As an active runner of Sonic Racing CrossWorlds on the PlayStation 5. I came across a hacked leaderboard entry that de-ranked one of my friends who worked hard to earn that rank. Me and a friend watched the run via share-screen and we are both adamant that the run is manipulated.

His replay data shows he is running both the Speed Machine Kit and the Boost Machine Kit which both takes up 3 slots each to reach the maximum 6 slots allowed. During his run he was able to perform faster air tricks and air trick bounty whilst his kits remained active. So to me and my friend the time is clearly illegitimate.

I created a video showcasing my lap 1 and his lap 1 via the in-game's replay data. Granted replay ghost can be glitched and are not 100% reliable. Can anyone shed some light whether it's cheated or not for posterity. I filled a ticket in to try and get his time removed does anyone have any success or experience with this? Thanks!

Hi!

So an important thing to note about "Kit" gadgets is that they come with the abilities of regular gadgets as well as a small modifier to stats, so an example would be Drift Charge Kit coming with Quick Charge Level 1 + 2 (but not Level 3) along with +3 to your Handling stat.

The instance of the run you're referring to is using Speed Machine Kit and Boost Character Kit and it's similar to what I'm describing. Here's what those gadget kits come with:

Speed Machine Kit has Mini Ring Boost and Ring Range Up with a modifier of +20 to Speed and -16 to Accel when using a Speed Vehicle (which this run is doing so the modifier is applied).

Boost Character Kit has Air Trick Expert and Air Trick Bounty with a modifier of +7 to Boost and -5 to Power when playing as a Boost Character (modifiers not applied in this case but the main Air Trick gadget effects still apply).

For extra reference of the ins and outs of gadgets in the game, here's a link to a google doc you might find useful:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_B2mHZUP6J6jeZfcwbM2HkLvjkwMYuACE4l6Ktt-UkI/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Hope this helps!

Appreciate the information that will be very helpful moving forward. To clarify running say Level 2 quick drift and drift charge kit is a wasted slot, since drift kit has drift charge level 2 built in?

Most gadgets can be stacked together to make them stronger, which includes quick charges. In this specific case the difference is pretty insignificant so it’s not really worth doing, because it already charges very fast.

Sometimes since it can depend on the meta for certain tracks but in most cases it makes more sense to run something else like QC Lvl 3 if you're also running Drift Kit. I'd especially say this is true if you're running a similar build in a full game speedrun.

For a track like Colorful Mall I'm guessing Mini Ring Boost (1 slot version) would shave off more time than if I ran drift charge kit, drift charge level 2, runoff bounty, and starting bounty (30 rings). Since I gain acceleration? What exactly does driving speed mean? You mean I go from 250 to 257 top speed?

Yeah I believe that's what it means, though the buff is very brief.

For some tracks like Colourful Mall I think it's more optimal to try to build up to 100 rings as fast as possible.