21 Things To Know Before Playing Star Wars Outlaws

Screenshot: Lucasfilm / Ubisoft / Kotaku

Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft’s giant open-world Star Wars action game, is finally out and it’s pretty good. But before you hop in, you might want to read up on these 21 tips to become the best scoundrel in the galaxy.

And don’t worry, there are zero spoilers in the tips below. Instead, these are just some useful reminders about in-game mechanics, a few tricks for making combat and stealth easier, and some features that the game doesn’t explain or mention that I found useful.

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Roll around!

Star Wars Outlaws mentions that you can dodge roll at least once in its early hours. But after that it never reminded me. And I spent far too much of my playtime not rolling around. Don’t be like me! Double tap “B” or “O” to roll away from blaster fire or into cover or even use it while sneaking.

Use ‘Nix Vision’ all the time

If you hold the “Up” button on the D-pad, you’ll activate a special vision mode that will highlight nearby enemies and objects. Use this mode as often as you want (and frequently). It will help locate baddies and make puzzle-solving easier.

And also, use Nix a lot, too

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 Nix even better

Nix is great (see above) but he can get even better if you eat street food with him and unlock some extra abilities. The best is to find the street food stall on Kijimi and grab the upgrade that lets you distract multiple enemies at once.

When slicing, don’t worry about triggering alarms

When I first started slicing (hacking into computers) in Star Wars Outlaws I was worried about triggering alarms if I failed too many times. However, in my testing, that doesn’t seem to happen. Instead, you just don’t get bonus credits. So don’t worry about it.

Lockpicking doors and crates involves a mini-game that has you hitting a button in time with certain beats. This can be tricky, especially if characters are talking to you, and you might wonder, “Am I just bad at this?”

No, it’s not just you. Lockpicking is tricky

The answer is, maybe, but also I bet most people will struggle with this mini-game. So don’t beat yourself up too much. My biggest tip is to tap your controller to the beat to get a better feel for when to hit the button.

Prioritize expert missions

You don’t level up and unlock new abilities in Star Wars Outlaws. Instead, you improve Kay Vess by meeting experts, doing 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 abilities whenever you come across an expert.

Check your challenges to know what to do and get better quicker

After you unlock an expert, check their challenges to actually see what you need to do to unlock new abilities and perks. It might 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 that is the key to improving Kay quickly. So make it a habit to check the expert challenges every so often while playing.

Actually, make sure to upgrade abilities and equip new items

When you do unlock a new ability, make sure you actually activate it. That pop-up that says it’s unlocked is misleading. You still have to go into the expert menu and activate it. Is this 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 fun parts of Outlaws, so you might end up forgetting 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 you start the final missions. You’ll thank me later.

Use electricity to pop shields and fry droids quickly

Kay’s blaster has a few different modes, all of them useful. But I think the game does a poor job of explaining how useful the electricity option is during combat. You can quickly kill droids, fry and disable shields, and even stun low-tier enemies, too.

Your stun ability isn’t just useful when sneaking around

Stunning enemies in Outlaws is very handy during stealth sequences, as it’s quiet and instant. But, I also found the stun option on my blaster to be useful during combat, too. A stun shot instantly drops most enemies from any distance and you don’t have to be super accurate, either. So I’d use my stun to pop a long-range enemy and blast the closer ones. Or stun someone charging me.

When you are sneaking, be aggressive

Stealth is a big part of Outlaws. But sneaking around can be annoying and guard reactions can be inconsistent. So to counter this, I played more aggressively.

Disable alarms and you can go in guns blazing without the fear of more troopers arriving. Use the stun to take out enemies from afar. Tell Nix to blow up barrels and throw enemies into a panic. And use your one-hit melee attack from behind to take out multiple baddies before they know what’s going on.

Manipulate Death Trooper spawns

In Star Wars Outlaws, as you anger the empire, you earn a wanted level like you do in GTA. If you max out this wanted level, a squad of Death Troopers will spawn on the map and you’ll need to take them out and hack their computer to wipe away the wanted status. (Or you can die or be arrested and lose out on some credits.)

However, when wanted, you can’t fast travel. And if that camp where the computer is located is far away, you have to drive the whole distance. Screw that! Instead, reload the most recent autosave and you’ll find that the camp has spawned somewhere else. Perhaps much closer! You can do this multiple times.

This isn’t how the game is supposed to be played, but whatever. Han Solo would totally do this.

You can fast-travel to other planets

While hanging out on Akiva, don’t think you need to hop into your spaceship to reach Tatooine. Instead, just open up your map, find a fast-travel point on Tatooine, and click it. You’ll be warped to that spot in a few seconds.

Oh, and you can fast travel back to your speeder bike, too

I’m not sure how useful this is, but if you get off your speeder bike, run around, and want to go back to where you left your vehicle, you can open the map and fast-travel to it.

In theory, you could place your bike in an area with no nearby fast-travel point, hop off it, fast-travel to a nearby town, turn in a quest, and then use that bike to fast-travel back to where you just were in seconds. I never needed to do this, but maybe it will prove useful to someone else.

Investigate areas to find new missions/quests

If you reach a point in Star Wars Outlaws where it seems like there’s not much to do, I’d recommend walking around a big town or city and just talking to everyone, listening to conversations, and reading data pads scattered about. These will provide intel that will often lead to new side quests and missions.

Criminal reputation can be manipulated pretty easily

A big feature in Outlaws is managing your reputation with the various in-game criminal syndicates. But don’t sweat too much about upsetting Jabba or the other gangs. It’s pretty easy to win their favor back and they’ll always let you do so, no matter how many times you betray them.

Hold on to data that you can sell to syndicate vendors

As you play the game, you’ll collect data that you can sell to vendors affiliated with the different gangs. Hold on to these and you can quickly improve your rep with a gang after betraying them by talking to a vendor and offering up some useful data.

Avoid contracts in hostile territory

Sometimes you might get a mission or contract that involves entering a gang’s territory. And if that syndicate currently hates your guts, it might be very difficult to finish that particular quest. So, if you can, wait to do those missions until you bump up your rep so they don’t shoot you on sight.

Yes, you can keep playing after the credits roll

As far as I can tell nothing really cool unlocks after you finish the main story, but yes, you can keep playing. So don’t feel like you need to do every side quest and mission before wrapping up the campaign.

Revisit people to get more profits over time

There are a few characters in Star Wars Oultaws that will ask you for some credits or some help. If you say yes and help out, stop by later to get your reward. And keep showing up, as many of these NPCs will pay you a few times for helping them rebuild their farm or get better at cheating. Once they vanish, that means you’ve gotten all you can get from them.

Order Star Wars Outlaws:Amazon | Ubisoft | Best Buy

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