The Outer Worlds, The Thread

[pierrot]

We need to talk about The Outer Worlds, y'all.

It's pretty great.


Let's talk about builds, and experiences, with as few spoilers as humanly possible.

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This is really one of the first WRPGs of any kind that I've played. I spent quite a bit of time playing The Record of Lodoss War on the Dreamcast, and a few hours with Baldur's Gate, but in general, pen and paper RPG mechanics don't do a lot for me in video games. I'm not much of a fan of tabletop roleplaying, either, though. Anyway, that's really just to say that despite not generally playing games like The Outer Worlds, this one has enchanted me a bit.

I'm playing on normal difficulty, and since Popo empowered me to not fear making any mistakes in my build, I made my character ("Gunner"--if I could do it again, I'd give him a last name of "Thompson") as a research assistant. I put most of the points into intelligence, with one point in melee, and two points in ranged. I probably shouldn't have bothered with making melee "good," but I didn't know if melee was going to be worth doing at all. (I went into this exceptionally blind.) At this point I'm needing to kind of play catch-up with my leadership skills, but my hacking, engineering, and science skills are all nearly 50, unadjusted. It's interesting to see that even though I didn't put a lot into conversation skills, I still have had a lot of opportunities to use them during dialogue.

I'm level 8 now, and just getting off of the Vale. I'm revered by both factions right now. Although

I diverted power to the deserters, and didn't have the skill to intimidate Tobson. What I ended up doing, though, was save scumming until I was able to sneak past the guards around the power regulator. After I nabbed it, I couldn't avoid getting noticed by the guard doing a circuit on the lower level, so I just ran, and it didn't seem to reduce my standing with Spacer's Choice at that point, for some reason. Even though I'm pretty sure I ran past Tobson on the way out of town.

I recruited a bit of an asshole, against my better judgement. He's just been in The Unreliable, but I was sort of hoping I would be able to recruit the bartender. She seems pretty interesting to me. I had kind of hoped I could just have a crew of scientists and engineers, with maybe a sweet, lovable idiot to round things out. Oh well. Maybe I'll strand him somewhere.

I've fallen in love with two weapons so far: A Bolter gun that I've put a few upgrades into, and a rifle that I put an electricity magazine upgrade into. The latter seems to rip through automechanicals with great vigor. The former seems to muzzle the shit out of canids.


Which leads me to some questions. I'm kind of confused about the level on weapons and armor. I thought that it would restrict me from using them if they were a higher level than my character, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I've been kind of holding back on tinkering them too high, though, just in case there is some penalty for a negative difference between player level and equipment level. Is there any relationship between the two, or are they completely independent of one another?

Do you all just filch everything you see? I find I don't steal things most of the time, unless it's something that seems really good. There's probably no downside to it, but I just don't feel like stealing things from shopworkers, and townspeople. (Unless I hacked my way into it. Then I basically earned it.)

Also, is there really any reason to hold on to the items that get put into the "Junk" tab? I'm not really sure if they're every going to be relevant for quests or something, so I hold on to crap like the tossball cards, servos, lighters, and employee awards (which are worthless to sell, so I feel like they have to have some sort of use).

[MrPopo]

So to answer your questions:

1. Weapon level is a basic indicator of the weapon's strength. A higher level weapon does more damage than a lower level weapon of the same time. You can at most upgrade an item to be 5 levels higher than your character level. There is no penalty to upgrading other than the rapidly increasing cost; skills can help mitigate that but even then you'll find you want to replace a piece of gear now and again with something of a higher base level to reset the tinkering cost (as the tinker cost is based on number of times you did it since getting the item, rather than a fixed cost to go from level N to N+1).

2. The only reason to not steal EVERYTHING is the penalties for getting caught in the act (and even then, you can talk your way out of the first one). Unlike the Elder Scrolls games, here items don't get flagged as stolen, so once safely in your pocket they're yours. But do what your heart feels is right.

3. Junk is 100% junk and only fit for selling. You even have the option of marking non-junk items as junk so you can quick sell it all at once. Always do the sell all junk functionality when you meet a shopkeeper.

[pierrot]

Yeah, I try to limit my stealing to certain spots, and that probably won't really change. Good to know about the junk, though. I don't really get the purpose of it, or why that Stefan dude sells canid meat if it's just going to be junk, but, I'm not going to worry about it.

I hit that level cap on one of the weapons, finally. Thanks for clearing that up. For clarification on the pristine equipment, is it just that they sell for more, and have better durability? I'm thinking I may as well just sell them, at that rate. Increased durability doesn't seem to really be worth much.

I'm mostly done with the Groundbreaker at this point, I think. I need to stop at Rosewood for another science weapon, and to check on Gladys' tip, so I can get the Stellar Bay pass. Otherwise, I stopped the radiator, took out the Mardet's bounty, went through Parvati's weird meltdown, and got a new crew member (but she's a Leo, ew). I'm starting to kind of wish that I hadn't kept the difficulty on normal. It was really tough when I started out, partly because I went sidequesting first, and started with going to the Emerald Vale Community Center, with pretty much the starting equipment, and no allies, before almost anything else. Now every encounter is pretty much a cakewalk. I don't even really use the TTD at all now, because I kill things so quickly without it that it really isn't worth slowing down time for. Is it just because I'm level 12? That doesn't seem like it should be way overleveled for this part of the game, but I'm not sure if the difficulty is going to be picking up at all here. It seems like a tricky balance, though, because it doesn't seem like it takes a whole lot for me to die, if I just get overrun by a handful of enemies, but maybe I'm just thinking of the last challenging encounter I had, back on Terra-2.

[MrPopo]

I hit that level cap on one of the weapons, finally. Thanks for clearing that up. For clarification on the pristine equipment, is it just that they sell for more, and have better durability? I'm thinking I may as well just sell them, at that rate. Increased durability doesn't seem to really be worth much.

Yeah, pristine just means more durability and selling. If you have low tech skills that can matter, but you'll basically be drowning in repair mats, so go for selling them.

It was really tough when I started out, partly because I went sidequesting first, and started with going to the Emerald Vale Community Center, with pretty much the starting equipment, and no allies, before almost anything else.

Yeah, that'll definitely make you think the game is balls hard.

I don't even really use the TTD at all now, because I kill things so quickly without it that it really isn't worth slowing down time for. Is it just because I'm level 12? That doesn't seem like it should be way overleveled for this part of the game, but I'm not sure if the difficulty is going to be picking up at all here.

The level cap is 30, and the level dings are pretty consistent, so consider yourself almost halfway through the game. A lot of reviewers have said the game is a bit too easy on normal if you have any familiarity with the first person genre. The TTD is really more about the fact that you get all the bonus effects when you hit the weakpoints, as hitting weakpoints without it still does extra damage. I found myself basically never using it other than to scope out enemy levels when I was still early in the game.

[pierrot]

How much of the sidequests, and companion quests did you end up doing, Popo?

Yeah, it did seem crazy hard until I realized I had just been reckless. I was dying repeatedly on my second encounter, approaching the community center, and was just thinking, 'Do I suck this badly at FPS, or is this just how the game is going to be?' Now it's like the complete opposite. I'm level 16, and outside of ranged skills, I don't even really bother with combat skills or perks. I have very seldom, in my entire life, played FPS, but I had a scenario where I was just walking and firing with the Verminator pistol, pinging dudes who were partially covered, about 20 meters away. So now it feels like the game is grossly exaggerating my skill. If it stays this way, which I kind of assume it will, I would also say that it's probably too easy on normal difficulty. There's some thrill in demolishing enemies, but it's also feeling more rote, and boring to me. Boss fights don't really seem to be a thing, and I think that might hurt the experience a little. It sort of feels like the game mostly drops the side characters after I've gotten their backstory dump, too. Sure, they chime in sometimes when I take them on quests, but their contributions feel so inconsequential that I usually don't even pay much attention.

It's pretty upsetting to me, in a way that probably doesn't matter to most others, that there are so many different styles of basically the same item, both consumables and equipment. The entirety of the item list feels really bloated, and I wish they had streamlined that more. It's annoying to me, also, because these kinds of P&P RPG stats are always so unclear, at a glance.

Still enjoying things, in general, but some of the glossy finish seems to be wearing a little thin. In terms of progress, I just got access to the Stellar Bay, and am about to head to Monarch.

[MrPopo]

I tried to do everything I could. I'm sure I missed a sidequest here or there, but I did all my companion quests (except Parvati, since I got her killed early on and just didn't have the energy to reload again). You are correct in noticing that there aren't really much in the way of boss fights. I'd say that one of the companion quests ends on what could be called a boss (mostly due to the health pool), and if you don't talk your way around it there is a boss in the end game (which I discovered watching the speedrun; I completely talked my way out of the encounter). So in terms of threats, once you've encountered the monsters on Monarch you've seen everything and it just all becomes a bit of a numbers game.

[Xeogred]

I might finally cave on the EGS for this game, since it looks and sounds so incredible. Been a HUGE fan of everything modern Obsidian, though I'm not big on some of the isometric stuff they did more recently, so I'm glad they're back to this format. And very happy it seems like this game blew up and is doing very well for them. MS must be pretty excited about their purchase now.

My one main question at this point is, are there still little dungeons sprinkled throughout the world? Like an abandoned building or cave and things like that? I always love those quiet little moments in New Vegas or the Bethesda games. This is one thing I haven't heard anyone really talk about. The combat itself sounds good but yeah, are there still some cool side dungeons and mysterious places to discover?

[MrPopo]

There's several small dungeons, but they all are used for quests. It's not like an Elder Scrolls game with a bunch of random things to do.

[pierrot]

Yeah, I don't know what the side dungeons were like in the other obsidian games, but most of the game so far has been areas not related to the main quest. Lots of abandoned houses, with bands of marauders, outlaws, and vicious native species. There are also some hidden alcoves that lead into small caves with rare loot. So far I've been to a satellite, and a whole asteroid that seemed to only be used for sidequests.


I'm still plugging away at the game. I've got around 30 hours clocked, at level 20, or maybe almost 21, I can't recall. Took care of most of the stuff in Stellar Bay, and ventured out into a bit of Monarch, which seems pretty dang big compared to Terra 2.

I ran into the cannibal family, to find out about the saltuna factory worker, but jumped out the balcony window because I can pretty much lock pick anything. (Actually I don't remember what the requirement was to open those locked doors). I was basically in and out of there with ease, but I am curious if there was potentially more to that encounter if I had actually sat down to dinner with them, or something. I imagine so, but I looted everything that wasn't on the first floor, anyway. Part of me felt like going back in after escaping, though.

I looked at the list of main quests, and it seems like I'm still not quite halfway through them. I'm wondering if the number of sidequests is going to taper off toward the back half of these quests, or not, because I feel like I could end up at max level before I'm even on the next main quest. Things are already easy, and I just got an Assault Rifle Ultra that I souped up, too.

I've also got a full crew now. Two of them I really don't care about, and one of them I can't decide if I really want to take with me.

(except Parvati, since I got her killed early on and just didn't have the energy to reload again)

Is that just in Supernova difficulty that they don't come back if they die. They always revive after combat for me. I probably wouldn't even bother bringing them with me if they were just gone after getting taken down in combat. How far into Parvati's quest did you get?

[MrPopo]

(except Parvati, since I got her killed early on and just didn't have the energy to reload again)

Is that just in Supernova difficulty that they don't come back if they die. They always revive after combat for me. I probably wouldn't even bother bringing them with me if they were just gone after getting taken down in combat. How far into Parvati's quest did you get?

Yeah, that's a Supernova thing (though some late game perks do allow you some rez capabilities; the top tier ones in each companion give them a single rez on cooldown and you can perk into having your inhaler rez people on a cooldown. Once I got off of the first area I had enough gear that the companions weren't a liability; they would die now and again if I was stupid but I could reload around it. In terms of how far into her quest, I had done the part where she asked me to talk to Vicar Max, then when we were going to the hydro plant she decided to take another dirt nap and I gave up on her. I had planned to just go solo, but then when I had a companion with me that I had bothered to armor up they were suddenly useful, so I respecced out of the solo perk I had taken.