Need for Speed Unbound Trophy Guide & Roadmap (2024)

The Need for Speed!
The Need for Speed!Earn all other trophies in Need for Speed Unbound to unlock Platinum (no DLC required).The Bear Champ
Smash all bear collectiblesThis trophy is awarded for destroying all 100 Bears there are available to find in NFS Unbound. These are large human-sized inflatable bears that can be found around the game world. If you played NFS Heat these take place of the Flamingo collectibles in that game.

For Bears and the other collectibles, you will see a green circle on your minimap when you are within the area of them, helping you to find the location. Bears are basically always on ground level, typically in parking lots or other areas near roads. The Bears are then also represented on the map with an icon that looks like the head of a bear.

For a map showing the location of Bears and other collectibles, along with individual locations if needed, you can check out the following page:
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Most Wanted
Escape a Heat 5 cop chaseThis trophy is awarded for escaping any Heat 5 cop chase. This is practically guaranteed during story progression, as high payout races increase heat further, and you will quite often be stuck in a chase after completing a race that you need to escape from to continue racing or return to the garage.

Escaping chases in NFS Unbound can sometimes be frustrating due to how relentless the police can be, especially at Heat 5. Outrunning isn’t extremely viable until you are driving S or S+ tier vehicles, so you will need to be craft about ramming them or getting them stuck. Going off jumps helps, especially long jumps if you spot them. When helicopters show up you can continue driving and they will leave after a short period, allowing you to continue escaping. When this happens and no other cops are near you it is possible to pull into a spot hidden from the road and turn off your engine with to escape faster. You can also enter event meetup spots or garages to instantly escape as long as the cops are in “searching” mode and not actively chasing you, regardless of the progress on the escape bar.

New Crew
Complete Qualifier 1Story-related, cannot be missed.

This trophy is awarded for completing the Qualifier at the end of Week 1. This qualifier requires having an A tier car, along with $20,000 for buy-in.

This and the other two qualifiers consist of a set of 3 races in a row, with the slowest two/three racers being eliminated in the first two races. This means you don’t actually need to win all three races, just the final one (there’s not any extra reward for placement during the first two races). If you need you are allowed to use restarts during the qualifier and it will just restart the current race, not make you start all 3 races over.

If you don’t have enough cash for the buy-in on Saturday or fail to win the race and run out of restarts, the game will put you back on Friday night so that you can try again, meaning that you can’t get stuck and need to restart the story or anything like that.

Oh, It’s On
Complete Qualifier 2Story-related, cannot be missed.

This trophy is awarded for completing the Qualifier at the end of Week 2. This qualifier requires having an A+ tier car, along with $50,000 for buy-in.

Lake Better Watch Out
Complete Qualifier 3Story-related, cannot be missed.

This trophy is awarded for completing the Qualifier at the end of Week 3. This qualifier requires having an S tier car, along with $100,000 for buy-in.

Found Family
Complete the GrandStory-related, cannot be missed.

This trophy is awarded for completing the Grand at the end of Week 4, which is the final story-related weekend series. This requires you having one of each of the prior 3 tiers of cars, along with an S+ tier and $200,000 for buy-in.

The Grand is a series of 4 races this time, one in each tier of car. This is why it’s recommended you just make a new car for each tier instead of upgrading the prior one because then you don’t really need to worry about re-upgrading lower levels of cars. You can upgrade the lower-level cars with things like Differential and Auxillary parts though as these don’t actually increase car ratings, but still provide bonuses. You can then also tune cars to favor grip which is more useful during races.

Otherwise, the races are the same as the Qualifiers. Slower races are eliminated in the earlier races, with the final race being just the top 3, which you then need to come in first to win.

Hey Lakeshore
Complete the prologueStory-related, cannot be missed.

This is awarded for completing the prologue, which is the short section you play through right at the start of the story. The game introduces you to the basic setup of starting races and how they work, along with upgrading your vehicle. Once you complete the prologue all the money you currently have is taken away, so don’t worry to much about doing every single possible event to earn cash.

Adbusting
Break all billboard collectiblesThis trophy is awarded for destroying all 80 Billboards there are available to find in NFS Unbound. These are large billboards that can be in multiple locations such as attached to the sides of bridges or on posts off the ground. On one side there is an image of a man in sunglasses, and on the other side is typically graffiti. Once you’ve collected a billboard it will reappear when returning to the area later, but the image on the front will now have graffiti on it. Most require going off nearby jumps to reach them, as all but a handful of ones on posts have concrete at the bottom which prevents you from just running through them. Billboards are represented on the map with an icon that looks like a billboard.

For a map showing the location of Billboards and other collectibles, along with individual locations if needed, you can check out the following page:
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Heaven Spot
Collect all street art collectiblesThis trophy is awarded for collecting all 80 Street Art pickups there are available to find in NFS Unbound. Street Art are large images that you can find on the sides of structures with a ladder sitting in front of them. They are collected by driving near them (generally you can run into the ladder to find the spot) and then hitting to collect them. They are represented on the map with an icon that looks like a spray paint can.

For a map showing the location of Street Art and other collectibles, along with individual locations if needed, you can check out the following page:
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In The Zone
Get 3 stars on all Speed Run activitiesThis trophy requires you to earn 3 stars on all 30 Speed Run activities in NFS Unbound. Speed Runs operate similarly to previous games, where you need to meet an average top speed over a stretch of road, instead of just at one point like Speed Traps. You can basically do the same thing though, and start farther down the road from the start point to get up speed, then race through the Speed Run area. Speed Runs can be started from either end of the area, so if you aren’t getting a good enough run up from one side you can attempt from the other side.

For all activity types, it’s easiest if you just wait until Week 4 where you can set up an S+ tier car with maxed stats. This makes the 3 star requirement on most of the activities very easy, as they are typically a decent amount lower than the “Rival” requirement which isn’t needed for any trophies.

Whatever car you use is basically a personal preference, just make sure you have everything upgraded to the highest level part, then you can tune your car fully to grip setting which is better for cornering and top speed. The only activity this doesn’t apply for is Drift Zones, but you can just tune the handling setting as far toward drift as it can go.

For a map showing the location of all Speed Runs and other activities, along with individual locations if needed, you can check out the following page:
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Frequent Flyer
Get 3 stars on all Long Jump activitiesThis trophy requires you to earn 3 stars on all 45 Long Jump activities in NFS Unbound. Long Jumps operate similarly to previous games, where you will have a ramp you need to jump off of and reach a specific distance traveled in the jump for the star levels. The majority of jumps have paths leading up to them, so you can make your way back up to the end of the path before taking the jump.

For a map showing the location of all Long Jumps and other activities, along with individual locations if needed, you can check out the following page:
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Catch My Drift
Get 3 stars on all Drift Zone activitiesThis trophy requires you to earn 3 stars on all 35 Drift Zone activities in NFS Unbound. Drift Zones operate similarly to previous games, where you have a specific area you race through and need to drift for a certain distance within the area. Some zones are circuits in a small area, and others have you follow a certain section of road. Drift Zones are timed and you need to complete the full zone for your score to count, so it’s recommended you purposely set up a high-level drift car for these to make sure you can complete them quickly enough and with enough drift. If you don’t want to do that you can just tune the handling on your normal high level car towards drift, and purchase drift oriented tires if you want to tune it slightly farther.

For a map showing the location of all Drift Zones and other activities, along with individual locations if needed, you can check out the following page:
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Caught On Camera
Get 3 stars on all Speed Trap activitiesThis trophy requires you to earn 3 stars on all 50 Speed Trap activities in NFS Unbound. Speed Traps operate similarly to previous games, where you have a point on a road you need to drive through at high speed for the star levels. You can basically just follow the road in one direction away from the Speed Trap location, then drive back at high speed to meet the requirement.

For a map showing the location of all Speed Traps and other activities, along with individual locations if needed, you can check out the following page:
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Cleaning Up
Collect all collectibles and get 3 stars on all activitiesThis trophy is awarded for collecting all 260 collectibles and getting 3-star ratings inall 160 activities. This means that you will automatically earn this trophy once you have earned all of the following:

• The Bear Champ – Smash all bear collectibles
• Heaven Spot – Collect all street art collectibles
• Adbusting – Break all billboard collectibles
• In The Zone – Get 3 stars on all Speed Run activities
• Frequent Flyer – Get 3 stars on all Long Jump activities
• Catch My Drift – Get 3 stars on all Drift Zone activities
• Caught On Camera – Get 3 stars on all Speed Trap activities

You can check the following page for large maps of all collectible and activity locations, as well as pages that include images of each individual collectible and activity map location if needed:
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Serious Guap
Bank $75,000 during one sessionThis trophy requires you to bank at least $75,000 when returning to the garage after a single Day or Night session. You may get this during normal play if you complete a lot of activities or grab a lot of collectibles early, but if you don’t you are actually guaranteed to earn it after completing the second Qualifier at the end of Week 2 as the reward for winning is $100,000.Cash Money Millionaire
Earn $1,000,000 in story modeThis trophy is awarded for earning a total of $1,000,000 during story mode. This is cumulative, you don’t need to have a million dollars at one time. There unfortunately isn’t a way to track this total unless you decide to do it manually, but you are basically guaranteed to earn this during the story. When you earn it will depend on how optimized you decide to be with progression and whether you do lots of extra races. If you do it’s possible to earn it before completing the second Qualifier, if you don’t and only do the bare minimum you’ll still earn it before or when completing the Grand.Flow Master
Score 250,000 during a Takeover eventThis trophy is awarded for scoring at least 250,000 points during any Takeover event. Takeover is an event type similar to drift events from prior games, but you also score points for things like running into specific green and purple obstacles and for getting air. You are introduced to this automatically during Week 1 of the story.

250,000 points is quite a bit in Takeover, and is basically impossible until you are in Week 2 or 3 with higher-level cars, along with much longer events compared to the ones available in Week 1. Some tips for how to do this are as follows:

• Try and get to 5x multiplier as soon as you can, then never drop it for the duration of the event. Try to continue scoring all the way until your hit 5x multiplier, because then your initial combo is multiplied by that much as well when it is fully “counted”.
• Only use your blue nitrous to continue your combo. Boosting contributes a small amount to score, but as long as you are scoring your combo won’t be dropped, so you can use your blue nitrous sparingly on straight sections where you can’t drift to keep scoring and hold combo.
• Hit as many scoring obstacles as possible, but avoid all of the red obstacles at all costs. Scoring obstacles give big points, but the red ones take away big points, so be careful what you are aiming for. For example hitting flaming barrels is -1,000 points per barrel.
• Tune your car to drift handling if you’re struggling with scoring around corners. You can still do this in the race selection before starting the Event, but can’t do this once the Event has started.

If you are having issues doing this in Takeover you can also try in Drift events, which also count even though they aren’t specified. Setting up an S+ drift car makes scoring in drift events quite easy, then you also don’t need to worry about the obstacle scoring aspects of Takeover events.

In the Flow
Score 200,000 during a Takeover eventThis trophy is awarded for scoring at least 200,000 points during any Takeover event.Rebel Without a Pause
Complete 30 street races in story modeStreet races are a specific type of race in the game, where you typically race through the city or the suburban areas of the city. If you aren’t avoiding doing extra races you’ll likely earn this without trying during the progression of the story, but if not you can just specifically watch out for these races which are denoted by the icon of a triangle with an arrow pointing up in it.

Style it Out
Complete 10 Takeover eventsThis trophy is awarded for completing a total of 10 Takeover events during the story. Unless you are specifically avoiding them you will likely earn this through normal story progression. Takeover events typically have a high payout and are relatively easy once you understand how they work, so it’s recommended you still play them even after completing 10. Note that the “practice” events during the day do also count towards this, even though they only award $500.Rydell’s Rydes
Fully upgrade your story garageThis trophy is awarded for fully upgrading your garage in story mode. Upgrading your garage allows you to buy higher-level upgrades, with three tiers of upgrades available once fully upgraded. This is done by going to Rides > Performance > Upgrade garage. The upgrade tiers are Pro costing $7,500, Super costing $50,000, and Elite costing $100,000, for a total of $157,500

It isn’t recommended that you worry about doing this right away in the story. You aren’t actually able to upgrade your cars past the level required for the weekly qualifier, which means that using parts of a higher level is not really worth it. You can just upgrade the garage one tier per week so that you are doing the Elite upgrade in Week 3, though if you are doing as many races as possible and have a ton of extra money in Week 2 you can do the upgrade then if you really want.

Escape Artist
Escape a Heat 5 cop chase in an A+ carThe trophy is the same requirement as Most Wanted, just you need to specifically be in an A+ tier car. You are automatically chased by cops after races quite often, so you are guaranteed to get this through normal gameplay.Public Enemy
Take down 5 cops within a single sessionThis trophy is awarded for taking down a total of 5 cops during a single day or night session during the story. If you don’t manage to earn this during normal gameplay, the easiest way to take down cops is to just run into them while not in a chase. This is generally the easiest way to deal with them overall and avoid chases to begin with, because you will instantly wreck everything except the highest level heavy vehicle if you run into them at a decent speed.Untouchable
Escape 50 cop chasesThis trophy is awarded for escaping a total of 50 cop chases in story mode. Unless you are specifically avoiding extra races to complete the story faster, it is basically guaranteed that you will escape this many chases during normal gameplay, as around half the time you will automatically be in a chase at the end of races.

There isn’t a single place to track this total, but if you want you can check the challenge menu under the Skill category where there are challenges for escapes in each Heat tier. Add the total together to know how many times you’ve escaped chases.

Access All Areas
Fully upgrade your Lakeshore Online garageThis same requirement as Rydell’s Rides, but the for your Lakeshore Online garage. It is highly recommended you do this AFTER earning the trophy for owning 10 cars at once, as unless you are planning to play the online past trophies you basically won’t need the higher level of upgrades. Purchasing the cars first allows you to sell them back, then you can use this money to upgrade the garage and you can worry about saving less money. If you completed everything in Story first then you’ll have a bunch of extra cars from things such as winning the Qualifiers/the Grand and completing all Activities and Collectibles, which you can then sell and only keep the ones you like.

The cost to upgrade the garage is the same as story mode, so Pro costs $7,500, Super costs $50,000, and Elite costs $100,000, for a total of $157,500 required to fully upgrade the garage.

Full House
Complete a Lakeshore Online playlist with 7 other playersThis trophy is awarded for completing a full 3 race playlist with a full group of 8 players. This can be frustrating as there is no general matchmaking and you are only facing the players in your current lobby if they decide to join the race, and can’t fully be boosted as at launch you can only make parties of 4 players, meaning you need other players in the lobby to still join. No players can leave during the playlist either, you need to finish the third race with all 8 players still in the race (though they can DNF during races and it still counts).

You shouldn’t specifically worry about this until you are finished or close to finishing your 25 playlists for Mixtape, but you can aim to join playlists started by other players if a number of others are joining. If you need to specifically go out of your way to try this, I found the best method was to wait for other players in the lobby to start playlists, joining immediately and waiting through the countdown to see how many players join. If not enough join you can quit the countdown with 1 second left and try again. If it seems not a lot of players are joining you can check on the map and beside player icons it will show a checkered flag if the players are currently in a race, so if many are you can try waiting for them to finish or find a new lobby by quitting to the main menu.

Once you do get into a race with enough players, I’d recommend staying in last place the entire time to try and bait players to stay in. Players are more likely to quit if they fall way behind, but if there’s still someone else behind them they’re less likely to quit. If you DNF during a race (the timer that starts after a player finishes runs out before you finish) you can still continue racing and this doesn’t affect the completion of the playlist.

B for My Name
Win a Tier B Lakeshore Online playlistThis trophy is awarded for winning any B tier Lakeshore online playlist (set of 3 races). This counts regardless of how many players are in the race with you, and even if all other players leave you can

For this and the other win-based online trophies, you can boost them with another player if needed. Have a friend join your party then go start a playlist. If other players try to join and you don’t want to deal with them you can just back out of the countdown and try again. Once you’re in the playlist you can then finish it out, letting whichever player win and repeat for the other tiers.

Bring Your A Game
Win a Tier A Lakeshore Online playlistThis trophy is awarded for winning any A tier Lakeshore online playlist (set of 3 races).

For A tier and above you are offered a loner car if you don’t currently own one in this tier, and that’s completely fine to use instead of using your money to buy cars in each tier.

Teacher’s Pet
Win a Tier A+ Lakeshore Online playlistThis trophy is awarded for winning any A+ tier Lakeshore online playlist (set of 3 races).

Note that for A+/S/S+ there are playlists that have you race once in each tier of car called “Mixed Tier” playlists. These DON”T count for any of the win trophies, it needs to be a playlist only for the single car tier.

Superstar
Win a Tier S Lakeshore Online playlistThis trophy is awarded for winning any S tier Lakeshore online playlist (set of 3 races).Top Billin’
Win a Tier S+ Lakeshore Online playlistThis trophy is awarded for winning any S+ tier Lakeshore online playlist (set of 3 races).Mixtape
Complete 25 Lakeshore Online playlistsThis trophy is awarded for completing 25 Lakeshore Online playlists, regardless of position or number of players in the race (this means it still counts as a completion even if all other players leave and you complete it by yourself, but you still need to complete all 3 races).

If you want to know how many playlist completions you have, you can check the challenge menu and scroll down almost to the bottom (the list is sorted in alphabetical order of car reward). You can then pin the “Finish any 30 playlists” challenge which awards the Volkswagen Beetle, allowing you to quickly check how many you have completed so far.

#Blessed
Own 10 vehicles in your story mode garageThis trophy is awarded for owning 10 vehicles at one time in your story mode garage. In story mode, you can buy cars yourself, win them during specific events at night, and as a reward for each Qualifier and the Grand. Winning them from the night races is the cheapest overall way to get cars, as these events have high buy-in, but this is typically less than buying the cars outright and the cars come already upgraded somewhat if you want to use them. You can tell what days they are on with the “Win a Car” text that will be at the bottom of the session block in the calendar.

It would be recommended that you don’t sell any cars until you earn this trophy, then you can do whatever you want with them as long as you have enough cars to compete in each Qualifier and the Grand.

The Collector
Own 10 vehicles in your Lakeshore Online garageThis trophy is the same requirement as #Blessed, but for owning 10 vehicles at once in your Lakeshore Online garage. If you complete everything in Story mode first you’ll automatically have a bunch of cars from winning the Qualifiers/the Grand as well as completing all Activities and Collectibles, which means you’ll earn this trophy immediately.

If you do Online first and want to be optimized and get this out of the way as quick as possible, you will want to not spend any money online until you have a total of $243,000. Once you do this you can buy the Volkswagen Golf GTI (1976) 9 times, which is the cheapest car immediately available immediately at $27,000.

Once you have purchased 9 and earned this trophy you can sell them to get back half of your money. You should then use this to upgrade your online garage (if you do this first you can’t “get back” the money for the garage, meaning you might need to spend extra time to earn more money).

Note there are some cheaper possible cars, but they require completing a large number of races to make available for purchase (for example the Chevrolet C10 Stepside Pickup costs $18,000, but requires finishing 30 Tier B playlists in a Chevrolet so you can finish all the other requirements before you actually have this available to buy).

Hey Speedie!
Reach 200MPH in story modeThis trophy is awarded for reaching a speed of 200 MPH (or 321 KMH if you use metric) while playing in story mode. This is quite a high speed so you won’t be earning this for a while with your starting cars. You can potentially earn it early during the car deliveries from Rydell and Tess when you use a high level car, but if not you’ll be guaranteed to earn this when you are using S or S+ tier cars later one.100 Miles and Runnin’
Drive a total of 100 miles in story modeThis trophy is awarded for driving a total of 100 miles (160 kilometers) during story mode. There isn’t a way to track this, but this is relatively speaking a very small distance for a racing game, so you will be guaranteed to earn this fairly early in the story.Throwing up Tags
Customize your Driving EffectsThis trophy is awarded for customizing your Driving Effects in story or online. These are the visuals that appear around your car during drifts or using nitrous, and customizing them changes the color and visual that appears, along with the sounds in a separate customization setting. You can find these options by going to Rides > Style > Driving Effects while in the garage.Fashion Killa
Customize your clothingThis trophy is awarded for customizing your clothing in story or online. If you customize it while creating your character right at the start this counts, but if you need to do it later you can customize your clothing in the garage by going to Character > Clothing and changing any option.Cool Whip
Apply a custom wrap to your rideThis trophy is awarded for changing the wrap on any of your vehicles in story or online. Wraps consist of all the extra visual pieces you can put on your cars on top of the paint job. You can grab a community-made warp if you like, or just stick some parts on yourself. You can find these options when in the garage by going to Rides > Style > Paint & Wrap.Kick it
Use max Burst Nitrous 5 times during Lakeshore Online eventsThis trophy is awarded for using max Burst Nitrous a total of 5 times during events while playing online. Burst Nitrous is specifically the larger yellow bar on the nitrous meter which fills up from more active actions: drifting, near misses, grip turns, air time, wrecking police vehicles, etc. This bar drains quickly instead of staying like the blue nitrous bar, so you need to keep doing these actions to raise it. You are at “max” when all 3 bars fill up at once and your whole speedometer turns yellow.

If you don’t manage to earn this during normal online play, the easiest way to get max Burst is just by holding + while not moving. This causes you to do a burnout, filling the burst gauge after 5 – 10 seconds.

Drop the Beat
Use max Burst Nitrous 5 times during story mode eventsThe trophy is the exact same requirement as Kick It, just in story mode instead of online. You are basically guaranteed to earn this through normal play during the story.