DiRT Rally 2.0 – Beginner’s Guide and Gameplay Tips

LHD / RHD

 
Get used to driving on the left hand side, don’t then try driving RHD vehicles (Mini Cooper, Ford Escort Mk II, Mitsubishi Lancer Group A) It will only screw you up… 
 
 

Screen Aids

 
Turn off all on screen aids, listen to the co-driver (but set Phil Mills to make the calls a little earlier than normal, note Scotland wont make a difference as the notes can’t keep up!!), with all the on screen gubbings disabled you’ll learn to start paying attention to what’s around you and build up a mental image of the track ahead. 
 
There’s still a couple of bugs that haven’t been ironed out where one or two calls are wrong. Also if your calls aren’t set early enough and your mid-air when you hear “caution, into 1 left” only to realise you’d need air breaks to stop in time… 
 
The only on screen help I have turned back on is thestage progress Indicator, helpful if you get a puncture, you can then make a call if it’s worth changing the tyre or limping to the end of the stage to not take a penalty. 
 
 

Manual Gears Is Best

 
If you can drive Manual Sequential do it. At first it’ll take a little getting used to and add complexity but after a couple of hours it’s second nature and simple. 
 
The major benefit here is that if you use the gear to corner number declared you will find you’re doing an appropriate speed, if you drive automatic you’ll not really have easy judgement on slowing down for sharper turns as easy. 
 
H-Pattern manual with clutch is good for immersion and great fun but overall is slower to play with, a long stage you’ll see a deficit of 5 seconds or more. 
 
 

Choose a Car You Like

 
Find a car you want to drive, get used to it. Find a track you like and are competent at it. Put that Car and Track combo on Time Trial and try and keep beating your time until you can not better it. Now go to YouTube and find a set of videos for vehicle tuning in Dirt Rally 2.0 by GTR Technical, apply and save these settings to your car and try your time trial again… 
 

 
The above video was after playing on the PC in VR for a week or so, my previous best time on the Xbox One was 3:03 so with more practice (and maybe VR!) I got this down to 2:47. 
 

 
With even more practive and plenty of hours mastering other car classes I retried this stage in a Group B Peugeot 205 T16 Evo 2 – The result was a 2:41 – Practice, Practice, Practice!! 
 
Faster yes #YourWelcome ;0) Just to note every time you reload the game you will have to go back to tuning and load the tune you require, which also makes sense to name then accordingly when you save the tune. 
 
If you play in VR apply the settings in normal mode, as its much easier! 
 
 

Easiest Cars To Drive

 
I find the cars that are Up to 2000cc / R5 series, 4 Wheel Drives best to learn to drive. This is likely subjective, slower cars can be tedious and not have the power to get you out of trouble either. Also 2 Wheel drive cars will have under-steer and this is tough to cope with at first. 
 
Powerful but good to learn handling without too much difficulty. Front Wheel drive vehicles are terrible to hand brake turn properly, Rear wheel drive vehicles tricky to get used to at first. I’d also recommend a compact type car that’s not too lengthy and doesn’t have a boot overhanging the back wheels much, sliding around corners is great but catch the boot and your going to crash. Citroen C4, Modern Subaru Impreza, Skoda Fabia R5 all pretty good. 
 
 

Steering Wheel Settings – Softlock

 
Set your Softlock to On in the settings and also only have your wheel set to 540° of rotation. Don’t have the force feedback cranked up too high, enough to feel it but not break your wrist in a crash. Rally cars are not about heavy steering. 
 
 

Tarmac Stages

 
Tarmac is rubbish for handling, gravel and dirt tracks even snow is great but tarmac is weird to drive on and accurate handling not quite there imho… Some of the faster rear wheel drive cars car be fin in Ribadelles – Spain but the feel I just don’t like compared to the rest of the game. 
 
 

Handbrake Turns vs Scandinavian Flick

 
If you have space, an analog handbrake adds to the immersion and makes driving a lot easier… Launching and hand break turns. However don’t be pulling this to harsh, you only need a little pull to get the back end moving. Once you master the art of handbrake turns you’ll be on the right track to gaining good stage times, however don’t over use it. Don’t go ploughing into the turn too fast, slow and smooth, put the front correct side of the bonnet to almost touch the post or apex you want to get around, the closer you are to the apex of the turn the less room you need to make the turn and you’ll be quicker through the hairpin for instance. 
 
Learn how to perform a Scandinavian flick, this will keep the speed of the vehicle whilst moving the weight to the opposite side of the vehicle before throwing back to gain the objective. 
 
 

Keep Calm & Rally On!

 
Overall remain calm, play the game with a clear mind – if you try playing and you have lots of things in your head it’ll be a disaster! 
 
Smart watch off, phone out of pocket and on mute, any small distractions lead to crashes. If something isn’t working that normally does just walk away and come back to it after a break. 
 
Should you have a crash, forget about it immediately and don’t try to make up time for the crash, you’ll have another and be even slower to get to the finish! 
 
 

VR Tip for Performance

 
If you have a FPS counter – FPSVR for instance to make sure the settings you’re running is giving you consistent 80+ FPS, you don’t want to get motion sickness, set the settings o that you are getting good frame rates. 
 
1080Ti should be able to run SuperSampling at 130% with many settings at High in Game. Disable mirrors and crowd for the extra headroom in VR. The Crowd does take some high processing from what I hear but there are two negatives to disabling this, firstly seeing random BBQ’s and cool boxes in a stage. Is a tad random and if you come off the track, you’ll sometimes find you got reset on. The track and received a penalty. You just ran over some poor dude! Learn to stay on the track and this won’t really apply. 
 

This is all about DiRT Rally 2.0 – Beginner’s Guide and Gameplay Tips; I hope you enjoy reading the Guide! If you feel like we should add more information or we forget/mistake, please let us know via commenting below, and thanks! See you soon!