Good Morning Friends! Yesterday was the official launch of the Outriders Worldslayer expansion, but I have had access to it for a while now. I did not really spend much time in it because there were some early server issues, and I had other things I wanted to be playing. Last night I pushed my way through the new story content and unlocked the new endgame area. I figured this morning I would talk a little bit about that experience. It is my goal not to really spoil anything in the story, but to be honest this is not exactly an epic fantasy tale… so I am not sure you would care if I spoiled it in the first place.
So I figure I should start out with an explanation for anyone who has not experienced Outriders before. This game is essentially a third-person run and gun looter shooter with a loot system that feels very similar to that of Diablo III. When you deconstruct an item you collect the mods that were on that item and then can modify any other gear to replace a single mod slot from one of the ones you have collected. You play as an Altered, or a character changed by the anomaly that ravages the planet. There is a class system and each class has a talent point system to build your character. I personally spend most of my time playing the more tanky close ranged earth-elemental-themed class called the Devastator and have specced down the Seismic Shifter tree that increases the damage I deal with my “earth” themed abilities. Pyromancer is medium ranged fire-focused class, Technomancer is long ranged focused on turrets and poison damage, and Trickster manipulates time and space while in close range.
The world of Outriders is extremely bleak, as humanity essentially exhausted the resources of the earth and attempted to find a new planet… and then found out when they arrived that it was also ruined in a different way. It is the sort of bleak that sees you nonchalantly climbing up a pile of corpses as you walk through a city that was quite literally a concentration camp. As such, I feel like you need to be a certain brand of desensitized to be able to look past this and see the deeply nuanced gameplay that it offers. If you can deal with the emotional barrage of the story… Outriders is quite possibly the most interesting looter shooter out there with fun and engaging gameplay and an “avoid cover at all costs to keep healing yourself” gameplay strategy. Unfortunately, most of the AggroChat crew could not look past the harsh exterior and get through the game in order to experience the “good parts”.
Unfortunately, as the story goes… Worldslayer is a tale of going from bad to much worse. You are presented with a new threat to humanity as the Anomaly keeps getting worse, this time deciding to freeze the planet in its wake. You also have to contend with a renewed focus on the civil war between the last remnants of the colony forces that you represent, and the insurgency camped just outside its gates. You also find yourself squaring off against “The Commander” of the insurgency which is an ultra-powerful Altered that seems to be able to channel some sort of hentai void tentacles nonsense. The story is still very bleak… but also maybe has a ray of hope for the future. I have to say that across the board the story does flesh out quite a few details about the world itself, and the people who lived here before. We find out that they seem to have also ruined the planet in their own way before figuring out a method for turning back the anomaly.
The new content area is rather small and consists of six story areas and a seventh are containing the new endgame activity. All told it took me around three hours to burn through the story, and I was doing so at a fairly leisurely pace. If you were moving faster there is probably only around 2 hours of solid gameplay here. If that is a thing that concerns you, then you might take that into account because this expansion is more a systems-wide upgrade than a juicy slab of story-driven content for you to explore.
Quite possibly my favorite aspect of the expansion is the unification of the challenge system. Above is a chart that I made trying to relate the two different difficulty systems to each other. Previously you had Story Mode World Tiers, which went up through 15, and that 15 related to around Challenge Tier 8, which was used for Expeditions. The problem is that if you preferred to run World content over and over, it essentially capped out at Challenge 8 and you could get no loot higher than level 42. Now Apocalypse Tiers essentially unify all of this mess. I had progressed through Expedition Challenge Tier 13 before, and the game started me at Apocalpyse Tier 13 with a maximum difficulty rating of 40 that I can unlock over time. This means stupid story mission farms like the Outhouse mission that I enjoyed doing over and over… are a completely valid want to level and get loot.
There are a few new systems that are added into the game, like Ascension points which are a direct equivalency of Paragon Points from Diablo III. You can essentially max this out and earn 200 of these, slotting 10 points into each attribute line. For example, I have already out 10 into bonus anomaly power, and now I am working on weapon damage. Given enough play time, we will end up maxing each one of these out at 10 points per attribute. This is not a terribly interesting way of gaining power, but it does help out nonetheless.
The more interesting new system is the Pax trees. These give you broad sweeping modifications to your existing builds. There are only five of these points in total and they are unlocked through completing the story, with the final point being tied to completing the Trial of Tarya Gratar end-game activity. I admit I am a bit torn here as to whether I should drop the apocalypse tier down and just burn through the activity to get my final talent point… or if I should gear up and do it at a reasonable apocalypse level for the loot rewards. I guess that ultimately is the decision always if you should grind it out… or go for the quick loot at the highest challenge you can complete.
I guess it is time that I should probably talk about the Trial of Tarya Gratar itself. Essentially this is a series of challenges that you need to complete in sequence and in a single play-through in order to reach the final boss encounter. I’ve played through two of these so far, the first being a ring-style encounter with three waves with the final wave being comprised largely of boss types. The second encounter was flagged as a “skirmish” and largely felt like playing through a normal map where there was a broad mix of enemy types and mini boss types in order to get a full clear. The absolute shortest route through the map sees you completing eleven events and you are given a limited number of attempts to get through the entire sequence. I think the fastest possible clears will take at least thirty minutes, with it taking considerably longer if you are struggling. Getting to the end apparently allows you to choose one of three apocalypse tier legendary items.
I think at this point we should probably talk about the changes to the loot. The above items are currently available as twitch drops, and if you are so inclined I would highly suggest farming them up, especially if you are a new player. Each of these new items has three mods associated with them, and specifically, these twitch drops include a Tier 3 mod that was previously only available on legendary items. So even if you are not going to these them specifically they are worth deconstructing to gain the mod for your character. Epic and Legendary loot now have the chance to drop with three stats like this, which means that a good number of the purples that you are going to be picking up will be functionally better than the original set of legendary items.
The other thing that I have noticed is that the game seems to be way more generous than it was previously. While I have only gotten a few legendary drops, the purples are raining down from the sky. All of the expansion world content seems to also provide drop pod resources, which were key to upgrading gear past a certain point. I will need to spend some time figuring out what the most lucrative solo farm areas are for me personally, and then I will of course share that knowledge at a later point. For a game that seems to want to be Looter Shooter Diablo 3, it is most definitely following that Loot 2.0 progression path and giving me a rain of shiny items to pick up.
So I guess we get down to whether or not it is worth buying the expansion. If you already have Outriders the expansion will set you back $40. If you are completely new to Outriders you can buy a combo pack for $60. Do I think the expansion is worth it for the story? No… it is a short campaign that will only get you around two hours’ worth of gameplay. Do I think the expansion is worth picking up for the other systems that it adds to the game? I am leaning towards yes because it normalizes the rewards structure, adds some long-tailed grinds, and also presents a new raid-type game mode that should be good fun with a full party of friends. I think Outriders is a mechanically better game than Destiny 2, that just does not get the love that it deserves. The challenge with Outriders however is the fact that it is not a live service game, which means future updates will be few and far between and will be largely limited to balance patches.
I am hoping to gather up a group of friends to take on the new Trial and see how that game mode feels with multiple people. I also need to get more serious about my build and tweaking it to perform better. Right now I am very much abusing a one-trick pony in the form of a couple of Tier III weapon perks on the same auto rifle I have been using forever.