Qvaid and I have been playing Outward now for a decent amount of time, and our progression has just been painfully slow. This left us with a bit of a dilemma. We love the game, but there are some aspects about it that just are not very appealing to us and our typical play styles. As it will be revealed in an upcoming Hobbit Plays post in any case, I thought I’d take the time to let it be known that Qvaid and I have decided to ‘cheat’ a little in our Outward play through. I don’t typically condone cheating in games, as in my youth I managed to ruin many a great play through with those attempts. However in this particular case, we’ve still only managed to gather some meager gear upgrades, and neither of us have managed to pick up any class skills save for a couple passives from the Kazite Spellblade, of which neither of us are planning to take (at the time of this post). I ‘believe’ would could make it without any cheating, but would our patience hold out long enough to accomplish the daunting task does come into question. In an attempt to maintain as much balance as possible, we decided to spawn in some currency and all the recipes. Initially we were just doing currency so we could finally (and I mean FINALLY) pick up some more skills and other classes, but we wanted to make use of some of the crafting in game. We started by heading to Harmattan to pick up passives from The Speedster Trainer and I learned the skills from the Hex Mage Trainer. From there we visited each merchant and bought all the recipes we could. This was taking an incredible amount of time, alongside of the fact that typically each merchant only had the recipe for use for one of us. We had so many more places we needed to visit to complete just the recipes alone. What we decided after that test, was we would just spawn in the recipes and learn them. Now, that part isn’t technically cheating on a level that I would consider, because in truth, you can just look up recipes and craft them the first time, then you know them in any case. I’ve seen many a content creator mention that. It’s a strategy used by the entire Outward Community at large to ‘save time and money’. In any case, we’ve made the decision to just spawn in currency and recipes for our characters so we can see if that will help us both in terms of quality of life and ease the combat a bit since we’ll have a few more abilities at our disposal. At this time we haven’t spawned in any gear, or materials as our intent is to just give us a bit of an edge and not have to pause the game to frequently go to the Wiki and look up recipes. We used the caravan to get to Harmattan, and plan to travel to all the cities to pick up our class skills. We also plan to gather all the materials required to craft. Thus the only luxury we have given ourselves at this time, is the ability to learn skills, and purchase things from the merchants to allow us more time to adventure and a bit less of the grinding (which I’ll say we’ve already done quite a bit as is.). In the few skills we’ve gathered, we’ve already noticed a vast improvement in combat, and Qvaid hasn’t even picked up her first class yet. One of the really neat things about Outward is you can actually pick up all the Tier 1 skills from every trainer. Granted we are not picking up everything. I mean if you don’t plan to use the skill with your current play through, there is no use in adding it to the list and having to search through them all when you are trying to find one you need. You only get 8 total slots to assign skills for after all 😉
In another attempt to improve my game play, I ended up moving from a controller to a keyboard and mouse. Qvaid is more at home with a controller and so she is still using that for this play through. I can use a controller, and there have been numerous games Qvaid and I have played together where the controller was a better fit. For this particular game, however, I’m more at home with the keyboard an mouse as I don’t struggle quite as much with aiming, mobility, etc…
All that said, the main reason we’ve decided to give ourselves a bit of a boost stems mainly from the desire to see what all Outward has to offer with all the class combinations, unique style of magic, and adventure. We only desire the boost to freely purchase class skills, pick our classes, and perhaps purchase a bit of gear from the merchants now and then, and we plan to leave the rest to what we can muster in our adventures in a game we love and want to get a bit more out of.
