Hood: Outlaws & Legends takes more than just cooperation and ingenuity to win. Beating the enemy team within the game’s deeply systematic match structure calls for complete control over the many mechanics at play. This guide will walk you through the most important gameplay mechanics in Hood: Outlaws & Legends.
Movement mechanics
If you tap the crouch key or button while sprinting, you will immediately break into a crouch walk; however, if you hold it, you will slide, allowing you to get into cover faster. Hitting melee while sprinting performs a leap attack, which costs more stamina but deals more damage. Every Outlaw has a different leap attack animation, and Marianne’s is especially great, because she goes from a tumble into a Superman hook, and she’s difficult to hit while performing it. John and Tooke are locked into their animations for slightly longer, but their leap attacks deal area-of-effect damage and are more powerful.
To move quickly and stealthily across the map, you can use distractions. You can whistle by tapping the Distract key or button — this draws nearby guards’ attention to your general area. By holding that same button or key, you can throw a rock, which draws guards’ attention to wherever the rock lands.
Carrying the chest slows you down heavily and locks you into a walking mode, unable to attack, use items, use your ability, crouch, or interact with anything. If you get hit while carrying, or if you fall off a ledge, you will drop the chest. Some gold spills out every time this happens, lowering the potential endgame reward.
Finally, if you haven’t noticed, executions and key-snatching are only possible while you are crouched, and this even extends to Marianne while under the effect of her Shroud ability. Furthermore, you need to be a slight distance away from your target to initiate an execution.
Sharpshooting
While the shooting mechanics in Hood: Outlaws & Legends may appear pretty simple, there are a lot of little details to be aware of. For starters, you need to be at least a foot away from your target in order to aim your ranged weapon and shoot.
Every arrow and bolt has a random chance of breaking when it impacts an enemy or surface and can be recovered if it doesn’t break. Your Outlaw will notify you with an audio cue when they are on their last arrow or bolt.
Robin plays like a sniper — he shoots slower but his arrows hit harder. He can charge up his arrow for increased projectile speed and a lot more damage. While aiming, Robin’s movement speed slows to a crawl.
Marianne is much more flexible, but also less effective at longer range. She can fire single bolts with pin-point accuracy, or charge up to fire up to three bolts in a burst. Burst fire has some minor spread and kickback, but it can work miracles against groups of enemies. Crouching increases Marianne’s accuracy slightly.
Team fights
It may be tempting to just swing your way through fights by spamming light attacks, but that won’t work against most opponents. Instead, learn to time your parry or dodge so you can end PvP encounters quickly and with minimal losses. Holding the parry key or button will deflect incoming attacks at the cost of stamina; this is referred to as blocking. Tapping parry just as a melee attack is about to hit you performs a Perfect Parry, knocking your opponent down. Perfect dodges can also be performed, although Marianne is the only Hood: Outlaws & Legends character who can benefit from them currently.
Some abilities will hamper you and your allies just as much as they would the enemy team. Be careful when using any character’s throwables — they inflict their negative effects on everyone caught within the area of effect, friend or foe. In general, utilities are best used against enemies grouped up around the winch.
Speaking of the winch, if you are on winch duty and your team is defending you, you should keep a sharp eye on the situation around you. You can still tag incoming enemies while winching. If your team is fighting an equal number of enemy players, you should drop the handle and lend them a hand. Due to the respawn mechanics in Hood: Outlaws & Legends, winning team fights decisively helps you win the match a lot more than just winching.
When you die, you respawn after 10 seconds at a captured spawn point of your choice. However, this timer gets longer after each death in the late game, actively punishing recklessness. The more you keep dying because you are fighting outnumbered or blindly winching, the more time you give to the enemy team to finish extracting the chest.
