10 Star Wars Galactic Racer tips to help you beat Kestar Bool

If you’re looking for some Star Wars: Galactic Racer tips to help you either cross the finish line or defeat Kestar Bool, you’re not the only one, because this game is hard. Developed by a team made up of folks who worked on Burnout, the speeds portrayed in Galactic Racer are wild, and one wrong move will see you obliterated in the side of a wall.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer’s campaign is all about trying to become the Galactic League champion, and that involves defeating Kestar Bool. To get there, however, you should take heed of these top 10 tips.

Choose the vehicle type that best suits your play style

At the start of each campaign, you can choose between three vehicle types (unfortunately, podracing is restricted to special events): a landspeeder, speeder bike, or skim speeder. The landspeeder is the most approachable, balancing speed and resilience, but not excelling in any one area.

The speeder bike is the most agile, boasting a kart racer-style boost whenever it exits a drift, but it’s a little weaker and tends to run wide in corners. Meanwhile, the skim speeder has the highest skill ceiling thanks to its Knife Edge ability which allows for greater control around corners and down narrow passages.

Learn how to do a perfect start, but don’t worry if you don’t nail it

Perfect starts in Star Wars: Galactic Racer are a tricky beast to tame. The gist of it is fairly simple — when the race starts, ensure your throttle is inside the middle section of the meter — but nailing the timing here is tough. It changes depending on which vehicle you’re using, but a semi-consistent method is to floor the accelerator immediately after the third light. If you don’t get it bang on, adjust the timing slightly for your next race.

However, if you can’t get the perfect start nailed down, don’t stress; it doesn’t actually do that much. Where games such as Mario Kart offer a significant boost for getting a perfect start, the boost in Galactic Racer is only minor. That said, if you get parts and abilities that have added bonuses when you do land a perfect start, practicing it is worthwhile.

Don’t try and be a jack-of-all-trades racer, pay attention to your racer style and specialize in it

The most important contributor to your build, however, is your racer style. There are 14 in the game in total, but you’ll unlock them gradually. They range from fairly general, such as the Survivor style which is unlocked by default and focuses on keeping you alive, to the highly specialized, such as Stunt Runner, which is all about taking advantage of jumps and being airborne.

The more you play, the more options you’ll have available to you here, so as you begin each tour, take a look at your new unlocks. There may be something that fits your play style much better than what you’ve been using so far.

If you want a build for true speed, focus on upgrading the ramjet

Image: Fuse Games/Secret Mode via Polygon

I’ve spent considerable time with Galactic Racer now, including having beaten Kestar Bool, and in my experience, the best build strategy is to focus on upgrading the ramjet. Alongside the obvious of investing points into the ramjet, that also means choosing ramjet-focused parts and abilities that will benefit it, such as Vent.

There are also a few racer styles that focus on the ramjet, but the best one is Redliner. Redlining is when you push your ramjet to the limit, where if you don’t let up, it’ll explode, but with Redliner, ramjet is more powerful in this mode, not to mention the redlining zone is increased significantly. Parts such as Extended Alarm, Heated Fuel, and Redlining Power all help facilitate this even further.

If you’re struggling, choose the Tenacious racer style

One of the unsung heroes when it comes to racer styles is Tenacious. This is essentially the racer style to use if you’re finding Galactic Racer too difficult, because it means you begin with the Autopilot ability installed. This may sound counter-intuitive in a game where you’ll want to practice improving your skills, but Autopilot is actually incredibly helpful for navigating tricky, twisting paths where you’d otherwise crash. If you enable it first during the start-up sequence, it will also auto-complete all your other button sequences.

The important thing is that you are still in control of all of your other abilities, which means you can time when you boost with Surge, for example. Autopilot isn’t completely incapable of crashing either, so stay on your toes. Finally, Tenacious has the added benefit of allowing one extra crash per race, and as you use the style more, you’ll unlock additional traits.

Never turn down a sidebet, but don’t oversell yourself

Image: Fuse Games/Secret Mode via Polygon

Sidebets are a glorious way to earn some extra credits during the Galactic Racer campaign, and unless you literally cannot afford one, you shouldn’t turn them down. Before every race, you’ll be offered three sidebets against your competitors: someone predicted to finish near the back of the pack, for the fewest credits; someone predicted to finish in the middle, for a little more; and someone predicted to finish in either first or second place, for a hefty wedge.

As long as you’re placing consistently in your races and you don’t have an awful build, you should usually pick the second option. You’ll only lose a few hundred if you fail, but it’s an easy way to double your stake. However, unless you think you’re going to win the race no matter what (which could definitely be the case on tracks and planets you’ve mastered!), steer clear of the top end.

Surviving is more important than winning

Winning races will net you the most rewards and grant you the most flexibility when it comes to upgrade options, but it’s more important to just survive throughout the tour. That’s because much like a race championship in real life, losing doesn’t eliminate you (unless you’re in an eliminator race; more on those shortly).

If your goal is simply to garner the most experience possible and try to take down Kestar Bool, even if you think you’ll lose, just race to survive. You’ll earn new unlocks this way, and the further you progress, the better you set yourself up for future tours.

Plan your path through the tour multiple planets in advance

Image: Fuse Games/Secret Mode via Polygon

You’d be foolish not to plan your route through the tour map before you even select your first race. There are a few different types of events available: races, eliminators, field tests, mystery encounters, and scrap dealers. These all lead to the galactic gauntlet at the end, but there are limited paths through each planet.

As a result, if you see a mystery encounter you want to choose in the future, make sure you choose a starting race that doesn’t lock you out of it. Each step you take should be calculated to let you choose the next event you want to partake in, lest you get stuck doing something too risky…

Avoid eliminator races unless you’re winning every other race and incredibly confident

Eliminators are one of only two ways you can lose a league token in Galactic Racer, and if you lose all of your league tokens, you are out and must start the tour again. Eliminator races periodically eliminate the racer in last place, until there are only three racers remaining, at which point they race it out to the finish line.

If you’re eliminated in this way, that’s your league token gone. The only other way you can lose a token is by wrecking (using up all of your crashes) in a normal race. So essentially, eliminators are the riskiest event on the tour, and unless you’re incredibly confident, you should avoid them. If you can place in the top three, however, you’ll net some excellent rewards.

Disable takedown cutaway cameras

Finally, and this is more down to personal preference, but I’d recommend going into the settings and disabling takedown cutaway cameras. These are the cinematics that happen when you take down another racer, showing their destroyed vehicle. They look sublime and can lead to some comedic moments if they fly through the air, but since you lose control of your own vehicle, it can also result in you crashing.

There have been far too many occasions when the takedown cutaway camera has ended, I’ve resumed control of my vehicle, only to plow straight into a wall because the game took control away from me. At the speeds Galactic Racer is played at, every split-second counts, and this can hinder your race significantly. You can find the toggle at the very bottom of the accessibility settings.