Why Going Through The Racing?
Is it to win the car? To win some hardware from ArenaNet? No. Not at all. We're doing it for the completionist in us. We're getting all the novelties and skins! Okay, now, what do we need to do?
The races reward us with a new currency called Racing Medallions. This is only the case for the six new races to my knowledge. With these Racing Medallions, you can buy stuff from a prize NPC that's standing next to the time challenges or race start points. This means we need to get those medallions.
This raises the question.
How Do We Get Racing Medallions?
After actually looking at how many I get for once I noticed the following pattern. Doing the daily achievements rewards you five for every single daily and ten for the meta-achievement. So that's
3 * 5 + 10 = 25 already. Each racing event gives you three. This means doing the daily rewards you with at least an additional nine. Additionally, there's the time trial or racing adventures. These have a bronze, silver and gold chest that each reward a different amount of Racing Medallions. Also, there's a different type of chest with the same name awarded at the practice run in Kessex Hills. Here's the result from them:
- Gold Chest (without Kessex Hills) - 5
- Silver Chest (without Kessex Hills) - 3
- Bronze Chest (without Kessex Hills) - 2
- Any Kessex Hills chest - 1
Summing it all up we have (5 * 5) + (5 * 3) + (5 * 2) + (3 * 1) = 53 in total. Why? We've got five races that award a gold chest that contains five, a silver chest that contains three and a bronze chest that contains two. Additionally, we have the Kessex Hills racing chests that award one for gold, silver, and bronze. Now if we take the difficulty into account and you only go for one try daily then anything at the level of Mount Maelstrom and higher is out of the question for the gold chest. Now we're going with (2 * 5) + (5 * 3) + (5 * 2) + (3 * 1) = 38. Cool and all, but...
How Many Do We Need?
There are multiple items that we can buy...
| Item name | Cost | Skin | Item name | Cost |
| Mini Roller Beetle | 150 | Endless Mystery Fanciful-Cat Tonic | 250 | |
| Racing Goggles (Heavy) | 150 | Racing Goggles | Endless Mystery House-Cat Tonic | 250 |
| Racing Goggles (Light) | 150 | Racing Goggles | Endless Mystery Dog Tonic | 275 |
| Racing Goggles (Medium) | 150 | Racing Goggles | Endless Mystery Choya Tonic | 300 |
| Racing Helmet (Heavy) | 150 | Racing Helmet | Endless Mystery Bear Tonic | 325 |
| Racing Helmet (Light) | 150 | Racing Helmet | Endless Mystery Fowl Tonic | 350 |
| Racing Helmet (Medium) | 150 | Racing Helmet |
To sum it up we need to be careful with the helmet and goggles as those share the same skin. That means we only need to buy one of those. With that in mind, we get a total cost of:
150 + 150 + 150 + 250 + 250 + 275 + 300 + 325 + 350 = 2200
With that, we have everything we need to answer the question.
How Many Days Does It Take?
If we do all dailies and each race on gold once a day we get 53 + 9 + 25 = 87 Racing Medallions each day. This means getting our 2200 Medallions takes 2200 / 87 = 25.29 or rather 26 days.
Now if we do our daily but only the daily races and time trials of those we miss out on two gold chests, two silver, chests, two bronze chest, and the Kessex Hills chests. This means we miss out on
(2 * 5) + (2 * 3) + (2 * 2) + 3 = 23 medallions. In this case, we only get 87 - 23 = 64. Hence it will take 2200 / 64 = 34.375 or 35 days.
Assuming we don't want to wait for the races and just do the daily time trials we need
2200 / 53 = 41.51 or 42 days.
Well, let's say we can't do gold on Mount Maelstrom, Brisban Wildlands, and Snowden Rifts...
Doing all dailies and each race once a day we get 38 + 9 + 25 = 72 Racing Medallions. With this, it will take us 2200 / 72 = 30.56 or 31 days.
Only doing the daily and the time trial of the respective races will let us miss out on two gold chests. But there's only a 1/5 and a 1/5 chance for that to happen. So we have a 1/5 * 1/5 = 1/25 chance to miss two gold chests and a 1/5 chance to miss one. With each gold chest being 5 medallions. On average we will lose 1/5 * (1 * 5) + 1/25 * (2 * 5) + (2 * 3) + (2 * 2) + 3 = 14.4 medallions. That means on average we will get 87 - 14.4 = 72.6 Racing Medallions. With this amount it will take 2200 / 72.6 = 30.30 or 31 days.
Okay, almost done... if we only do the time trials we need 2200 / 38 = 57.89 or rather 58 days.
Last but not least.. if we only do the daily events without the time trials (not recommended). It will take a whopping 2200 / 36 = 61.11 or more like 62 days.
Efficiency Is The Best!
And to make it even easier for you here's a trick. If a race event is starting, say you participate in it and wait for it to begin, or talk to the NPC to participate if it already has started and then start the time trial. This way you will do both the event and time trial at the same time, reaping the rewards of the time trial after the first round and the event rewards at the end. This way you don't need to do the race twice. This does not work perfectly on each map though, however, there's no special reward for being first in the goal in the race event, nor for second or third place. Thus, who cares about the place as long as you finish the event with gold.
A Little Addition
Assuming you only do the same race event over and over it will require you to do 2200 / 3 = 733.33 or 734 times the same race event. With the events taking place about every 15 minutes and a start timer of about 5 minutes it takes 20 * 733 = 14660 minutes without taking the actual race into consideration. That's 14660 / 60 = 244.33 hours which is 244.33 / 24 = 10.18 days or 11 days.
If you do this please blog or vlog the whole ordeal.
