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Outriders crafting guide

Here are all five of your crafting options in Outriders

Outriders screenshot from Stadia Image: People Can Fly/Square Enix
Ryan Gilliam (he/him) has worked at Polygon for nearly seven years. He primarily spends his time writing guides for massively popular games like Diablo 4 & Destiny 2.

Crafting is a key element to any loot game, and Outriders is no exception. With the help of Dr. Zahedi — who you’ll pick up relatively early in your Outriders journey — you’ll be able to improve your gear rarity, improve attributes, mod gear, swap weapon variants, and level up your loot.

In this Outriders crafting guide, we’ll describe each of the crafting options in Zahedi’s arsenal and give some advice on how and when to use each.


Table of contents

Outriders’ crafting location is First City, where you’ll find Dr. Abraham Zahedi. Speak to him, and you’ll find the following crafting menu options, each of which we’ll explain below.


Mod Gear

Mod Gear menu in Outriders
You can interchange mods in certain slots
Image: People Can Fly/Square Enix via Polygon

Mod Gear is the crafting menu option that you’ll use Outriders most often.

When you dismantle a piece of gear, you’ll get several materials. But if you dismantle a piece of gear that has a mod that you don’t have yet, you’ll also add that mod to your collection. These mods — perks that change how your abilities work or that add new effects to weapons — are key to building out your character with powerful combo effects. And the more mods you collect, the more options you have.

Epic and Legendary gear pieces have two mods each. With the Mod Gear menu, you can choose one of those slots to trade out. Basically, you can replace one mod in a piece of armor or a weapon, but you’ll lock the other mod in permanently while doing so. The good news is that you can continue to change out the mod in the non-locked spot over and over again.

As you’re leveling, drop in class and weapon mods that you know you like, just to have a better time playing. But as you get farther in the game and start hunting for gear, look for weapon and armor pieces that already have one mod you want. Then you’ll replace the secondary mod with another favorable mod (since you can only change out one per piece). This effectively lets you create the perfect piece of loot with far less reliance on randomness and luck.

Use this system often to try out new mod combinations and build your class. Changing out a mod only costs Leather or Iron, which you should get plenty of when dismantling gear.


Level Up

Level Up menu in Outriders
You can level up your gear to make it more powerful
Image: People Can Fly/Square Enix via Polygon

Level Up is the second most important crafting menu.

Gear drops at certain levels based on your World Tier, your Challenge Tier, or your character level. And as you upgrade any of those three things, you’ll find higher level gear. But what if you already found the perfect Legendary pants for your build, or a weapon you really love? Then you need to use the Level Up menu.

Leveling up an item improves its stats, bringing it in line with other gear pieces at that level. The problem comes with the cost. Leveling up an item costs Titanium, which is a rare resource that only drops from Elite enemies. Leveling up is a powerful tool, but be careful how often you use it, or you could find yourself spending hours farming for more Titanium.


Improve Rarity

Improve Rarity crafting option in Outriders
You can level up the rarity of Unusual or Rare weapons
Image: People Can Fly/Square Enix via Polygon

Improve Rarity is the top option while crafting. This lets you transform any Unusual or Rare weapon into a higher tier. If you go from Unusual to Rare, you’ll get to pick which mod appears on your new Rare weapon. If you go from Rare to Epic, you’ll get to choose which second mod your weapon or armor gets.

Improve Rarity can cost a lot of Titanium, and Epic gear tends to rain from the sky at high Challenge Tiers and World Tiers. But it can drastically increase your item’s stats. So if you find a great piece of blue gear that has a perk you already want on it, you can improve its rarity to help you find that perfect piece of gear.


Swap Variant

Swap Variant menu in Outriders
You can change the types of weapons you have without changing the weapon completely
Image: People Can Fly/Square Enix via Polygon

Swap Variant is a powerful tool that you may not even realize you have access to.

When a weapon drops, it comes as a certain type. For example, you may get a burst assault rifle that fires two or three shots in a burst, or an assault rifle that’s fully automatic. You can change this setting at Dr. Zahedi using the Swap Variant option. For a small amount of Iron, you can turn your single shot rifle into a multi-shot rifle.

This can be really useful for the endgame, but it’s even better when you’re leveling up and you find a great weapon with a variant that you don’t like. Just take it to Zahedi, and he’ll fix it up to the variant you prefer.


Raise Attributes

Raise Attributes crafting menu Outriders
Use specific Shards to increase your stats
Image: People Can Fly/Square Enix via Polygon

Raise Attributes is the most complex form of crafting and something you might not want to touch at all until you reach the endgame. Think of this menu as an investment. Don’t invest in a piece of equipment that you’ll stop using an hour from now.

When you dismantle gear in Outriders, you’ll get a variety of different resources, including Shards. Unlike other materials, Shards bracket out into a ton of different types, associated with different stats:

  • Bonus Firepower
  • Long Range Damage
  • Healing Received
  • Close Range Damage
  • Max Health
  • Anomaly Power
  • Skills Life Leech
  • Crit Damage
  • Status Power
  • Armor Piece
  • Cooldown Reduction

You’ll get a lot of these shards when you dismantle gear, but you’ll also burn through them as you’re improving stats. Armor pieces and weapons drop with three different stats, and you can enhance those stats with these Shards. But if you level up a piece of armor or a weapon piece, you’ll need to invest even more Shards in them.

This is an expensive and complex system where you can really add a lot of power to your gear. But it’s also something to save until you know you’ll be holding onto a piece of gear for a long time. You’ll get some of the Shards that you used back if you dismantle something, but not all of them.

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