Outriders: How to Unlock Locked Gear

Outriders is a pretty good looter shooter, but the game doesn’t always do a great job of explaining some of its more complicated mechanics outside of some small menu text. It also does a pretty bad job of explaining what you’re supposed to do with the game’s locked gear.

The idea of items you can’t really do anything with (besides equipping them) in a looter title is one of the most frustrating concepts that we can imagine in a video game. While the sad truth of the matter is that your ability to interact with Outriders‘ locked gear is fairly limited relative to the other items in the game, you’re not necessarily doomed to look at these often unwanted items for the rest of the campaign.

Here’s what you need to know about unlocking locked gear in Outriders:

Why is Some Gear Locked in Outriders?

The gear included in Outriders‘ pre-order bonus “Hell’s Rangers Content Pack” is locked when you first try to access it. That essentially means that you can’t dismantle, delete, or interact with it in any way that will directly remove it from the game via traditional means.

Why are these items locked? I can’t seem to find the official answer on that, but it’s either a safety feature designed to prevent you from deleting your pre-order gear (the most likely answer) or it’s a way to prevent you from gaming the system and deleting these items for resources and mods.

There are a few other locked pieces of gear you’ll come across in Outriders, but the only thing they seem to have in common is that they can’t be acquired naturally through the regular course of play. They’re usually pieces of gear that tie into the story in some way and won’t drop from enemies or chests.

How do You Unlock and Dismantle Locked Outriders Gear?

The short answer to this question is “You can’t.”

I’ve heard fans say there are ways to get around this particular restriction, but I have not been able to verify that any of these actually work outside of, perhaps, rare glitches that don’t seem to be work 100% of the time.

This is honestly quite unfortunate as a lot of this gear ends up taking up space in your inventory and would be better scrapped for parts. If you think you’ve found a way to actually scrap these items (or unlock them in any way) be sure to let us know in the comments below.

Can You Delete Locked Gear in Outriders?

If you just want to get rid of Outriders‘ locked gear, you have two options of varying effectiveness available to you.

The first method involves simply putting those items in your storage. While the items will obviously remain in storage, you’ll at least be able to ignore them most of the time.

Similarly, you could always create a secondary character, send the locked loot to them, and just ignore that character forever. Again, it doesn’t exactly get rid of those items, but having a “pack mule” character is a looter tradition, and that second character certainly helps you ignore otherwise unwanted gear.

If you’re really desperate to be rid of locked items, you can also just transfer them to that secondary character and then delete the character. This seems to work for most players, but since there’s a fair chance that this “solution” could be addressed at some point, I’d recommend utilizing this strategy as soon as possible if you’re interested.

How Do You Fix Outriders’ Pre-Order Locked Items Glitch?

While some Outriders players are looking to delete their locked items, others haven’t been able to access some of them in the first place due to an annoying glitch that prevents you from being able to open the pre-order loot box.

People Can Fly seem to have addressed this problem for most players, but if you find that you’re still unable to access these items, you’ll need to exit the game, re-enter the lobby, and restart your campaign. That should allow you to access the pre-order items associated with your account. You may also need to exit the game entirely and try relaunching it from there.

If that doesn’t work, then you might have to just create a second character, let that character open the (hopefully accessible) pre-order loot, and then just send it all back to your main character or let that new character have it all.

How do You Unlock Locked Outriders Mods?

You may have noticed that most of Outriders‘ mods are locked at the start of the game. Well, unlike the locked weapons, there’s actually something that you can do about this.

If you want to unlock a mod and add it to another weapon, you first need to dismantle a piece of gear that already has that mod on it. The easiest way to utilize this system is to make sure you always dismantle any gear that has a mod on it that you don’t already have rather than just sell it. Once you’ve dismantled a piece of gear with a new mod on it, you’ll be able to add that mod to any other compatible piece of gear via the game’s crafting and modification system.

Mod distribution does appear to be fairly random, so there’s not a great way to farm a specific mod that you’re looking for. As always, I recommend just repeatedly killing Elites and bosses to unlock some of the best gear in the game and the excellent mods that come along with them.