People Can Fly’s RPG shooter Outriders is out now, and as you might imagine, there’s a lot going on in this game. Depending on how much you played of the demo (if you even played it), you might already be familiar and comfortable with the core underlying systems of the game, but for those of you who’ll be jumping into it for the first time, here, we’ve compiled a bunch of handy tips and tricks for you to make your first few hours in the game a little smoother.
KEEP MOVING AROUND
Don’t let Outriders’ cover shooting mechanics fool you- even though you can play it as a cover shooter, saying stationary for too long isn’t advisable. It’s best to keep moving around the battlefield and making full use of your skills and abilities. Your enemies definitely like to keep moving around, and there’s a good chance that if you don’t do the same, you might find yourself a bit too overwhelmed quickly.
HEALING
Healing is a mechanic that really drives home what we just spoke about, because in Outriders, healing is tied directly with killing enemies. Each class heals in different ways- Devastators recover health from enemies that you kill up close, Pryomancers heal every time an enemy that you marked with your skills dies, Tricksters get health and a little bit of a shield every time you kill an enemy in close range, while Technomancers recover a bit of health for every bit of damage they incur. Offence is the best defence in Outriders, and healing in particular is dependent on you playing aggressively, and the sooner you get to grips with that, the easier things will become.
SKILLS
Here’s another way Outriders makes it clear that in spite of its cover shooting mechanics, it’s not a cover shooter- just as important as the guns you’re using are the supernatural abilities you have at your disposal. Both function as equally important pillars of the combat. Your skills are on very short cooldowns, and there’s a reason for that- you should be using them liberally. Any time a skill becomes usable, pick an enemy or group of enemies that poses more of a threat than the others, and let loose with your powers. Higher level enemies in particular are best fought with skills than completely relying on regular weapons.
MELEE
Given how useful the bombastic skills of Outriders can be, you might not think that melee attacks are useful even in the slightest- that’s not true, however. While certainly (and obviously) not nearly as useful as skills and straight up shooting enemies in the face, melee attacks are plenty important as well. From special effects to interrupting enemy attacks, melee moves can be useful in a pinch plenty of times, so while ignoring melee attacks almost entirely is fine in plenty of shooters out there, it definitely isn’t in Outriders.
MODS
Outriders has a lot of systems playing with each other just below the surface that allow you to experiment with your character in various ways and let you build the kind of character you want. Which mods you have equipped is one of the many ways you can influence that, and from buffs to new skills to enhancing existing ones, these can be incredibly useful. Think carefully about what kind of a build you’re making, about what sort of skills you like to use in combat, about what your playing style is, and equip weapon and armour mods accordingly. They can make a pretty significant difference.
STACKING
Given the fact that Outriders is, of course, and RPG, you’ll be wondering whether you can stack mods to boost the effects of one that you really like- well, yes and no. Though you cannot stack multiple mods of the same kind, different kinds of mods can have the same or similar effect to each other, and you can equip multiple of those simultaneously, which means you still get to stack their effects. So if you’re looking to build a character whose skills do massive AoE damage, be on the lookout for mods that boost AoE attacks in particular.
AUTO-COLLECT
Having to collect every little piece of loot that you come across can be a pretty tedious exercise in looter shooters, but Outriders has a pretty genius (and simplistic) quality-of-life feature that cuts a lot of that tedium out- the auto-collect feature, which does exactly what its name suggests, and picks up any loot that you come across automatically once it has been enabled. Of course, then you might be worried that you’ll be picking up everything, even the crap stuff, and that your inventory will soon be flooded with useless things. Well, you can also tweak auto-collect and set it so that it only picks up loot from specific rarities, which is just as useful, if not more, especially as you progress further in the game.
DISMANTLING
Dismantling weapons, armour, and equipment goes hand in hand with playing any loot driven game. You’re always on the lookout for better stuff, which means you never stick with a piece of gear for too long, and given how much new stuff you’re constantly finding, you’ll be discarding old stuff at a pretty regular basis. Well, there’s a smart way to go about that in Outriders. Rather than dismantling everything you don’t need, it’s best to hold on to useless common and uncommon gear. Dismantling them yields pretty disappointing results, so it’s best to instead sell them at vendors. Meanwhile, any rare and epic loot that you no longer need is best dismantled for resources, and often even mods.
SIDE QUESTS
“Don’t ignore the side quests” is a pretty generic piece of advice that can be applied to almost any game out there, but seriously- in Outriders, don’t ignore the side quests. You will, of course, be on the lookout for Legendary-tier loot all the time, and guess what the best way to earn Legendary loot is- yep, the side quests. Unless you’re here just for the story, ignoring the side quests is really, really not the smart thing to do. Seek them out whenever you can, and once you find one, take it on as soon as you can.
FARMING XP
In fact, don’t just do side quests- do them again and again. Grinding out side quests is possibly one of the best ways to farm not only Legendary gear, but also XP. Side quests can give net you with pretty high sums of XP (though, of course, how much XP you get varies depending on what side quest you’re tackling). What’s interesting is that a large number of side quests in the game are quite short and can be finished very quickly, which means that they’re a great way to level up your character quickly, and earn some pretty sweet loot while doing so. All of which is to say that farming side quests is a great way to speed up progress, so keep an eye out for them.
INTERRUPT SKILLS
It’s not just you who can unleash deadly storms of supernatural skills on your foes- in Outriders, you’ll often come across enemies that will also be all too happy to hit you with skills and abilities of their own. Often, you’ll get the chance to interrupt these, however. As an enemy is preparing to cast a certain skill, you might see a casting bar above them, and if you hit them with Interrupt skills before the bar fills up, you will, as you may have guessed, prevent them from unleashing those abilities. When deciding what skills you want your character to have, it’s best to always have at least one (or preferably two) Interrupt skills in your arsenal.
RESPECCING
Outriders has a lot of ways in which it gives you a great degree of control over how you want to build and progress your character- from gear to mods to what skills you use and more. Given how much build variety the game has, it goes without saying that you might often come up against enemies or roadblocks against whom the character you’ve built just isn’t cutting it. If that happens, or even if you just feel like switching things up and trying out something completely different, don’t worry- you can always respec in Outriders and start from scratch. In fact, it’s recommended that you always keep that option in the back of your mind. It can be a game-changer in certain situations.