yeah you deffinately want a battery pack to replace the crappy AA holder...2nd day i had my hyper 7 rtr it had a bad experience with a curb cause a battery fell out of it...twisted the chassis broke the rx box and everything...might get a failsafe too incase you run out of range or your TX batteries go too low...cheap insurance for that...but for sure make for certain your battery and battery leads are secured good or you too will have a bad experience. and the steering servo for sure...the brakes on that buggy wont work worth a darn till you get a more powerfull servo for that too...the stock ones just dont have enough backside to make them perform well.