Zwift launched its new mountain bike course two weeks ago (here’s how to find it) and with it the opportunity to unlock the first-ever Zwift mountain bike frame and wheelset.
While this is surely only the first in-game mountain bike of many to come, and serious Zwifter should want it in their garage. So how do you unlock it?
First: Find Repack Ridge
You must ride the new Repack Ridge steering trail in order to unlock the mountain bike.
Here’s a clear guide explaining how to get to Repack Ridge >
Second: Ride It Well
As you pedal (and steer!) your way over Repack Ridge, the game is tracking your performance in two ways:
- Your overall time on the trail (shown at the top of the screen)
- The number of stars you get by steering the right line (also at the top of the screen)
There are 10 sections of the trail which include either blue arrows and red X’s, or a single blue line. Steer your way onto the blue, keep of the X’s, and you’ll get a full star for each section.
To unlock the Zwift mountain bike, you must complete the trail in under 12 minutes, 30 seconds AND get at least 9 out of 10 stars.
What Do You Unlock?
Hit your targets and you’ll unlock both the Zwift Mountain frame and wheels.
While they aren’t particularly fast on tarmac, they’re faster than any other bike available when it comes to riding the Jungle Circuit‘s dirt, thanks to Zwift’s new rolling resistance changes.
And the frame has a color slider, so you can customize the look a bit!
Have You Done It?
It took me three tries, mostly because I was messing around with my steering setup. What about you? Have you unlocked the mountain bike yet?
Done it 11 times and my max is 8 stars. That includes times when I specifically took it nice and slow to try to maximize my stars. I find the steering too twitchy for small turns and not responsive enough when a big turn is needed. Maybe my phone’s sensors aren’t the greatest?
I got it first try
The phone has a huge impact on this. Tried 3 different phones now: one phone was just okay, one phone was terrible, one phone seemed like the bike was going where I wanted it to before I even reacted to the turns.
Also discovered there is a huge bug relating to the speed here. On the final climb I was able to get 35kph for quite a while at 300w, the very next run the same 300w got me about 12kph. Avg watts on the strava segment are almost the same but the time on the end climb differs by a minutes (3.5 mins vs 2.5 mins).
Thanks for the info Eric, just what I was looking for!
More than 30 attempts 4 mobile phones and 1 tablet and there are always problems at least I’m doing my training. This is so weak and has so many problems that they should never have thrown it. Neither looks like Zwift company.
To be fair, Repack Ridge is a Beta project under Zwift Futureworks, so there will be bugs and anomalies across various setups and users. Hopefully all will be captured and sorted in a stable release soon.
Do you need to be at a certain level to enter the trail? Every time I pass the trail entrance I don’t have the ability to enter.
Nope. As long as you approach it from the right direction and have Zwift Companion connected to your live ride you should get the prompt.
I’ll try again. I always select the ”Muir and the Mountain” route
I think it’s not that smart that on one hand this bike is a reward from a beta test event and on the other hand, this bike can impact races on some portions of Watopia. I tried it only to get the bike for the jungle circuit and got it to 7 stars several time while being under 12 minutes. I tried it at least 20 times with 4 different phones. The steering “reaction time” was too different from one phone to another regardless of the sensitivity switch position. They should have given the reward as soon as you finished the course with at least 5 stars knowing that your results depends so much on the type of phone you use.
I just tried it on my setup on emotion rollers…that was a little crazy. I started to get the hang by the end though and I didn’t even crash on the rollers!
I finally got the mountain bike. Here are my tips:
1. Don’t attach the phone to your handlebars. Attach it to your stem or headset. It steers much better this way.
2. Put your phone on airplane mode and connect it with wi-fi.
3. Go super slow before the first five stars and the middle three. Go full blast in between.