Black Forest

Black Forest is an official STK track and an addon (which should coincide with official track), made by Sven Andreas Belting.

Screenshot

History

Black Forest was introduced as an official STK track in version 1.0, replacing Green Valley. This decision is rather controversial, because while Black Forest is a very detailed and nice track with several possible drivelines (which are pretty balanced), it usually causes lags for many players online, and also forces them to use lower graphics level (if this is possible at all). For that reason, the track is sometimes called Lag Forest. Last but not least, Green Valley is a pretty nice track itself.

Description

For Black Forest, heavy karts are still preferred, but it isn't a 100% choice: one needs to take lag situation and the number of laps and players into account. If the expected lags are more than a simple discomfort, one should not participate in the race remember that actions can be not precise. The lap is pretty long and takes about 1 minute 20 seconds in normal conditions, so the default number of laps is 2.

The track is located... in the forest with rare houses, railway, a castle, a river and many, many trees. This provides a beautiful landscape.

The start-finish straight is pretty long, ending with items leading to a nitro hairpin through a bridge. Combined with trees around and possible lags, this makes the start unbelievable. Then a few corners follow, containing at first several items, then bananas near the sides of a bridge, then several small nitros.

Then a player gets into a pretty long straight, which contains the only (among the official tracks) item surrounded by four (!) bananas which are narrowing the road pretty much, and sometimes it's better to go offroad. Switches can be also useful here. At the end the road splits into two paths.

The track shown from above

First choice

The left path consists of three long, almost straight parts separated by sharp 180° corners. The first part contains a bit of nitro and items and a few separate bananas which force one to choose a non-trivial driveline. The corner after contains several items, a small nitro and another banana which is pretty difficult to escape if you are aiming for that nitro too. More items follow, with nitros at the end of the second path, including a big nitro which is located on the outer side and should better be taken, but the fence is pretty tight and can cause problems. Finally, the third part of this left path contains bananas and a hard-to-take item, and leads to the railway.

There is also a house to the right of this third part. One can ride into it and grab some nitros and items from rooms, even on the upper floor which also contains a direct zipper to the next part of the track (while the lower floor just has another road out). This doesn't save time, but in case one leads with a big gap and is bored (or wants to set a fastest lap), this might be suitable! Also there are a few small but useful nitros under the chairs outside of the house.

The right path, however, isn't so interesting. It is rather straight, has a zipper, a few bananas, and an item-nitro combination. The road also has some tree-like obstacles in the second half, and a big nitro inside of a tree trunk. The path ends with a zipper that carries you further.

The left path is a bit faster than the right path, though a bit more difficult.

Second choice

The next path of the track has a railway immediately to the right of the road, separated by uncomfortable barrier. One can ride over the railway, and can switch to it at the start of this track part. Railway is narrow and has many items and nitros, while the main road also contains bananas. Though, a train is regularly going on the railway and can hit the kart which results in loss of time. Hitting a moving barrier at any railway entry also results in a time loss. Also note that a switch can be efficient against railway users.

There is another opportunity to switch the main road to railway and vice versa a bit later. This can be useful, for example, in case of bad timing at the first entry. The remaining part of the railway goes to the tunnel, with train disappearing in it going right (so one should go left), so in the very last part of the railway one no longer cares about the train. This railway part is significantly faster than the corresponding part of the main road, which has several small nitros but also a few annoying slow corners.

Third choice

After the railway joins the main road, there is a short part with a banana, an item, and a small nitro, which splits further again into left and right paths.

The left path goes near the hill and surrounds it. It has a few separate bananas and even more items and nitro, even one big nitro at the end, but it's much slower than the right path.

The right path goes up to the top of the hill, surrounds the castle, and then goes down to the start-finish straight which is partly formed by the left path. This path is more difficult though, because it has a series of bananas that need to be avoided, a fence which has holes in unexpected places (falling into them is not recommended) and is itself a problem, and bumpy stairs when going down to the lap finish. This path is also narrower than the left one.

When riding in reverse, note that the train still goes in "normal" direction which can cause a problem.

Overall, Black Forest is a pretty difficult track which is hard to complete perfectly, still having big lag problems and thus not as popular as it could be.