It's only been a few days since the release of Outriders, the co-op looter-shooter from People Can Fly, but already players are reaching its endgame content. Unlike many other games in its genre, Outriders focuses heavily on its narrative campaign. However, this doesn't mean that there's nothing for players to do once the main story is over.
The heart of Outriders' endgame content is Expeditions, a challenging game mode that unlocks only once the main campaign is complete. Spanning fifteen missions and Challenge Tiers, Expeditions offers the best possible loot in Outriders. It isn't easy to acquire though, as completing an Expedition is much more challenging than any story mission.
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The main story of Outriders takes around forty hours to beat. Afterwards, players will find themselves in a new camp; from here, they can either go back and farm side-missions, or set out on their first Expedition. The latter is done from the new table in the camp, covered with charts and blueprints.
The first thing that players will notice when opening the Expeditions UI is that Outriders' World Tiers are no longer a factor. Instead, they've been replaced by Challenge Tiers, a similar system that only affects Expeditions. As players complete Expeditions, they'll unlock progressively higher Challenge Tiers, opening up new Expeditions and improving the loot. However, the Challenge Tier will also raise the level of the enemies in each Expedition.
There are fourteen basic Expedition missions in Outriders, followed by a fifteenth chapter titled The Eye of the Storm. This final mission is the most challenging, and the most heavily-related to Outriders' main story. To unlock it, players will have to complete other Expeditions and earn a special resource at the end.
All loot in Expedition missions is awarded in a drop pod at the end of the level. This pod is basically just a giant chest, filled with high-quality gear. Although the Challenge Tier has the biggest influence on the rarity of the loot that players can get, there is another factor. Completing Expeditions content is all about speed, and the faster players can get to the end, the better loot they'll receive. This is all part of Outrider's focus on aggressive attacking, most notable in its heal-through-killing mechanic. People Can Fly made it clear that it wanted Outriders' players to always be pushing forward, which means a time-gate loot system makes perfect sense.
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The top level for players in Outriders is 30, which can be reached quite easily. This doesn't mean that everything caps out at 30 however. The top level for weapons and gear is actually 50, though everything above 31 can only be unlocked through Expeditions. This means that, while players can go back to do campaign side-missions, if they want to max out their character they'll have to take on Expeditions.
When players complete an Expedition, they'll be given a score based on their time, earning either gold, silver, bronze, or no reward. The first three of these will unlock the next Challenge Tier, while also offering progressively better loot. It's worth noting that, unlike in the main campaign, enemies do not drop loot in Expedition missions. This means players will have to see the mission through to the end to get anything. There is still a compensation for failing to complete a mission in Outriders' Expeditions, however. If players immediately restart the mission they failed, they'll be given a small loot box at the start as compensation.
The kind of loot in Outriders that players can expect from Expeditions runs all the way from Common to Legendary. It'll take more than a top-tier gun to guarantee success though. Outriders has both a deep gear-modding system and a flexible skill tree. These two factors combine to give the game a huge amount of customization options. Players who want to succeed in Expeditions will have to work hard to ensure that every aspect of their character is honed to perfection. While recommended builds for Outriders have started popping up on the internet already, not everyone will get the same loot.
Ultimately, a large part of preparing for Outriders' endgame content comes down to experimentation and trial and error. Each of the Expeditions is very different, and none of them re-use locations or content from Outriders' story campaign. The sheer amount of enemies that players can end up facing means that a well-built, well-thought-out character is a necessity.
Expeditions are the core of Outrider's endgame content at the moment, and People Can Fly hope that they'll draw players in through challenge, loot, and a further exploration of Enoch's secrets. While the high difficulty spike and elite-tier loot is sure to attract a certain kind of player, more casual players may have been hoping for an endgame that follows the challenge curve of the campaign.
Outriders is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.