
If I could have started focusing on finding gear with the stats that I want, it would have allowed me to start engaging with the modding tools and gear upgrading options much sooner. After 12 hours, I felt pretty comfortable with my abilities and I was ready to dig into the meatier customization that the game has to offer. Outriders would have been much better off had it let you hit max-level at the halfway point in the campaign. It’s not a process that sparks joy or creativity.
#Outriders max level mods
Once you figure out the three abilities you want to use, there’s a good chance you’ll just slot in the exact same five armor mods into your new gear every single time you return to camp. The problem is that the constant gear churn even makes gear modding tedious and repetitive.
#Outriders max level mod
It doesn’t cost very many crafting materials to swap a good mod into your armor anytime you’re back at camp, and some mods can make a huge difference in combat, especially if you’re trying to push the highest World Tier possible. That’s not to say you can’t experiment with builds and loadouts during the leveling process, and in fact, I think it’s essential that you slot useful mods into your gear every chance you get.

The joy of slapping on new gear just to see what it does eventually becomes exhausting because nothing is meaningful and everything you pick up will need to be replaced within minutes for the entire 26-hour campaign. Instead of slowly figuring out the strengths of your class and building an interesting playstyle around your gear and abilities, Outriders keeps the carousel of disposable gear going for the entire runtime of the campaign. This process makes power acquisition feel fast and fun early on, but it’s important that the rotating door of gear slows down eventually so that you can start to define your playstyle and focus on acquiring the gear you want to use in the long run.īut that never happens in Outriders. It’s perfectly fine if you don’t have a sense of what gear is right for your build while you’re leveling because whatever you are using at any given moment will likely be replaced the moment you level up. This is an important part of the leveling process because it provides you with the opportunity to experiment with different weapon types and weapon modifiers as you level up. While leveling, the gear you find will always scale with your level, offering a near-constant stream of upgrades to your character. ARPGs are very different games before and after hitting max-level. The problem with Outriders is that it treats the leveling process like the meat of the game, when it ought to be treated like the appetizer. Even in Pokemon, it’s reasonable to finish the game somewhere around level 60, with the option to continue grinding all the way to level 100 if you really want to. Your character will continue to earn stat increases and new abilities every few levels, but most RPGs are only designed to get you about halfway to the level cap during the main campaign.

In a single-player, story-driven RPG like The Witcher or Dragon Age, players don’t expect to hit max-level by the end of the game. As it stands, the Outriders campaign and leveling process is a fatiguing experience that goes on far longer than it should. Had the leveling process ended sooner, there’s a good chance more players would have the opportunity to experience the crunchy and satisfying builds that are possible with the right gear and abilities. Unfortunately, in a game like Outriders, everything that happens before level 30 is just the tutorial. Were this typical single-player RPG, there would be something immeasurably satisfying about hitting max level just as the credits roll.

My Outriders Trickster, named Lincoln, dinged level 30 just as the final boss keeled over and died roughly 26 hours into the game.
