Sonic Speed Simulator: Sonic & Shadow's 33rd/23rd Anniversary + Birthday Bash Event Guides!

Welcome everyone to another event guide for Sonic Speed Simulator, and this time, we've got a pretty massive one - because we have three new events, with Birthday King Sonic and Shadow making a return to the game, along with a all-new Party Sonic based off the design from Sonic Frontiers debuting. If you still need to catch up, multiple other events such as Diamond Terminal, Dark Rider, 2 Years Running, and the Summer Scavenge event are all still available as well. Check out @Failinhearts's new article on the latest updates to see everything new:

Either way, we'll be breaking down all three of the events today and doing everything we can to make it as easy as possible to finish this. So let's get into things. 

The Set-Up:

To keep things relatively short and sweet this month in terms of the set-up, I want to refer everyone back to the section in last week's guide - in which we covered the importance of Red Hero Chao, and the extreme difference they can make on reducing the length of a collectible grind. As always, Chocola is a must-have, but if you want to make things easier - refer to the guide last week so you can also add Red Hero Chao to your ranks:

EVENT 1: Sonic's 33rd Anniversary

So first things first, let's jump into the very first event - Sonic's 33rd anniversary event. Both the Sonic and Shadow birthday king events are required to be finished in order to get the new Party Sonic, so we'll be leaving that for last. Either way, let's get started.

Task 1: Complete 30 Time Trials - REWARD: 3x Tuxedo Chao

So for the first task of this event is a familiar, but easy one - we need to complete a rather whopping 30 time trials. Luckily, if you put the work in to get the Red Hero Chao, this should only require around 10-15 times rather than 30. While you can possibly use the Green Hill time trials, we'll again be using Diamond Terminal, as it's still available to play, despite being limited:

When we're here, the time trial we're doing is the first one, visible right next to the unlockable Rouge once you spawn in. This in my experience is far and away the easiest and fastest time trial, doable in around 27-30 seconds per trial.

The reason we're using this one is not only how fast it is, but it's heavily automated via rails and speed ramps, which means you're essentially just following a very easy path, and you can chip away at some of the Chao Orbs and Grind Rail challenges too. 

Keep replaying the time trial every time you finish it, and once you've hit 30 wins - either one by one, or less with Chocola/Red Hero Chao, and you'll finish up the first task and be ready to move into the next one.

Task 2: Perform 100 Hoverboard Boosts - REWARD: Classic Sonic Blur Trail x2

The second task asks you to perform 100 hoverboard boosts, which is a pretty easy task. All you need to do is ensure you have a Extreme Gear unlocked, equip it to your character, and then spam boost. When your boost gauge drains, you can then wait for it to replenish, or you can search out for Chaos Orbs to refill it. Jumping and performing tricks by jumping again also refills it.

However, if you want to kill two birds with one stone, head to Race World via the red rocket next to the drag race stand:

From here, to your left, there's a ring with Jet next to it. This gives you a guaranteed race in Metal City which progresses a lot of tasks for additional characters, such as collecting air, collecting scrap, and racing Jet. 

This also offers the benefit of giving you race tickets per win, meaning you can work towards the gold variants of Racesuit Sonic and Shadow that's been added to the race shop in this update. Either way, you'll get through this task quick, and be ready to move into Task 3.

Task 3: Collect 3000000 Rings - REWARD: 3x Tuxedo Chao

This is probably the simplest and easiest task to do during the entire birthday event. While a large number, even basic Chao multipliers will make this pretty easy to knock out. In my sake, I had this done within a minute of running around Green Hill, just recording what was new in this update.

Still, to quickly run down the easiest way to do this, we're once again going to rely on our good ol' friend - Auto Run. So run past the Lost Valley ring to the Auto Run podium: 

It's down to personal preference if you want to use the Green Hill or Lost Valley auto run, but it doesn't make much difference since it's so easy to attain the total. You'll have it in no time and be ready to move to Task 4. You could even have done it whilst simply doing the previous tasks.

Task 4: Earn 300,000 rail grind points - REWARD: Classic Sonic Blur Trail x3

Normally, I'd be posting about two-three different methods that can accomplish this task depending on your mastery level and how far into unlocking worlds you've gotten. Luckily however - I don't need to do that, because a limited event gives us the perfect spot for any player to pull this off. We're heading back to Diamond Terminal for this one.

Upon spawning, you'll see a hallway that has blue lighting - run down this, and hit the first rail you see. Follow this along, and head out of this specific exit to the room: 

Upon running through this particular pathway, you'll be brought to the upper floor of the room we started within, where you'll now see a red rail:

This rail is in a perfect circle, meaning once you jump onto it, you can simply loop around it as much as you want until the mission finishes up. So go ahead and do that, and go make a cup of tea, coffee, or grab a drink while the game does the work for you, and you'll be done in no time and ready to jump to the last task that'll net us the Birthday King variant of Sonic.

Task 5: Collect 300 Experience Hoops - REWARD: Potential Hoverboard

We're finally at the final task of our first event, and it's another easy one thankfully. For this one, we're going to be using a relatively recent addition to the game to make this one extremely easy. So first things first, make sure you've got Emerald Hill Zone unlocked by finishing Lost Valley, and head to Tails' Workshop there.

We're going to jump into the Tornado Assault minigame, where one of the main mechanics to actually increasing your score within the game is specifically flying through hoops - and through the magic of asset reuse, these are XP hoops that count towards the goal:

As you can see, it's easily achievable to get 65-70 XP rings per play, which with event boosts from the red hero chao + Chocola - can easily finish this challenge off within 3-4 plays. With this, you should be able to get it done in no time, and finally unlock our first character: Birthday King Sonic.

EVENT 2: Shadow's 23rd Anniversary

Next up is thankfully a much shorter event - in fact - if you did Sonic's event, you likely already have a decent chunk of this one done. Still, we're going to break it down bit by bit to make it a snap to get Shadow.

Task  1: Perform 250 Hoverboard Tricks - REWARD: 30 min triple XP boost

For the first task, it's pretty simple - and there's two ways you can opt to do it. One that will get it done very fast, and one that'll let you chip away at two of the tasks required for the event. So...

Option 1: Fast

The first option will take us to Hill Top Zone, so if you haven't unlocked it yet, make sure to finish up New Yoke City, which will then grant you access to this particular world. Once there, you're going to equip your extreme gear, go directly ahead...and dive right into the first pit you see, just ensure it's a bottomless one and not one with lava.

Hill Top Zone has a unique attribute, in that if you go to a pit, it'll automatically bounce Sonic (or whichever character you play as) back up into the air - this means you can simply sit and spam the trick button here repeatedly until you hit the 250 marker. Just ensure to head back to solid ground every now and then for it to update your progress bar.

Option 2: Double Task

For this task, you're going back to our earlier step where you raced Jet. Since it's a hoverboard race, you can very very easily and repeatedly spam this race to obtain the necessary tricks + contribute to a later task. You can also use drag races such as No Places, which is pretty short, but still on hoverboards. It just depends on how much you value race tickets. Either way, move onto the next task when you've finished whichever method you chose.

Task 2: Collect 6,500 Chaos Orbs - REWARD: Gambler ZG Hoverboard

Another easy enough task, and you can already guess where we're going for this one. You've likely already got a good amount of Orbs from our other tasks, but if you still need more?

Our good ol' friend - Auto-Run is here to once again save the day. You're going to simply run into the podium and let the game grab the necessary Chaos Orbs. Give it like five mins or so, and you're ready to move into the next task.

Task 3: Defeat 500 Badniks - REWARD: 5x Joker Chao

This task is one you've probably got done already - at least, I had it done by the time I finished up Sonic's tasks. Either way, the two options we have available to us here are both within Emerald Hill. One of which, we've already explored. 

Option 1: Tornado Assault 2: Electric Boogaloo 

As you'll recall, we used the Tornado Assault minigame to assist us in finishing up the XP rings in Sonic's event. Well, as it just so happens - the other means of gaining score within that minigame is using the Tornado to destroy badniks - and in my experience - it's very easy to have at least 60+ badniks destroyed per attempt, if not more - which will be further boosted via Red Chao + Chocola. 

So just keep repeating Tornado Assault until you've hit the number. That said - if you've got a Tornado mount, you've got an alternative option.

Option 2: Emerald Hill Blast Processing

Unfortunately, I'm unable to provide images for this one since I don't have a Tornado mount on the test server. That said, it's essentially as easy as it says - Emerald Hill is a wide open area filled with badniks - so equip a Tornado mount and just start flying around, pelting away at any you see. I do think Tornado Assault is both more accessible to everyone + faster, but might as well present the option.

Either way, you're now ready to move into the final task for this event...

Task 4: Complete 20 Races - REWARD:

For the final task, we're heading back to Race World in order to complete 20 races (thankfully less with Chocola + red hero chao). As to which race you want to do, it's up to you, really. You can do Metal City for Jet's missions, or Shadow's motorcycle race if you still need to do that event. If you've got both done though, you're primarily left with two options, depending on if you want the fastest means to finish the event, or the most rewarding. 

First things first, ensure your return location is set to Race World in the options:

Option 1: Fastest Way

To get this over and out of the way ASAP - you're going to the left, where the drag races stand is, and from here - vote on a race. In my experience, Green Hill and Hill Top are generally the fastest.

These races will place you in a simple foot race against Metal Sonic where you're running in a straight line. Keep running in this straight line, and jump through any XP hoops along the way, which will give you a boost in speed. When you get to the end, you'll be able to do it within 20 seconds, easily - making it a very quick means to finish the task.

Option 2: Rewarding Way

On the other hand, while this may take longer - you can do action races for bigger payouts of tickets for the newly dropped race shop update, making the races more worthwhile. Once again, I'd personally recommend the Metal City races because those have the best payout of all the races + the fastest time to beat it in my experience, but you're free to vote for any action race you prefer if you want a change of pace. Either way, keep going til you get to 20 races finished.

With that, you'll now have a new addition to your inventory...

Birthday Bash Event Guide:

Finally, we're onto the last event of our birthday celebrations, and it brings us to the newest addition to Speed Simulator - Party Sonic from Frontiers' 2nd update. We've already cleared two of the steps from unlocking Sonic and Shadow above, so now it's time to finish this off! 

The event is relatively simple - all around three different zones, they've added crates of fireworks to various portions of the map to celebrate Sonic's birthday. Your mission is to homing attack them and launch a grand total of 2000 fireworks. So let's jump in.

Task 1: Launch Fireworks in Green Hill - REWARD: 2x Gift Chao

Unfortunately, our old friend auto-run can't bail us out this time, to my knowledge at least. All we got to make this grind easier is simply equipping our Red Hero Chao and Chocola.

You'll be introduced to the goal very quickly - as all around the event stage is floating boxes that's filled with fireworks - where all you're going to do is homing attack chain all of them. In spite of the box showing multiple fireworks, each box just counts for one, so you're definitely going to want as much of a event boost as you can. Run all around Green Hill, homing attack chaining the boxes whenever you see them, and you'll be done in no time. Just be aware that the Summer Scavenge event is still ongoing, so Summerstones are still around the map as well. You'll want to avoid the beach since there's very few boxes around it, it's still mainly summerstones.

Task 2: Launch 2,000 Fireworks in Emerald Hill - REWARD: Sonic and Shadow Trail x2

For the next task, we're doing...pretty much the exact same thing. Make sure you've got Emerald Hill unlocked by finishing Lost Valley, and then jump into the Emerald Hill portal to head there.

This is much the same as before. You're just going to do a full loop around the zone, hitting the boxes as you go along, and making sure you have event boosts active because otherwise - this is a utterly miserable grind. If you have a Tornado mount, you can try using that to speed the process up, as it should target the boxes like badniks, but either way, there's no real trick to it beyond just doing it. Personally, I find this one to be a even worse grind, if only because there's less boxes compared to Green Hill, as far as I can see.

Task 3: Complete the Sonic's 33rd Anniversary Event - REWARD: 3x Gift Chao

Luckily, we've already got this task done, which is why it's the first thing we knocked out in the guide. If you decided to skip on down to this portion of the guide in particular, then go back up to read the Sonic 33rd Anniversary event guide to find the best ways to finish his tasks. 

With that, we're onto...*sigh* more fireworks.

Task 4: Launch 2,000 Fireworks in City Escape - REWARD: 3x Sonic and Shadow Trail

Honestly, this is a pretty trollish thing to do, given that City Escape has such a absurdly high barrier of entry at this point, asking for a whopping 65 mastery level to enter. So if you haven't already, you're going to need to do everything you can to boost up your team rank. Level character masteries by running around, unlock new characters via the various events, whatever works. Make sure to grab the Race suit variants in the race shop too.

Once you've made it to the level, you're now greeted with another rather tedious fireworks grind. Again, make use of the event boosting pets, because this grind is a slog with them, so I don't even want to imagine what it'd be without them. Run all throughout City Escape, which luckily is one of the better designed worlds in the game and is easy to loop around, so it should be much easier compared to Emerald Hill Zone. Once done, we're moving onto the last task...

Task 5: Complete Shadow's 23rd Anniversary Event - REWARD: Cosmic Starshot Hoverboard

It's been a insanely long road, with so many tasks to complete everything, but this is finally it - the very final step to finish the event once and for all...

...and again, it's already done! Again, if you skipped over the earlier portion of the guide, go back to the upper portion of this guide to unlock Birthday King Shadow, but for now - that's it, you're officially done!

Conclusion:

It's been a obscenely long event. In fact, probably the longest since ESP Silver dropped, but you've finally completed all of the major events that's dropped with the update, and on top of that characters, you'll also have gained 4000 red star rings as well.

Go into your character menu, and check out your brand new roster:

With that, we close the book on another event guide. Thanks to everyone who made it this far! Normally, this is the part where I'd do my usual conclusion of "see you next week", but I actually won't be here. Since I'll be going on vacation, I'll be unable to do a proper guide, although I'm in talks to get someone to cover for me next week, so hopefully a guide will still be up.

Either way, as usual - feedback is appreciated, and thanks again for reading!