21 Things You Need to Know Before Playing Star Wars Outlaws

Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft’s massive open-world Star Wars action game, is finally here, and it’s pretty darn good. But before you dive in, you might want to read these 21 tips for becoming the best outlaw in the galaxy.

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

Roll around!

Star Wars Outlaws mentions that you can dodge at least once in the early hours. But after that, I never remembered. And I spent way too much of my playtime not rolling. 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.

Always use ‘Nix Vision’

Holding down the “Up” button on the D-pad activates a special vision mode that highlights nearby enemies and objects. Use this mode as much as you want (and frequently). It will help you locate bad guys and make puzzles easier to solve.

And I also use Nix a lot

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 stuff from NPCs. A very useful 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 be even better if you eat street food with him and unlock some extra skills. The best thing to do is find the street food stand on Kijimi and grab the upgrade that allows you to distract multiple enemies at once.

Don’t worry about alarms going off while cutting

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

Lockpicking doors and crates involves a mini-game where you have to press a button in time with certain beats. This can be tricky, especially when characters are talking to you, and you might be wondering, “Am I just bad at this?”

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

The answer is maybe, but I bet most people will struggle with this minigame. So don’t be too hard on yourself. My biggest tip is to tap your controller to the beat to get a better feel for when to press the button.

Prioritize expert missions

You don’t level up or unlock new skills in Star Wars Outlaws. Instead, you level up Kay Vess by meeting experts, doing missions for them, and then completing challenges to unlock new skills and perks. This makes experts very useful. When you encounter an expert, prioritize completing their missions to gain access to their useful skills.

Check your challenges to know what to do and improve faster

After you unlock an expert, check out their challenges to see what you need to do to unlock new skills and perks. It can be as simple as telling Nix to grab a few objects or more complicated, like shooting three specific enemies in a row.

Knowing what to do and focusing on it is the key to improving Kay quickly, so make it a habit to check the expert challenges every now and then while playing.

Basically make sure to upgrade your skills and equip new items

When you unlock a new skill, make sure you actually activate it. That pop-up that says it’s unlocked is misleading. You still have to go to 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 forget to upgrade your ship. And generally, 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 burst shields and fry droids quickly

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

Your stun ability isn’t just useful when you’re sneaking

Stunning enemies in Outlaws is very useful during stealth sequences, because it’s silent and instant. But I also found the stun option on my blaster useful during combat. A stun shot will take down most enemies instantly, regardless of distance, and you don’t have to be super accurate. So I used my stun to pop an enemy at long range and pop the enemies closer to me. Or to stun someone coming at me.

If you sneak, be aggressive

Stealth is a big part of Outlaws. But sneaking can be annoying and the guards’ reactions can be inconsistent. To counter this, I played more aggressively.

Disarm alarms and you can go in with guns blazing without fear of more soldiers coming. Use the stun to take out enemies from afar. Tell Nix to blow up barrels and panic enemies. And use your one-hit melee attack from behind to take out multiple bad guys 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, just like in GTA. When you max out this wanted level a squad of Death Troopers will appear on the map and you must take them out and hack their computer to remove the wanted status. (Or you can die or get arrested and lose some credits.)

However, if you want to do that, you can’t fast travel. And if the camp where the computer is located is far away, you have to drive the whole distance. That’s not possible! Instead, reload the most recent autosave and you’ll see that the camp has spawned somewhere else. Maybe even much closer! You can do this multiple times.

This isn’t how the game should be played, but whatever. Han Solo would absolutely do this.

You can quickly travel to other planets

While you’re hanging out on Akiva, don’t feel like you have to hop in your spaceship and get to Tatooine. Instead, just open your map, find a fast-travel point on Tatooine, and click on it. You’ll be warped to that spot in a few seconds.

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

I’m not sure if this is useful, but if you get off your speedbike, go for a run and want to get back to where you left your vehicle, you can open the map and fast travel there.

In theory, you could place your bike in an area where there was no fast travel point nearby, hop off, fast travel to a nearby town, turn in a quest, and then use that bike to fast travel back to where you were in seconds. I’ve never had to do this, but maybe it’ll be useful to someone else.

Explore areas to find new missions/assignments

If you reach a point in Star Wars Outlaws where it seems like there isn’t much to do, I recommend walking around a large city or town and just talking to everyone, listening to conversations, and reading datapads that are scattered throughout. These provide information that often leads to new side quests and missions.

Criminal reputation can be manipulated quite easily

A key feature of Outlaws is managing your reputation with the game’s various criminal syndicates. But don’t worry too much about pissing off Jabba or the other gangs. It’s pretty easy to win back their favor, and they’ll let you do it no matter how many times you betray them.

Keep track of data that you can sell to syndicate suppliers

As you play the game, you will collect data that you can sell to vendors affiliated with the various gangs. Hold on to this and you can quickly improve your reputation with a gang after betraying them by talking to a vendor and offering some useful data.

Avoid contracts in hostile territory

Sometimes you’ll get a mission or contract that requires you to enter a gang’s territory. And if that syndicate hates you at the moment, it can be very difficult to finish that particular mission. So, if you can, wait to do those missions until you’ve improved your reputation, so they don’t just shoot you down.

Yes, you can continue playing after the credits have rolled

As far as I know, nothing really cool unlocks after you finish the main story, but hey, you can keep playing. So don’t feel obligated to do every side quest and mission before you finish the campaign.

Revisit people to drive more profits over time

There are a few characters in Star Wars Outlaws who will ask you for some credits or help. If you say yes and help out, come back later to get your reward. And keep showing up, because many of these NPCs will pay you a few times if you help them rebuild their farm or get better at cheating. Once they’re gone, that means you’ve gotten all you can from them.