than the WRC rounds?

How are you enjoying your EA Sports WRC career? Tell us on Twitter at @OverTake_gg or in the comments down below!
About author
Angus Martin
Motorsport gets my blood pumping more than anything else. Be it physical or virtual, I'm down to bang doors.

Comments

D
Uh, seriously shouldn't have to do any of what is described in the first sentence to in order to get a brand new game from one of the world's "premier" game development companies to look or run decent on current mid to high end hardware.

That fact that what you wrote is required doesn't reinforce your point at all.Quite the opposite.

No laughing, Just a **** situation.
It's a sad state of modern gaming industry unfortunately. Early adopters pay the price.
Number of mods and tweaks I had to install to get decent experience out of Starfield was crazy, and they still don't have DLSS support, at least WRC had it out of the box and was only missing DLAA option, which ACC still does not support either unless you do DlssTweaks. Looks like gaming studios just started catching up with DLAA as it's a relatively new thing.
And you can still use DLDSR + optional DLSS to get similar results even without DlssTweaks.
Both are wonderful options for NVidia users, that makes me feel really sorry for AMD.
 
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After the 1.3 patch (1.2 on PC splash screen) users still complain that if you don't do an event from start to end, when you quit and resume it, the AI level will revert to 1/100 (despite the UI setting), no matter if you adjust it or not mid-event.
Unrelated to that bug, when doing an event in one go, IME in the last power stage of a medium event the AI has been unexpectedly slower than before, taking the fun out of having to push a bit more.
Later, the career can and mostly will CTD after the end of the second and third season, etc, when reaching >100% benefactor status on the debriefing. Only way to advance is to continuously press the skip button and pray until you reach the next season title screen. Stuff like this still present after a first patch only shows how much the career was an afterthought, when basic QA testing seems lacking for simple progression.

ATM the career looks pretty unfinished. The fixed calendar will always be the same, with events spanning the exact same stages/conditions every year, and no randomization. So if you're playing in short length mode (even Medium for just 5 stages is already very short for rally game, imho), you'll be only doing the same single stage location in both directions in many 2 stage events. :rolleyes:

A Career tip, if anyone wonders: When you must reach a Team position achievement in a championship, you can fire your teammate to replace him later mid-season with a more capable one, p.e, after expanding budget. As long as you keep both cars unsold+assigned to that championship, the new team mate will use it and keep adding up to your team championship points.

PS: @Ole Marius Myrvold, and Clubs in the current state are still broken. If you quit and resume at any point between stages, the car will be completely repaired and fit with fresh tyres, also after servicing. Either way, unfortunately due to driver mistake, binned my Megane with terminal damage after a puncture while avoiding exploiting it by doing the current event in one go.

@Andrew_WOT video settings are just incomplete. On a racing sim they didn't even the expose the UE framelimiter in the UI, neither sharpen options for users suffering under TAA at native resolution. All stuff native to UE, just missing from menus. Probably the only ingame workaround is to enable FSR in dynamic mode at 100%/100% so RCAS works over native res.
edit: less rant, it is what it is.
 
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D
@Andrew_WOT video settings are just incomplete. On a racing sim they didn't even the expose the UE framelimiter in the UI, neither sharpen options for users suffering under TAA at native resolution.
If you are on NVidia GPU you can use DLAA which should have been available as an option in the menu without any mods.
As for sharpening, NVidia removed sharpening from DLSS starting v2.5.1, so you would need to use NVidia driver sharpening anyway. Some games like Cyberpunk 2077 had it cranked up there already in their Nvidia profile,
 
(Atm I'm not on my NV system, but yeah, missing the dlaa option is crappy. Imho, devs expected the performance to be so bad, that they didn't even give decent options for users running native res, such as dlaa-only dlss, rcas-only fsr, or sharpen for ue's own taa-only without temporal upscaler)

And regarding my last comment above, no, it's worse than I thought, there's no way to force just fsr's RCAS via gui, and skip upscale. FSR+Dynamic 100%/100% is a blurry mess, looking way worse than even just "quality" (should be fixed 66%) at same sharpen or even maxed slider settings, so I wonder what the heck is that % setting doing.
 
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