The Crew

Introduction
This achievement requires you to get 500 Gold medals on the Skills activities within the game. It’s important to note that they must be different skills and that you can’t just get Gold on the same skill 500 times. It is a bit of a daunting achievement however there are certainly strategies that can make it less painful and, for those who like a challenge, even a bit enjoyable!

Skills Overview
There are 573 skills in the game split into 7 categories:

• Jumps – 39 skills
• Speed – 114 skills
• Escape – 48 skills
• Hill Climb – 44 skills
• Precision – 92 skills
• Race-Line – 102 skills
• Scramble – 68 skills
• Slalom – 66 skills
• Total: 573 skills

So the very first thing to note is that you don’t have to do every skill on the map and that you have a budget of 73 skills that, if you don’t like them or just get too frustrated by them, you can leave them alone.

Important Things to Note
• For each skill there will be a ‘Gold Ghost’ doing the event alongside you and showing you roughly where you are in relation to where you need to be if you want to earn gold. The ghost is represented by a see-through car. If you’re not seeing a Ghost when you do a skill then you need to open the world map, select the skill and then select the ‘Ghost’ option on the menu. You will then be able to specifically choose the Gold ghost so that it appears in the skill.
• You are not penalised for over-performing. So any skills on which you get a Platinum medal will also count towards your ‘500 Gold Total’
• With the exception of Jumps, all skills can be done in both directions, based on which side of the Skill gate you drive through. In some cases it is easier to drive through the gate in the opposite direction to the one the game will place you at after fast travelling – or to the one you see the Gold Ghost take. Examples of this are:

Getting Prepared Part 1: Cars and Levels
To get the 500 gold medals you will need to do a lot of preparation work, including:

• Reaching Player Level 50 so that you unlock platinum parts for your cars.
• Winning enough platinum parts so that you can substantially upgrade your cars.
• Tuning each of a Street, Raid, Performance, Circuit and Dirt car to at least level 1200 – but the higher the better.

You can see some guidance on upgrading cars to their max 1299 level here:


Getting Prepared Part 2: Perk Points
To help make the skills easier you should have the following perks completely maxed out:

• On a Dime – Zoe – 5 Points – Increases your cars braking.
• Like a Glove – Omar – 5 Points – Increases your cars handling
• Light the fires – Alita – 10 points – Increase your nitrous boost.
• Shifting Gears – Roxanne – 5 points – Increases your acceleration
• Redline – Vincent – 5 points – Increases your speed.
• Highly Skilled – 5 points – increases your skill scoring.

That final perk should hopefully grab your attention. Fully upgraded, the Highly Skilled perk will mean that you earn points in Skills 30% faster. Crucially, this means that you often will not need to beat the ‘Gold’ ghost that you see racing along the track because you’ll actually be accumulating points at a faster rate than the gold ghost did. Of course it’s best to beat the Gold ghost, but very often you’ll simply have to get close to it in order to secure Gold.

If you’ve spent your perk points and don’t have the perks listed above you can always select the ‘Reset Points’ option, which allows you to reassign all of your perk points at a small cost.

Method of Approach
It’s quite daunting to see 573 icons on your game map so the approach I took was to do one skill type at a time. This meant that I got familiar with how that skill worked and what sort of driving I needed to do, and also kept the volume of tasks ahead of me from feeling too imposing.

On the Map, press RB to scroll to SKILLS, then pressed ‘X’ to bring-up the filters. There are 3 types of lifter:

• Status: All, Done, Undone (i.e. you haven’t played that skill yet)
• Medal: None, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum
• Type: Speed, Escape, Uphill Climb, Precision, Race-line, Scramble, Slalom

An example of the approach I took is:

• Set the filters as: Status: All. Medal: All: Type: Escape
• I then played every Escape skill, starting in Midwest, then East Cost, then South, then Mountains, then West Coast.
• I attempted each skill 5 times then moved on if I didn’t already have Gold/Platinum.
• Once I had attempted each skill I then changed the ‘Medal’ filter to be bronze. This meant that only the Escape skills on which I had earned a bronze medal displayed on the map.
• I then went through and continuously did each Escape skill on which I had only earned a bronze until it was Gold or Platinum.
• I then changed the ‘Medal’ filter to be silver. This meant that only the Escape skills on which I had earned a silver medal displayed on the map.
• I then went through and continuously did each Escape skill on which I had only earned a silver until it was Gold or Platinum.

That then meant that the whole of ‘Escape’ was done and I could move on to the next skill and repeat the above steps. Long winded perhaps, but thorough and easily manageable.

The next section will now look at each of the Skill types in turn and the ways in which to secure a Gold medal.

Guide to Skills Part 1: Jumps
[u[Difficulty: 2/5
Total Skills: 92
Best Car Spec: Performance / Circuit for Asphalt jumps and Dirt for off road jumps.
Recommend Car Level: At least 1180 for the really tricky jumps.

The jumps are the quickest skills and the easiest to do. All of them require you to drive through the skill gate, build up as much speed as you can, hit a ramp and clear as much distance as you can. Performance or Circuit cars are best for most of the Jump skills in Midwest, North East and South, while Dirt cars will be needed for any off-road specific jumps and almost all of the ones in the Mountains and West Coast.

Tips for getting a Gold Medal:
• Drive through the skill starting gate and time the use of your nitros boost so that it expires just as you’re on the ramp itself, ensuring that you have maximum speed and momentum at take off.
• Try to remain straight at all times. For jumps that have the ramps off centre and requiring left/right steering, make the steer at the last possible moment.
• If you’re struggling to clear Gold then consider reversing further away from the Skill Start Gate before hitting the accelerator, so that you start the skill with a faster speed.
• Select your car based upon the terrain closest to the jump. For example, some Jump Skills might start you out on Asphalt – making you think to choose a Performance car maybe. However the last 150 yards before the jump ramp may in-fact be on a Dirt road on which anything other than a Dirt vehicle will lose all of its momentum.

Guide to Skills Part 2: Escape
Difficulty: 2/5
Total Skills: 92
Best Car: Performance / Circuit for Asphalt and Raid for off road.
Recommend Car Level: At least 1206

These skills require you to get as far away from the skill starting gate as possible within the time permitted. You can travel in any direction you wish and over any terrain; you just need to stay ahead of an ever expanding Red circle that is rippling out from the Skill Start Gate. The skill will end when either the time runs out or the red circle catches up with you.

This skill is largely about speed, so I recommend a highly tuned performance or circuit car for all road based skills. For the offroad ones I recommend a Raid car. As you’re going for pure speed you’ll likely be a bit reckless and so you’ll want to be able to hit walls and trees without bouncing off them or entering the crash cam. A highly tuned Raid will give you that room for error.

Tips for getting a Gold Medal:
• Before driving through the start gate to start the skill, bring up the map and zoom in on the local area to see what sort of roads and pathways are near-by and pick out a route.
• Get on to a straight road as soon as you can.
• Don’t waste your nitros boost right at the start. The red circle expands slowly to begin with and speeds up as time passes, so your nitros will be more valuable the later it is used.
• Try to head in as straight a direction as possible with minimal turning.
• The Gold Ghost often chooses a very good path of least resistance in this skill so pay attention to it and follow it if your own paths aren’t working out.

Guide to Skills Part 3: Speed
Difficulty: 2/5
Total Skills: 110
Best Car: Performance / Circuit cars only.
Recommend Car Level: At least 1206

Similar to Escape, Speed skills require you to drive away from a starting point as fast as possible. The difference is that you accumulate points based upon how many meters of Road you have driven on in the time permitted. Any time spent driving offroad earns no points in this skill, which is why it’s vital to have good handling and to be good at braking – otherwise you’ll hit corners fast and earn no points by going offroad while tackling a short corner.

Another consideration is that this skill features a multiplier. The longer you stay on the road the higher your score multiplier – i.e. 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 etc. - which can make a big difference as to which medal you earn. Note however, that a single split second offroad resets your score multiplier to 0.

For almost all of these skills the Gold medal follows very quickly behind the Silver medal. Most of the skills in Midwest and North East use straight roads, however many in the South and the Mountains throw lots of bends and traffic at you and so are more challenging and warrant the use of a highly tuned circuit car.

Tips for getting Gold Medals:
• Brake. It is far, far, far better to slow down and brake to a snails pace while taking a corner if it means staying on the road and preserving your score multiplier.
• If you’ve got the ‘Highly Skilled’ perk maxed out, this is a good example of a skill in which you won’t need to beat the Gold Ghost, just stay close to it. Therefore don’t feel the need to take mad risks to get ahead.
• Find a straight road as quickly as you can.

Guide to Skills Part 4: Scramble
Difficulty: 4/5
Total Skills: 48
Best Car: Raid cars only.
Recommend Car Level: At least 1220

These skills present you with a series of targets that you must smash your way through while driving along. The targets are arranged in winding patterns that frequently go offroad, onroad, offroad, onroad. As such, Raid cars are by far the best spec for these skills.

At the top of each target is a scoring value that’s counting down. Scoring is based upon how quickly you smash through each target. If you drive through the target while it still has 300 points left, you’ll get 300 points added to your total, however, if you were slow and drove through the target when it only had 270 points left, then 270 points is all that gets added to your total.

The timing is pretty generous in this skill but you must keep up a good speed to earn as many points as possible when hitting each target. Rarely will you need a perfect run hitting every target. I would often miss 2 and still be fine. Any more than 2 however and I would often be left with silver.

Tips for getting Gold Medals:
• The initial targets are usually right in front of you, so fire nitruos straight away so that you smash through them with maximum points and start building up a big score early.
• After that, ease up on nitruos as you’ll often be going offroad on bumpy services and hitting a bump at too high a speed can significantly throw you off track.
• Don’t be afraid to smash obstacles. You should be using a raid car and therefore able to smash through fences to get to the next target rather than driving around them.

Guide to Skills Part 5: Hill Climb
Difficulty: 1/5
Total Skills: 48
Best Car: Raid cars.
Recommend Car Level: At least 1200

These Skills start you at the base of a hill and challenge you to get to the top as quickly as you can. You score points via two ways: 1) How much time is left on the clock when you arrive at the summit of the hill; 2) How many bonus point rings you drive through along the way.

When the skill starts you need to start heading uphill as quickly as you can. As you go you will see a collection of bonus rings appear up ahead, each indicating a route you can take to get to the top. The rings have different point values based on how complicated the route is, however, with a fast raid car it often doesn’t matter at all which route you take as long as you get to the top quickly enough.

Tips for getting Gold Medals
• Remember that you are in a raid car and so, aside from massive trees or jutting rocks, you can drive through anything, so don’t waste time steering around objects you could drive through.
• You often will not need to get any bonus rings but even where you do, always go for the ones closest to you and never go out of your way for a ring. The biggest points earner in this mode is the time left on the clock when you reach the summit.
• A lot of the missions start out on an uncluttered area at the base of a hill, so use your nitruos at the start while there are fewer obstructions around.

Guide to Skills Part 6: Precision
Difficulty: 5/5
Total Skills: 48
Best Spec: Street Cars
Recommend Car Level: At least 1250

I found this to be the hardest skill. It requires you to drive through a series of gates as quickly as you can. The challenge is that each subsequent gate gets smaller, therefore meaning you have less and less room for error.

With regards to scoring, you build up scoring in two ways: 1) Each gate has a score awarded based upon how quickly you drove through it. 2) Each consecutive gate you drive through adds to a multiplier (much like the ‘Speed’ skills) that will times the points you earn by 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 etc.

Be aware that this skill is incredibly fussy about what constitutes ‘driving through’ the gate. If you touch the inside of the ‘bars’ that represent the two sides of the gate, it will count as a fail. You have to be lined up right through the centre, with no part of your car touching the gates frame.

Tips on getting Gold Medals
• Use your nitruos straight away. These skills often start off straight then go into curved regions where nitruos would be incredibly dangerous to use when it comes to sustaining your multiplier and alignment to the gates.
• If you miss one of the first 3 gates you’ll still be fine if you hit all others because you wouldn’t have lost much of the multiplier bonus, but if you miss a gate from the 4th one onwards I would restart to avoid frustration and wasting time.
• Be careful on long straights. The game often makes it look like you have 4 or 5 gates in a row and so you may be tempted to nitruos your way through them, but often the gates will be slightly out of alignment. This skill is all about deft handling and braking, not pure speed.
• If you have trouble with a skill try doing from the other direction as it may involve straighter roads and less need for constant steering and correcting.

Guide to Skills Part 7: Slalom
Difficulty: 3/5
Total Skills: 69
Best Spec: Performance (followed by Circuit).
Recommend Car Level: At least 1180

This skill requires you to weave your way around a set of markers that are plotted out on a route before you. The markers always alternate direction. For example, you will need to drive on the right side of the first marker, then the left side of the second marker, then the right side of the third marker, then the left side of the fourth marker etc.

For this reason you need to be good at breaking and getting quick bursts of speed, which is why I recommend the Performance and Circuit spec cars.
With regards to scoring you earn points for how quickly you drive past each marker and how big you build your score multiplier – which builds based upon the consecutive number markers you go past without missing any.

Be aware that a lot these skills have traffic on the roads and that sometimes you’ll have to make quite sharp manoeuvres that involve swerving past traffic and skill markers in quick succession.

Tips on getting Gold Medals:
• The first marker on every Slalom skill requires you to go past it on the right hand side, so instantly start steering right and hitting your accelerator when the skill starts.
• The trick to getting a high skill is steady, small movements – making big turns to get past a marker will really throw you off your game.
• When you go past a marker do a sharp break and a quick steering re-adjustment to get yourself lined up with the outside of the next marker, then fire off small bursts of nitruos to get past it.
• The Gold Medal scores are quite forgiving, so don’t worry about quitting out if you miss 2 or even 3 gates. If you miss more than that however I would restart to avoid frustration and wasting time.

Guide to Skills Part 8: Race-Line
Difficulty: 4/5
Total Skills: 69
Best Spec: Street Car for onroad and Dirt for offroad.
Recommend Car Level: At least 120

This skill requires you to drive along a set path on the terrain. The path is represented by a blue line painted on the ground. You must keep at least some part of your car on this path at all times to earn points.

The longer you stay on the path the more points you earn, but also the thinner the path gets, making the skill harder and harder as it continues. When you start the path is about 2 meters wide and so quite forgiving of loose steering, however, as you continue the path will eventually shrink to being only a foot wide – meaning that any poor steering will almost certainly result in you having no part of your car on the painted path.

When this happens you stop scoring points and the path reverts to being 2 meters wide again. This is important because the thinner the path you drive on the more points you earn. SO if you constantly keep going on and off the path you’ll never make it thinner and never build up a good score.

More than anything this is about steering, not flat out speed, which is why I recommend the Street Car for the on-road skills – easier to handle than Performance or Circuit and with enough speed to carry you through.

Tips on getting gold medals:
• Don’t go too fast. Staying on the path is the most important thing and the faster you go the more chance there is of you going off the path.
• Break early for corners. Far better to slow down and turn around corners slowly, while staying on the path.
• Be careful of jumps. Many of these skills involve a jump and the game still tracks your alignment to the path while you’re in the air. If you move while in the air you’ll likely go out of alignment with the path and stop earning points, plus land off the path and ned to correct yourself – again losing points. Better to slow down before a jump and just ride over it gently and stay fixed to the race-line.

Summary and Monitoring Progress
A very long guide I know, but the idea is to give you a solid understanding of each skill. In summary I would say:

• Get level 1200 Raid, Circuit, Performance, Street and Dirt Cars.
• Remember that you can skip 73 of the skills.
• Focus on one skill type at a time to keep things manageable.
• Be stubborn and persistent and keep going until you get Gold.

You can monitor your progress on the Awards tab of the Driver ID screen by selecting ‘PvP’ then scrolling right to ‘Skills A’ then selecting the 4th box along on the 3rd row. Like the achievement it’s titled ‘Skills to Pay Bills’.

If you spot any weirdness in the above guide, or have any queries, please do not hesitate to comment to sent me a message.

This solution was a comment on the other solution that started getting hidden in the comment feed, and since the other solution hasn't been updated practically since it was posted, I'm putting this information here:

Getting the Wild Run DLC will help this go MUCH easier!!

Monster trucks are the best vehicle for Race Line(HUGE margin of error!), most Hill Climbs(these were just fun), and Scrambles(HUGE margin of error!).
Drag vehicles are best for Jumps(ridiculous acceleration in short distances even offroad!).
Motorbikes are best for Precision(HUGE margin of error), Escapes(Dirt for Dirt and Circuit for Road--fit between trees and cars!), and Speed skills. Motorbikes easily fit between vehicles in Escapes/Speed and the Precision gates!

Easy summary:
Escapes: Monster; Bikes.
Hill Climb: Monster.
Jumps: Drag.
Precision: Bikes.
Race Line: Monster.
Scramble: Monster.
Slalom: Bikes.
Speed: Bikes.

Don't forget to 1000 your vehicles which is really easy after level 50 by just playing west coast skills that look easy for your vehicle type that show the reward you want. Once you've gotten level 40+ gold parts on each part of the vehicle, then just platinum skills and you'll have 1299's really soon! Do NOT try to platinum the vehicle parts before you have level 40+ gold parts otherwise you'll just get cheaper parts instead of going straight to high end platinum parts.
1299 Bikes and Monster trucks are fun! I'm going for 5k miles on my Circuit Ducati and it's a blast... so easy to drive without hitting stuff.

You DO NOT have to get all the skills gold to reach 500 as there are well over 500 total, and Wild Run adds more.

Please comment with any questions, I generally never get rid of my games, and I know this solution is a lot of info crammed, and I keep an eye out for any questions on my solutions. I enjoyed this game for the most part!