Looter shooter fans have been anxiously awaiting the release of Outriders, a third-person shooter with excellent loot and fast-paced gameplay. As with most games in this genre, players will need to spend hours leveling their characters and acquiring gear before they can tackle the game's hardest content.

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To survive on Enoch, understanding how this game treats difficulty scaling, crafting, and other combat-related mechanics is rather important. Some of this game's mechanics, both big and small, can drastically impact your experience. From unlocking mods on alternate characters to general gameplay advice, here are ten pro tips that will make Outriders much easier.

10 Interrupting Enemy Abilities

Outriders Status Immunity

Some enemies in Outriders can use abilities of their own to turn the tide of combat against you. These Elite enemies are some of the toughest foes you'll face, but they do have a weakness.

A swift melee strike while they're in the middle of casting an ability will interrupt them, staggering them for a second while canceling their ability. Be careful doing this! If you interrupt or apply enough status effects to an Elite, they'll become immune to all interrupts and status effects for a short time—denoted by a circle icon to the left of their health bar. Be sure to output as much damage as possible while it's stunned to bypass this immunity phase.

9 Dismantling Gear

Outriders Golem's Limb Legendary Shotgun

In most situations, you're better off dismantling your gear than selling it. Dismantling items won't grant any scrap, but you'll gain valuable crafting materials. More importantly, any mods tied to items you dismantle will be permanently unlocked for crafting. Mods are critical to making the strongest builds in Outriders, potentially letting you to combine two legendary-tier effects on one item. Needless to say, completing your mod collection is imperative to creating the best builds.

You can dismantle gear by using one of two methods:

  • Hold the dismantle button while inspecting an item.
  • Mark an item for dismantling in your inventory, then mass-dismantle your items.

Only sell items if you have plenty of crafting materials or have every mod unlocked.

8 Changing World Tiers

Outriders World Tiers Menu

Outriders features a scaling difficulty system in the form of World Tiers. As you increase your World Tier, enemies become significantly tougher but drop better loot. While this system is excellent for farming items, it makes the leveling experience tougher than it needs to be.

Those that want to level as fast as possible can reduce the game's World Tier, making the difficulty curve much lower. To do so, open your quest map. In that menu, they'll be a button prompt on the bottom left of your screen to open the World Tier menu (default "Z" on PC). Open the menu, then select which World Tier you want to play on.

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Doing this will forgo progress towards unlocking your next World Tier, although the reduced difficulty should make breaking into Outriders' leveling and endgame systems much easier.

7 Auto Loot After Combat

Outriders Auto Loot Feature

Use Auto Loot! Outriders features a dedicated button for automatically grabbing items in your game instance, allowing you to push through levels without having to backtrack for any loot you missed. Auto Loot will only grab weapons and armor drops for you; it does not automatically grab ammo packs.

You can configure the rarity of gear that Auto Loot will pick up for you. Configuring your Auto Loot filter can be done from the options menu under the "Gameplay" menu. Look for the "Auto Loot Minimum Rarity" option, then select whichever rarity you desire. You can also change the button tied to Auto Loot in the controls submenu (default "H" on PC). Use this after a gunfight to never miss a single piece of loot.

6 Crafting While Leveling

Outriders Crafting UI

Crafting is a vital mechanic to Outriders' loot structure. If you grow attached to certain weapons or armor mods, you can enhance your items or transfer their mods to future items. This makes the leveling and gearing process a breeze when compared to most looter shooters. The most cost-efficient strategy while leveling is to apply your favorite mods to items with a higher gear level.

If you haven't dug into Outriders' crafting system yet, check out our comprehensive crafting guide.

5 Sharing Your Mod Collection

Outriders Mod Selection

Your mod collection in Outriders is character bound. At least, it's supposed to be. Thanks to how crafting works, there's a trick you can use to transfer your mod collection to your alternate characters.

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On your main character, use the crafting interface to apply the desired mod onto an item. Place the newly crafted item in your stash. Log on to your alternate character. Head to your stash, and you should see the crafted weapon from your main character. Grab it, dismantle the item, and now you should have that mod unlocked on your alternate character. It'll cost quite a few resources to unlock an entire mod collection this way, but this strategy makes gearing alternate characters much less time-consuming.

4 Countering Status Effects

Outriders Trickster Spacetime Background

There are eight status effects in Outriders that can make combat significantly harder, either for you or your enemies. Fortunately for you, most status effects can be ended prematurely if you make a specific action. Certain abilities and mods will allow you to purge status effects from yourself as well.

Here is every status effect you can counter:

  • Ash and Freeze: Use your melee ability to break free.
  • Bleed: If you don't move, Bleed doesn't damage you. Stick to cover if you start bleeding.
  • Burn: Roll to end the debuff prematurely.
  • Toxic: Heal yourself to purge the debuff.

The tips listed above work for every class, regardless of gear and level.

3 Adjusting Their Build

an image showing the three subclasses available to the pyromancers in outriders. Several nodes in the tempest tree are highlighted in order to make the fire witch build

Skill tree respecs are free in Outriders and can be done at any time. Skills themselves can also be swapped at any time, so long as the skill you're replacing isn't on cooldown. Experienced players can use this flexibility to adjust their build between Expeditions and tougher content to suit their build for the occasion. Newer players should also be doing this to get familiar with their abilities and skill tree paths.

2 Using Their Melee Ability To Afflict Status Ailments

Outriders squad fighting flying enemies in a swamp

Not listed in your skills menu is your melee ability. Every class in Outriders has a unique melee ability that always inflicts a status effect. These melee abilities have a deceivingly long range, can be used every few seconds, and they all cover a sizable area if you sprint before meleeing. If you need some breathing room mid-gunfight, or you're setting up a devastating skill combo, using your melee ability is a good idea. The sprint melee attack is also a great way to initiate combat.

Each classes' melee ability does the following:

  • Devastator: Inflicts Freeze
  • Pyromancer: Inflicts Burn
  • Technomancer: Inflicts Bleed
  • Trickster: Inflicts Slow

Pyromancers and Tricksters can especially make use of their respective melee abilities. Pyromancers can mark targets with their melee or use the Burn status to inflict some deadly combos. Tricksters can use the slow to set up a deadly Temporal Blade, Cyclone, or unload a shotgun into a horde of slowed targets.

1 Ignore Cover

Outriders Gameplay

Unlike most cover shooters, Outriders ties its health mechanics with how aggressive you are. Hiding behind cover will only recover a sliver of your health bar. Because of this, most players familiar with Outriders will ignore cover altogether, employing a high-risk, high-reward playstyle instead.

Every class in Outriders has a unique passive that ties with how they heal mid-combat. In general, you'll need to damage opponents in some form to get your health back. Here are the healing passives for each class:

  • Devastator: Every Close Range kill heals you by 24% of your Max Health.
  • Pyromancer: Skills Mark damaged enemies for 15 seconds. Killing a Marked target heals you by 24% of your Max Health.
  • Technomancer: Weapons and skills recover 15% of damage dealt as Health.
  • Trickster: Close Range kills heal 20% of your Max Health and grant 20% Shield.

Additionally, some weapon mods and abilities can provide additional means of healing mid-combat. In most situations, you'll be relying on your passive to recover your health.

The faster you kill enemies, the harder it is to die. And the harder it is to die, the less incentive there is to use cover. With how aggressive enemies get when you do enter cover, there's little reason to use it besides reloading your weapon. Don't use cover in Outriders. Play aggressively instead.

Next: Outriders Complete Guide And Walkthrough