Outbound Beginner's Guide: Tips and Tricks for an Easy Start

Here's a beginner's guide with tips and tricks for starting out in Outbound.

Outbound is a cozy survival game where everything revolves around a vehicle. The van is the base, the storage, and the way forward. Getting familiar with how it all works early on makes the rest of the game flow much better.

Settings to Change Before Starting

Before diving in, a few settings are worth adjusting. Change the driving camera to the rear of the car, as the default first-person view makes it hard to see the road and resources. Choose the 75-degree field of view to see your surroundings more clearly.

Extend the day length to the maximum so you can get more done during the daylight hours. If you find the crafting minigames tedious rather than fun, you can turn them off as well. On the controls page, set the sprint to tap-to-toggle so it does not need to be held down constantly.

Choosing a Vehicle

At the start of Outbound, four vehicles are available. The classic van has balanced building space, carry weight, and handling. The Path Maker has great handling but limited building space.

The large vehicle has the most building space and carry weight but handles poorly. The school bus is a DLC option with a huge amount of building space. Speed is not important in this game - it is built around slow exploration and frequent stops, so handling matters less than storage capacity.

The Tutorial Area

The first area acts as a tutorial. Find the first Signal Tower and download the available blueprints - no token is required for this one. Collect Scrap Metal from the ground nearby and craft the Wrench at the Workbench.

Use it to repair the gate, which opens up the rest of the world and also unlocks multiplayer. Before leaving, light any Campfires found along the way and open any boxes for extra resources.

Managing the Backpack

The backpack holds 20 slots. When the limit is reached, movement gets slower and you can't sprint anymore. It's important to stay under the limit to be able to move efficiently. Always sprint while moving - it makes a significant difference in how much ground gets covered.

Drop resources into the van regularly to keep the backpack clear. To keep specific items like Vouchers from being auto-deposited, left-click them in the backpack and use the lock icon to pin them in place.

The Van and Power

The van runs on battery power. Wood or fiber can be dropped into the Power Unit at the back to recharge it, but only while the van is stationary. Make sure to set up camp before charging - the camper mode needs to be turned off again before driving. If the van gets stuck or flips, press escape and use the unstuck option to reset it to a drivable position.

Collecting Resources

Pick up everything on the ground - Scrap Metal, Wood, Litter, and food. All of these matter early on and all resources respawn every three days, so revisiting areas is always worth it.

Get the Axe early since large logs give five wood at once compared to one from small logs. Scrap Metal in particular is needed in large quantities throughout Outbound, so collect it whenever it appears near Signal Towers.

Litter found on the ground can be processed in the Recycler into Vouchers, which are used at Signal Towers to unlock new blueprints. Always pick it up.

Day and Night Cycle

Once the owl sound plays, night is approaching. Sprinting away from the van becomes impossible and visibility drops significantly. Use the Homing Boots - unlocked at a Signal Tower - to get back to the van quickly by holding shift while pointing toward it.

Once back, sleep in the bed to skip to the next morning. Trying to do much at night slows progress considerably. On rainy days, Campfires cannot be lit, so come back to them during clear weather.

Food and Hunger

Hunger drops over time in Outbound but the penalty for letting it hit zero is minimal damage. Dying only skips to the next day with no loss of materials. In the early game, food can mostly be ignored.

Road Berries and Bananas found along the road are enough to keep hunger up when needed. Later on, farming and cooking become more useful for extracting extra nutrition from fewer inventory slots.

Signal Towers and Blueprints

Signal Towers are found all over the map and are the main way to unlock new blueprints. Most require a Voucher token to download from. Carry tokens in the backpack at all times so they are available whenever a new tower is found.

Towers that have been fully used go dark but reactivate periodically, usually on the opposite side of the map, offering decorative and building blueprints.

Multiplayer

To play with others in Outbound, create a new save and finish the short tutorial first. Then press escape, go to multiplayer, and share the multiplayer code with friends. Anyone joining also needs to have completed the tutorial before they can connect.

Also, check out our other guides below :

• Outbound: How to Farm and Use Crop Plots
• Outbound : How to Complete the Windmill Puzzle
• Outbound : How to Power the Vehicle Elevator