Crash Bandicoot: On the Run Collection Run Guide - Maximize Your Farming With These Handy Tips
Note: While we’ll be talking about Crash Bandicoot: On the Run using BlueStacks 4, this game is already available on the New BlueStacks 5 with much better performance, less resource consumption, and more stability. Download the latest version of our Android emulator and give it a try!
Crash and Coco are back and better than ever in the new Crash Bandicoot: On the Run. This endless runner game takes all the elements that made Crash amazing on the original PlayStation and translates it perfectly to the mobile platform. The result is a game that, while offering similar elements to what you can find in other endless runners like Subway Surfers, also retains the original charm, characters, and many of the hazards and interesting level design of the original.
However, since On The Run is a mobile game, it’s expected that it would have some sort of gameplay loop or mechanic that would require grinding in order to proceed. In this case, your progress through the main story is always halted by your supply of bombs and other weapons. Specifically, in order to access the main campaign, you must first have enough explosives, which are used for defeating the bosses at the end of every level. In order to obtain these explosives, however, you’ll need to craft them in your Labs, which takes both time and resources.
In this guide, we’ll be showing you how to collect resources in Crash Bandicoot: On the Run, as well as how to maximize your farming.
Collecting New Materials
Early on after starting the game, Crash gets access to the Collection Runs, which are essentially endless levels where you can farm all the resources you’ll ever need. These levels are divided into different islands, in which there are many different stages that offer a wide variety of materials. You can access these islands and levels by clicking on the Map button on the lower right side of the main base screen.
Once in the Collection Run menu, you’ll find all the different islands you can explore. If you’re just getting started, you will only have the Turtle Forest level of the Wumpa Island available. But don’t worry, you’ll unlock other zones as you continue collecting Power Gems, and you won’t ever need materials from islands you haven’t unlocked yet, anyway.
Knowing Which Island to Farm
And speaking of the different islands in Crash Bandicoot: On the Run, you can easily tell what materials you can find in each of these through their icons in the island overview screen. For instance, in this screen, you can see that Wumpa Island has Glowing Bark, Nitric Fungus, Alpha Parts, and Beta Parts, and you can focus exclusively on this spot if you need any of these.
However, the supply of materials isn’t unlimited; they’ll run out if you collect enough of them on your runs, and you’ll need to wait for the refill timer to expire before they’re available once again. You can check the current availability of any material by zooming into any island. This availability is represented by the crate icons in the island screen, with three green bars meaning that the material in question is completely available and an empty bar meaning that it’s unavailable until it refills.
You can speed up the refill process by paying purple crystals, though we strongly suggest saving them for other purposes as this is effectively a waste of currency.
Going on Collection Runs
Once you’ve chosen a level in any island, you’ll get to choose your character and skin before beginning. As we mentioned on another occasion, your skin in this game is more than just about appearances as some of these can provide important bonuses when farming materials. Specifically, some skins can boost the number of resources you receive from their corresponding crates. However, these skins usually only increase your acquisition of a single type of resource, so you’d need to alternate between them as needed.
At the beginning, you won’t really need to worry about your skins too much as you probably won’t have too many of these unlocked, not to mention that a lot of these are purchased with purple crystals and, unless you’re thinking of spending real money on the game, you won’t have them unlocked early on.
Maximizing Your Resource Gain During Collection Runs
Now that you’ve chosen an island and a level to explore, you can start collecting all the resources you need, all of which you’ll find by breaking crates as you run through the different paths. You always know what materials are in every crate since they have their respective icons on them. Similarly, while these collection run levels are endless, you can always look at the signs in every fork to know what materials you will find in every path.
Just like in regular levels, collection run stages have underground sections and higher paths that you can take and that can have different materials. In these cases, you might need to go down the same paths multiple times to collect everything that they offer. A good idea here is to exhaust the resources in the level as much as you can in order to maximize your gain on every run. Not to mention that, by doing so, you’ll also accumulate steps that can be traded for trophies later on.
Once you’ve collected everything you need, you can exit the level by taking the path with the house icon in the next fork you come across.
Collecting Multiple Crates on Both Sides at the Same Time
One common question that people ask about collecting items from crates is that, when there are crates on both sides of the track at the same time, is it possible to collect both of them, or do you have to run down the same path twice just to get both items? Fortunately, the answer here is yes, but only by using the belly flop move.
Both Crash and Coco have a special aerial they can perform while in the air, by swiping down on the screen, or by pressing S if you’re playing on PC with BlueStacks. By doing so, your character will instantly slam into the ground, breaking not only everything directly underneath, but also everything on their sides, as well. In this sense, with a well-timed belly flop, you can collect all items when there are two boxes on either side, while saving time in the process.
By going out on collection runs regularly, you can keep your silo stocked with materials at all times in order to produce all the explosives and weapons that you’ll ever need to defeat the evil Doctor Neo Cortex. So get out there and start farming!
