Mario Kart Tour | What are favored courses?

For Mario Kart’s first mobile outing, many of the series’ staple elements were tweaked or altogether removed. Besides Mario Kart Tour’s simplified control scheme, perhaps the game’s biggest difference from previous entries in the series is the lack of character and kart-specific stats. In Mario Kart Tour, characters don’t have traditional speed, handling, or weight values. Instead, each character has a set of favored courses that grants players bonuses when a character is played on those specific courses. We’ll go over what these advantages are and run down a list of all favored courses in this Mario Kart Tour favored courses guide.

Mario Kart Tour | What do favored courses do?

In Mario Kart Tour, favored courses provide additional items per item box. Favored courses come in two, unnamed tiers: Characters collecting item boxes on a “second-tier” favored course will receive one extra item per item box. Characters collecting item boxes on a “first-tier” course will receive two extra items. You can find a character’s favored courses of each tier when viewing them in the Drivers tab of the Menu. Second-tier favored courses are listed under an icon of two green shells, and first-tier courses are listed under an icon of three shells with “FRENZY!” emblazoned above them.

ALSO: Is there Mario Kart Tour controller support?

Besides the luxury of receiving three times the items you’d normally get from an item box, the major advantage of first-tier favored courses is the opportunity to enter frenzy mode. If you receive three of the same item from an item box — only possible in a first-tier favored course — you’ll enter Frenzy mode, which gives you invincibility and infinite items for a short period of time.