Tips for Outpost

Outpost is a fun little game by Open Mid Interactive that has popped in recently in my recommended section of Steam, and I decided to give it a try.

It's a fun tower-defense game with progression, different graphics and random world generation which makes it quite fun for a few hours. In this post I want to talk about some tips I found useful to get past night 50.

Build Pattern

At first, you may be inclined to design a checkerboard pattern like the following, where "C" is the Crystal shrine, "S" is a stone launcher and "B" is a booster:

Indeed, this pattern will apply 4 boosts to every turret, but unfortunately, the other 4 slots of the booster are wasted! This is because boosters are able to power 8 different towers, and you really want to maximize that. Here's a better design:

The shrine's tower does get boosted, but it's still not really worth it to boost it. This pattern works good, and it's really easy to tile: just repeat the same 3x3 pattern.

Nonetheless, we can do better. What if we applied multiple boosters to the same tower while still applying all 8 boosts?

That's what peak performance looks like. You can actually apply multiple boosters to the same tower, and it works great.

Now, is it really worth it building anywhere except around the shrine? Not really. You never know where a boss will come from, so all sides need a lot of defense if you want to stand a chance.

The addition of traps in 1.6 is amazing. You want to build these outside your strong "core", mostly to slow the enemies down so your turrets have more time to finish them off. Don't waste boosters on the traps, and build them at a reasonable distance from the center (the sixth tile is a good spot):

If you gather enough materials, you can build more trap and cannon layers outside, roughly at enough distance to slow them for enough duration until they reach the next layer of traps, and so on. Probably a single gap of "cannon, booster, cannon" is enough between trap layers, just not in the center where you need a lot of fire power.

Talents

Talents are the way progression works in the game. Generally, after a run, you will have enough experience to upgrade nearly all talents of roughly the same tier. However, some are worth upgrading more than others (which provide basically no value).

The best ones to upgrade are:

• Starting supplies. Amazing to get good tools early.
• Shrine shield. Very useful to hold against tough bosses.
• Better buildings (cannon, boosters, bed and traps). They're a must to deal the most damage.
• Better pickaxe. Stone is limited, so better make good use of it.
• Better chests. They provide an insane amount of resources early.
• Winter slow. Turrets will have more time to deal damage, it's perfect.
• More time. Useful if you're running out, although generally you enter nights early after having a good core anyway.
• More rocks. Similar to a better pickaxe, more stone is always better.

Some decent ones:

• In-shrine turret. It's okay to get past the first night without building but not much beyond that.
• Better axe and greaves. Great to save some energy and really nice quality of life to move around.
• Tree growth. Normally there's enough trees for this not to be an issue but it can save some time gathering wood.
• Wisps. They're half-decent since they can provide materials once you max out or max out expensive gear.

Some okay ones:

• Extra XP while playing. Generally not needed due to the way XP scales per night, but can be a good boost.
• Runestones. Not as reliable as chests but some can grant more energy per day.

Some crap ones:

• Boosts for other seasons. I mean, winter is already the best, no use there.
• Bow. The bow is very useless at the moment, it's not worth your experience.
• More energy per bush. Not really worth hunting for bushes since you will have enough energy to do well.

Turrets

Always build the highest tier, there's no point in anything lower than that. You will need to deal a lot of damage in a small area, which means space is a premium.

Boosters

If you're very early in the game, I recommend alternating both the flag and torch in a checkerboard pattern where the boosters should go in the pattern above. This way your towers will get extra speed and extra range, which works great.

When you're in mid-game (stone launchers, gears and campfires), I do not recommend using campfires. The issue is their range boost is way too long, and the turrets will miss quite a few shots. It's better to put all your power into fire speed for increased DPS, at least near the center. If you manage to build too far out and some of the turrets hardly ever shoot, you may put campfires there.

In end-game, of course alternate both of the highest tier upgrades. They are really good, and provide the best benefit / cost ratio.

Gathering Materials

It is very important to use all your energy every day! Otherwise it will go to waste, and you will need a lot of materials.

As of 1.6, you can mine two things at once if they're close enough! I don't know if this is intended or a bug, but it sure is great.

Once you're in mid-game, your stone-based fort should stand pretty well against the nights on its own. After playing for a while you will notice, if your base can defend a boss, then it will have no issue carrying you through the nights until the next boss. You can (and should!) spend the nights gathering materials, but only when you're confident that the night won't run out.

Before the boss hits (every fifth night), come back to your base and use all of your materials. This is the next fort upgrade that will carry it the five next nights.

You may also speed up time during night, but make sure you use all your energy before hand. And also take care, in the current version of the game speeding up time only speeds up monster movement, not the fire rate or projectile speed of your turrets! This means they will miss more shots and can be pretty dangerous. If you're speeding up time, consider speeding it up for a little bit, then go back to normal until things are more calm, and repeat.

If you're in the end-game, try to rush for chests. They provide a huge amount of materials which is really helpful to upgrade all your tools early so you can make sure to get the most out of every rock left in the map.

In the end-game, after all stone has been collected, you don't really need to use all of your energy anymore. Just enough to have enough wood to build with the remaining stone. This will also be nice with the bow upgrades, which admitedly can get quite powerful, but it's best to have a strong fort first.

Season

In my opinion, winter is just the best of the seasons. You don't really need that much energy (it gets tiresome), or extra tree drops, or luck. Slower movement means your turrets will be able to shoot enemies for longer, dealing more damage over time, giving them more chance to take enemies out before they reach the shrine.

Feel free to re-roll the map a few times (play and exit, or even restart the game) until you get winter if you want to go for The Play.

Gear

In my opinion, you really should rush for the best pickaxe you can afford. Stone is a limited resource that doesn't regrow like trees, so once you run out, it's over. Better to make the best use out of it with a good pickaxe!

You may also upgrade your greaves, we all known faster movement is a really nice quality of life improvement.

Of course, you will eventually upgrade your axe to chop wood (otherwise it's wasted energy, really), but it's not as much of a priority as the pickaxe.

Now, the bow is completely useless. Don't bother with it. Your energy is better spent gathering materials to build permanent turrets that deal constant damage while you're away, and the damage adds up with every extra turret you build.

With regards to items you carry (like sword, or helmet), look for these (from best to worst):

• Less minion life.
• Chance to not consume energy.
• +1 turret damage.
• Extra energy.
• +1 drop from trees or stones.
• +1 free wood or stone per day.

Less minion life, nothing to say. You will need it near end-game.

The chance to not consume energy is better the more energy you have. With a 25% chance not to consume energy, you can think of it as 1 extra energy for every 4 energy you have on average.

Turret damage is a tough one, it's amazing mid-game (it basically doubles your damage) but falls short once you unlock the cannon where you may prefer other items. Definitely recommended if you're getting started. You may even try to roll it on low tiers by dying on the second night, because it's that good.

Extra energy is really good, because it means you can get more materials before it gets too rough. Make sure you have built at least two beds in the first night! This extra energy will pay of for the many nights to come.

The problem with free wood or stone per day is that you have, often, five times as much energy per day. By this I mean you can get easily 5 stone every day, which means 5 extra stone, whereas the other would provide just 1 per night. On a good run, you will get around 50 free stone or 250 extra stone. It's a clear winner.

In end-game, more quality of life are revealing chests so that you can rush them early, if you like to hunt for them try to make better use of the slot.

Closing words

I hope you enjoy the game as much as I do! Movement is sometimes janky and there's the occassional lag spikes, but despite this it should provide at least a few good hours of gameplay. Beware however a good run can take up to an hour!