To an extent, online play at a high level has always been difficult in the Mario Kart series. That said, Mario Kart World has upped the difficulty in pretty much every category. Items are more chaotic, the game’s skill ceiling is much higher, and items are much more chaotic (again). These factors make racking up wins online much more difficult, with Knockout Tour in particular being specifically brutal in big groups. Given all the factors out of your control, it’s probably impossible to guarantee wins online – but today, we’re going over some tips and tricks that might help you improve your placement in big races.
A while back, we reported on some of the best character and kart combos for Mario Kart World. When you’re playing online, the Acceleration stat is incredibly important – in fact, it’s most likely the single most important stat. Online matches can include up to 23 other racers, which means you’re going to get hit with item after item. Mega Mushrooms and Lightning are particularly prominent – everyone online with a Mega Mushroom will try to run you over. A high Acceleration stat means you’ll be able to recover faster when you do get hit, which makes a high placement much more likely. On the contrary, heavyweight builds with high Speed and low Acceleration will struggle to get back in the game if they get hit by an item. Another problem with these builds is that other players will often try to hit you again as they pass you, and heavyweights take longer to get going, which means those players will have an extended window to hit you with an additional item. We’d recommend playing as a feather weight or lightweight character (Swoop, Toad, any of the babies, etc.) plus a kart with high Acceleration. That’s also why you see the Baby Blooper kart everywhere online – it has a high Acceleration stat and its other stats are pretty good, too.
Basically, your goal online is to spend most of the race in the middle of the pack, but then pull forward and secure first place at the very end of the race. That doesn’t mean you should start bagging, though – if you don’t know this already, bagging is when you purposefully hang back and farm item boxes until you get a combination of items you like. In this game, bagging will actually get you subpar items like a Coin or Banana, so don’t bother doing that. That being said, it’s often beneficial to get good items like Golden Mushrooms and Mega Mushrooms and smuggle them into a high placement. Mushrooms and Golden Mushrooms are extremely effective items online, especially during the intermission courses. There are some very powerful off-road shortcuts that can really put you ahead of the pack, so we’d recommend keeping an eye out and saving Mushrooms for those big off-road sections. The Boo item also lets you drive off-road with no speed penalty, so you should definitely start taking shortcuts as soon as you activate your Boo. As you might expect, being in first place on the first or second laps is an extremely dangerous position. You’re liable to be targeted by Red Shells, Boos stealing your items, and of course the Blue Shell as well. Furthermore, you’re very unlikely to get a Super Horn in first place. Generally, you’ll only receive items like Coins, Bananas, and Green Shells.
Item boxes are another big component here. In online matches, you’re fighting for the simplest of resources – the other players will hog all the coins and all the items and do their very best to prevent you from getting anything at all. Most often, other players will snatch up double item boxes right before your eyes and leave you with nothing. As a result, you need to focus on the other players when you see item boxes coming up. Many of them will swerve into a completely different item box for the sole purpose of denying another player an item, so if you see their kart facing an odd direction you’ll be able to predict this ahead of time. You can also use this technique too. The good news is that a few of the courses’ double item boxes are out of the way, so some sets of items aren’t as likely to be stolen as others. Some tracks, however, have sections where there are only four or five item boxes offered in a given set. These are very likely to be stolen. If you really wanted to, you could slow down for a moment to ensure that the item box reappears before you get there, but this isn’t always a great idea.
You can also use your opponents’ items to gain an advantage. For one, try to bump into any player who has Triple Mushrooms active and you’ll actually receive a small boost from them. Another important item is Lightning, which will force every player to drop their items. Inevitably, someone will drop Mushrooms onto the track, and as soon as you see them, you should rush over and use them to gain a speed boost. Players will also drop tons of coins, and they’re important online as well. On TikTok, shortcat321 recently figured out how exactly coins work in this game. You can read more over at our corresponding post, but here’s a summarized version: if you’re using a kart combo with a low Speed stat, coins are more impactful when you collect them early. In other words, you should do your best to collect at least 7 coins per race if you’re using a character and kart combo with a high Acceleration stat like we recommended. For heavyweight builds with high Speed stats, the coins you earn closest to 20 are more impactful. That’s of course not very good here – you’re going to get hit a lot and lose coins each time, which will make collecting all 20 coins very difficult if not flat-out impossible on certain stages.
Overall, online play in Mario Kart World is chaotic and difficult. Even with these tips, you probably won’t get first place every single time just because the game is often out of your control. But even if that’s true, there are still things you can do to get the race back under your control. That means Mario Kart World online isn’t completely luck-based as some have said – there’s definitely a skill factor there as well, it’s just tough to get the hang of. As we mentioned earlier, online Knockout Tour is brutally difficult, much more so than standard races. It’s common for you to get hit with an item right before you pass a checkpoint and get eliminated as a result. This makes carrying defensive items much more important, but even then, a Banana won’t help you against items like Mega Mushrooms or Lightning. At any rate, have you had much success playing online? Do you have any tips or strategies that weren’t mentioned here? If so, feel free to let us know in the comments down below. You can read more about the game over at the official Mario Kart World website.
