Outriders Demo Guide: Where To Farm For Legendary Loot

Jumping into the Outriders demo ahead of the game’s launch on April 1 is worth it–not only is it a free way to see whether you’ll enjoy the game, but your progress carries over into the full experience. To that end, farming for powerful legendaries can ensure you have a leg up on your foes. Your best course of action for finding rare items is to grind captain and boss fights.

Before getting on the grind for legendary items, you need to reach a certain World Tier. World Tiers determine how difficult Outriders is, increasing enemy health and damage but offering higher tier rewards more often. You’ll unlock higher tiers in the demo just by leveling up. In World Tier 1-3, you won’t see any legendary drops because the legendary drop rate bonus will only be +0%. Once you reach World Tier 4, that jumps up to +10% and at World Tier 5, it’s +25%. That’s still not an ideal bonus, but that’s the highest World Tier you can unlock in the demo. So keep playing and leveling up until you unlock it–you’ll likely reach it just by playing through the demo and completing all of the available campaign missions and each of the four optional side quests at least once. From here, there are two ideal methods.

Fight The Captain

The first way to grind for legendary loot is to replay one of the aforementioned side quests, Payback, over and over. It’s a very short quest so it’s easy to repeat multiple times. You’ll first encounter this quest after reaching Outriders’ first hub area, Rift Town, and setting out on the story mission to deal with Gauss, an Altered and Outriders’ first boss battle. Partway through this mission, you can find a wounded soldier named Audrey Storm off on the side of the main path, near the Crossroads warp flag. They will give you the Payback side mission, which you can repeat as many times as you want by returning to Audrey.

As a warning: Payback is one of the missions in the demo where you’ll encounter a lot of snipers, all of whom are typically hidden in entrenched positions behind waves of enemies. If you’re playing as Pyromancer or Technomancer, there’s a good chance you already have a strong sniper rifle yourself–just remember to bring it along to take out the far off threats before they start chipping away at your health. You can rely on a similar strategy if you’re playing as Devastator or Trickster, but given both classes have improved performance at close-range, consider equipping their teleporting abilities (Gravity Leap and Hunt the Prey, respectively) to simply jump to the snipers’ position and take them out up close. Just remember to play to your class’ strengths and you’ll be fine.

There’s a chance you earn a legendary item simply by killing enemies during this mission–at the very least, you’ll likely get rare gear that will both improve your power level and augment your class’ abilities in fascinating ways via gear mods. Be sure to read the description of whatever you find. But what you really want from this mission is the miniboss at the end of it: Captain Reiner. Thankfully, unlike the other captains you’ll encounter in the demo, Reiner’s abilities are always the same, so you always know what to expect when confronting him.

Reiner’s two skills are Wandering Flame and Healing Wave. The former fires out a column of flame that will chase you around the battlefield, while the latter will heal him. He also has a crew of normal enemies accompanying him at the start of the fight. Deal with them quickly if you can, especially since a few carry shotguns that will decimate your health in this enclosed arena.

Once you kill Reiner, warp back to Audrey, turn in the quest, and there will be a chance that you get a legendary item as a reward. And that’s basically it–just rinse and repeat Payback at World Tier 5 and eventually you’ll unlock something that’s legendary. And if you don’t like it, then just keep playing Payback until you find a legendary item that you do.

Fight The Boss

The other way requires you to beat the demo, completing the campaign mission where you beat the Outriders’ first boss, Gauss. After beating him, there’s a single chest that you can open, which is the only chest in the game that currently can drop a legendary item. If you’re lucky on your first attempt, congrats! But if not, open Outriders’ lobby, switch your World Tier to level 5, and then click “Select Story Point.”

Doing this will allow you to go back to any point in Outriders story and replay campaign missions with your current gear. So go back to just prior to getting the mission to hunt down and face off against Gauss and fight him again, beat him, open the chest behind him, and repeat until you manage to get a legendary drop.

Like Reiner, Gauss’ abilities do not change, so once you’ve figured out his abilities and how they work, you don’t have to relearn anything. Don’t worry too much about interrupting Steel Wall–it’s basically just a way for him to temporarily shield himself. Discharge Mine and Lightning Storm are a bit trickier to deal with though, so try to interrupt them if you can. The former places a mine on the battlefield that you’ll have to avoid, while the latter sends out lightning strikes that will chase you across the arena. Both force you to consider where you’re standing when fighting Gauss, which is just an added hassle you really don’t want to have to deal with when you’re trying to shoot him.

Also, unlike Reiner, Gauss becomes stronger with every subsequent attempt thanks to the March 5 patch–you won’t be able to breeze through him like you can Reiner after a while, as his health bar will increase to match your stronger weaponry. So make sure that you’re upgrading your gear between runs.

As a final note, you will pass the starting point for Payback on your way to fight Gauss (since both missions occur in the same area) so if you want, you technically can attempt both of these strategies in a single run.