A Wild Drivatar Appears!

Unlocking the Achievement - A Wild Drivatar Appears

A Wild Drivatar Appears! -- Actually not so wild - and they are usually not unknown to you!

You see, the Head-to-Head racing system is generally made up of a player-based Drivatar recognition system that takes the Drivatar files - mostly for people who are either on your Friends List or who you have raced before in one of the Forza games - and it presents the opportunity for you to race them again.

The background details and finer points are not something that Turn 10 has made public, but based upon our very extensive experience in the game there are some elements that we feel confident that we can discuss.

Drivatar and Car Selection

The Cars that are used for these encounters appear to be purely random. What I mean by that is that there does not appear to be any actual relation between what car you happen to be driving, and the car that the bounty Drivatar is driving. That is what you call a good thing and a bad thing.

It is good because they tend to offer a wide variety of challenges. The bad is that depending on the car you are in when you have the encounter, you may not have even the barest of competitive chances.

For example when this Achievement was first suggested as an activity by the game I was driving the 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 302 - which on a good day may be useful for very short very straight street racing but for the most part as a competitive vehicle is usually restricted to quarter and half-mile sprint races in controlled environments that do not include lots of curves and civilian traffic!

With that in mind you might be thinking that I was pretty much screwed - and you are not far from wrong.

The first head-to-head bounty race I ran was against a Drivatar that was ostensibly from my Friends List, who was driving a late model Corvette, and they pretty much mopped the floor with me.

I did not stand a chance and considering that the races for this mode are little more than 3-mile stretches of standard city and country roads, that is saying something. But that does not mean that facing the right car I was out of the running.

The second race I chose to engage for the bounty-based head-to-head was against another person from my friends list - or rather the Drivatar of that person - who happened to be behind the wheel of the 1949 Mercury Coupe - and I was in the 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 302 - and it was a match made in heaven (at least from my PoV).

Yeah, I mopped the floor with them for a nice change.

That said, if I were seriously looking to unlock this Achievement - which means out there hunting these bounty Drivatars - there are several things I would do... And I am going to share them with you because, I suspect, a lot of you will be looking to nail down the Achievement.

Rule #1 -- Thou Shalt Not Hunt Bounty Drivatars.

OK, I do not actually expect you to pay any attention to this rule, but it needs to be said anyway because of the perverse nature of this particular Achievement.

The facts are that the game randomly inserts Bounty Drivatars. Sometimes you get lucky and the spawn happens within range of your radar map, and so Anna tells you - and when that happens sometimes you get lucky and the newly spawned BD is in a car you have a chance of beating without having to cheat too much.

When all of that comes together, well then you have yourself a race! But you should really look at this as a casual opportunity. In fact when you do treat it that way it seems like you get a BD around every corner.

Ah, but go looking for them and there are none to be found. Like I said, the game has a perverse sense of humor.

That said there are some stipulations you need to be aware of. Call it the rules of hunting for Bounty Drivatars if you like.

Rule #2 -- Thou Shalt Not Be In A Supercar.

For some reason when you are in a car that the game considers too powerful - examples of which include the 1967 Ferrari 330 P4 or the 1997 Lamborghini Diablo SV, the game will not insert Bounty Drivatars into play. Put simply, you can choose to drive this type of car but you won't be doing so against Bounty Drivatars.

Rule #3 -- Thou Shalt Unlock the Bounty Hunter Perk

This Perk is very similar to the Paparazzi Perk in that like that one, which puts a camera icon above any car that is on the list for Horizon Promo and that you have yet to photograph, it makes it easier to spot.

The Bounty Hunter Perk does the same thing with Bounty Drivatars. Now you might not think that is all that big a deal - after all Anna tells you when there is a Bounty Drivatar present, right? Well, not so much really...

Anna will tell you when a Bounty Drivatar happens to spawn into the game within a certain range of your car - but if the Bounty Drivatar entered the game outside of that range, she does not say word one. Which means unless you spot the icon on the radar map, it will largely go unnoticed.

Your odds of spotting it increase significantly however when the Bounty Icon is actually placed above the car and driver's name... In that case you see then coming and going and so your chances of getting a race more than double. So this is one Perk you really want to unlock as soon as you get the Bounty Drivatar fever...

Picking Your Ride

Obviously you go with what you are most comfortable with, and the car that will have the best features in terms of sticking to the road, turning, and speed.

Ironically the two Cars that I ended up using to unlock this Achievement were the Ford Mustang Boss 302 and the BMW M5. Basically those were the two whips I was using for the campaign championship races. Nothing special in other words.

But I got lucky and faced Cars I could actually beat driving them, and so I unlocked the Achievement. There is something to be said for luck - but when you do not have it, cheat!

The Achievement Requirements

To unlock the Achievement -- A Wild Drivatar Appears! (10G) Win 3 Head-to-Head Races against Drivatars with a Bounty on them -- all you need to do is find the Bounty Drivatars and then beat them. Heh.

As previously mentioned, the Bounty Hunter Perk will be a major asset in this quest - as will being in a car you are comfortable driving fast, on urban roads. That really is all that there is to it...

But Cheating Helps

Yes, I said Cheating Helps. Watch the embedded video and you will see that I cheated to unlock this one. I did not cut corners, or skip ahead by driving between roads - those are legitimate cheats mind you. What I did was outright used the game physics and a minor effect against the BD.

In FH2 if you trade paint with a competitor the game does this really odd thing - it causes the competitor's car to downshift. That causes it to temporarily slow down.

All you have to do is bump them - or swipe the side of their car - any action that will normally trigger the Trade Paint Skill Point event will suffice. The BD will then downshift, and slow down considerably, giving you the opportunity to shoot ahead.

If you keep an eye out for them in your rear-view mirror you can use this tactic to prevent them from passing you on relatively narow roads like those found in the hills. Now, I am not telling you to cheat - all I am doing is pointing out that you can force the BD to drive slower temporarily by trading paint with it.

So hey, good luck! Cheers!