Outward Guide: Death and Finding Your Backpack

There are a lot of ways in which Outward tries to shake things up for players, one of those ways being the whole death scenario system.

A number of things can happen to your character when you’re knocked out, based on how and where you died and random chance. You may die to the same enemy in a dungeon over and over, each time ending up at the entrance, only to find that moving onto and dying to another enemy kicks you out of the dungeon completely.

I’m not completely sure what the factors are that affect what happens to you when you get whomped on, but I can say I’ve gotten vastly differing results from dying to the same dude in the same spot before. All I can do is ASCII shrug ¯_(ツ)_/¯ and move on.

There are two load screens when you’re knocked out, one before the scenario text and one after. Some players seem to skip this text, but it tells you what happened to you after you were laid out. It’s in your best interest to read it; sometimes it gives hints about where you are or what you’re going to have to do once you wake up.

I’ve had several different things happen once my character got knocked out. Most have been bad, but some have been surprises. Waking up in jail and having to half-ass some labor to get out, and waking up to an Immaculate willing to share his knowledge or survival equipment are just two of the notable scenarios I’ve run into. I don’t want to ruin more.

Of course, for anyone playing the game the number one worry after death is:

Where is my backpack?

That’s the big question sometimes, isn’t it? Where the hell is my backpack?

I’m not going to pretend I know exactly how all this works all the time, but there seem to be some constants you can use to solace yourself during the death load screens.

1. If you put your backpack down before you died, it’s probably right where you left it (but it may have come with you)
2. If you had your backpack equipped when you died, you’re going to wake up with it either on your back or nearby in the same area you are

Every Outward player should know to look for the backpack symbol on their compass when they’re not wearing their backpack. Look at your compass before you do anything else after you die, so you have an idea about where to go.

The symbol only directs you towards the last backpack you wore, so be absolutely sure not to equip any other backpacks while you’re in search of yours.

When you die and wake up without your pack, just trudge towards its symbol on the compass until you find it. You don’t have much choice, chances are your lantern and tent are in that bag.

This isn’t the only thing to know about the symbol, though. You will not see a symbol for it on your compass if your last backpack is in another instance (dungeon, town, zone). You will be blind to its location.

For this reason, it’s imperative you try to know where you are on the map before entering a dungeon or other instanced location. If you do not have the foggiest idea where you are, enter a dungeon, and drop your bag — you may never get it back if you die in there.

There are a lot of reasons to learn to navigate by learning to discern notable locations on the map based on the direction your facing and nearby landmarks, but this is the biggest one. Your backpack is most of your inventory and losing it to sheer carelessness is enough to make anyone want to quit, so play it smart and learn to navigate.

Thanks for reading this guide, even if it is a pretty basic topic. I’m slowly writing other Outward guides as I push through two separate characters (one solo and one co-op). For now, it’s just topics to help new players. Who knows about later, though! There’s so much to stumble upon in this game.