Project CARS 3 Trophy Guide & Road Map

Project CARS 3
Project CARS 3 Trophy Guide

Special thanks to kinjall for the graphics

If you have any questions or comments, please visit the discussion thread

Estimated trophy difficulty: 3/10 (personal estimate) [Platinum Difficulty Rating]
Offline trophies: 31 (9, 19, 3)
Online trophies: 6 (5, 1)
Approximate amount of time to platinum: 20-30hrs (personal estimate) [Estimated Time to Platinum]
Minimum number of playthroughs: 1
Number of missable trophies: 0
Glitched trophies: 1 - See Overcome Your Rivals for more information.
Does difficulty affect trophies?: No, you can choose your own settings

Slightly Mad Studios are back once again with their popular racing series and there are some big changes to be found in this latest entry. PC3 moves away from the hardcore sim racing formula found in previous entries and instead moves towards a more arcade, user-friendly experience. Whilst not everyone will appreciate this change, long-time fans in particular, changes were necessary to bring the series up to scratch for modern gamers and to open the series up to a wider audience. Not all of the changes are unwelcome, though, and the user-friendly experience doesn't stop at the gameplay, because the menus have also had a massive overhaul. Anyone who has played PC1 or PC2 will know the pain of navigating the menus and trying to find stuff, but that's no longer the case. Despite some mixed changes, PC3 still offers a good experience that I'm sure will be enjoyed by most who play it.

Note on Glitches:

It has come to my attention that the trophy "Overcome Your Rivals" is glitched due to a recent patch that broke the online leaderboards. Any points earned in the Rivals mode will not count if you close the game afterwards and thus the platinum is effectively unobtainable. However, there is a workaround. Please refer to Overcome Your Rivals for more information.

Step 1: Career Mode & Rivals Mode

Career mode is where you'll be spending the majority of your time and earning the most trophies. Complete as many events as possible, because you'll need to earn lots of XP to rank up. Ranking up is the only way to earn credits, you don't get any from winning events and you'll need a lot of credits to purchase cars with later on. You'll most likely earn some other trophies as you progress through the career, the various objective trophies in particular, but you can clean up anything you've missed later on. Another thing you should be doing every day is checking out the events in Rivals mode, because you need to earn 300 points in a single Rivals season and that might take a lot of daily events to accomplish. See Overcome Your Rivals for more information regarding this.

At the end of this step, you will earn:

Here's The Keys
The Journey Begins
Deserved Recognition
Pace Setter
A Smashing Time
Achieving Those Goals
Making Contacts
Smashed It
Silverware
Taskmaster
Seasoned Racer
Challenge Accepted
Goal Orientated
Objectively Brilliant
Silverware Collection
Objectively Mad
Veteran Racer
New Challenger Approaching
Making Adversaries
Overcome Your Rivals

And most likely:

The Treble
Mastering the trade
Track Master In Training
Perfectionist

Step 2: Multiplayer

Now you should focus on the multiplayer trophies. Multiplayer in PC3 is all but dead, so you will almost certainly need to find a boosting partner to help you out with these trophies. You can find other players to boost with here: Boosting Thread.

At the end of this step, you will earn:

Right On Time
Rapid Fire Racer

Step 3: Clean Up

With the career, rivals and multiplayer trophies out of the way you should be nearing the platinum. Your only aim here is to complete any of the miscellaneous tasks that you may have missed during previous steps. Things like purchasing 25 unique cars, mastering 15 tracks if you haven't already done so, purchasing a car that's discounted in the daily deal, upgrading a road car to a race spec and anything else that you may have missed along the way. This should be the quickest and easiest step.

At the end of this step, you will earn:

Splish Splash
Stickered
Bargain Hunter
Grease Monkey
Custom Plates
Under The Hood
Stripped To The Bone
Maximising Potential
They Call Me The Track Master
Car Collector
Slightly Mad Racer

Slightly Mad Racer

Earn all other trophies
(2)
Congratulations on your new platinum!
Here's The Keys

Purchase your first car.
Story-related and cannot be missed

This will be the first trophy you earn in the game. Go through the introduction and complete the opening tutorial race. You'll then be taken to the showroom where you'll be given 30,000 credits and a choice of 3 cars to purchase. Pick any cars you like to unlock this simple trophy.
The Journey Begins

Complete the first Career race.
Story-related and cannot be missed

After you've completed the introduction and purchased a car you'll then be taken to the career menu. For the time being you'll only have access to the Road E series, specifically the Road E Basics group. The first race within this group is called Shanghai Nights and it takes place on the Henan Loop. Simply complete this race to unlock the trophy.
Mastering the trade

Master your first track.
Please see They Call Me The Track Master for more detailed information.
The Treble

Complete all 3 Career Objectives in a single Career Event.
Career objectives are bonus requirements that award XP upon completion and every event has 3 of them to complete. For this trophy you are required to complete all 3 objectives in a single event. I used the very first event called Shanghai Nights for this, because the objectives are simple enough, but you can use any event you like. There's another trophy that requires you to complete 200 career objectives in total. Please see Objectively Mad for more detailed information.
New Challenger Approaching

Post a time or score for when a Rivals Event completes.
(1)
Online required

Rivals is a multiplayer mode where you compete against other players in hot lap and pace setter events. There are daily, weekly and monthly events to take part in. For this trophy you simply need to complete one of these events. The trophy will only unlock once the event is finished, so that means you will need to wait a minimum of 24 hours if completing a daily event. Enter the rivals menu after the event has concluded and the trophy will unlock.
Deserved Recognition

Earn your first Career Accolade.
Career accolades are bonus requirements similar in many ways to career objectives. The main difference is that career accolades focus more on long-term goals and as such they offer greater XP awards upon completion than career objectives do. You can view career accolades and their requirements by pressing whilst in the career menu.
Right On Time

Compete in a scheduled online race.
Online required

Scheduled events are time-limited races that you need to register for in advance. They start every 20 minutes and there's usually 6 of them to choose from at any given moment. Once you register for a scheduled event you won't be able to leave the menu or your registration will be cancelled, so you'll have to sit tight and wait for the race to start. Taking into account how dead the multiplayer is, you might want to boost this. As long as you have at least one other person helping you out and you both register for a scheduled event, you should get matched together in the race. You can find other players to boost with here: Boosting Thread.
Splish Splash

Win in a 3+ Lap race in Thunderstorm conditions.
This is easier done in a custom event. Go to the settings and change the number of laps to 3. Next go to the weather settings and set the start and finish weather to thunderstorm. Change the track conditions to match the start weather just to be safe. I also recommend picking a shorter track such as the Mojave Coyote Noose. You can further make things easier by limiting the amout of AI drivers to 1 or 2 and setting AI difficulty to easy. Now you simply need to win the race to unlock the trophy.
Stickered

Apply multiple decals to one of your cars.
A very simple trophy. Go to your garage, pick any car and press and select customise, pick custom and then edit. Here you'll find the decals. Now simply apply at least 2 decals to your car to unlock the trophy. Job done.
Pace Setter

Compete in 3 different Pace Setter events.
Pace setter events are a type of time attack, but the goal is to complete to 3 laps rather than 1. At the end of the 3 laps your average time is used to determine how you performed. Consistency is the key to performing well in these events. It should be noted that if you do anything to invalidate one of your lap times such as going off-track or crashing then you'll need to restart the event from scratch, because your time won't count. Pace setter events are fairly common in career mode, so you won't have any trouble completing 3 of them.
Bargain Hunter

Purchase a car from the Showroom that's discounted in the 'Daily Deal'.
Whenever you enter the showroom for the first time each day you'll be greeted with the daily deal. You can also press to bring it up whilst in the showroom. The daily deal is a car that goes on sale each day for a discounted price, usually for 10-20% off the regular price. The car in question is random each day, but in my experience it was always something more expensive in the 100,000-200,000 credit range. With that being said, if you wait long enough you're bound to come across something more affordable before too long.
A Smashing Time

Smash 100 targets in Breakout.
Breakout events come up every once in a while in career mode. The goal is to achieve the highest score by smashing through targets that award points. There are 3 types of targets with blue awarding 10 points, yellow awarding 20 and red awarding 50. The targets are mostly placed around the track where you might expect them to be, but some of the targets are cleverly hidden in places away from the main track. It's all about finding the optimal route to rack up the highest score, so don't be afraid to go off-track or cut corners because the usual rules don't apply here. You should unlock this after completing your first or second Breakout event.
Grease Monkey

Apply upgrades to a road car to take it into the next road car class.
You can purchase a whole host of upgrades covering everything from tyres to turbochargers. For this trophy you're required to upgrade a road car so that it moves up into the next performance class. At the top of the upgrades menu you'll notice a long bar. This bar tells you the current performance class of your car along with a number which represents the Performance Index Rating (PIR) of the car. If you're using the first car you bought for this then it should be in the Road E class and its PIR should be around 250. To move it up to Road D, the next performance class, requires a PIR of 300. Purchasing a set of motorsport tyres should be enough to do the trick, but if not, simply purchase another upgrade such as a turbo and that will definitely be enough to do it.
Achieving Those Goals

Complete a total of 25 Career Objectives.
Please see Objectively Mad for more detailed information.
Track Master In Training

Master 3 different tracks.
Please see They Call Me The Track Master for more detailed information.
Perfectionist

Perfect over 100 corners.
Beneath the map on the HUD is a little check mark followed by a number. This number represents the amount of corners you have mastered on the current track. For example, 5/14 would mean that you have mastered 5 of the 14 corners on the current track. Some tracks have as few as 3 corners, whilst others have as many as 50. Mastering corners is actually incredibly easy and it's likely that you will master many of them without even trying. It's all about taking the correct line through the corners. That means entering in the correct position and exiting in the correct position. If you're used to driving games then this will be second nature to you, but even for beginners this is still rather simple.
Custom Plates

Alter the license plate on 3 or more of your vehicles.
A very simple trophy. Go to your garage once you've acquired 3 cars and then change the license plates on each of them. Job done.
Making Contacts

Unlock 5 Career Invitational Events.
Invitational events are unlocked by completing specific goals. You can see exactly what these goals are by pressing whilst in the career menu. You'll know which goals are tied to invitational events because it will say 'career event locked' next to the goal. There are 28 invitational events to unlock, but you only need to unlock 5 of them for the trophy. Most are simple whilst others are time consuming, so simply focus on the easier goals. You'll unlock a few of them naturally as you progress through career mode.
Rapid Fire Racer

Compete in 10 Multiplayer Quick Races.
(5)
Online required

Only quick play races count towards this trophy. Scheduled events and custom lobbies don't. Unfortunately, the multiplayer is almost completely dead and quick play races in particular seem to be non-existent. Therefore your best chance of earning this trophy is by arranging a boosting session. As long as you have at least one other person helping you out, you should be able to find each other when searching for quick play races. You can find other players to boost with here: Boosting Thread.
Smashed It

Compete in 5 different Breakout events.
Breakout events come up every once in a while in career mode. The goal is to achieve the highest score by smashing through targets that award points. There are 3 types of targets with blue awarding 10 points, yellow awarding 20 and red awarding 50. The targets are mostly placed around the track where you might expect them to be, but some of the targets are cleverly hidden in places away from the main track. It's all about finding the optimal route to rack up the highest score, so don't be afraid to go off-track or cut corners because the usual rules don't apply here. Simply complete 5 of these events to unlock the trophy.
Under The Hood

Complete a race using either the 'High Speed' or 'High Grip' Tuning Presets in a race car.
This is easier done in a custom event, because you'll have access to every car in the game which means there's no need to purchase an expensive race car just for this trophy. I used the Aston Martin Vulcan AMR Pro for this. Continue to the race once you've picked a car, but before you start the race go into the tuning settings and pick either the high speed or high grip preset. Now simply start the race and complete it to unlock the trophy.
Silverware

Win your first Career Championship.
Please see Silverware Collection for more detailed information.
Taskmaster

Earn 20 Accolades.
Accolades are bonus requirements similar in many ways to career objectives. The main difference is that accolades focus more on long-term goals and as such they offer greater XP awards upon completion than career objectives do. You can view accolades and their requirements by pressing whilst in the career menu.
Seasoned Racer

Reach Player Level 2
(1)
Please see Veteran Racer for more detailed information.
Challenge Accepted

Complete 20 Career Objectives in Challenge Events
For this trophy you'll need to complete career objectives in the Challenge series, which can be found in the bonus section in the career menu. There's 48 career objectives available in this series, but you only need to complete 20 of them for the trophy. The Challenge series consists exclusively of championship events and the objectives are pretty much the same throughout. Winning every round in a championship will be enough to earn you all 3 objectives. Therefore you'll need to win 7 championships in this series to unlock the trophy. If you haven't met the requirements to unlock the championship events then you can purchase them instead. They range in price from 10,000-20,000 credits.
Goal Orientated

Complete 50 Career Objectives.
Please see Objectively Mad for more detailed information.
Stripped To The Bone

Upgrade a Road spec car to Race Spec with a 'Race Conversion'.
For this trophy you'll need to purchase a race conversion upgrade for a road car which in turn will upgrade the road car to a race spec. The race conversion upgrade varies in price depending on the road car being used, but it will typically cost more if you use a more exotic road car. You'll want to have around 60,000-100,000 credits set aside for this.
Making Adversaries

Post a time or score in 10 unique Rivals Events.
(1)
Online required

If you're completing every daily event along with the weekly and monthly events then this trophy will take a minimum of 8 days to unlock. You might unlock this naturally when going for Overcome Your Rivals , but it's entirely skill dependent. Either way, keep completing rivals events until you've completed 10 in total.
Maximising Potential

Upgrade a race car to its highest possible Performance Index Rating (PIR).
There are 2 ways to go about this trophy. You can purchase a race car or you can purchase a race conversion upgrade for a road car. Both options will take quite a few credits, so the choice is yours. Once you have chosen one of these options, the next step is to upgrade the race car to its highest possible PIR. To do so, simply upgrade absolutely everything that you can until there's nothing left to upgrade.
They Call Me The Track Master

Master 15 different tracks.
Beneath the map on the HUD is a little check mark followed by a number. This number represents the amount of corners you have mastered on the current track. For example, 5/14 would mean that you have mastered 5 of the 14 corners on the current track. Some tracks have as few as 3 corners, whilst others have as many as 50. Mastering corners is actually incredibly easy and it's likely that you will master many of them without even trying. It's all about taking the correct line through the corners. That means entering in the correct position and exiting in the correct position. If you're used to driving games then this will be second nature to you, but even for beginners this is still rather simple.

To master a track you need to master every corner of the track and you must do so in one go. For example, you cannot master 5 corners of a track in one race and then master another 5 corners in another race, it has to be done in the same event. A lot of tracks are very easy to master, with only a few of the longer tracks being tricky. Simply concentrate on mastering the shorter tracks with the fewest corners.
Objectively Brilliant

Complete 100 Career Objectives.
Please see Objectively Mad for more detailed information.
Car Collector

Purchase 25 unique cars.
You should have a good amount of credits by the time you finish career mode and also a number of cars in your garage. I owned 18 cars and had around 300,000 credits when I was finished career mode, but it's dependent on how much of the career you actually complete. You don't need to own 25 cars at once, so you can sell any cars that you own to raise even more credits. Go to the showroom and sort the cars by value and then begin purchasing the cheapest available cars. They need to be unique, meaning that you don't already own them. You can't just purchase the cheapest car over and over. This will take a lot of credits, but it shouldn't require any grinding so long as you've completed a decent chunk of career mode. If you don't have enough credits then you can either continue in career mode or play custom races.
Silverware Collection

Win 5 different Championships in Career.
There are multiple championship events throughout career mode. Championships have multiple rounds and they work on a points system, meaning that you don't necessarily have to win every round in order to win the championship. For this trophy you simply need to win any 5 championships. You will also unlock Silverware for winning your first championship as you go for this trophy.
Overcome Your Rivals

Earn 300 Rival Points in a single season
(3)
Glitched
This trophy is glitched due to a recent patch that broke the online leaderboards. Any points earned in the mode will not count if you close the game (application) entirely. That effectively makes the platinum unobtainable and it's an issue that will likely never get fixed. However, there is a workaround that has been confirmed to work. This issue was brought to my attention by PST user Dark Shadows who also did all of the testing on this workaround method, so all credit goes to them. The workaround is as follows:
Play events in Rivals mode as you normally would, however, do not close the game under any circumstances when you are done playing. You must stay in the game at all times, but you can place your console into rest mode. Doing so is fine and has been confirmed to work. You must do this for as long as it takes to reach the 300 points threshold required for the trophy, which could take a few days for skilled players or weeks for less skilled players.
This workaround might not even be feasible for many players, because it involves leaving your console turned on for days or potentially even weeks at a time until you earn the required points total, but at the moment it's the only solution. Further, any chance that the studio behind it will ever fix the issue is extremely unlikely. The Project CARS series has been discontinued and Slightly Mad Studios effectively doesn't exist anymore. That also doesn't bode well for the game's online functionality as a whole, so if you plan on playing this game and going for the platinum then I would do it ASAP.

Online required

Rivals is a multiplayer mode where you compete against other players in hot lap and pace setter events. There are daily, weekly and monthly events to take part in. A season in rivals lasts for an entire month, so that means you'll have lots of opportunities to earn points. You should focus on completing at least the daily event each day. You will receive a ranking based on your performance at the end of each event. These rankings range from Bronze 1 which awards the fewest amount of points, to Platinum which awards the most points. For some reason it doesn't state in the game how many points each rank is worth, so the following is my best guess based on my own experiences. From what I can gather, Bronze 1 is worth somewhere between 5-10 points, whilst Platinum is worth between 50-60 points. As far as I can tell, the points go up in increments of 5-10 points for each rank. To be on the safe side, you should be aiming to complete events with a Bronze 2 ranking as doing so will be enough to ensure that you reach 300 points by the end of the season, although it may be possible to scrape by with a Bronze 1 ranking in most events. With that being said, it isn't overly difficult to get at least a Silver ranking on most events, so I wouldn't worry too much about this.

On the flip side, it's possible for good players to reach 300 points in just a few events. If you happen to be one such player then you don't need to wait until the season is over to unlock the trophy, because it will unlock as soon as you've reached 300 points, although you may need to enter the rivals menu to trigger it.
Objectively Mad

Complete 200 Career Objectives.
Career objectives are bonus requirements that award XP upon completion and every event has 3 of them to complete, whilst every race series has 48 to complete. That means there's much more than just 200 in total spread across career mode. This gives a lot of flexibility in how you approach this as you can simply ignore any objectives that you find difficult and focus instead on objectives that you find easy. With that being said, most of the objectives are straightforward so this shouldn't be a problem and you will probably even earn this naturally.
Veteran Racer

Reach Player Level 3
It takes 945,000 XP to reach player level 3. That might sound like a lot, but it really isn't. For reference, I earned this trophy by the second race series in career mode. By the time you unlock the platinum you will be somewhere around player level 10, so this will come naturally long before then.

7 trophies

Sen-Esque

Win a 3+ Lap race around Sakitto National in the Acura NSX.
Class Representative

Apply a Legends Pack decal to your car.
Yaaaass

Master Yas Marina GP.
From Icon To Icon

Upgrade a Toyota Supra MkIV to a Toyota Supra MkIV Racing with a 'Race Conversion'.
Wankel Fever

Complete 10 races using either the Mazda RX-7 or Mazda RX-7 Racing.
Legend In The Making

Complete all objectives in the Legends Pack Career Events.

6 trophies

Trueno Sprint

Win a 3+ Lap race around Lake Valley Outer Short Circuit in the Toyota Sprinter Trueno.
Plus 5HP

Apply a Power Pack pattern to your car.
Stadium Master

Master Lake Valley Outer Long Circuit.
Riders On The Storm

Upgrade the Nissan 370Z to its max PIR.
JDM Dream

Complete 10 races using the Nissan Silvia (S15) Spec-R Racing conversion.
Max Power

Complete all objectives in the Power Pack Career Events.

6 trophies

Power Trip

Win a 3+ Lap race around Zandvoort National in the Audi AI:RACE Concept.
Harnessing Energy

Apply a Electric Pack pattern to your car.
Zandvoort Pro

Master Zandvoort Grand Prix.
Can't Touch This

Upgrade the Nio EP9 to its max PIR.
Just Electric

Complete 10 races using the Volkswagen ID.R.
Fully Charged

Complete all objectives in the Electric Pack Career Events.

6 trophies

My Kind Of Poison

Win a 3+ Lap race around Bahrain Paddock Circuit in the Hennessey Venom F5.
Latest Swag

Apply a Style Pack pattern to your car.
Bahh Bahh Baaaahh

Master Bahrain GP.
Fast As Lightning

Upgrade the Lamborghini Sian FKP 37 to its max PIR.
Hype Machine

Complete 10 races using the Ferrari SF90 Stradale.
Style Over Substance

Complete all objectives in the Style Pack Career Events.