Need for Speed Heat Trophy Guide

How to Unlock All Trophies in NFS Heat for PlayStation 5

Welcome to our Need for Speed Heat Trophy Guide. What can I say about Need for Speed Heat that hasn’t already been said about every other Need for Speed game. We know the drill, there’s cars that go fast, upgrades to buy, customizations to obsess over, and a surplus of unnecessary collectible content. Let’s go!

In terms of your platinum journey, you’re looking at about 35 hours of racing around Palm City. Honestly, it’s a pretty chill experience once you get over how absolutely psychotic the police are. There’s a bit of an annoying Collectible/Activity cleanup grind which makes up a good majority of the required playtime, but otherwise the game is very good for just switching your brain off and zoning out for a few hours.

Need for Speed Heat was one of the PlayStation Plus Monthly Games in September 2022.

Phase One – Complete All Driving Stories

In this first phase of our Need for Speed trophy guide, you need only focus on completing the “Driving Stories” and keeping your REP Level up.

You can freely play on any difficulty without your trophies being affected, so feel free to adjust this as you like throughout the story to keep the gameplay comfortable.

As you progress through the Driving Story missions, you will frequently find yourself needing to upgrade your vehicle, or raise your REP Level, so that you can unlock the next Driving Story.

You can open a Campaign Objectives menu while driving to see what’s next on your list by pressing .

The gameplay loop between these Driving Story missions is pretty simple; Play new races during the day to earn bank, spend that bank on new vehicles (or upgrade current ones), then take those vehicles out into the night to complete races for REP.

Along the way, you are welcome to complete as much or as little side-content as you like, but it is recommended that you collect as many Flamingoes, Speed Traps, Billboards, Drift zones, and Long Jumps as you can. This will reduce the amount of cleanup that you’re faced with once the story is over.

Note that even when the credits roll, you may still have some Driving Stories left, most likely for Dex. The aim of this phase is to complete all Driving Stories, so make sure you don’t let up until there aren’t any left.

Some missions won’t appear on the map until you’ve visited the garage, so make frequent trips to check for new Driving Stories.

Lastly, I recommend that you play online. There are several online-only trophies that you’ll likely unlock or progress naturally just by playing online.

Story Trophies

The “Welcome to Palm City” trophy will unlock automatically after the game’s introduction. It’s completely unavoidable.

In Need for Speed Heat, when you complete Race Challenges during the day, Races during the night, or myriad other activities, you will earn a chunk of REP.

You can look at REP like EXP; the more you earn, the quicker your Reputation Level increases, giving you access to more activities, events, races, and parts.

Reaching REP Level 2 will not take a lot of work and will happen naturally very early on in the story. When that happens, the Humble Beginnings Trophy will unlock.

The “Drift driving story” is a series of Drift Races featuring an NPC named “Wayne” who appears at Story Event icons on your map.

You’ll be completing all Story Missions during Phase One of our NFS Heat Trophy Guide, so you’ll unlock the Carving Turns Trophy unavoidably!

That being said, it will unlock once you complete the Mission called “Wayne’s Last Wonder” and beat the target score.

The “Off-road driving story” is a series of Off-Road Events featuring an NPC named “Roshni” who appears at yellow Story Event icons on your map.

You’ll be completing all Story Missions during Phase One of our NFS Heat Trophy Guide, so you’ll unlock the Off the Grid Trophy unavoidably!

That being said, it will unlock once you complete the Mission called “Pit Potential” and finish in first place.

The “Race driving story” is a series of Race Events featuring an NPC named “Dex” who appears at Story Event icons on your map.

You’ll be completing all Story Missions during Phase One of our NFS Heat Trophy Guide, so you’ll unlock the Friends Reunited Trophy unavoidably!

That being said, it will unlock once you complete the Mission called “All Gone South” and finish in first place.

Keep completing Story Objectives until you complete Chapter 1 (After Ana gets her car towed). When you return to the Garage and end the night as instructed, the “Consider Yourself Noticed” trophy will unlock.

Continue working your way through Story Missions until you’ve helped Ana evade Shaw. Once you return to the Garage and collect your Rep and Bank for the night, you’ll also unavoidably unlock the Worlds Collide trophy for Completing Chapter 2.

The “Home from Home” trophy will unlock naturally as you progress through the story. After discovering the Cloudbank Hideout, the Chapter will end and you’ll unlock the trophy.

Proceed through the Driving Story Missions until you reach and complete a Driving Story called “Breaking the Law.” After the cutscenes, but before the WFFL86 news report, the Merciless trophy will unlock as Chapter 4 comes to an end.

Phase Two – REP Level 50

Moving on to the second phase of our Need for Speed trophy guide, after finishing the story, you should be at around REP Level 40, so it makes sense that your next objective will be to reach REP Level 50 before we move on to clean up.

This is the best time to start working on your end-game vehicle. You want something fast and resilient that can handle being out at night with a Heat Level of 5. Alternatively, begin saving now for the Koenigsegg Regera, a very vehicle with a high-performance rating of 400+ which is ideal for some of the tougher post-story trophies.

Of course, continue completing any collectible or activities you like along the way to reduce your endgame clean up further.

REP Level 50

As stated previously, you should be at around REP Level 40 when you finish Phase One of our NFS Heat Trophy Guide, so there isn’t too far left to go.

The best method that I found for farming REP was to just go out in a fast 350+ stat vehicle at night and complete the “Discovery” races.

The three Discovery Races, Discovery A, Discovery B, and Discovery C, are all long sprint races that begin and end in close proximity to one another. Not to mention they have a very high REP payout.

Starting at any of the three Discovery Events, complete them back-to-back over and over in a single night. After completing about 5 or 6 of these races and reaching Heat Level 5, you should have a massive amount of REP to cash in. (Try to earn one million REP in one night for Cashing In).

Escape the Cops and return to a Garage to bank the REP gains and increase your REP Level. Repeat as many times as needed until you unlock the “Notorious” trophy at REP Level 50.

Phase Three – Collectibles & Activities

This next phase of our NFS Heat Trophy Guide will have you finally mopping up the collectibles and activities you will have seen all over the place while you play. Though you may try hard always to grab or complete any that you see while exploring, there are hundreds that you’ll come across in races and not be able to stop to investigate.

To help make this phase easier, we’ve put together some maps, which you’ll find alongside the relevant trophies below. You can also use real-world bank to purchase a map from the in-game store, which is easier to follow in-game.

Collectibles & Activity Trophies

Throughout Palm City there are 85 Billboards that you can smash. Typically they have ramps nearby which you can boost over to hit the board and smash it.

Smashing all 85 will unlock the A Bit of Paradise trophy. Check out our Collectibles Map for all Billboard Locations.

There are 130 pieces of Graffiti Art hidden across Palm City that you can collect and then use in the Livery Editor. Simply approach some Graffiti with a spray can icon above it and then press when the “Collect” prompt appears to add it to your collection.

Collecting all 130 will unlock the Graffer trophy. Check out our Collectibles Map for all Graffiti Art Locations.

Palm City also contains 100 hidden Neon Flamingos, which you can destroy by driving into them. They’re usually tucked away in corners, hidden under canopies, or inside secret areas.

Destroying all 100 will unlock the Get Shrimpin’ trophy. Check out our Collectibles Map for all Neon Flamingo Locations.

Throughout Palm City, there are 45 “Speed Trap” activities, where you need to drive through a glowing gate at a specific speed. Each gate has up to 3 stars you can earn by blasting through them at the highest possible speed. It’s actually quite fun to go around the map trying to hit Mach 1 through all these gates, but it’s near impossible to complete them all until you’re near the very end of the game.

It’s also quite useful to blast through these gates as fast as you can while the cops are on your tail, as you’ll get bonus REP for this.

After reaching REP Level 50 and purchasing the Koenigsegg Regera ’16 (or an equally fast vehicle of your own), go around the map using our Activities Map to locate and complete all 45 Speed Traps with a full three stars, unlocking the Danger Zone trophy.

Technically, you can unlock this trophy by getting one-star ratings in each Activity, but you won’t unlock The Brightest Stars.

Once you have access to Drift Zones, several will appear on your map. To begin a Drift Zone, drive through its entrance gateway and a purple path will appear on your GPS, indicating the Drift Zone course.

Drift through the remaining gates, getting as high a drift score as you can, and try to earn a full three stars in every single Drift Zone on the map to unlock “Drift, Drift, Drift.” Use our Activities Map to find them all. I strongly recommend building a separate drift-optimized vehicle to use for these events, as you’ll need a car which is heavily tuned towards drifting if you want to hit those high scores.

Technically, you can unlock this trophy by getting one-star ratings in each Activity, but you won’t unlock The Brightest Stars.

There are 40 Long Jumps throughout Palm City, which are typically huge ramps or ramp-like surfaces with a gate on them. Passing through the gate and over the ramp, you need to try and get as much distance in the air as you can to earn three stars on each activity.

You should be able to use the same vehicle that you used for Danger Zone, however, there are some off-road Long Jumps which are difficult to hit the right speed for unless you have a good off-road vehicle, so maybe try to have one as a backup.

Use our Activities Map to find all 40 Long Jumps. Earn a three-star score on them all to unlock the Full Send trophy.

Technically, you can unlock this trophy by getting one-star ratings in each Activity, but you won’t unlock The Brightest Stars.

“The Brightest Stars” trophy requires you to earn a 3-Star Rating on every single Speed Trap, Drift Zone, and Long Jump in the game.

For Speed Traps and Long Jumps, just having a very fast car and enough of a run-up to the activity is all you need to be able to smash through those 3-star goals.

The Drift Zone events are a bit trickier, and you’ll have a much easier time if you take these on in a drift-optimized vehicle.

Activities Map

See our Activities Map below (Click/Tap to view full-size):

Once every single activity has been completed with a 3-star rating, the trophy is all yours.

To unlock “Be The Very Best,” you will need to unlock the A Bit of Paradise, Graffer, Get Shrimpin’, Danger Zone, Drift, Drift, Drift, Full Send, and The Brightest Stars trophies. Earning them all will automatically unlock this trophy.

Collectibles Map

See our Collectibles Map below (Click/Tap to view full-size):

Phase Four – Misc Cleanup

Arriving at the final stage of our four-part NFS Heat Trophy Guide, you should now have the game’s biggest grind-fest trophies out of the way and will have a handful of misc trophies left to collect.

Browse the eclectic mix of remaining trophies below to see if there are any you need in order to lock down the Platinum.

Misc Driving Trophies

You will see Cops both during the day and at night, but at night they are much more aggressive and accessible. During the day they will only chase you if you hit them.

Taking down cops is easier than it sounds. Sure, you can just ram the cops until their cars explode – there’s even a useful Auxiliary Upgrade for that – but you’ll end up cutting your own vehicle’s life short.

Actually, the best way to take down cops (and escape them too, if you were wondering) is with ramps. Especially Long Jump Activity ramps. Cops just can’t figure them out. They either wipe themselves out just trying to follow you onto the ramp, or they will get totaled by the hard landing at the other side.

The “Eleven – Fifty Six” trophy requires you to destroy a grand total of 100 Cop Vehicles. This is cumulative across your entire playthrough, so don’t worry about having to do this all in one night.

The best method for this is to go out at night, rack up a Heat Level of Four or Five, and then hang out along the South or East Coasts, driving back and forth. Each time you have some cops on your tail, find and jump a ramp (especially one over the water), then watch as they all total themselves.

Repeat until the trophy unlocks.

Escaping 100 Cop Chases sounds like an insane amount of work, yet that’s exactly what the “Travis, Who?” trophy calls for. You’ll be surprised how much progress you make on this trophy naturally.

In fact, while farming REP at night, you will enter and leave so many Cop Chases that you could go through 4 of them in a single night race if you just stay far enough ahead of the pack.

I recommend that you just follow the same steps as for the “Eleven – Fifty Six” trophy. Continuously enter Cop Chases and then use ramps to escape them. You will be surprised at how many Cop Chases you’ve escaped during your story playthrough, so you shouldn’t need to farm them for long, if at all.

I actually unlocked the trophy naturally while working on the Notorious trophy.

Hitting a max speed of 240 MPH is not easy. Particularly because it will require having a heavily kitted-out vehicle with a 400+ performance rating. The easiest way to reach 240 MPH is to buy a vehicle that can hit that speed right out of the box. The only vehicle in the base game which fits that description is the Koenigsegg Regera ’16.

You can purchase the Regera from the Dealership for $1,227,500, so it’ll take some saving up. This is a wise purchase, though, because the Regera can also be used for “I Said Right Now!“

If you choose not to get the Regera, then keep purchasing Engine Swaps and Part Upgrades for your vehicle of choice until it is able to reach 240MPH—if it even can!

Reach 240 MPH for the very first time and the Warp Speed trophy will unlock!

After reaching Reputation Level 10, you will unlock access to Crew Time Trials. More will appear as you progress, but this is where the first few will appear on your map.

They are found at Stopwatch icons and are time trial events where you race the ghost of another driver. The times to beat are pretty reasonable, and you shouldn’t really find yourself struggling to finish in first place for any of them.

Winning a Crew Time Trial event will result in the “Two Racers, One Event” trophy unlocking.

The Comeback Kid trophy is a lot easier than it seems. Especially once you’re in the post-game and have a high-performance vehicle that you can throw around a circuit.

Choose any Circuit Race you like (I used the “The Resort’s Circuit” race in the Stadium near the Main Garage) and then tail the person in 11th for the entire race until you reach the Final Lap. Once you see the “Final Lap” prompt appear, slam down on and speed to the front of the pack.

This is easier to do on events with a lower recommended performance rating than your vehicle’s actual performance rating. Additionally, playing with the difficulty on Easy will further increase your chances of pulling this off.

With some luck, you should be able to quickly make it from 12th place to 1st place within a single lap.

As this would be too easy to cheese online, you can only unlock this trophy when playing offline solo mode races.

In Need For Speed Heat, when you’ve taken damage, you can drive through a Gas Station to recover your vehicle and avoid wiping out.

At night, however, the Police are out in force, so you’ll need the Gas Station Repairs more than ever, but you’re limited to just three per night. Therefore, it’s best to save your limited Gas Station visits until you really need them.

You will know when that time comes, as your speedometer in the bottom-right corner of the HUD will turn red, with a flashing “Critical Damage” warning over the top of it.

At that point, if you drive your vehicle through a Gas Station to repair, the “At The Last Second” trophy will unlock!

This is likely to happen naturally, especially early in the game, as the Police can actually be quite brutal.

While playing Need for Speed Heat at night, you will see some special “High Heat” events appear on the map. These events require you to have a specific amount of Heat before you can begin them and they have an entry cost, but you’ll earn REP, Bank, and a rare vehicle part for completing them.

There are two types of High Heat races; Heat 3 and Heat 5. The Heat 5 events yield the best rewards but can be difficult to survive as you’ll need to escape Heat Level 5 Cops at the end of the event to be able to bank your rewards at a Garage!

Play night events until your Heat Level reaches 5. Then, escape the police and make your way carefully to the Heat Level 5 event on your map. Keep an eye on the police on both your Minimap and full map. Slow and Steady is absolutely the way to go, even if you have to go the long way round to avoid police, it’s much easier than escaping them on Heat 5.

Once you reach the event, start it up and win the race. At the end, if you didn’t escape the Cops along the way, you’ll need to drive to the nearest Long Jump ramp and use it to shake the Cops.

If you can successfully escape the cops again after having completed a High Heat Level 5 event, return to your Garage to receive your reward as well as your new “The Most Wanted” trophy.

Earning One Million REP in a single night and unlocking the “Cashing In” trophy is easier than it sounds.

After the story, upgrade your vehicle to have a performance score of at least 350. It would be wise to reinforce your car with Auxiliary Upgrades too, making it harder to destroy.

When you’re ready, head out at night using the same method that I described for the Notorious trophy; complete the Discovery A, B, and C events back to back until you reach 1 Million Rep, then return to a Garage to bank it as soon and as safely as you can.

By now, you should be familiar with the Discovery A, Discovery B, and Discovery C events, which all end back-to-back, because I’ve recommended their use for the Cashing In and Notorious trophies.

When you reach REP Level 50, however, another event becomes available, which is simply called “Discovery.”

It’s a long race around the entire map. Much like the other Discovery events, this race is only available at night. Completing it for the first time will unlock the “Around The World” trophy.

Misc Online Trophies

Daily Challenges are only available when you are playing NFS Heat online. This doesn’t mean you will have to play with other people, you just need to be connected to the EA servers to access the Daily Challenges.

Once you’re connected to the internet, you can view your live Daily Challenges by opening the menu, then going to “Social,” followed by “Challenges.”

You can also view them in the menu while driving.

For each Daily Challenge that you complete, you’ll earn a small amount of REP or Bank as a reward.

“Don’t Quit Your Day Job” will unlock whenever you complete a Daily Challenge for the very first time.

If you tend to play while connected to the Online Services anyway, there’s an extremely high chance that you’ll unlock this trophy naturally.

Complete any 5 events online for the first time to unlock the “You have friends?” trophy. See Benefits Are Nice for more info.

When you are playing online (Must choose “Play Online” from the Title Screen), you will be able to play any event against other players online. There are a few ways you can do this:

• Play Online with friends by forming a party and inviting them to any races you wish to start or joining their races.
• Play Online with strangers on the same server by selecting “Challenge All” when starting a new event.
• Play Online with strangers on the same server by accepting public match challenges when they pop up in the upper-right corner of your screen.

Obviously, the easiest way to do this is to form a party with at least one other friend, but it’s nice to know there are other options for those playing solo.

You do not need to win these races; simply completing them will be enough. Complete a total of 25 Races online with other players to unlock “Benefits Are Nice.”

A good short race to replay with friends is “The Resort’s Circuit,” available inside the stadium next to your main Garage.

To unlock the “All For One” trophy, you will need to do one of two things:

• Start a new crew from scratch, or join a new crew. Continuously earn REP, and your Crew’s REP will increase. When it reaches the max, you will unlock the “All for One” trophy. You can even do all this offline, but it would take an absurd amount of time, so I don’t recommend that you try.
• Simply join a Crew that’s already at max level! Unfortunately, you will need to get an invite from someone who is already in a max-level crew, but this is the easiest way.

If you choose to join a crew, search “Trophy” in the Find Crew tab; there, you’ll find lots of crews called some variation of “Level 50 Trophy,” try to join any of them and wait for the crew owner to accept your request.

I’m sorry to say, though, don’t bet on this method working out. Most Crew Members with the ability to view and accept invite requests are not active players and so likely won’t see your request. It could very well be that you have to buckle up and farm out 50 levels with the crew you’re automatically assigned to.

I recommend using the methods described for Cashing In to try and bring in about one million REP for your crew per night. With this method you can increase your crew level fairly quickly but could still find yourself grinding out this trophy for the next 10 hours if your Crew isn’t active at all.

If you have a friend who is already in a Level 50 Crew, they can invite you to join, which is easier than trying your luck with random crews.

Misc Customization Trophies

In any Garage, select “Customization” and then “Body.” You’ll then be able to use to select parts of your vehicle to customize. Move to the rear of the car and highlight the Number Plate.

Select it with , then select “Edit Text.” Type in anything you like (as long as it fits) and then save the change. The “Change My Name” trophy will then unlock immediately.

There are many vehicles in NFS Heat that are powerful enough to be upgraded to a performance rating of 400+. However, this will cost hours of time and thousands of in-game dollars to achieve. You’ll need to not only purchase a good vehicle, but you’ll need to purchase a powerful Engine Swap for it, purchase the very best upgrades, and even have to go out and win Volatile Parts from High Heat Race Events.

You can avoid all of that if you save up some money by completing the high-reward post-game race events for $50k-80k per race and then spending it on a Koenigsegg Regera ’16.

You can purchase the Regera from the Dealership for $1,227,500, so it’ll take some saving up. This is a wise purchase, though, because the Regera can also be used for “Warp Speed.”

The Regera is already at a performance rating of 400+ without upgrades!

Once you have a car with a performance rating of 400+, set out and complete any event while using that vehicle. The “I Said Right Now!” trophy will unlock at the end of the race, provided you finish in 1st place.

The “Wrap It Up!” trophy is incredibly simple. Start by visiting any Garage and then selecting “Customization.” From there, select “Paint and Wrap,” then “Edit Wrap.”

All you need to do to unlock this trophy is change the paint color of your vehicle!

Select “Paint,” choose any color you want, and then save the changes, immediately unlocking the trophy.

When customizing your vehicle in the Garage, there are several categories of upgrades you can apply; Engine, Chassis, Drivetrain, and Auxiliary. The last two on the furthest right are the Auxiliary Upgrades.

Keep playing the game until you’ve progressed enough to unlock Auxiliary Upgrades for both Auxiliary slots on your vehicle. Then, use your bank to purchase just one upgrade of any kind to apply in both slots.

Once done, go out and complete any race event to unlock the “Techin’” trophy.

In your Garage, go to “Customization” and then “Effects.” Here, there are several categories of special effect upgrades you can apply, which do things like changing the color of your tire smoke or changing the sound of your horn.

Purchase an upgrade for every single Effect slot, and then go out and win any race event to unlock the “Blame the Vain” trophy.

One of the many aspects of your vehicle that can be customized is the “Exhaust Sound.” At any Garage, in the “Customize” menu, select the “Exhaust Sound” option.

There, you can adjust various sliders that affect the overall sound of your vehicle’s exhaust. Make any change you like to the Exhaust Sound of any car, then take it into a race and win.

Upon winning the race, the “Hear Me Roar” trophy will unlock!

In Need for Speed Heat, Drifting events can be very challenging, especially if your vehicle is set up to dominate in racing events, as that often means very tight handling. For drifts, you want a car with extremely loose cornering, so it’s best actually to have a separate Drift Car.

Conveniently, that objective also aligns with the requirements for the “Sideways Style” trophy, which asks that you win a race event while using a vehicle that has been tuned for maximum Drift.

When purchasing parts for your drift vehicle, look for parts with a Drift icon underneath and “Drift” in the name. These parts are optimized to increase your drift stats more than any other.

You’ll see a Chart under your vehicle’s stats on the left. You need to equip enough Drift-enhancing parts to your vehicle for the chart to be 100% on the right, the drift side of the chart.

Once you have a vehicle that is fully optimized for drifting, go out and use it to dominate in a drift event (or any other race event), unlocking the trophy.

The “The Hackney Dream” trophy is similar to Sideways Style, except instead of full Drift stats, you will need to get full Off-Road stats, indicated by the small suspension icon.

Once you’ve equipped enough Off-Road parts to reach maximum Off-Road alignment, go out and win in any race event to unlock the trophy.

The “Component Parts” trophy is similar to Sideways Style, except instead of full Drift stats, you will need to get full Road stats, indicated by the small steering wheel icon.

Once you’ve equipped enough Road parts to reach maximum Road alignment, go out and win in any race event to unlock the trophy.

The “Redline” trophy is similar to Sideways Style, except instead of full Drift stats, you will need to get full Race stats, indicated by the small racing flag icon.

Once you’ve equipped enough Race parts to reach maximum Race alignment, go out and win in any race event to unlock the trophy.

When customizing your vehicle’s performance, you can press to open the “Swap Engine” menu. Here, you can pay about the cost of the vehicle twice over just to increase its base stats by a small margin.

Save up your bank from Day events, and then spend your hard-earned bank to purchase an Engine Swap.

Whenever you’re ready, take your engine-swapped vehicle out on the streets of Palm City and win a race of any kind to unlock the “Swappin’” trophy.

Plat Get!

Once you have acquired every other trophy in this Need for Speed Heat Trophy Guide, the “The Need for Speed” Platinum trophy will unlock.

Thank you for choosing PlatGet as your source for a Need for Speed Heat Trophy Guide. Consider checking out our other guides!

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