Camp Sessions
There are six real life fight camps you can work with during your career. All six are open for your use at any time, though you can only learn or level one move per visit. Each of the camps offers a variety of new technique moves to learn for fighters of all proficiencies. You will eventually have the opportunity to join a gym full time. Once you join that gym, you are a member of that gym for the duration of your career. You can always decline, and keep sampling the moves from other gyms. Though, joining a gym gives you the added benefit of discounted training, and sparring with actual UFC fighters from that gym.
When looking at a gym for a new move, you should always be aware of the position that the move needs to be executed from. There’s a handy video player on the bottom of the screen, which shows you what the move looks like, and how it is used in a fight. Remember, the style you picked early on in your career already comes with three technique moves loaded (unless you chose MMA). You should look to build upon that move set with complimentary techniques. If you’re a big wrestler, a visit to AKA or Greg Jackson’s Gym would make the most sense. Wolfslair and Black House have excellent clinch moves for Muay Thai or Jiu-Jitsu fighters. If you want a more rounded experience, then American Top Team and Sityodtong have a little bit of everything, but lack a focus in one particular area.
Whatever moves you decide to learn, it’s important to level them up as fast as possible. The higher the level, the more impact the move will have when you use it. A level three left hook will do more damage than a level one hook. Higher level takedowns are tougher to stop, and will expend less energy to pull off. You can get a new technique move up to level three rather quickly in the game, and it should only take you three or four sessions of leveling to max a move out. Beware though learning too many moves. Your fighter only has a select number of button combinations they can have moves mapped to, so while it’s great to be a Jack of all trades, it’s more important to have a focused arsenal of moves that will help you win a fight from any position.
You should always have at least one strong kick, punch, takedown, and ground maneuver learned. Submissions can also be of benefit, however, unless you’re a submissions whiz, it’s more important to build up your fighter with actual strikes first. A hefty kick to the head has a higher chance of ending a fight quicker than fighting with an opponent on the ground as you try to sink in a submission.
Sponsors and Upgrades
Winning fights isn't the only way to earn cred in the career mode. You can also have up to ten sponsors, which will pay you in cred for having their logos on your shorts, shirt, hat, or banner. You’ll start off with access to only a few sponsors, and as you progress farther into you career, even more sponsors will come looking for you to endorse their brand. The more faithful you are to a sponsor, the more cred you can earn from them. Sponsorships can be leveled up, which will in turn lead to them paying you more when you have their logo on your clothing.
If you’re just looking to make a lot of money incredibly fast, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to keep changing sponsorships throughout your career. Even though there are 34 different sponsorships you can unlock, you can make an incredible amount of cred by sticking with the earliest available, and leveling them up to earn you the maximum amount of cred every fight. You can have up to ten different logos on your shorts, shirt, and banner, but only four on a hat. All this sponsorship cred, coupled with your fight purse cred should give you a nice bankroll by your fourth or fifth fight (depending on how you’re performing).
Cred can be used for more than just training though. Remember, any cred you spent on training was already deducted from your winnings. Whatever money you have in the bank is used to buy new sponsorships and logos when you’ve earned them, and can be used to buy training and sparring upgrades. As great as it is to have more recognizable sponsors on your pants, it’s even more important to purchase new sparring partners and training programs as quickly as possible.
There are four levels of sparring partners to buy, and eight levels of training sessions to buy. New sparring partners will raise the level cap on all of your statistics, while new training programs will raise the level cap on all of your attributes. The moment you have enough cred, you should purchase a level two sparring partner. This will boost your stat cap to 80 across the board. Then the subsequent purchases you should make are for level two cardio, level two strength, level two speed, and finally, level two footwork. When you have the cap raised for all of your stats and attributes, you should repeat the pattern again for level three sparring and training. Purchasing new partners and programs is expensive, but you’ll be raking in the creds by the time your fighter is ready to upgrade to level three.
