Folks playing the Outriders demo have a golden opportunity to get their character(s) into a really strong position before the final game launches on April 1. The demo, unlike most betas, allows players to take their progress on the same platform into the full game, which means it's worth farming as much as you can before then.
You can earn loot by playing through the side missions or even the whole available story again, but if you just want to get a lot quickly and easily, this is what you should be doing.
The quickest chests to farm in the Outriders demo
This run assumes you've already cleared the story mission in the demo and have reached the point where you have to liaise with Jakub to leave for the city. This means there's a stretch of the map open to run through without fear of any enemies and you'll find five loot chests, too. It'll also have the best returns on World Tier 5.
I've timed this run at 2 minutes 35 seconds from loading in, to opening the last chest on the Xbox Series X. Obviously on PC and the Xbox One this will be different, but even being conservative you can expect to be able to hit at least 50 chests in an hour including time to go back to base and sell off the stuff you don't want. But with at least one item of gear in each chest, you're soon going to be filling up your inventory.
Follow these steps, starting in the lobby.
- Select the select story point option in the lobby.
- Choose either of the final two story points.
- Confirm your selection.
- Now, hit continue game and you'll load into the game.
- Run to the lower floor to the fast travel point.
- Fast travel to Crossroads.
- Head left and begin to follow the path towards the Solar Tower from the story mission.
There are no enemies to fight, you simply need to run, collect the chests, then run on. Below you'll see the locations for the chests we're going to hit.
Ruined Outpost
There are two loot chests to open in this area. Run straight through the arena to the building at the end. Before you go through the door, turn left and you'll find the first chest in this area tucked up against the wall in the shade to the left of a door hole.
Now turn around and head back through the door as if you were continuing the mission. As you go through the door you'll see an ammo chest in front of you and then to the right, there will be a loot chest.
Solar Panels
After the Ruined Outpost continue following the main path. You'll go past a fast travel point and bear left as you keep running into the Solar Panels area of the map. Just before you ascend to the Solar Tower you'll come to a fork. Right goes up to the Solar Tower, but you want to bear left.
You'll go past some barbed wire and run towards a dead-end through the water. At the end of the passage, you'll find another loot chest.
Solar Tower
From the second chest, turn around and run back to the fork, now bearing left to ascend towards the Solar Tower. As you approach the building, turn left towards the piles of remains and look for a path between them. At the edge of the ridge you'll find chest number 4.
Then, turn around and head back to the building. Go through the main door and run through the first room.
As you come to the second, instead of running straight on towards the platform where you fought Gauss and the fast travel point, turn right. You'll find a room with the fourth loot chest.
That's all the chests on this run but as it's a relatively short process and there are no enemies to waste time on, I've found it's the most efficient way to farm for gear.
How to reset the loot chests for another run
Once you complete a run, to start another you'll need to reset the loot chests. To do this, back out to the lobby and follow the first four steps from the first section of this guide. You'll spawn back in at base ready to go again. If you reset to the second last story point, before your debrief with Jakub and Shira, you'll spawn right next to the fast travel flag if you really want to maximize your runs.
Resetting the story point will also refresh any of the side missions you have completed, so these will also be playable again with fresh chests.
This method applies to any form of loot farming in the Outriders demo, and you'd assume in the final game when it launches. You can replay any of the side missions at any time or run through open areas, but chests only open once until you back out and reset.
Fortunately, on the Xbox Series X and Series S, at least, this is a fairly quick process.
What loot can you get from these chests?
Don't go into this expecting to spend an hour or two running these chests and getting Legendaries up the wazoo. While it's possible you could get a legendary gear drop from a world chest, the drop rate, on the whole, is incredibly low. World Tier 5 does at least give you an improved modifier for legendary drops.
Right now it seems farming the Captain in the Terra Infirma side mission is the preferred method to chase legendaries. But you will be chasing. After all, we're still in the opening missions of the game.
What you're going to find is mainly green (unusual) and blue (rare) tier weapons and armor. Before you get into the full game, having a loadout made up of blue gear will certainly put you in a stronger position.
You'll also be getting drops at level 9 assuming you're on World Tier 5, two levels above the cap for the demo. You won't be able to get anything higher than level 9, but getting weapons around 300 and armor around 200 is what you want to shoot for.
The other reason to farm for rare gear is that it's the first tier where items come with mods and associated unique perks. These can be retained for crafting later in the game when you break down an item, so it certainly doesn't hurt to get a good stash of those.
An added bonus is that chests often contain scrap and the vendors at base can, on occasion, sell purple (epic) tier items, which are even better but also expensive.
Outriders is slated to launch on April 1 on Xbox, PlayStation, PC, and Google Stadia with support for cross-platform play.
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