Outward – Build Guide

You can make more meta build, like skip spellblade and go for imbue instead, but that’s less fun IMO and those build works just fine anyway.

Guide to Builds

All credit goes to Erei!

“Summon-corruption” lightning sith build

You get a fancy electric sword, like to be corrupted for power (a blood stone, but still), and otherwise shoot electric balls at people. You’re budget palpatine.

Oh and you summon a turret and a ghost to help you because you got no friends, so you can pretend you play coop. So yes, budget palpatine who doesn’t have Dark Vader.

Cabal of wind + hex mage + rune mage (that one is if you want to stay in the theme)

Holy mission faction best.

Sigil of wind + fire a pistol (chimera for vulnerability is best) to start of with a big lightning ball. Then spark in the sigil for big impact centered AOE (like the shrimp/cannon ligthning golem do). Conjure for AoE lightning (long cast time, be aware of that). Mana push for ethereal bolt and big impact.

For boss/big fight, pop a blood sigil to (on top of each other). Conjure summon a turret, otherwise you can use mana push for 2 different bolt (a high impact one from the wind sigil, and a decay one from the blood sigil). The impact is big and will be able to stagger/kb eventually. Do note the turret also do impact damage and can stunlock a mob once the stability bar is below 50%

Since blood sigil is costly and sigil of wind have a high cooldown, in between you can use infuse light and the radiant wolf sword (which was buffed !) to wack people.

Or use the rune spell “rune lightning” for more lightning balls, to stay in the lightning mage theme.

When you see a skeleton on the ground, reveal soul->conjure will pop another summon (an ethereal ghost dude). Otherwise, spark for mana if you need it more

When you are too high in corruption, cleanse for the blood stone (have a bandage ready for the bleed). Don’t do it in combat.

Obviously, you go for lightning buffs/gear of all kind (even if you’ll do some ethereal and decay damage), lockwell’s revelation etc….

It was a fun build and very effective. The stagger and impact from the spells and the blood sigil is not to be understated. You will stagger “passively” by just doing your stuff.

The only issue I had was the long preparation, but all pure mage suffer from that.

Classic chakrams/spellblade

Nothing fancy there, but it was a lot of fun. It’s the classical spellblade. Magic and blade in harmony.

Originally, I went full on fire (antique plateau armor, sunfall axe….) but then Caldera happened. Fire is sadly quite often resisted in the game. So I swapped to ice instead.

Philosopher + warrior monk + spellblade

Blue chamber for the armor.

An alternative (more meta) would be to skip spellblade (use imbue instead) or warrior monk for hex mage to access lockwell’s revelation.

Blue chamber armor (minus the helmet, too many penalties for very little). For helmet the red wide hat is what I used, doubly so since white priest mitre was nerfed in DE.

Chakram I used was the frozen chakram for vulnerability+extra frost damage, but you can open up with a chimera pistol instead and use another chakram.

Chakram will do a crazy amount of impact damage. Chakram pierce at relative range for some tickle damage, chakram arc as your bread and butter (remove about half the stability bar on most enemies). Chakram dance is situational due to long cast.

Once the impact bar is at half, wack with your melee.

Use infuse frost, skycrown mace/brand, and might even go a bit tainted for extra frost damage.

That build will stagger and stunlock about everything, even some bosses. Most notably mage boss with low stab (like the 3brothers end boss).

The following builds doesn’t work in DE due to bug, but still added for future reference.

One shot rogue dagger build

By far the most efficient build I did. The damage is nuts and you will one shot most stuff around.

Rogue engineer + speedster + whatever. I went spellblade for a ice build but if you go decay or something else it’s not needed.

You have a few ways to go:

• Decay build (manticore dagger, decay gear, scepter of the cruel priest, some taint from corruption, and infuse blood in caldera from blue chamber faction).
• Fire build (red lady dagger, sunfall axe/meteoritic axe, fire imbue), but as I said earlier, fire is bad for a lot of encounter and most notably almost the entirety of 3brothers.
• Ice build (gilded shiver of tramontane, skycrown mace/brand, some corruption for the boost, frost imbue).

The idea is to open up with the hand cannon + shatter bullet. This will apply both pain and confusion on target.

If it’s a big target, serpent’s parry->backstab (the target is stunned allowing you to run behind it and backstab it). Serpent parry have a lenghty cooldown and that’s why I was speedster. At alertness 2 (potions or 2probe attacks) you can use prime before serpent’s parry which reset its CD.

Then opportunistic strikes at X6 damage. Do that directly for non boss encounter, it should be enough for a one shot.

The order is important because serpent’s parry doesn’t consume the debuff, while opportunistic strike does.

Speedster is also useful to apply pain and confusion. Probe 2 apply confusion, probe 3 apply pain. It’s good to reapply the debuff on really big boss that don’t die on first hit.

Do note that sweep kick will KB an enemy affected by confusion, and not consume the debuff either. Not really needed when everyone’s dead, but might be situationally useful.

Be aware, however, it will trivialize a lot of the game.

Right now, as a I stated, it’s buggy in DE. Opportunist strike doesn’t work (no bonus, 0 dmg on un-debuffed targets) and serpent’s parry doesn’t stun (but do 4X damage instead of X2).

The ritualistic hexmage

The idea was to use the ritualist drum and chime hex to trigger the hex mage spells. It worked fine, but popping the totem and carrying them around was annoying.

Ritualist + hex mage + whatever. I used rune mage for the ethereal blade and focused on ethereal damage. Unless you pick gep’s blade.

What you really need to pick when a choice is offered is rupture and nurturing echo. Reverberation is fine, but nurturing echo is straight up OP refiling all your vitals and allow for ridiculous sustain between fights. Bonus point in coop, since it refills both players vitals.

You’ll deal 2 type of damage from the rupture. Lightning and ethereal. I went for the ethereal way.

If you also go that way, then pick sorobor academy for the infuse mana in 3brother.

For weapons, I used the 2h runic blade (more reach to beat on the drums), but gep’s blade have been buffed and it’s really good now.

How to play?

Plop the 2 drums things. Mobs that enter the circle gets 2 debuff. Pop torment (bad stuff to enemies), then rupture for damage. Might need to wait between the 2 for the hex to reapply, it’s been a while since I played that build.

Beat the drums a bit before that or for tough target.

When the enemies are dead, pop nurturing echo and then pick the drums back. If you beat them enough, nurturing echo will give you tons of health, mana and stamina. It’s basically cheating.

The issue with DE is that the drum/chime don’t do the hex, and nurturing echo doesn’t work at all.