Outward - open world RPG where you are an ordinary adventurer and survival is harsh

[Martyr]

I got my backpack back. :D
got myself killed on purpose quite a few times, until that female hunter brought me back to Cierzo. whenever that happened in the past my backpack was right beside me when I woke up and this time was no different.

 

[luj1]

Martyr opinion on this game?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Martyr opinion on this game?

Wait for a while, see if he can keep the backpack.

 

[Martyr]

Martyr opinion on this game?

TL;DR: it's a fun, light hearted game. just don't expect a second Daggerfall.

longer version: I'm reluctant to call Outward a RPG, because your character actually doesn't have stats. instead you get stronger only through aquiring new items, not through leveling up. this also means that the stamina bar doesn't get bigger, which imo is pretty annoying. in Dark Souls you can run only for a few seconds and the more you level up, the longer you can run. here you're short on breath pretty quickly and while it doesn't take long for the stamina to fill back up, it is still too long for my taste. the stamina bar also gets emptier, the more you're carrying and the later it is.
and I'm still in the starting area, so I can't comment on late game content but the way I'm playing it (sleep in my house, get up early, go to some location, explore/kill monsters, get back to sleep) the traveling distances are quite long, so the stamina thing is pretty annoying tbh. would've been nice to have a horse or even a horse + cart, like in Daggerfall.
you also need to eat, drink and sleep but I'm almost never eating/drinking, since your hunger/thirst bars go back to 100% once you sleep. if you would use sleeping bags or tents to sleep out in the wilderness you would have to eat/drink regularly. with my current playstyle that's not the case.
can't comment on mana/magic yet because I'm a pure fighter/archer right now.
I didn't follow the main questline yet, instead I just went out exploring after the initial quest of repaying your debt, because I love playing in a sandboxy way instead of following a plot. so can't comment on story either.

all in all it's a fun way to waste time. but as I've said, it's not comparable to something like Daggerfall or Darklands in terms of being a true open world RPG and it's also not comparable to UnReal World or Kenshi, because they have a much more consistent and relevant implementation of survival elements.

 

[Martyr]

oh, one thing I've forgotten: you can't save/load, the game always saves what you're doing. this also means you can't die, instead you're waking up in multiple different situations, which are more or less dangerous. you've almost always "lost" your equipment, but it's usually pretty nearby, so that's not a real problem. if you've gone unconscious you're also deprived of a considerable amount of your health/stamina, so going back to sleep in your house is mandatory.

 

[Murk]

You can increase your stamina via skills which are passive; same with HP and mana as well. Gear which reduces stam/mana usage can also give you more 'effective' stamina/mana but that's separate from the direct bonus you can get to it via skills.

You can also regain said burned stamina/health through both consumable items and by sleeping on better bedrolls/tents.

 

[Martyr]

You can increase your stamina via skills which are passive; same with HP and mana as well. Gear which reduces stam/mana usage can also give you more 'effective' stamina/mana but that's separate from the direct bonus you can get to it via skills.

You can also regain said burned stamina/health through both consumable items and by sleeping on better bedrolls/tents.

didn't know most of that.
as I've said, I'm pretty early into the game so there's still much I have to learn, which is good. this means there's more depth to the game than meets the eye.

 

[Murk]

Food has a lot of good benefits, and teas don't spoil so you can always run with some of those for removing the burned stats.

Worth mentioning that each town has around 2 trainers that you can buy skills from and usually you can find one or two more NPCs who will teach you a specific skill for 50 gold (often in taverns/hotels) so it's worth talking to them if you can. Most of those are weapon-specific combat skills, but the normal class based trainers will usually have 3-4 skills you can learn without spending a breakthrough point, and there's a few that will teach you either stat efficiency or stat boost ones.

 

[Martyr]

Food has a lot of good benefits, and teas don't spoil so you can always run with some of those for removing the burned stats.

yeah, there's also the thing about sickness that I forgot to mention, that you can get sick in a different variety of ways and there's potions and tea to cure these health/stamina/positive effect draining sicknesses.

also that I mentioned earlier that Kenshi has a more "consistent and relevant implementation of survival elements" is only half true: you don't have to sleep in Kenshi, you don't need to eat/drink in Outward, so they're both lacking in one way or another. the best implementation of survival elements in RPGs is in UnReal World, by far, followed by Kingdom Come.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

You need to eat AND drink in Outward. Not sure what you meant by that.

 

[Efe]

trying to play an axe/shield guy, joined blue mountain but theres a horrible lack of melee oriented trainers.
now entered moonsoon and there is a trainer, but its skill are kinda linked to discipline buff etc.
are there any other melee class trainers?
spent a lot of gold on elite heavy armor (you get the helm from cierzo guard captain named burrito or smt), it worked nicely until then but in hallowed marsh it does jack shit. what should i aim for armor wise? is there a tier list?
--
you don't need to eat in outward?
your entire hp/stamina regeneration baseline IS having eaten food.

 

[Murk]

Efe there are more melee trainers, each town has at least 1 trainer that has some melee skills or complementary skills for melee characters.

As for armor, there's a lot that are similar with minor differences in environmental effects but there isn't a clear tier in that heavy armor tier 1 -> tier 2 -> tier 3. More like there are a few heavy armors that have approximately equal values but may give a benefit in poison resist or mana efficiency or.... etc.

I personally ran around the master trader set for stamina efficiency + extra pockets.

Potatoman put together each armor visually + stats here:



Also worth noting is that the wind cabal has a trainer in Cierzo that's potentially missable in the north east; one of the towers has a ladder that leads up to both a shop and a trainer. There you get the very useful 'reveal souls' spell that basically makes mana a non-issue.

 

[Efe]

this looks bad, looking at the video, it seems i already have one of heaviest armors in game and it was doing jack shit. (not even an caster or supernatural opponent, just a guy with a sword)
maybe i should not go for melee?
also with shields, when i block i lose stamina but enemies just lose poise? or are regenerating stamina in an insane rate

 

[Martyr]

You need to eat AND drink in Outward. Not sure what you meant by that.

normally you do, yeah. but not if you sleep every ~10 minutes. :D

 

[luj1]

Martyr opinion on this game?

*snip*

So its basically an average open world survival game. Thanks for saving me time bud

 

[Martyr]

Outward's visuals have a pretty good desktop wallpaper quality:

Spoiler

 

[Murk]

For anyone still interested, there's a big patch available in beta right now. Adds items and changes some stuff around (new bosses included), changes skills and adds some more functions like unarmed attacks. Enemies have been buffed and stuff like mining with a broken pickaxe is removed. Bleed also got set to not be able to murder everything in sight.

Biggest change is probably 'hardcore' mode tho which features perma-death (not guaranteed tho, just chance on defeat that your save file is deleted).

Currently playing other shit but I think I might try it out after.

Full notes: https://steamcommunity.com/app/794260/discussions/0/1643166462053977732/

Spoiler

New experimental build - June 19th, 2019
Hi all!

We've been hard at work on a patch and there's a lot of new content. All of it will be free and we still have a few things to tweak, but it's close enough to final to get out there and start gathering some feedback, especially if you encounter bugs and such.

If you want to try out this patch, you need to open the Steam client > right click on Outward in your list of games > select Properties > click the Betas tab > change the branch to Experimental Builds.

We know that some balance tweaks are always met with complaints, but we feel that some strategies made the experience too trivial and discouraged too many other choices that we hoped to be as viable.

Sadly, the camera stutter issue wasn't fixed, but we're still looking into it. It affects a very small percentage of PC builds and we think the bug is deep rooted in the engine, but it doesn't mean that we gave up on it.

Here's the changelist:

New
- Equipment can now be repaired at any blacksmith.
- Unarmed attack.
- Hidden endgame boss fights.
- End game items.
- Poutine.
- Hardcore mode.*
- There is an additional season in Enmerkar Forest where it is foggy and colder (not as cold as Winter in the Chersonese).
- In order to reduce confusion, made the consequences of failing Vendavel quest clearer by changing the affected area.
- Added the following languages (text only)**: Polish, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Portugese (Brazil), Turkish.

Changes
- To open chests, you now need to hold the 'interact' button.
- Improved Legacy Chests.
- New body and skin materials for characters.
- Some face models have been changed.
- Several high level monsters now have low HP regen.
- Tweaked Gold Lich AI.
- Normal/Extreme bleeding damage has been reduced on enemies**
- Leap Attack can now be followed up by a normal or special attack.
- Shields now have an impact and damage stats.
- Shield related skills now take into consideration the new impact and damage stats of the equipped shield for their effects.
- Shield charge do not apply Confusion status anymore.
- Reduced chances of getting Vendavel defeat scenario in a row (Does not apply if was captured by talking to Croc).
- Oliele's sword cannot be acquired from the Smuggler shop in Levant anymore.
- Reduced drop rate of traps in supply caches.
- Master Trader armors are not sold by Caravan Traders in Town and Cities anymore (Only by Cavaravan Traders in open areas).
- Changed how "Code Sonic" works. It can now be enabled without cheat panel (Also, works on console).***
- Lantern and torches are turned off when entering a bed/tent.
- Broken gathering tools can't be used anymore for gathering.
- Equipment balancing.
- Various UI improvements.
- Various balance changes.
- Various minor changes.

Fixes
- Skills requiring special conditions (such as boon) will now be grayed out in the quickslots if not all conditions to use them are met.
- Fixed the Mouth to Feed progression break.
- Moving silver around in inventory should refresh pouch weight and overweight status correct.
- Client remove durability of equipment as expected when using skills that uses durability.
- Status effects should not damage equipment anymore.
- Status effects should now be applied at the correct rate by weapons skills (Were twice as fast).
- Shield absorb skill should now counter reliably.
- Shield absorb skill should not absorb poison or other damage from status effects.
- Skill cooldown should now behave normally (no more stuck/not resuming).
- Online coop: Should now see partners with full health if they have a passive increasing their max health (instead of damaged).
- Online coop: Gear should be confiscated correctly by Croc in Vendavel.
- Various minor fixes.


*Hardcore mode: When defeated, there is a chance you get a defeat scenario, but there is also a chance you actually get killed. Additionally, characters in hardcore mode can't play with characters that are not, and vice versa.
** Some texts are missing and will be patched in later.
***Bleeding now does 35% of max health in 2 mins and Extreme 50% of max health in 2 mins.
****Super Speed: You character must be named 'Code Sonic'. This will display an hidden option in the settings menu that you can toggle to go to really fast.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/794260/announcements/detail/1583503191506960457

The free content patch is finally out!



Hello everyone!

As some of you know, there has been a huge patch that has been in the work and been in testing on the Experimental Branch for a couple months. A big thank you to everyone who played it while it was in testing, reported bugs and gave us feedback.

For those of you that don't know what that patch is about, well, here is a summary:

• New End game bosses (those are accessible after you completed one of the Faction story).
  
• Improvement of the Legacy Chest
  
• Hardcore mode
  
• 7 new languages (text only)
  
• A bunch of fixes and balance changes
  
• Poutine (full changelist at the end of this annoucement)

Please note that the console version of this patch isn't quite ready yet but should follow soon.


We are also currently working on another patch in which we update the game's engine (update from Unity 5.6 to Unity 2018) which should increase general performance, stuttering and fix a bunch of crash issues people were experiencing, especially in Enmerkar and Abrassar. This will eventually be available in the Experimental branch of Steam like the patch we release today was.

There are more in the work too, but we can't quite talk about that yet.

Cheers!


Here is the full changelist:

New
- Panel to assign controllers to players.
- Equipment can now be repaired at any blacksmith.
- Unarmed attack.
- Hidden endgame boss fights.
- End game items.
- Poutine.
- Hardcore mode.*
- There is an additional season in Enmerkar Forest where it is foggy and colder (not as cold as Winter in the Chersonese).
- In order to reduce confusion, made the consequences of failing Vendavel quest clearer by changing the affected area.
- Added the following languages (text only): Polish, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Portugese (Brazil), Turkish.

Changes
- To open chests, you now need to hold the 'interact' button.
- Improved Legacy Chests.
- New body and skin materials for characters.
- Some face models have been changed.
- Several high level monsters now have low HP regen.
- Tweaked Gold Lich AI.
- Leap Attack can now be followed up by a normal or special attack.
- Shields now have an impact and damage stats.
- Shield related skills now take into consideration the new impact and damage stats of the equipped shield for their effects.
- Shield charge do not apply Confusion status anymore.
- Reduced chances of getting Vendavel defeat scenario in a row (Does not apply if was captured by talking to Croc).
- Oliele's sword cannot be acquired from the Smuggler shop in Levant anymore.
- Reduced drop rate of traps in supply caches.
- Master Trader armors are not sold by Caravan Traders in Town and Cities anymore (Only by Cavaravan Traders in open areas).
- Changed how "Code Sonic" works. It can now be enabled without cheat panel (Also, works on console).****
- Lantern and torches are turned off when entering a bed/tent.
- Broken gathering tools can't be used anymore for gathering.
- Increase Chakram Pierce to x1 Weapon damage multiplicator
- Various UI improvements.
- Various balance changes.
- Various minor changes.

Fixes
- Crystal Powder won't show up as Plate Trap compatible component since no recipe requires it. (This will fix the crash on consoles)
- Impact stat isn't affected by durability and display now reflects that behaviour correctly.
- Lexicon stats are now displayed in the item detail panel.
- Added a timeout on opening/joining room to hide the connection screen.
- Added a failsafe so dropped items don't pass through the floor.
- Normal/Extreme bleeding damage has been fixed on enemies***
- Female Visual assigned and corrected for Shock Armor.
- Sometimes the achievement 'They will tell stories about this' was not unlocked properly. It was due to completing a quest line that was previously completed by another character. ***
- Skills requiring special conditions (such as boon) will now be grayed out in the quickslots if not all conditions to use them are met.
- Fixed the Mouth to Feed progression break.
- Moving silver around in inventory should refresh pouch weight and overweight status correct.
- Client remove durability of equipment as expected when using skills that uses durability.
- Status effects should not damage equipment anymore.
- Status effects should now be applied at the correct rate by weapons skills (Were twice as fast).
- Shield absorb skill should now counter reliably.
- Shield absorb skill should not absorb poison or other damage from status effects.
- Skill cooldown should now behave normally (no more stuck/not resuming).
- Online coop: Should now see partners with full health if they have a passive increasing their max health (instead of damaged).
- Online coop: Gear should be confiscated correctly by Croc in Vendavel.
- Online Coop: Gates are now correctly synchronised.
- Online Coop: Fixed other synchronization issues for clients when joining another player. (For instance: Poisoned water in the Dark Ziggurat Passage even if host cleaned it)
- Various minor fixes.

*Hardcore mode: When defeated, there is a chance you get a defeat scenario, but there is also a chance you actually get killed. Additionally, characters in hardcore mode can't play with characters that are not, and vice versa.

**Bleeding now does 35% of max health in 2 mins and Extreme 50% of max health in 2 mins. (For some reasons it was 4 times that amount before)

*** Note that the achievement can be unlocked if you load a character that has completed a quest line and is still undefeated. Unfortunately, it won't be the case if a you load a character that hasbeen defeated even if it is after the quest line completion.

****Super Speed: You character must be named 'Code Sonic'. This will display an hidden option in the settings menu that you can toggle to go to really fast.

 

[cvv]

Ok, I guess it's finally time to take this for a spin.

 

[Murk]

Sweet, might do a replay of it in a few months. Lately the songs have been running through my mind at random times.

 

[Jinn]

I'll probably wait until they (hopefully) add a new region, faction, and a couple more classes to the game before I do a full co-op replay/run with a friend or my brother.

cvv I'm curious what you'll think of the game. Something tells me you're not going to like it.

 

[cvv]

cvv I'm curious what you'll think of the game. Something tells me you're not going to like it.

How do you figure? If a game checks a few boxes for me I'll forgive a lot. Outward seems original, non-linear and has a non-traditional saving system. Those are big pluses in my book. We'll see.

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[HoboForEternity]

nice. deserved. i like the game, at least the first 20 hours of it when everything can kill you in 2 or 3 hits.
after the first half, the challenge couldn't keep up with character level and made everything a chore. it was great when simply traversing the map was a dangerous task, you have to set trap, or evade because if you rush carelessly you will die.

in the end, with rune mage build and star claymore, i just kill everything pretty easily and traversing become a chore that in the 30th to 40th hour it became boring.

but i hope they do make a full sequel and make it more proper RPG, with more scripted content and expanded procedurically generated content

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Pretty good news. Whatever his marketing strategy it worked.