Despite how it may look on the surface, Outriders has a lot of deep RPG elements under the hood. Between your class, abilities, weapons, and armor, there’s a lot to manage in this third person looter shooter. If you take advantage of these systems, you can create a character that is built to fit exactly the style and role you enjoy most. Weapons all come in various rarities, do different levels of damage, and have their own effective ranges and rates of fire, but to really get the most bang for your buck out of your arsenal, you’ll want to beef them up with mods.
You can equip your guns with mods for added effects and buffs. Just like other gear and loot drops, they come in a range of tiers, with one being the most common and three the rarest and generally most powerful. Some are good for all classes, while others are basically designed to synergize with one specific class’s role or skill set. With so many mods to find, you’ll want to know which are the best ones to keep a lookout for.
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How to get and equip mods
Before you can interact with the mod system at all, for your weapons or for anything else, you have rescue a certain NPC that opens up a crafting menu. Just follow the main story missions until you reach the First City and get the quest to rescue Dr. Zahedi. Once you complete the quest, he will go back to your camp and unlock a new upgrade menu when you find and speak to him.
To actually get weapon mods, you will have to sacrifice some of your old gear by dismantling it. Any gear that is at least at the Rare level will break down into one or two mods, so don’t just go selling off all your old equipment if you’re looking for some new mods. You can get an idea of what mod (or mods) you’ll get from breaking down any gun by looking at the aspects attached to that specific gun. So if you have a gun with a great attribute that is just too underleveled, dismantle it and carry that trait forward into your current gun.
Dr. Zahedi will also catalog all the mods you’ve obtained in the Mod Gear menu, which is broken down into the three respective tiers. Tier one is for blue weapons, two is for purple, and three is for orange.
Finally, the process of equipping weapon mods is also done with Dr. Zahedi, but it does have a few costs associated with it that you should know of ahead of time. Speak with him, select the weapon you want to add a mod to, and then choose Mod Gear from the menu. This is where you need to make a sacrifice, however. Once you pick a mod you want to add to your gun, you also need to pick an attribute already on it to replace. You can swap only one attribute per gun, so once you pick which one to swap, that’s the only one you can change going forward, and the other will be locked in permanently.
The last cost is some resources — iron specifically. You can get iron by finding and collecting it on missions or as another component you get when dismantling gear. It is a common resource, and the cost for swapping mods is very low, so don’t worry about changing things up often because of the cost.
Claymore
Claymore is a tier two mod that is versatile enough to fit with just about any class. What this mod does is summon an anomaly blade that damages any enemy you shoot for a nice chunk of extra damage. Being a single target-type mod, and having a slightly longer cooldown time, this mod works best with sniper weapons. It can also function well with shotguns if you’re getting right in the enemy’s face for bursts of damage.
Storm Whip
Another tier two mod, Storm Whip has a similar function to claymore. Instead of an anomaly blade, successful shots from your gun will cause bolts of lightning to strike your targets. These bolts are less damaging than the Claymore’s sword, but is on a much faster cooldown. Slapping this mod on a fully automatic weapon will be like calling in your own personal storm to strike down on the enemy waves.
Bone Shrapnel
Bone Shrapnel is one of the most powerful tier two mods for AOE damage. How it works is that the final shot that kills an enemy will cause their bones to explode like a grenade. This explosion deals damage, of course, but also inflicts the bleeding status to any enemy hit by it. The mod itself has a lightning-fast cooldown, meaning you can essentially turn every minor mob into an explosive to soften up their pals. While not great for bosses or enemies that keep far apart, it can melt swarms of weaker enemies in no time.
Perpetuum Mobile
Mods aren’t all just about increasing damage or causing status effects, though. They can be more of a utility as well, such as Perpetuum Mobile, the last tier two on the list. This mod can, if used intelligently, basically remove the need to reload completely. If you’re down to 30% ammo or less on your gun but get a kill before running dry, your ammo will instantly be filled back up to full again. Shotguns, snipers, and LMGs benefit from this mod the most, but there’s not really a bad weapon to add this mod to. Alternatively, the clip roller mod can serve a similar function, only instead of getting a kill, you can get a free reload at 50% ammo or less every time you roll.
Striga
Another utility mod, this time focusing on survivability, is the tier two Striga mod. This mod works wonders for builds focused on dealing massive critical hits since it refunds 30% of whatever critical damage you deal back to you as health. Naturally, high-damage, high-crit weapons like snipers will benefit most, but again it can fit in with plenty of other guns. Aggressive players can use it to constantly keep their HP up while tanking and blasting. Just make sure you aim for those weak points to get the full benefit.
Ultimate Damage Link
Now we’re moving on to the tier three mods, where things get crazy. Ultimate Damage Link is another crowd control type mod, but unlike the ones listed before, is not limited to AOE effects. How it works is that when you shoot up to three enemies, they become linked. Once they’re linked, dealing damage to one will also inflict 30% of that damage, or 10% if it is anomaly damage, to the other enemies you’ve linked. This allows you to not only manage the battlefield more efficiently, but intelligently selecting targets can also let you focus on bigger threats while still taking out the small fry.
Ravenous Locust
For a high-tier true AOE mod, the Ravenous Locust is one of the best for damage and inflicting status. We have a preference for inflicting weakness, and that’s what this mod does best. Your shots will spawn a cloud of locusts that not only deal damage over time, lasting 15 seconds, but also cause weakness to any enemies in the 6-meter range. With only a two-second cooldown time, you’ll be popping clouds of damage, and nerfs, all over the arena.
Judgement Enforcer
This mod is somewhat of a cousin to the Ultimate Damage Link, focusing only on pure, instant damage. Instead of marking three enemies, this mod lets you tag as many as you can before reloading. Once you do reload, however, every enemy you marked will take five times your weapon’s damage. This is useful in just about any situation. If there’s a ton of enemies, mark as many as you can and reload to wipe out a huge number in one massive burst. If there’s a few tough enemies, peak out, shoot, and reload for quick damage. With something like a sniper, this can be a devastating mod. Just keep in mind that you can’t mark with one weapon and switch to another for the reload.
Killing Spree
This is a great mod for players who are hitting hard and fast. With this equipped, every kill you get buffs your gun’s damage by 30% for 30 seconds, maxing out at a 150% damage bonus. The damage buff you get does go down over the course of those 30 seconds, but if you’re able to keep chaining kills together quickly enough, you can sustain it for as long as there are enemies for you to shoot. Naturally, this mod is almost broken when used with a class that is already rushing in and mopping up enemies one after another. Shotguns in particular can just melt enemies once buffed up a few times, and from there you’re basically set to crush anything left.
Ultimate Ashen, Bleeding, Burning, Stiffening, Toxic, Freezing, Vulnerability, and Weakening Bullets
Finally, we come to the special-status bullet mods. These final tier three mods all do exactly what they say on the label: Ultimate Ashen bullets make all your bullets inflict ash, Ultimate Bleeding inflict Bleed, Ultimate Burning inflict Burn, and so on. These will perfectly supplement your character’s class and abilities, depending on which class you pick and what you prioritize of course. If you’re a Pyromancer, for example, equipping the Ultimate Burning bullets will eliminate the need to use your ability that makes all the bullets you shoot deal Burn damage since this mod will do that for you automatically and for free. Or, if you want to diversify, you can always mix and match to keep your bases covered. Inflicting a status is never a bad idea in Outriders, and these mods make sure you’re never locked out of hitting your enemies with any of them.
