Outriders, the new shooter/RPG hybrid from developer People Can Fly and publisher Square Enix, is out now. If you’re just picking up the game, you’ll likely notice that it’s fairly straightforward and there isn’t too much complexity to grapple with. That said, there are a few features and mechanics that the game quickly glosses over or never explains, and they’re quite helpful. So, we’ve outlined nine tips below to help you become a top-tier Outrider.
Alongside these tips, we’ve put together plenty of other Outriders guides. Be sure to check them out if you’re looking for more information on Outriders, which is available for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, PC, and Stadia. (The game is also playable via Xbox Game Pass.)
Outriders Guides
Lead With A Punch
Sure, you have plenty of incredible superpowers in Outriders, but each class has a pretty devastating melee attack too. All the melee attacks carry a secondary effect: the Devastator’s causes bleed, the Pyromancer’s causes burn, the Trickster’s causes slow, and the Technomancer’s causes frost. In a pinch, these melee attacks can save you when you’re backed against a wall and waiting for one of your abilities to recharge, but their primary use is offense. And sometimes there’s no better way of beginning your attack than running straight at the enemy encampment.
When you use a melee attack while sprinting, your character will leap into the air and slam down on the ground to deliver an area-of-effect explosion–a powerful opening move to any attack, especially if you’re playing as the tank-like Devastator or rogue-like Trickster and are looking to get up close and personal anyway.
There’s Always A Better Gun
In Outriders, you’ll find loot all the time and the game does a really good job of constantly drip-feeding you better and better firearms and armor. Early on, just keep selling old gear and equipping the more powerful. This will not only help you take on the early-game mini-bosses and bosses with the ideal power level, but allow you to experiment with a lot of different types of weapons. Don’t grow too attached to anything–trust us, there’s nothing you’ll find in the early game that you’ll want 10 hours in.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
After the intro chapters of Outriders, you’ll unlock crafting. Here is where you should start paying a little bit of attention to what you loot. Keep upgrading to the best you have, but whenever you find Rare or Epic items (or, if you’re really lucky, Legendary items), take the time to look at the mods they have. When those weapons and armor are no longer up to snuff, dismantle them instead of selling them. This will give you the mods on those items, which you can then craft onto any Rare or Epic weapon or armor you find.
Loot Is Good, But It Could Be Better
Be sure to mod your gear often. Though some mods have general benefits like getting health back on kill shots or adding burn damage to your guns, many of them are geared towards benefiting specific builds. You don’t have to wait until the endgame to start forming your preferred playstyle. Every time you ditch an old piece of gear for something new (which, again, you should be doing all the time), take the opportunity to craft your favorite mods onto your new gear so that you can continue to dominate with your ideal playstyle.
If you’re a Trickster and prefer using Temporal Blade over Cyclone Slice, for example, it makes no sense to equip gloves with the Healing Slice mod (receive health for each enemy killed with Cyclone Slice) over gloves with the Slasher mod (Temporal Blade can be used twice before cooldown) regardless of whether the former is a higher power level than the latter. But through crafting, you can transfer the mod on the second pair of gloves to the first pair–now you have the best of both worlds, more powerful armor and a mod that will actually benefit you. Provided you keep selling all the gear you don’t need and taking a few seconds to mine for resources as you come across them in missions, you’ll be swimming in crafting materials. Just keep modding your gear.
Slide To The Loot
If you’re at all worried about missing out on loot, turn on Outriders’ auto-loot feature. Open the options menu and navigate to the gameplay tab, where you should see a slider that you can adjust in order to determine what type of weapons and armor you want to auto-loot.
Maintain Your Privacy
By default, Outriders will allow any and all players to join your game. If you don’t want folks randomly jumping into your game, you’ll need to adjust your privacy options. Open the options menu and go to the gameplay tab. From here, you should see an option to change your game privacy. You can adjust it so that only your friends on your chosen hardware can join your game or close your game off entirely, requiring folks to get an invite from you in order to join.
Respec Yourself
As you level up, you’ll unlock points that you can invest into a three-pronged skill tree. You won’t be able to unlock enough points to buy every skill across all three branches, but don’t sweat things too much. Not only can you respec your skill points whenever you want, you can do so freely. So experiment with different skills and see what might work best for your chosen build.
On top of that, you can respec your skill tree in order to help out your loot game when you’re farming for better gear. Certain skills in each classes’ skill tree make your character better with certain weapons and allow them to more easily find those weapons. For example, the Trickster’s Assassin tree is filled with skills that increase the class’ effectiveness at close-range and help the Trickster more easily find the guns in order to wreck shop up close, like Shotgun Master (increase shotgun damage by 15%, increase shotgun weapons drop chance by 12%).
If you’re curious, all four classes feature a skill that helps them farm for assault guns (Assault Rifles, Light Machine Guns, Submachine Guns, and Double Guns). However, only the Devastator and Trickster have a skill to help them farm for shotguns (Pump Action Shotguns and Automatic Shotguns), and only the Pyromancer and Technomancer have a skill for helping them farm for rifles and snipers (Marksman Rifles, Automatic Sniper Rifles, and Bolt Action Rifles).
Change The World, Tear S**t Up
Just because you unlock a new World Tier doesn’t mean you always have to play at that World Tier. You should play on the highest World Tier you’ve unlocked as often as possible just to ensure you’re still getting loot drops that will boost your power level. However, if you’re stuck on one fight, just lower your World Tier, get past it, and then raise the World Tier again afterwards. There’s no penalty for doing so, and it’s better than frustratingly throwing yourself at the same section of the game for longer than you have to.
Claim Your Worldly Rewards
Every time you unlock a new World Tier, you’ll get a new reward. In order to accept the reward, you need to open the World Tier menu–it won’t unlock automatically. Early on, your rewards aren’t much to write home about, as they’re largely rare gear or resources. However, you’ll eventually start to get Epic and Legendary loot. So don’t forget to claim those rewards in order to unlock some powerful mid- and late-game gear.
