Outriders boss guide: How to defeat Gauss at the Solar Tower

They say lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice, but this guy doesn’t believe that at all. Gauss is one of the Altered, a being empowered by the Anomaly in Enoch. Since Gauss is the first boss in Outriders, he’s pretty much the first challenging enemy you’ll face. You’ll encounter him once you reach the Solar Tower area. Here’s our Outriders boss guide to help you defeat Gauss.

Note: Stay tuned for our Outriders guides and features hub, coming soon.

Outriders boss guide: How to defeat Gauss

Gauss’ abilities

Gauss has a weapon that can shoot out bolts of lightning (he’s extremely accurate with those shots, too). Likewise, he’s able to control electromagnetic energy. These are his abilities:

• Discharge Mine – Spawns a mine on your location. The mine will persist for a long time throughout the fight, and touching it will zap your character.
• Shock Shift – Gauss will teleport to another location on the map.
• Steel Wall – The boss will periodically shield himself from all damage by using floating metal shards. Once he’s done casting this ability, the metal plates will disappear.

• Metal Barrage – Several blue circles will appear on the ground. After a few seconds, shrapnel will rain down from the sky.
• Ball Lightning – Gauss will summon pairs of electric orbs that’ll float around the arena. If you get hit, you’ll get blasted away.
• Lightning Storm – By far Gauss’ deadliest ability in Outriders, this causes multiple lightning strikes to hit the ground. The storms will also move around the area.

The Gauss boss fight in Outriders can be challenging, but it’s mostly about careful movement (and maybe a bit of luck). If he casts Ball Lightning followed by Metal Barrage or Lightning Storm, then you could be in for a world of hurt. It’s even worse when he channels the Lightning Storm since the electrocuting blasts will follow you around. Ideally, though, you should use an interrupt skill to stop him from channeling.

In my case, I tried to steer clear of him, making sure that I was using a sniper rifle from further away. For some odd reason, he mostly just chilled back to use Discharge Mine and Steel Wall (which would give you a breather). However, the moment he teleported using Shock Shift, I knew that he’d cast the other three spells that have to be rigorously avoided.

Outriders is available via Steam.