Patterns in Randomness: Outward

Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Outward

For the the longest time I was undecided if I really wanted to play Outward or not. It is a third person fantasy action roleplaying game that emphasizes survival mechanics, preparation, and learning by trial and error. Would it actually be fun to play or would all the management get tiresome? Since the game's release in 2019, there have been quite a few mods made for it; you no longer have to play strictly as the developer, Nine Dots Studio, intended. Thus I ended up eventually picking the game up.

An adventure difficult to get into

In addition to all the other things to worry about, Outward also gives you time limits in its few story quests. However, with the exception of the last quest for each faction, the timers in the game are very lenient -- assuming you don't fuck up royally and/or repeatedly.

One rather unique feature of Outward is how dying doesn't lead to the usual case of save reloading or bonfire resurrection, rather than a defeat scenario of which there are around 100 unique ones. The amount of time setback varies from few in-game hours to few days in the worst cases, in addition to possible monetary losses and zone transition. Failing to complete a quest within its time limit is not the end either, though: you merely lost on the best possible outcome.

If you're not okay with that, Outward does keep 10 backup saves, which are made every time you go through a loading screen. Simply delete the most recent folder(s) until you're back where you want to be. That goes heavily against the game's design but sometimes -- like when trying to 100% the game -- it's just necessary to waste exorbitant amount of time. The game has co-op, too, which makes surviving a lot easier. One player going down isn't a defeat yet because the other can revive them.

The game begins with you just having shipwrecked and lost all the goods you were supposed to use for shortening the Blood Debt on your family line. Now you have 3 days to cough up 150 silver -- which feels a lot at the start -- or earn a tribal favor to not lose your lighthouse home. In actuality, this is not a difficult task at all but fuck if a new player knows that. Such timers are sure to put some players off.

Once you have dealt with initial problem, you have all the time in the world to explore and do whatever until you eventually decide to join one of the game's factions -- which are 4 with the DLC/Definitive Edition -- to start on their exclusive main quest line.

Mods to the rescue

Outward's modding scene seems to have settled on Thunderstore Mod Manager which is found on the Overwolf platform -- both were complete unknowns to me. The latter gives off adware vibes but the mod manager at least does work perfectly: it was very smooth to install mods via it. (Outward needs to be set on the 'default-mono' beta branch on Steam and launched from the mod manager for the mods to apply.)

Like in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, controller compliance set a hard cap on the player's options: you only have 8 slots to hotkey abilities and items. The builds people have made for the game work with the assumption that you have a limited amount of active skills within reach. But that doesn't need to be the case on PC; there's more than one mod to increase your action bar estate.

I used ActionUI with its default 11 slots but it can be customized to have even more. I did add another switchable bar so that I could have all boon spells neatly in a row for pre-buffing, instead of having to find them in the skill page every time.

The mod caused some confusion too. I originally had only buff spells and consumables in the rightmost slots and thought that not being able to use them in combat was because of the game -- it surely would have fit Outward's design philosophy. But after putting a mana potion into a slot more to the left, I started to wonder why it stayed usable in combat. The mod turned out to have a 'Combat Mode' option checked by default to disable any extra it has added to make combat in line with unmodified Outward. That defeats the point of the mod, I feel. Many a mod for the game do seem to have similar thought behind them: even though they add new options, they come with a cost or limitation to align with the default game experience.

For instance, Soroborean Travel Agency allows you to fast travel from the Soroborean merchants to any city, instead of the destination being random. But it still costs silver and rations. And HearthScrolls cost a lot of silver, and are not even usable when over-encumbered -- which certainly limited their value. Shared Stashes allows you to access your stash anywhere if you want. That would have been too much -- what's the point of backpack sizes and the game's expedition spirit if the stash exists everywhere? The mod's default settings already make things easier by allowing you to access the stash in cities before you've bought a house in them.

Having the stash enabled everywhere would have caused some annoyances too. As I was new to the game and didn't know what items I needed to keep, I was hoarding about every item that looked potentially valuable or important. At some point, the amassed treasures caused opening the stash/inventory in cities to become delayed. From what I've read, it's not the mod but how Outward is inefficient with its inventory. A stack of 100 items is not an item with a stack value of 100 rather than 100 individual items that are each polled whenever you interact with your inventory/stash. On my later characters, I avoided hoarding items mainly for that reason.

Not particularly immersive

Outward certainly looks and feels like a Unity title made by a small team in mid-2010s. It's not particularly impressive visually and there's a fair amount of jank. The game went for a type of an explorative MMORPG experience instead of trying to be an immersive simulation. Without mods, your character's location is not even shown on the map. Not being able to jump certainly annoyed me -- and same with the lack of swimming. You can still drop off cliff edges, although sometimes there is an unexpected invisible wall to stop you.

Outward's music adds to the lack of immersion. The exploration tracks are too upbeat-heroic to create a living world atmosphere. I set music volume pretty low early on because I felt it might get old before I was done with the game. I didn't want it completely gone because music switching to a combat track is helpful if you didn't see something coming at you off-camera. Ambient sounds could have been far more developed too. I was quite bothered how night sounds the same in winter -- as if there were insects with snow on the ground.

Contradictorily to the previous points, Outward has quite an immersive feature I've not seen in a game before: your inventory is held in an actual backpack that impedes your dodge rolls. You can drop the backpack on the ground to free yourself from the weight and to become limited only to the items carried in your far smaller pouch inventory. Most backpacks also are able to hold a lantern, freeing a hand, although there are other sources of light, too, such as a runic spell or glowing weapons.

Most of the game's survival mechanics ended up mattering very little: you drink, eat, and sleep frequently for buffs and to restore burnt health, stamina, and mana, thus the respective timers rarely, if ever, come into play. However, weather tends to be an absolute pain the ass unless your choice of armor has high cold/hot weather resistance. I was in massive trouble the first time I experienced winter in Chersonese. Being cold makes you catch cold and getting rid of contracted diseases takes time: there's a recovery period after you've cured it.

Punishing combat

Outward has heavy hitstop, which can make combat jerky: every connecting hit pauses the game for a fraction of a second. The Combat Tweaks mod smoothens that. Its values can be adjusted but I was satisfied with the defaults. The mod allows you to dodge out of an attack animation as well. You shouldn't abuse it, though, because dodging is very much a newbie trap. It costs a lot of stamina and it replenishes very slowly even when buffed. Being out of stamina leads quickly to death. The Rogue Engineer skill tree does have a helpful perk if you really want to have dodge as a more frequent move -- even while wearing a backpack.

Otherwise what you really should be doing to avoid damage is holding block and strafing around the target. Even one-handed weapons work for that, though shields and two-handed are better. Strafing often causes the enemy to have their attack chain to go past you and expose their back. Then you wail on them with your weapon that preferably has high impact for stagger and eventual knockdown.

Put on your running shoes

Stamina is important for getting to places in a timely manner as well. While the Travel Agency mod allows to switch cities/regions quickly at the traveling merchants, there is still a whole lot of sprinting to do. The region maps are fairly wide and your legs are the only traversal method. Having stamina cost reduction and speed increase buffs is immensely helpful for saving time but there's no avoiding the running simulator part of the game.

The pearlbirds found in the first region have a chance to drop a mask that grants +15% movement speed -- a sizable single source bonus. The drop chance is low, however: reportedly mere 2.5%. It took me many birds to find the mask on my first character. You might get lucky, though, like my second character, and find it already on the first few killed birds. The mask is kind of a special item because it can be passed twice to a new character, increasing its bonus each time. Its final form, the jewel bird mask, grants a +19% bonus to movement speed.

Being able to twink a new character is hardly an unheard feature in video games -- even a passed item becoming more powerful was a thing in Torchlight already for instance, as I recall -- but how the four legacy chests are scattered across Outward's world is neat and thematic. If an item has no legacy version, you can also simply start splitscreen and load your old character to hand it (and anything else) directly over to the new one.

That is particularly helpful for enchanted items because farming the materials for enchanting incenses can be terrible with the game's low drop rates. And the second DLC's enchantments are only accessible in the very endgame of a full playthrough. Getting gear enchanted on my first character before joining a faction was a miserable experience. You will get plenty of materials for enchanting as you go through the "parallel quest" (as the game calls them) of The Soroboreans DLC but I wanted to be in full strength before that, not after.

A lot of build variety

I roamed and explored the world quite a bit on my first run before committing to a build or faction. In addition to Outward having achievements for each of the four exclusive main quest lines, you also need to craft a full set of Tsar armor. The material needed for that, the Tsar stones, are so limited that you need at least three characters to collect enough of them. As I wasn't initially considering the ease of passing items via splitscreen, I had to figure out the builds for all of the characters beforehand so that I would know what needed to go in the legacy chests with the Tsar stones/armor taking slots.

I ended up watching a lot of youtuber SheenShots' videos on the game and eventually landed on his 'Ghost of Enmerkar' build that wields the Dreamer Halberd: an endgame viable weapon gotten without fighting anything, though good luck at figuring out how to actually get it without looking it up. I switched one of the skill trees SheenShots used, instead going with Cabal Hermit, Kazite Spellblade, and Warrior Monk.

Outward has no leveling system. Skills and stat boost are instead learned from trainers and quests. With enough silver, you can buy every single first tier skill from the game's 11 class trainers. But to get to the third tier of each tree, you will have to use a breakthrough point for the second tier perk -- and you get only 3 of those.

The Ghost build was good enough to beat the whole game, including the optional endgame bosses in The Three Brothers DLC. I did face several setbacks, too, although that could've been just me being new to the game. I didn't do Three Brothers on the following runs. I got all of its achievements on the first, and building New Sirocco just for fun... isn't fun. Looking at Outward's achievements stats, you can see how few players ever got to the end of the game's content.

The Soroboreans DLC's parallel quest I did only on the first and second runs as well -- it's long and there was no need. The second character was also the one to join the Soroborean faction. Their main quest is kind of separate from the base game's three but it does add to the overall story. It's pretty cool how I didn't have a complete picture until I had done three playthroughs. The Soroborean quest is also said to be the most difficult one so I wanted a good build for it.

SheenShots' 'Boom' build -- Mercenary, Rune Sage, and Hex Mage -- was perfect for it. Gep's Blade is a ridiculously powerful weapon with its area-of-effect explosions and the Fabulous Palladium Shield kept me alive through everything. I can highly recommend the build for the They'll Tell Stories About This achievement of beating a quest line without a defeat. I never used the Shield Infusion cap skill of the Mercenary tree, though -- I found it too situational and bothersome. I also didn't use SheenShot's suggested armor, rather than Green Copal Armor, and Manawall Helm and Boots -- all legacy items.

For the third run, I wanted lightning. I started on SheenShots' 'Hermit of Doom' but mixed it with suggestions from the video's comments and my own ideas of maximizing light damage: Cabal Hermit, Rogue Engineer, and Kazite Spellblade. As my weapon I used the Starchild Claymore from the Royal Manticore I had killed on my first character. The manticore would probably be the scariest boss in Outward with its never-ending trashing in melee -- enemies never run out of stamina -- if the creature wasn't located out in the wilds where you can simply set a dozen of improved incendiary traps to kill it without effort. The build definitely was able to dish out silly high damage but was also kind of squishy.

It's a shame my fourth playthrough was so short with SheenShots' 'Tarnished Pirate' because the build was probably the most interesting one to play with its attack chains: Rogue Engineer, Cabal Hermit, and Warrior Monk. Stealth isn't very fun or viable in Outward but you can still get backstabs executed even in combat. Instead of SheenShots' weapon pair suggestion, I found the Maelstrom Blade + Rondel Dagger combo in the comments. And I think I used Flash Onslaught instead of Counterstrike because the build already had 2 parry skills without it. With a full Master Kazite Armor set, this build was the only one that didn't have silly-looking gear combinations.

I guess Outward did provide an interesting experience on some level -- I did play it for casual 200 hours -- but it was definitely a massive hurdle to get started on it. The fear of wasting time in trial and error was too much to not look up stuff beforehand. Outward 2 is currently in development and I suppose I might play it one day. I haven't followed its development too much but I do know that it will have mounts, which is certainly an improvement.

Outward's different spell systems caused nostalgia for an old, janky game called Dungeon Lords to surface. It got a Steam release at some point in the past and I felt like I want to revisit it. That will have to wait a bit because there's a bit of a backlog to chew through first -- as is tradition.