The first major expansion for Outriders has been announced. We have already been able to play the Worldslayer campaign and tell you what you can expect here.
With Worldslayer, Square Enix announced the first expansion for the loot shooter Outriders on 21 April. It comes with a completely independent new campaign and is meant to inspire both veterans and new players. We were allowed to try out the new story about the Changed in the course of an event and try our hand at assessing whether the add-on can successfully revive the action game that has recently gone underground.
If you already can’t remember one of the biggest surprise hits from 2021, then it’s best to read our detailed Outriders review from back then:
Outriders: The first Steam hit of the year celebrates its big content comeback
If you don’t have time for that, you can also read this short summary:
What is Outriders?
(~) Genre: Loot-Shooter, can be played alone or in co-op with two or three people
(~) Scenario: Mankind had to leave Earth and seeks its fortune on a distant planet. However, an anomaly is raging there that kills people or gives them special abilities. You have been given the latter fate and now it is your task to protect the survivors.
(~) Gameplay: You engage in brutal battles against monsters and humans with one of four classes, skillfully using your respective abilities and firearms to achieve victory. You can only heal yourself by damaging and killing enemies. By combining skills and appropriately modified weapons, you can create powerful combos and take down entire hordes of enemies.
Table of Contents
What’s new in Worldslayer?
What is actually included in the new expansion? We summarise what new content players can look forward to. If you’re more interested in our personal impression from the first hour of the expansion, you can jump straight to our play-on conclusion of Worldslayer.
New Campaign
The biggest part of the new content is probably the new story, which can be played after the main game or completely independently of it. Those who want to jump right into the new story can either use their own character as a veteran or create a new Outrider at the previous maximum level 30 and leave the main game out of it for the time being. A character created with the level 30 boost already has the right equipment to keep up from the start.
This time, the Outriders face the villainess Ereshkigal, who is blessed with similar but greater powers to yours. She is among the first to be altered by the anomaly on the alien planet Enoch. Only if you stop her can humanity continue to survive.
The developers promise to delve deeper into the background story of the alien world with the new story. There will also be more variety in combat and new, epic alien landscapes inhabited by entirely new enemy species.
New difficulty levels
To ensure that hardcore, battle-hardened Outriders are also challenged by the new content, Worldslayer is introducing new difficulty levels with the so-called Apocalypse Tiers. These go up to level 40 and are supposed to be even more challenging than the Challenger Tiers of the Expeditions, which are completely replaced by the Apocalypse Tiers.
For the tough fights, there is of course also new loot, the Apocalypse Gear. This drops as variants of epic and legendary items and is characterised by a third mod slot. However, it cannot be changed, so you have to find a weapon with a matching Apocalypse slot if possible.
New weapons and equipment
The expansion also lets you hunt for more new equipment: Nearly a hundred new legendary items are available for purchase. These include two new five-piece armour sets for each class, as well as new three-piece sets suitable for each class. You can also see some of the new items in the expansion screenshots:
New skills and long-term progress
With Worldslayers, there is a new Pax skill tree for all classes that is available to you from level 30. You earn points for this when you complete chapters from the expansion. The Pax skills allow you to further specialise your class and develop it into one of two subclasses.
Another new feature in the skill system are the so-called Ascension levels. As you level up, you can distribute one point to various bonuses, for example, for magazine size, healing, armour penetration or skill strength. You can earn a total of 200 of these points to fine-tune your build.
The Ascension levels are intended to enable your character to develop over a long period of time. According to the developers, it takes hundreds of hours to earn all the possible points.
New Endgame
The developers promise to deliver new activities for the endgame with the expansion. Here, the ancient ruins of Tarya Gratar (introduced in the trailer) await you in Worldslayer, where an even greater danger than the antagonist of the new campaign should be waiting.
Details about the endgame have not yet been revealed, but it is said to be a completely new mode that still has little in common with the expeditions from the main game.
How does the new campaign play?
At the beginning of the game, we first travel to an inhospitable ice desert and later to an eerie fishing village. There, as usual, we kill hordes of enemies that block our way to the goal. In addition to the familiar cannon fodder, there are also new enemies, such as the first larger boss at the end of the play session:
We can only say a little about the deeper innovations such as Pax Trees or Ascension levels after this short time. It is obvious, however, that the expansion with these additional progress systems is aimed primarily at veterans.
Beginners may find the multitude of skills overwhelming at first. And the special play style of Outriders, in which we always have to deal more damage in order to survive, also takes some getting used to. Despite all this, however, it is quite possible to get into Worldslayer as a beginner. Especially those who have experience with loot shooters should find their way around relatively quickly.
We also know little about the story after an hour. Obviously, the anomaly is growing at an increasingly frightening pace. In order to prevent the certain demise of the surviving humans, we must now find out what is behind all this. Find out more in our video summary with new gameplay:
Is Worldslayer worth getting back into?
After a successful launch, Outriders angered many players with bugs, broken servers and disappearing inventories when it was released in 2021. These problems seem to have been largely solved in the meantime, but the game is still stuck at triple-digit player numbers (Steam).
The Worldslayer expansion is therefore certainly also an attempt to get old players to return and to win over new fans. Whether it succeeds remains to be seen. For the big promises of Worldslayer are the new campaign, the endgame and the new progression systems. At the moment, however, we know too little about all of this to make an assessment.
What has been shown does look promising: thanks to Pax Trees and Ascension levels, we will become even stronger for a long time, the beginning of the campaign arouses curiosity and the end game is also supposed to be completely different. At 40 euros for the DLC (currently reduced to 35 euros) and 80 euros for the bundle including the main game (currently reduced to 54 euros), the expansion is also quite expensive.
Until it is clear whether the Ruins of Tarya Gratar can make up for the disappointment of the expeditions, it is still unclear whether the return is worthwhile for veterans. For new players, on the other hand, the expansion offers little. To get to know the game, it seems to make more sense to start with the campaign of the main game.
Editor’s verdict
At first glance, the new expansion Worldslayer seems to be a promising addition to the main game. Above all, as in the main game, the detailed landscapes and environments stood out, from an inhospitable icy desert to an eerily gloomy swamp village. As known from Outriders, I plunge into fast and brutal fights, which, depending on the difficulty level, can be easy or completely overwhelming.
How the changes in skills through Pax Trees and Ascension levels affect the game experience is difficult to assess after a short time. However, it is conceivable that the new skills will improve a core element of Outriders, namely the creation of the perfect build. With the expansion, you can further specialise your class and probably make your play style even more efficient.
Little do I know about the story of Worldslayer, even after playing it. The descriptions of the campaign are rather lavish with superlatives, but in the first hour of the expansion, Worldslayer knows how to make me curious about the continuation of the story.
All in all, it seems too early to pass judgement on Worldslayer. A first impression is positive, but too few details are known yet. Veterans in particular probably want to wait and see whether the new endgame offers a promising approach.
