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

[hello friend]

Fair enough

 

[Zanzoken]

I did the tutorial and explored the starter town a bit, and I like the game so far. The controls and character movement are not the smoothest but I like the survival mechanics.

Also, with some tinkering and the help of a couple of mods, I was able to get the co-op working so that my nephew and I are able to play vertical split-screen, each of us with our own monitor. He's only 8 and this is the first time I've seen him take an interest in RPGs, so maybe us being able to play together will get him started in the hobby. I imagine having a partner to explore the game world with will also cut down on the monotony of all the walking and stuff, which appears to be a common criticism of the game.

 

[Zanzoken]

Ugh so I was out doing some adventuring to get the money needed to pay off the debt, and ended up getting killed a few times. The combat really does take some getting used to.

Anyway I thought I still had a couple days left before the deadline, but when I got back to town my house was taken from me! I had like 180 silver in my stash and was going to pay it off as soon as I got back to town, but now I can no longer access my stuff.

Probably just going to reroll at this point. Making money isn't that hard but you really have to be cautious when making excursions out into the wild.

 

[Decado]

Ugh so I was out doing some adventuring to get the money needed to pay off the debt, and ended up getting killed a few times. The combat really does take some getting used to.

Anyway I thought I still had a couple days left before the deadline, but when I got back to town my house was taken from me! I had like 180 silver in my stash and was going to pay it off as soon as I got back to town, but now I can no longer access my stuff.

Probably just going to reroll at this point. Making money isn't that hard but you really have to be cautious when making excursions out into the wild.

Reroll, and do this instead (spoiler, if you care):

Spoiler

The village lady tells you that you can clear your blood price by doing a tribal favor, instead of paying out mega dollary-doos. So, quickly get your act together in town upon starting a new character: pick a weapon, get the water skin from the desalinator, talk to Burac (the guy by the front gate) to get your free weapon skill. Go to a vendor and buy one bandage, or make a bandage from some linen scraps. You can get linen scraps by deconstructing your own clothing, for example the rags you started the game with -- which you should have replaced with the clothes you found in your own house, at the very least.

Now, don't head out of the town. Instead, head towards the back of the town, to the docks area right below your light house, and enter the Cierzo storage area. Collect the stuff in there -- including a lamp, and a bedroll -- and fight the two troglodytes in the caves. Press forward, and you'll end up on the beach, outside of town. Walk along the beach a little ways, being careful to avoid the Pistol Shrimp enemy if there is one (their placement is randomized). You'll notice a young man on the beach in need of healing. Give him the bandage, and it turns out he is the Mayor Lady's nephew or whatever. He will give you a tribal favor in return for helping him.

Now, the slightly tough part will be getting back home. Walk back towards the cave that you exited from and look up at the cliffs. You can walk your way up there, heading generally north. Hug the mountains, curling around towards your left. You might stumble across a wolf or two, and sometimes there are bandits there which is nice because if you're confident, you can kill them and sometimes they have useful gear. But you should be able to make it home to Cierzo.

If you make it into town, do not stop to rest. Go right to the mayor's house and give her the tribal favor. Your house is now yours, and those commie villagers can fuck right off.

 

[Zanzoken]

Decado that worked like a charm, thanks! Ended up playing a bunch last night, just staying close to Cierzo and making brief trips outside the walls.

Got a Nomad backpack set up for both of us with travel gear.

Spoiler

Lantern
Bedroll
Campfire kit
Flint & steel
Cooking pot
Mining pick
Fishing spear
Travel ration (x10)
Salt (x10)
Waterskin
Bandages (x10)
Antidote (x2)

Probably a little overkill but gearing up for the journey is part of the fun imo.

 

[Decado]

Cool man, glad that helped.

You are probably carrying way more than you need but that's part of the fun. But for example, I never saw the need to carry a cook pot or alchemy station with me. Most food lasts a long time so if you use your kitchen in your house and pack two or three meals, you generally have enough to get where you're going.

Also, you almost never need to carry a campfire kit. Wood is everywhere, you can strip practically any tree in the game. No need to carry wood scraps around.

BTW, an easy way to make money is to craft stacks of warm potions. They sell for a few coins each but cost almost nothing to make. Even if you use oil that you have to buy instead of the oil you can find, you'll make money.

 

[Zanzoken]

I managed to cheese my way through a fight with 4 bandits.

Spoiler

First I laid two spike tripwire traps on the road with some distance in between them.

Pulled one bandit away (basic sword guy) without alerting the others and killed him 1-v-1 without a scratch.

Tried to peel another one off, but accidentally aggro'd the whole group. Oh shit, gotta run back toward the traps.

First trap manages to hit 2 of the bandits at once, which was lucky. The second trap hits one of the guys again.

Now melee. I quickly dispatch the guy who'd been hit with both traps (sword + board guy) as he was nearly dead.

Two left... another basic sword guy and a polearm guy. Polearm guy is the more dangerous of the two, and also wounded by the first trap. I take a few hits but manage to get him down.

Only one remains but I am down to about 1/3 of my life. I land a couple of strong hits, he clips me, I'm almost dead but I manage to stagger him and then finish him off. Yeesh, close one.

Combat is still hard, but I am getting a little better. Oddly enough it reminds me of Kingdom Come more than anything. Very different mechanically, but similar feel. You're not just gonna mash buttons and steamroll past a dozen bad guys... just 2 or 3 enemies is a serious challenge. I call that incline.

I am mainly using a 2H sword, but just got my first bow and hunted a few giant chickens to test out archery. Also curious about daggers (sneak attacks?) and guns... noticed the Soro caravan guy in town has a pistol for sale.

Finally I realized that eating Jerky gives a small but long-lasting health regen effect, and also appears to stack with bandages. It's a cheap and easy way to regain health without having to sleep, since health potions are fairly rare at this point in the game. Although as far as I know, the only way to regain max health is rest.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Don't see the similarity between KCD combat and this at all, sorry. KCD has elegant action combat with timing and muscle memory elements (when to parry, when to perform next combo move). Outward combat is very bland, hold up shield/weapon, wait the other guy out, then strike, bring shield/weapon back up, etc. Though both games do have shitty targetting locks.

On my run, I managed to make it to the Ley Lines and became a mage. Spellcasting definitely made the combat more enjoyable for me. So far I got 3 fire spells (Spark, Flamethrower, and the one that sets a fire zone at your feet). Spark seems generally useless, but I noticed if cast out of that fire zone, it becomes more powerful. However, the ingredient cost of the fire zone spell makes this prohibitive for now. Flamethrower, on the other hand, uses cheap ingredients (ie torches, only a piece of wood and linen, which is cheaply available at merchants), and does excellent damage. Even better if you buff yourself with warm potion or something along those lines. BBQ'ed the bandit captain at the Montcalm camp with a couple of flamethrowers, before that he gave me some trouble with a sword/shield setup.

 

[anvi]

KCD needs wizards.

 

[Cryomancer]

KCD needs wizards.

No, not games needs fantasy. KDC is a historical game and should be one. What it really needs is crossbows. And more arrow types.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

KCD needs wizards.

Nobody needs wizards. Even wizards don't need wizards.

 

[hello friend]

btw don't put a bunch of points into mana, you hardly need any

every character should get spellcasting capability for weather resistance shit

 

[ERYFKRAD]

every character should get spellcasting capability

Crom laughs at you from his mountain.

 

[Zanzoken]

I ended up playing for like 6 hours today lol. Both of my nephews are into the game now, so they each have their own character. We play in my game as host and they swap out every 30 minutes.

We're still just in the first area but it's turned into winter now and the cold weather is a real concern. Pretty cool to see the seasons change like that. We managed to raid one of the bandit forts and also killed some of those lightning bugs that hang out on the beach. Got killed a few times but so far someone has always come along to save the day.
Fun times overall. If you thought the game was boring playing solo, try managing it with two 8 year-olds.

 

[Rafidur]

every character should get spellcasting capability

Crom laughs at you from his mountain.

Any sufficiently advanced barbarian is undistinguishable from magic.

 

[LESS T_T]

Something is coming? https://steamdb.info/app/794260/history/?changeid=12551617

Outward - DEFED DLC (1758860) Depot

I've wondered for a moment if there's another DLC coming but "DEFED" likely stands for Definitive Edition.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

every character should get spellcasting capability

Crom laughs at you from his mountain.

Any sufficiently advanced barbarian is indistinguishable from magic.

Therefore get rid of magic and have barbarians instead.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I am starting to understand what people meant by too much walking. Holy crap this game should've had some teleport/fast movement/transportation feature. Inexcusable that it doesn't. Gothic games had teleport stones, Morrowind had the traveling bugs.

 

[Joggerino]

I am starting to understand what people meant by too much walking. Holy crap this game should've had some teleport/fast movement/transportation feature. Inexcusable that it doesn't. Gothic games had teleport stones, Morrowind had the traveling bugs.

Walking, backtracking and linear maps. Pretty annoying

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Holy crap this game should've had some teleport/fast movement/transportation feature.

You can travel with caravans I think? Or is that a dlc feature?

 

[Zanzoken]

Last night I visited the 3 capital cities and I can see how trekking back and forth could get tedious. It really is a poor design choice, and there are a couple of approaches they could've taken to make this much more player-friendly without invalidating the survival mechanics.

a) When the player arrives in a region, spawn them at or near the city, instead of forcing them to trudge all the way across the map every time to access the area's hub. Then put all of the quests and places of interest farther out in the region, so that the player must deal with the area's challenges in order to reach them.

or

b) Have a transportation service (e.g. silt striders from Morrowind) that will haul the player from city to city for a small fee. If for some reason you want the cities to be remote then t's acceptable to force the player to make the journey on foot once, but after that they should be accessible by fast travel.

Here's a quick and dirty mock-up.

Better map design example

I also would've made Enmarkar the starter region, since it's centrally located and has no weather effects. Then give the other regions their own unique hazards that the player must endure using a mixture of gear and consumables.

 

[Zanzoken]

On another note...

I noticed the game doesn't really have a system in place for XP or level ups. So I guess that means trainers and equipment are the only systems available for getting stronger? I saw that each character is limited to three "breakthrough" skills, which give passive bonuses and are sort of like choosing your class. But otherwise it doesn't appear that you gain any kind of increased health, stamina, damage, etc.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Eh, this game is so annoying at times.

Was sliding down a hill, which generally worked for me before, but I guess this one was to steep or something, so I fell to my death. Was saved by some guy, woke up nearby with barely any health. Went to sleep, set guard, got ambushed anyway. 2 bandits, whom I could've taken, but when I rolled to avoid being backstabbed by one, the place where I was saved was on another fucking hill, so I fell to my death again.

This time woke up in Vendavel fotress. Was about to pay the guard to get out, when saw the option to jump down off some ramp. Not realizing this game REALLY doesn't reward exploration, I did it, fell out of the fortress without any of my shit. No weapons, no armor, nothing.

The great thing about gems like Gothic was that they nailed the sweetspot between challenging gameplay and fun. Outward tries so hard to be challenging, it's like they forgot the fun part.

Also, unlike say Gothic or other PB games, the world is barren af. There is very rarely anything cool to discover, most stuff is just a background prop.

 

[Zanzoken]

I made the trip to Sorobor (cost 400 silvers round trip, ouch) and got the cheap stamina buff + mana unlock for all three of our characters. I had already got us all the cheap health buff from the trainer in Chierzo, so that means we're each at 120 health / 120 stamina / 20 mana.

Progress has hit a bit of a lull now as I try to figure out our builds. The kids will enjoy throwing a fireball or two for the novelty of it, but ultimately I expect they'll be content to just stick with melee. So I'll just equip them with the best weapons and armors I can find, and top them up with the passives that buff health and stamina, as resources permit.

That means for efficiency's sake I should build my character for magic use. That's a bit more complicated, seeing as (a) upper tier skills are hella expensive to train, and I need a lot of silver to outfit 3 characters and (b) you only have 8 hot bar slots, which places a fairly stringent limit on how many skills you have readily available in combat. After doing some research, here's what I currently think about the available options.

Spoiler

Rune Sage (https://outward.fandom.com/wiki/Rune_Sage)
Pro: Just 4 hot bar slots gives access to a ton of useful spells. Passive ability gives +40 mana. Basic rune spells are cheap to learn. Memorizing spell combinations is kind of a fun mechanic.
Con: Need to carry a Lexicon in your off-hand to use Rune magic (there is a passive skill that eliminates this requirement, but it's expensive). Rune spells also appear to have fairly high mana costs (16 mana for basic spells, 32 mana for advanced) and they lack synergies with other skill trees.

Hex Mage (https://outward.fandom.com/wiki/Hex_Mage)
Pro: Spells do a lot of debuffs and damage. Passive ability restores attributes lost to attrition when you kill stuff. Some powerful skill synergies.
Con: Seems like it would need a lot of min-maxing to be effective. Dark stones, sigils, corruption, fatigue... it's a lot to manage, and I don't think I want to be bothered with it.

Philosopher (https://outward.fandom.com/wiki/Philosopher)
Pro: Passive grants constant effect mana regen (1 mana per 3 seconds). Chakrams look like fun.
Con: Sigil spells are situational and finicky. Chakrams require the Discipline buff to use. Upper tier skills look kind of meh.

Cabal Hermit (https://outward.fandom.com/wiki/Cabal_Hermit)
Pro: Lots of useful abilities and synergies. Passive enhances boons which is a nice effect. Sigil of Wind doesn't require a consumable to use.
Con: Have to pick between Sigil of Wind and Infuse Wind, which are both great abilities. Conjure has a long cast time which may limit its usefulness.

Kazite Spellblade (https://outward.fandom.com/wiki/Kazite_Spellblade)
Pro: Passive grants +15 to health, stamina, and magic. If you convert the bonus health and stamina to magic, it adds up to a whopping +75 mana! The ability to infuse melee weapons with elemental damage and attack from range is also nice.
Con: Can only specialize in either fire or frost (not both). Only one active ability which is kind of meh.

Warrior Monk (https://outward.fandom.com/wiki/Warrior_Monk)
Pro: Lots of synergy with Philosopher since they both rely on the Discipline boon. Passive gives +40 stamina which is useful for all characters. Gives added melee and tanking capabilities to a battlemage-style build.
Con: Not actually a magic-using class. Lots of active abilities to quickly clog up the hot bar.

I like Philosopher / Rune / Cabal Hermit for a pure caster and Philosopher / Monk / Spellblade for a battlemage. Or perhaps even Philosopher / Rune / Spellblade for a heavy hitter with very deep mana reserves.

Open to suggestions if anyone has any.

 

[Efe]

give one of them a pistol and you can delay buying him armor for a time
I remember using extra skills from menu before boss fights
not everything has to go in hotbar