The final option for building your character comes in the form of character customizations. These customizations are mostly ease of life upgrades or cosmetic enhancements rather than direct gameplay changes, but the echo system and strongboxes (which is technically a customization) can have a big impact on how you play Outlands.
An echo is a copy of a character, allowing you to switch between two versions of that character. The advantage of an echo over making an alternate character is that an echo preserves experience between the two copies, so you can build a different version of your main without having to start over at the beginning of this guide all over again.
You won’t need an echo for a long time, but here’s an example use-case to help you plan accordingly:
My main is a mage tamer. I have my skill cap increased to 720 with skill balls, I have taming and animal lore at 120 with skill scrolls, my bestiary and grimoire are max-leveled, I have a few aspects unlocked and leveled, and I have several links unlocked and installed on my mastery chain.
This character is great for hunting monsters, but if I wanted to do something different, such as treasure maps, I need a few different skills.
With an echo, I copied my main and made an alternate version that replaces a few dungeon-crawling skills with the skills I need to complete treasure maps. Luckily, the aspects I’ve leveled and the links I have selected are useful for both dungeon crawls and for treasure maps, so in a short amount of time I have what is functionally two well-developed characters.
Echoes aren’t free, though. You can have as many echoes of a character as you want, but each echo is more expensive than the last. For your first echo, you can unlock it with 1 million gold, 100 skill scrolls, or 25,000 arcane essence.
Once you have an echo unlocked, switching between echoes is free, but there is a delay of 12 hours before you can switch again. With a little planning, this delay is manageable. It can be even more manageable if you invest in character customizations to reduce this delay, giving the freedom to switch more frequently between your echoes. Those aren’t cheap.
Knowing about the option to echo early-on is useful for a few reasons:
The option to echo means you are far less restricted by your main build than it might seem at first
An echo can give you access to entirely different types of game content without the grind of making a character from scratch, saving you a lot of effort and resources if you’re willing to wait to develop your main to the point where an echo is worthwhile
Echoes are most useful with some forethought, so knowing you can use one eventually will help you to plan accordingly as far as collecting resources and grinding for skills goes
We covered this earlier, but some players may choose to wait to unlock strongbox if they feel like carrying more gold is actually a risk. While the benefit seems obvious, the tradeoff is that it hurts a bit more when you do die – because you potentially lose a lot more gold – but the efficiency boost typically means a big increase in your gold farming potential.
Big takeaways for this category:
An echo is an alternate copy of an existing character that you can switch between
Echoes have a long cooldown delay that can be reduced by purchasing character customizations
Echoes give your main character much more versatility without the work of making a new character
You don’t need to do anything about an echo as a new player, but someone in Discord would make fun of me for leaving it out of this guide
Strongbox upgrades are a big boost for your farming efficiency
Strongboxes can be unlocked a number of ways, such as with society points