Traffic Rider Walkthrough (February 2017)

I couldn't find an in-depth Traffic Rider guide on the Internet, so after finishing the game I wanted to provide some advice on the easiest ways to beat it.

The main reason I am posting this is because Career Mode alone doesn't get you through the game and you will get blocked until you can afford bikes with more power, which means you'll be stuck doing repetitive time trials, or more likely, playing endless mode for hours on end. Beating the game took ~3 weeks for me because of that, and since I would not try to buy cash shortcuts by paying with real money.

GAME CURRENCY

There are three types of currency:

CASH ($):

Cash is the main thing that you need in order to advance in the game since it is what you use to purchase and upgrade your bike. If you do the Career Mode alone at the beginning, you will start getting stuck because of a lack of cash rather than a lack of experience. You can get cash on any of the three main game modes (CAREER, ENDLESS, or TIME TRIAL - not FREE RIDE), or by watching ads.

EXPERIENCE:

Experience is also useful for purchasing motorcycles since each motorcycle requires an increasing level of experience. You can get experience by playing on any of the three game modes (CAREER, ENDLESS, or TIME TRIAL - not FREE RIDE).

GOLD (G):

Unless you end up making a purchase with real money, gold is really only useful for giving you more time ("lives") to beat missions by extending +15 seconds per life. You can earn gold by watching the first ad each day (the second ad and forward give you cash only), by leveling up, or by going back to easier missions with an upgraded bike and getting the bonus reward. You're probably going to want to save gold for the later game when gold becomes more scarce. Even at the high levels 50+, you will only get around 6 G after leveling up.

WALKTHROUGH

To beat the game as fast as possible, you only need to be concerned about CAREER MODE and ENDLESS MODE.

CAREER MODE:

Career mode is the most efficient way to get experience, gold, and cash. This is going to be your main boost through the game and you will want to supplement that by playing on ENDLESS mode - which may get monotonous but it's the best way to beat the game. 

After beating each mission, you will get an XP and cash reward far greater than you could earn on any of the other modes. At the final levels, you'll be rewarded close to 100,000 cash after each completed mission. The XP reward is also relatively high so you could be leveling up almost once per completed mission, which will lead you to getting even more gold and cash rewards.

You should try to avoid buying new motorcycles as much as possible and play hard missions even when an upgrade is recommended, until the game blocks you with "THIS MISSION IS IMPOSSIBLE" (which is not true, those missions are totally beatable with bad motorcycles - especially the overtaking ones - but it forces you to upgrade your motorcycle). When you get stuck on CAREER MODE, then it is time to buy a new motorcycle. Once you are able to purchase a 150+ power motorcycle such as the SK 1200 for a couple hundred thousand cash, you can use that to play ENDLESS MODE in a loop enough times to afford the TOMA, which will get you through the rest of CAREER MODE and allow you to finish the game.

As I mentioned, the main problem with the game, and the reason I felt compelled to post this guide is that the game does not let you advance by playing CAREER MODE alone, since the money you get from beating each mission is not enough to buy you motorcycle upgrades that would allow you to play the subsequent missions. Once you play the first few missions, you will find yourself stuck on CAREER MODE ("This mission is impossible") with no cash, and you will need to resort to ENDLESS MODE. To aggravate things more, not only do missions give you very little cash, but each subsequent mission usually requires 5+ power over the previous mission, so you will find yourself constantly buying new motorcycles and only able to play a couple of missions. Instead, what you want to do is save up for the TOMA by playing ENDLESS MODE repeatedly with a less powerful motorcycle and then beat CAREER MODE all in one go, unless you want to spend a year playing the game.

ENDLESS MODE - TWO WAY - WITH MANY COMBO CLOSE OVERTAKES:

This is the best way to get experience besides career mode. For this you need to choose ENDLESS mode on two way, and overtake cars on the opposing lane in combo. The great thing about combos is that they will increment and give you an increasing amount of experience each time. So on one way mode, overtaking one car gives you +100XP, the second in combo will then be +200XP, the third will be +300XP, and so on. Even better, if you play two way mode, and go on the opposing lane, overtaking cars will get you X3 XP, so +300XP, +600XP, +900XP, etc.. One step ahead is to combine that with wheelies,, which will give you 2X XP (combining that with opposing lane, you could get 6X, +600XP, +1200XP, +1800XP, etc..), but I find that this is dangerous - if you're skilled you might be able to pull it off. One small caveat is that speed matters here, so the amount of XP that you get will be capped by how fast you are travelling, thus, by which motorcycle you are driving. On the initial motorcycle, at top speeds, your earned XP per combo overtake will not increase to over a maximum of around +560XP, however, on the faster bikes, you will be able to get over +10,000 XP per overtake.

ENDLESS MODE - ON NIGHT MAPS:

Playing the night maps on ENDLESS MODE will get you an additional 30% cash, which I fond useful when I was trying to save up for the TOMA motorcycle. ENDLESS MODE night maps are the fastest way to earn cash besides CAREER MODE or watching ads.

WATCHING ADS, BONUSES, AND EXPLOIT:

Exploit (still works on February 2017): On the home screen, there is a present box icon. Pressing it will lead you to a screen where you can get bonus cash and gold. Strangely, the game will not verify if you actually went through the registration process on FACEBOOK, TWITTER, and YOUTUBE, which means that just tapping these three buttons will get you bonus gold without you having to do anything at all. You can just tap these three buttons and then return to Traffic Rider and you will be rewarded a bonus. Having said that, don't let that stop you from showing some love to the developers by liking their social media pages - the app is really great.

You may also want to watch ads each day. The first ad each day will give you 2 gold. The rest will give you 500 cash each. Each of these ads last 30 seconds approximately and cannot be skipped. You will be able to watch a limited number of ads per day.

MISCELLANEOUS TIPS AND HINTS:

Note that, if you have a back button on your phone, you will be able to use press that key to skip any popup ads (except the ones for 500 cash).

TIME TRIAL MODE is mostly useless since you can already play continuously on ENDLESS MODE. TIME TRIAL mode does not seem to offer any great or special materialistic rewards that ENDLESS MODE doesn't already have.

I am not completely sure about this, but the speed of cars generated by the game seems to be relative to the current speed that you are currently riding at as well as your motorcycle type. This means that if you want to slow down the game, and overtake cars quickly, you may want to be patient at the beginning and not accelerate, and more cars will populate. Note that there is always traffic in the game (hence the name "Traffic Rider"): if the traffic were too slow, users would not be able to properly stop and dodge incoming traffic - similarly, if the traffic were moving at similar speeds as your motorcycle, it would also not be as fun because overtakes would be more difficult.

There used to be an exploit where you could align your motorcycle to the right of the road and have the game play itself, but this was patched in one of the updates, so chances are that you will not be able to do this anymore unless you have an old version of the game. This trick relied on the fact that you could fit the motorcycle in between the highway rail and the vehicles. After the update, the dimensions of vehicles were enlarged to prevent this.

SPOILERS

Once you beat the first island map, a second island map will open up (looks like the UK), and once you get to the bottom of this island, a third (hidden) island will open up with a few additional missions.