Star Wars OutlawsUbisoft’s huge open world star Wars action game, is finally here and it’s pretty good. But before you get started, make sure you read these 21 tips to become the best villain in the galaxy.
And don’t worry, the following tips don’t contain any spoilers. Instead, these are just some useful pointers about the game’s mechanics, a few tricks to make combat and stealth easier, and some features that the game doesn’t explain or mention but that I found useful.
Roll around!
Star Wars Outlaws mentioned that you can dodge at least once in the first few hours. But after that, it never reminded me of it again. And I spent way too much of my playtime not rolling around. Don’t be like me! Double press “B” or “O” to roll away from blaster fire or take cover, or even use it while sneaking.
Always use “Nix Vision”
If you hold down the “Up” button on the D-pad, you activate a special vision mode that highlights nearby enemies and objects. Use this mode as much as you want (and as often as you like). It will help you locate bad guys and make puzzle solving easier.
And also use a lot of Nix
Oh, and don’t forget that Nix, your little pet/friend, is very useful. He can distract enemies, stun people, flip switches, grab items, and steal things from NPCs. A very handy move is to tell Nix to stun someone during a firefight while you focus on closer enemies. And don’t worry about Nix taking damage or anything. He’s invulnerable.
Eat street food to make nothing even better
Nix is great (see above), but he can get even better if you eat street food with him and unlock some additional abilities. Your best bet is to find the street food stall on Kijimi and grab the upgrade that lets you distract multiple enemies at once.
Don’t worry about triggering alarms when cutting
When I started hacking computers, Star Wars Outlaws I was worried that alarms would go off if I failed too many times, but in my testing that doesn’t seem to happen. Instead, you just don’t get any bonus credits, so don’t worry.
Lockpicking doors and chests is a mini-game that requires you to press a button in time with certain beats. This can be tricky, especially when characters are talking to you, and you may find yourself wondering, “Am I just bad at this?”
No, it’s not just you. Lock picking is difficult
The answer is: Perhapsbut I also bet that most people will have trouble with this mini-game. So don’t worry too much about it. My main tip is to tap in time with the controller to get a better feel for when to press the button.
Prioritize expert missions
You do not level up or unlock new skills in Star Wars Outlaws. Instead, you level up Kay Vess by meeting experts, completing some missions for them, and then completing challenges to unlock new skills and perks. This makes experts very useful. Prioritize completing their missions to gain access to their useful skills when you encounter an expert.
Review your challenges to know what to do and get better faster
After you unlock an Expert, check out their challenges to see what you need to do to unlock new skills and perks. It can be as simple as telling Nix to grab a few objects, or more complicated, like shooting three specific enemies in a row.
Knowing what you need to do and focusing on it is the key to improving Kay quickly, so make it a habit to check the expert challenges every now and then as you play.
Make sure to improve your skills and equip new items
When you unlock a new skill, make sure you actually activate it. The pop-up saying it’s unlocked is misleading. You still have to go into the expert menu and activate it. Is that annoying? Yes. But hey, I didn’t make the game.
Speaking of upgrades: Don’t forget your ship!
Space combat and exploration are probably the weakest and least entertaining parts of Outlawsso you might forget to upgrade your ship. And for the most part, this won’t be a big problem. Until the end.
No spoilers, but trust me: upgrade your ship before starting the final missions. You’ll thank me later.
Use electricity to destroy shields and quickly fry droids
Kay’s blaster has a few different modes, all of which are useful. But I feel like the game doesn’t properly explain how useful the electricity option is in combat. It can be used to quickly kill droids, fry and disable shields, and even stun low-level enemies.
Your stun ability isn’t just useful when sneaking around
Stunning enemies in Outlaws is very useful in stealth sequences as it is silent and instantaneous. But I also found the stun option on my blaster useful in combat. A stun shot will instantly kill most enemies from any distance and you don’t have to be super accurate either. So I would use my stun shot to kill a far away enemy and blast the closer ones. Or stun someone who is attacking me.
When you sneak, be aggressive
Camouflage is a big part of Outlaws. But sneaking around can be annoying and guards’ reactions can be erratic. To counteract this, I played more aggressively.
Disable alarms and you can go in with guns drawn without fear of more soldiers arriving. Use the stun to take out enemies from afar. Tell Nix to blow up barrels and send enemies into a panic. And use your one-hit melee attack to take out multiple baddies before they know what’s happening.
Manipulate Death Trooper spawns
In Star Wars OutlawsIf you anger the Empire, you will receive a wanted level, as in GTA. When you max out this wanted status, a squad of death troopers will appear on the map. You must take them out and hack their computer to clear the wanted status. (Or you can die or get arrested and lose some credits.)
However, if you want to, you can’t fast travel. And if the camp where the computer is located is far away, you’ll have to travel all the way. Screw it! Instead, reload the last autosave and you’ll find that the camp has appeared somewhere else. Maybe much closer! You can do this multiple times.
The game is not like that allegedly played, but whatever. Han Solo would definitely do that.
You can quickly travel to other planets
When you’re on Akiva, you don’t necessarily need to jump into your spaceship to get to Tatooine. Instead, just open your map, find a fast travel point on Tatooine, and click on it. You’ll be transported to that point in a matter of seconds.
Oh, and you can also fast travel back to your speeder bike.
I don’t know how useful this is, but if you want to get off your speeder bike, walk around, and go back to where you left your vehicle, you can open the map and fast travel there.
In theory, you could park your bike in an area with no fast travel point nearby, dismount, fast travel to a nearby town, turn in a quest, and then bike back to where you were in a matter of seconds. I’ve never had to do this, but maybe it’s useful to someone else.
Investigate areas to find new missions/quests
When you reach a point in Star Wars Outlaws where it seems like there isn’t much to do, I would recommend walking around a large city and just talking to everyone, listening to conversations, and reading data blocks scattered throughout. These provide information that often leads to new side quests and missions.
The reputation of criminals can easily be manipulated
A big feature in Outlaws manages your reputation with the various crime syndicates in the game. But don’t worry too much about angering Jabba or the other gangs. It’s pretty easy to get their favor back, and they’ll always let you do it, no matter how many times you betray them.
Keep data that you can sell to syndicate providers
As you play, you collect data that you can sell to merchants associated with the various gangs. If you keep this data, you can quickly increase your reputation with a gang after betraying them by talking to a merchant and offering them some useful data.
Avoid contracts in enemy territory
Sometimes you’ll be given a mission or assignment that requires you to enter a gang’s territory, and if that syndicate currently hates you, it can be very difficult to complete that particular task, so if possible, wait to do those missions until you’ve built up your reputation so you don’t get shot immediately.
Yes, you can continue playing after the credits
As far as I know, nothing really cool unlocks after completing the main story, but yes, you can keep playing, so you don’t have to do every side quest and mission before completing the campaign.
Revisit people to earn more profit over time
There are a few characters in Star Wars Oultaws that asks you for some credits or some help. If you say yes and help out, check back later to collect your reward. And keep checking back, because many of these NPCs will pay you a few times to help them rebuild their farm or get better at cheating. Once they disappear, that means you’ve gotten everything you could from them.
