The Mario Kart Tour points are used for several important systems, including leaderboard ranking, unlocking Grand Stars, and earning bonus coins at the end of races. Like favored courses and various other Mario Kart Tour systems, however, the way the points system work is a bit complicated. This Mario Kart Tour how to earn more points guide will fill you in on just that.
Mario Kart Tour | Why do points matter?
The main draw of earning points in Mario Kart Tour is unlocking more Grand Stars, which allow you to unlock more races and open Tour Gifts. At the end of a race, you’ll unlock up to five Grand Stars depending on your score, and your bonus points will earn you a few extra coins.
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Earning points can also get you rewards through the Mario Kart Tour ranking system. You may see a small bubble above a cup icon in the main menu. Select this, and you’ll be taken to the ranking menu, where you can see your points rank compared to friends and other players (or, you will be able to, once you’re not playing against bots anymore). The top three players for that cup in the weekly ranking can earn a variety of rewards, including coins, tickets, and rubies.
Complicating things is the fact that scoring points while racing as particular drivers, karts, and gliders will further increase the points you can earn while playing with those characters and vehicles equipped. We’ll discuss this more below.
Mario Kart Tour | How to get more points
As with most games with scoring systems, doing better at the game earns you more points, so doing well in races is perhaps the most obvious way to get more points in Mario Kart Tour. You’ll earn more points depending on your placement at the end of the race and your speed, so make sure you know how to change CC for maximum points.
Along with simply doing well, several other factors play into your score at the end of a race. The easiest of these to influence is your combo points. During races, you’ll earn extra points for performing actions in quick succession of each other. These include Rocket Starts, Jump Boosts, Mini-Turbos (earned after using the Mario Kart Tour drifting mechanic for a certain distance), coin collecting, and more. Even actions you’d think would make you lose points, like running into a goat on one of the Daisy Hill tracks can contribute to combos. Once you’ve finished a race, you can select “Actions Performed” on the points total screen to see a breakdown of your combos, which is helpful for learning how to best get more going in the future.
As we mentioned above, Mario Kart Tour’s points system becomes a bit more complicated when you dig into the points tied to drivers, karts, and racers. Earning points will fill up the EXP bar of the driver, kart, and glider you used at the end of a race. This will increase each of their base points, which are automatically added to your points for subsequent races. For example, if you race using a 504-base-points Donkey Kong, a 244-base-points Pipe Frame, and a 252-base-point Super Glider, 1,000 points (the sum of all three elements’ base points) will be added to your score for that race. This, in turn, contributes to your point total, which fills these items’ EXP bar and increased their base points.
Karts and gliders also have score bonus multipliers to further increase your score. First-tier Kart favored courses (marked by three upward arrows) provide two-times bonus points, and second-tier (two arrows) courses provide 1.5-times bonus points. First-tier glider favored courses, on the other hand, provide three-times combo points and a “big” combo-time boost (allowing for more time between actions in a combo), while second-tier courses provide a two-times combo bonus and a regular combo-time boost. Unfortunately, since these bonuses are tied to kart and glider favored courses, certain karts and gliders will provide them on more courses. In order to unlock the most widely-useful karts, you’ll have to tackle the Mario Kart Tour Pipe reward system.
