Released in April of 2021,Outridersreceived a bit of a mixed reception on launch. While many critics praised the game’s varied animations, level design, and particularly its fleshed-out combat mechanics,Outriders' story, characters, and general world-building wasn’t quite up to scratch. In an attempt to fix these issues, along with adding an impressive amount of content to the base game, developer People Can Fly released the large-scale expansionOutriders: Worldslayerin June of this year, just a month ago.
For manyOutridersfans, thisWorldslayerexpansion was the breath of fresh air that the cooperative shooter had needed, and for those on the outside,Worldslayer’s fierce marketing did a good job of bringing in some new faces. However, due to the amount of new content whipped up by People Can Fly, it’s easy for even long-timeOutridersfans to get a little confused about what’s what, andthe game’s new Apocalypse Tiersand range of Apocalypse Gear is quite a complex system to get to grips with.
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Outriders: Worldslayer’s Apocalypse Gear
TheOutriders: Worldslayerexpansion added a brand new Apocalypse Tier to the game, which adds new layers to player progression and character strength. As players make their way throughOutriders, they’ll move up the game’s World Tiers. Once they’ve conquered all of those, they would then have to level through 15 Challenge Tiers in the base game. With theWorldslayerexpansion, this system has been reworked a little. Now, when players beat all World Tiers, they’ll move straight onto the new Apocalypse Tiers, which offers 25 more tiers.
As the player continues to rise through the Apocalypse Tiers, they gradually increase their chances of finding some of the brand new Apocalypse Gear inOutriders: Worldslayer. Naturally, Apocalypse Gear is the highest rarity of loot in the entire game, coming aboveLegendary Tier weapons and armor. While Apocalypse Gear can technically be dropped by any enemy, at any point, the chances are monumentally slim if the player is not on the Apocalypse Tiers, so fans shouldn’t hold their breath for this kind of loot until the endgame.
The real benefit of Apocalypse Gear, aside from its inherently higher stats, is that each piece of gear has a third mod slot, which is a marked improvement over Legendary Gear which has just two slots. However, Apocalypse Gear does come with a catch. While each piece ofApocalypse Gear does have a third mod slot, the mod that takes up that spot is already pre-determined on pick-up, meaning that players cannot pick and choose what third mod they use with that weapon or armor. That being said, with a little patience, players should be able to find a combination of mods that best suits their playstyle, by swapping out mods from the other two slots so that they compliment the third, immovable mod best.
Much like any other piece of gear inOutriders: Worldslayer, Apocalypse Weapons can be upgraded at a crafting bench. Fans should keep in mind that Apocalypse Gear does cost a hefty amount of resources to upgrade, altogether requiring Titanium, Drop Pod Resources, and the brand new consumable, Anomaly Extract. The latter ingredient can only really be found by destroying other Apocalypse Gear. Alternatively, if the player has enough time on their hands to farm, Elite level enemies occasionally drop Anomaly Extract. All in all,the new Apocalypse Gear systemadds even more depth to this surprisingly complex third-person shooter, and the 25 new Apocalypse Tiers are sure to keep even the most die-hardOutridersfans busy for a while yet.
Outridersis currently available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
