SSX (2012)

Basics

Boost

Boosting along the ground is almost always faster than being airborne. You can't boost in the air; stay grounded as much as possible.

Your main goal in each stage is to get a full boost meter in the least intrusive way possible so you have the maximum potential speed through the course. Performing tricks fills your boost meter; If you fill your boost bar completely you'll gain "Tricky" state and infinite boost for as long as you keep Tricky.

Tricky will eventually dissipate if you stop doing tricks for a substantial period of time. so plan when and where to gain and lose Tricky so you waste the least amount of time getting it back.

Tricky Management

You can move from regular Tricky to "Super Tricky" by doing a few more tricks. Doing so refreshes Tricky state, giving you a fresh timer for your infinite boost. Tricky caps out at "Super Tricky" and can't be filled any further though, only maintained or fully lost from that point on. Move from Tricky to Super Tricky when doing otherwise would mean losing Tricky altogether.

Plan your routes to let Tricky expire just before unskippable jumps. That way there isn't any wasted time renewing it by going out of your way for a different jump or rail, as you have to take the jump either way. You'll always get a small portion of the boost bar back for immediate use after Tricky expires, use that to link to your next Tricky.

Remember: you don't have to fill the bar all the way to Tricky every time, as long as you aren't going to run entirely out of boost. It can be beneficial to simply gain a portion of the boost bar in order to fill it to Tricky at a more strategic time later. The same goes for Super Tricky.

Extending Super Tricky

As long as you're still doing tricks periodically you can extend the duration of Super Tricky indefinitely, though doing so usually means going slower overall than letting Tricky expire fully and renewing it with one large trick (due to time taken out for multiple consecutive jumps).

Importantly, you can't lose Tricky while still actively doing a trick. This leads to two major ways of extending Tricky through difficult sections or through patches of course that would otherwise be prohibitive to regain Tricky in:

Board Presses
By holding X/Square or B/Circle while traveling on the ground you can perform a nose or tail press with your board that counts as a trick and can significantly extend the time it takes for Tricky to expire (though it will still eventually expire if you do nothing else). This is a great way of extending Tricky state through flat portions of ground or eeking out an extra second or two to tide you over until the next convenient jump. Beware however as doing a board press will slow your speed by ~20km or more and make it harder to turn, so don't extend Tricky through board presses alone for entire runs.

Rail Grinds
In some sections it can be convenient to hop on a long section of rail or grindable terrain to extend the length of Tricky. No matter the level of Tricky you have it will be maintained as long as you continue to grind, allowing you to boost freely through the entire rail section. You also get a significant point score for doing tricks on the rail which often refreshes Tricky at the point you exit the rail, letting you carry Tricky even further with you. Be aware though that the average boosting rail speeds cap slightly lower than land speeds, usually ~150km. (Hopping on a rail can increase your speed if you find yourself boostless, as the speed you travel on a rail with no boost is usually higher than the speed of having no boost on snow.)

Keeping Speed

Hold forward on the stick whenever possible to give your rider a significant speed boost (~25km); they'll tuck in and pull their arms down making them faster but also slightly harder to turn. Maintain this position whenever possible.

Do whatever you can to avoid being sent airborne: seek the lines that will let you maintain your forward lean and not lose it to minor bumps or jumps. It can be worth your time to ride up on slopes and walls parallel to you in order to skip over smaller bumps and ramps so you can maintain boost.

Never actively jump off of a ramp if you don't need to, it will only give you more hangtime. Learn which ramps you can gain enough boost from by simply doing tricks while falling from them instead.

If you cannot skip a ramp but don't need additional boost from it, do your best to bunny hop over it. You usually can't hop over entire ramps, but you can minimize air time by timing your jump so you clear the tip of the ramp at the apex of your bunny hop. This will minimize time spent on unwanted ramps even further.

Be sparing with your wingsuit unless you're using it for a substantial skip. At the level of gear you normally have during an any% run the wingsuit's airspeed will be substantially lower than your land speed. You might see old individual track attempts on Youtube that heavily utilize a high gear level wingsuit, but they've long since been patched to be less effective at skipping large sections of track.

Tricks

All tricks are worth a certain amount of points based on how long you hold a trick, what type of trick you did, and whether you did any rotations or flips during the trick. The more points a trick is worth the more boost it earns you (or if in Tricky state, it helps stop Tricky from expiring).

Tricks aren't all worth the same amount however and there appears to be three different point categories tricks can be a part of:

• Basic one button tricks (i.e. Press X and hold)
• Two button grabs (i.e. Press X and move to holding Y)
• and character Signature Tricks (Hold the triggers and any grab button)

Two button grabs give roughly 1.5x the points, and thus 1.5x the boost but take that much longer to perform and finish safely. Signature Tricks give roughly 1.75-2x the points and take proportionally longer to successfully pull off. (though in some cases Signature Tricks can be more in the 1.5x region, it's still being tested)

Usually this difference in trick points and timing is minor enough to not be a concern, but on occasion it can mean the difference between gaining Tricky off a jump and leaving your boost meter only very close to being full. Use the small differences in these tricks' scoring to better manage your Tricky state on the fly, and fill your Tricky bar that much quicker at the beginning of stages.

Note: Flips earn you more points than spins as they're considered less safe/harder to land. You should be doing front flips most of the time regardless though as you should be holding up for the majority of the run, priming you for front flips on most jumps you take.

Trick Events

The scores the AI characters get are fixed to 2-3 possible scores each, but which score they get each time you compete is semi-random. You can tell which score out of their potential score sets an AI is going to get on a run by watching which route they take to complete the course; resetting the race will re-pick their end score/route pattern for the run (though they could always get the same score/route over again). Plan your own needed route (or reset) appropriately.

Remember, you don't need to win an event with four participants to move on in an any% run: you only have to score third or better. You will have to fully win every 1 on 1 encounter however.

In competitions where it's hard to get enough score with the fastest route it can be beneficial to keep Tricky until the very end simply for the multiplier boost it can give and see if that is enough to squeak by. Otherwise you'll have to start adding extra jumps and rails to your route.

Gear

Shops

The items you see in the shops are all randomly generated and equal in level to the character you're browsing the shop with. The stock of items at a particular location won't change until you've moved your attention to a new location (you just have to select the drop, you don't have to compete in it or look at the shop there necessarily). Characters of the same level will see the same equipment for a location.

In theory equipment is more valuable the longer you expect to be using a character. This means any character with particularly long courses and/or Zoe make the best use of gear: as she makes an appearance once for the start of each region as well as having the first region all to herself (+the final race).

Equipment

Boards
As you'd expect, buying any board with substantially better Speed or Boost stats is desirable during your run. Which it should have more of can be determined on a character basis, but usually it doesn't matter as long as the board has higher overall stats than a character's default board.

It's not worth even looking at the shop's offering of boards until a character is level 3-4+, as any board below that will be strictly worse than your default board. Even then it may be time wasted if a substantial improvement isn't found.

Suits
It's usually not worth looking at suits, but they can offer benefits like increased boost or lengthened tricky time. Buy them if you find them, but they usually don't offer anything but cosmetic differences until character levels higher than you'll find most of the cast at when you finish your run.

Special Equipment

Ice Axes
Despite what it might look like, turning with the aid of an ice axe does not slow you any more than turning without one would. Feel free to make use of them wherever needed in a run (Siberia).

Wingsuits
For the most part this is the only piece of special equipment you can argue you should get for every single character. You can start buying them from stores as soon as you finish Patagonia, so theoretically you can have access to them for every region except the Rockies.

Wingsuits are only as beneficial as the time they save, so it may not be necessary for every single character to purchase one (level 1 wingsuits can be like having no wingsuit at all in some cases). Research is still being done into when and where wingsuits save time over a land route. Sadly many of the most extreme shortcuts and a wingsuit exploiting glitch have been patched out, but many intentional and unintentional wingsuit skips still exist.

A wingsuit's use-meter refreshes upon touching solid ground, even if that ground isn't a normal part of the track. Abuse this to leapfrog from one outcrop to the next during skips to minimize slow "wingsuit depletion" fall times.

Headlamps
If you find yourself lost in the dark, prioritize a headlamp with high brightness and beam size (battery life should never be a problem). You shouldn't need to buy any headlamps though.

All Other Equipment
The character specific special equipment should suffice for all other situations.

General Tips

Aerial Tutorial Skip

The trigger for completing the Aerial tutorial section is simply leaving the tutorial. Just pause and quit as soon as you can to skip it.

Ground Tutorial

The ability to gain boost isn't activated until you come to the second set of rails (even though this isn't the location where they tell you how to use boost). Don't bother doing anything but staying low and fast until then.

The ground tutorial is unique in that it's the only stage where Tricky never expires once obtained. Get it as soon as possible and do nothing but boost until the finish.

Skeleton/Louge Glitch

For whatever reason performing the rail grinding trick mapped to Y/Triangle while in Super Tricky noticeably lowers your speed, even while boosting. Presumably this is a minor bug, as no other grind tricks behave this way (as of yet seen). Either way avoid using it.