When People Can Fly started talking about Outriders and showing off gameplay, the devs were careful not to label the co-op shooter as a live-service game. The pursuit of loot and endgame activities would keep players invested if they wanted, but completing Outriders’ story campaign offered a definitive conclusion for those looking to get in and out. People Can Fly did its best to toe that line between live-service and single-player game, and its upcoming Worldslayer expansion looks to continue that trend.
At its core, Worldslayer is more campaign content for Outriders players looking to jump back into the game they enjoyed last year. It features a new set of environments to explore, new enemy types (riffs on familiar archetypes, though), and a big bad named Ereshkigal to contend with. The world of Enoch is changing following the conclusion of the main game, and it is up to the player to boost their powers and defeat those who seek to wipe out humanity.
For the live-service-seeking gamers, People Can Fly has made sure to make a number of smart additions to the existing game to keep them coming back. Obviously, the promise of new loot is at the top of the list for Worldslayer, and Outriders' upcoming DLC will deliver new weapons and gear sets to collect. But there are also new ways to theorycraft a build and further spec into a specific playstyle, which is something that the game struggled with at launch.
PAX Skill Tree and Ascension Points
During our preview of the Worldslayer content, it wasn’t clear how deep those build possibilities will be, but the key appears to be the PAX skill tree. This is a separate skill tree from the main three available to Outriders’ four playable classes, and they include nodes with significant boosts to the player’s abilities. Because the experience was limited in its scope, it was better to fall back on familiar builds like the Trickster’s Venator’s Knife/Twisted Rounds combo. But the promise of using each class’ abilities in new ways is exciting, and the PAX tree could lead to builds that were never even possible in the base game.
Players can further tweak their builds using Ascension Points, which unlock every time the player accrues enough XP. Ascension Points are spent on incremental stat boosts that players can add to their character in one of four categories: Anomaly, Brutality, Endurance, and Prowess.
There are then five different boosts within those four categories, ranging from cooldown reduction to armor boosts, for players to invest their points to further hone their build. They can even completely respec the Ascension Points and start again like with the Skill Tree. People Can Fly says that the 200 total Ascension Points that players can earn in Outriders Worldslayer should take hundreds of hours to earn, adding another grinding layer to the game that wasn’t there before.
New Outriders Endgame in Worldslayer
Originally, the base endgame for Outriders consisted of Expeditions and Challenge Tiers. Expeditions are still in Outriders, but they were reworked during the New Horizon update to value difficulty over completion time. The higher the Challenger Tier, the greater chance at higher tier loot. For Worldslayer and the base game, Challenge Tiers are being replaced with Apocalypse Tiers but those who don’t own the DLC will not be able to go higher than Apocalypse Tier 15. These Tiers will push the difficulty further than Challenge Tiers with the promise of more XP and better loot depending on the Tier.
As one might expect, OutridersWorldslayer adds “tons of new weapons and gear” including new Legendary armor sets for each class. There are also new perks tied to the loot, but it was unclear if those perks might also show up on existing loot as well.
Additionally, the higher Apocalypse Tiers will influence the odds of earning Apocalypse gear, a new rarity of loot that has a third perk slot. With a third perk available, this gear is likely to be the prime reason to grind in Outriders, and should be extremely rare because it cannot be crafted and the third, Apocalypse perk slot is locked. Players can, however, swap out one of the two base perks like they can with other pieces of Outriders gear.
Outriders Worldslayer seems to meet the expectations fans of the base game should be looking for. A new campaign with a new story, environments, and enemies is the main draw for the casual players, and those looking for more reasons to grind should be satisfied as well. Layers on top of the base game will also ensure that players’ time is respected and that they feel rewarded, even if they aren’t acquiring the loot they are chasing.
And while People Can Fly wasn’t ready to talk about it just yet, there is a new endgame experience on the way with Worldslayer called the Trial of Tarya Gratar. It could be a raid-like experience or something else, but fans can look for more info on that later this summer.
Outriders Worldslayer expansion releases June 30, 2022 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.