Outriders guide: Challenge Tier

Until you finish the campaign in Outriders, World Tier governs almost everything in the game — the difficulty, the level of your rewards, and more. But once you finish the Outriders campaign and unlock the Expeditions endgame activity, you’ll also unlock Challenge Tier. Challenge Tier replaces World Tier for Expeditions, and impacts your endgame gear.

In this Outriders Challenge Tier guide, we’ll explain Outriders’ Challenge Tier is, how it works, and how to increase it.

What is your Challenge Tier?

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Challenge Tier is your difficulty level in Outriders Expeditions. Like World Tier, it also determines how rewarding your loot is.

When you first unlock Expeditions, the Challenge Tier that you start at depends on your World Tier level at the end of the campaign. We finished the campaign with our first character at World Tier 13 and could instantly go into Challenge Tier 5. But on our second character, we blazed through the campaign at World Tier 3 and had to start at Challenge Tier 1.

When you select an Expedition to go on in any camp, you’ll also select a Challenge Tier. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see an indication of enemy and loot level. This goes up as your Challenge Tier does, and it tells you how tough your opponents will be. Level 40 enemies will drop level 40 loot, and so on up to level 50. To get faster times on your Expeditions and become more powerful, you’ll need higher level loot, which means you’ll need to fight higher level enemies.

Challenge Tier also determines the kind of rewards you’ll get. At Challenge Tier 6, you only have a 0.75% chance at a Legendary each time an item drops from the Drop Pod at the end of an Expedition. Even if you get four items, that’s a really low Legendary chance. But at Challenge Tier 15, you have a 25% chance at a Legendary each time an item drops.

It’s worth noting that your Challenge Tier doesn’t impact how difficult enemies are in other activities. If you were to do a non-Expedition activity after you finish the campaign, the enemy difficulty follows your World Tier, not your Challenge Tier.

Once you get to the Outriders endgame, there is little reason to level up your World Tier (you will get some guaranteed Legendaries for the last few levels, but leveling your World Tier is a lengthy process). If you only care about Expeditions, focus on raising your Challenge Tier above anything else.

Finally, Challenge Tier does not change the number of enemies in an encounter, it only scales them up to the level associated with the challenge tier. To get a full picture of how scaling works in Challenge Tiers, check out or chart below.

How to raise your Challenge Tier

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To raise your Challenge Tier in Outriders, you need to reach certain medal thresholds on Expeditions. Each Expedition offers a gold, silver, bronze, and completion medal, depending on how long you take to complete the Expedition. Getting medals on the highest — or at lower levels, the second-highest — Challenge Tier you’ve unlocked allows you to increase your Challenge Tier.

For example, to reach Challenge Tier 7, you must complete a bronze, silver, or gold medal on any Expedition at Challenge Tier 6. The “+1 Tier” icon in the Challenge Tier menu denotes medal you need before upgrading to the next Tier. But at higher levels, you only go up to the next Challenge Tier if you get gold on your current level, such as Tier 14 to 15.

Once you’re at Challenge Tier 15, you can’t go any higher. The goal then becomes to grind level 50 gear until you’re ready to take on the Eye of the Storm Expedition and defeat the game’s final boss.

Challenge Tier chart

Challenge Tiers scale enemies and rewards based on the level of Challenge Tier you want to compete on. The scaling jumps hard at certain levels, like Challenge Tier 9 and Challenge Tier 11. Challenge Tier 15 is the highest tier, and the only one where you can complete the Eye of the Storm Expedition.

Here’s the complete Challenge Tier chart to help you keep track of the various difficulties. Note that even if you don’t complete a Challenge Tier in time, you’ll get “bonus rewards” by finishing it after the timer, independent of your chosen Challenge Tier.