Outriders is getting a “colossal” free content update on November 16. Called New Horizon, the update will bring a reworked expedition loot reward system, brand-new expeditions to explore, and new customisation options for your characters.
The New Horizon update marks the first major post-launch content drop for Outriders, and a key feature is the rework to expeditions – the endgame missions available after you’ve wrapped the main campaign. Before the New Horizon update, players had to complete these expeditions as quickly as possible to get the best loot; however, this is no longer the case. The reworked expeditions do away with any time-based rewards, instead offering more rewards based on how long it should generally take to complete that expedition. There’s still an option to turn on timers for expeditions for those who want the challenge, but this is just for bragging rights – you won’t get any extra goodies for doing so.
The biggest effect of this change is that it’ll take as long to complete a single long expedition as multiple runs of shorter expeditions to get the same loot. It should also give players the freedom to go into an expedition without pigeonholing themselves into a specific Outriders build designed to get through expeditions as quickly as possible. This update works in tandem with previous updates that increase legendary loot drop rates and the system that reduces the chance of picking up duplicates of legendary loot you already have.
There are also upcoming improvements to The Eye of the Storm, one of the last expeditions in the base game, with New Horizons. You will soon get a choice between three legendary items upon completing it. In addition, Tiago, one of the vendors, will also get a new option that’ll let you opt to buy a random legendary of your current maximum gear level for drop-pod resources or spend them on a re-roll of the legendary inventory in his shop.
Elsewhere, there’ll be four new raid-like missions to explore in the New Horizon update, as well as new weapons and gear for all four Outriders classes. All players will have access to the first of the four expeditions, while the rest are accessible for more experienced players. These include entry-level missions such as The Molten Depths, which sees you power through frozen caves to reopen a geothermal power station. Others, available at higher World Tiers, have you break into an old military facility, facing down insurgents, monstrous beasties, and poisonous attacks as you go, or head to an ancient city overrun by colossal monsters and looters. The highest, available at tier 12, is The Wellspring, which gets you infiltrating a settlement in a sandstorm and monster-infested ruins to find the loot hidden inside.
Developer People Can Fly is also adding a new Transmog feature that allows players to change the look of every item they have equipped. This is flexible, even letting you use skins from other characters across different classes. So, it’ll be possible to have your best gear look like a Trickster build when the update drops, even if your current class is a Technomancer.
It seems you’ll only need to pick up an item once to get a certain style, which can then be used on every bit of gear you pick up. It’s completely free to transmog one item into another’s style, and you can do it as many times as you want. The feature even comes with its own little Pokédex-like catalogue if you’re looking to find all four complete style sets.
The coming New Horizon update makes changes across a host of other aspects, too, among which are more buffs for all four classes’ skills and gear. There are also improvements coming to matchmaking to prevent rubberbanding and disconnections, and to multiplayer, which should help make it more stable. The devs are additionally adding control settings and customisations for controllers, and you’ll find you’ll no longer get kicked before collecting your hard-earned expedition loot. Lovely stuff.
The Outriders New Horizon update launches November 16, and you can always check out the game for yourself right now via the Xbox Game Pass if you’d like to get a sense of it before the big day arrives. You can also get a free unique legendary armour piece for logging into the game from November 15 until November 22.