How to trick out your competitor in Off the Grid
1.16.2025
By Thomas Wilde, Contributor
As part of the cost of entry, you’ve had your arms and legs amputated and replaced with cybernetics. Initially, you’ve got standard limbs that only serve to do normal hand and foot things, but you can quickly acquire an assortment of new options like jump jets, missile launchers, or hidden chainsaws. Notably, “acquire” often means “pull off the corpse of a fallen opponent.”
Up to 20 teams of 3 players are dropped into the heart of Teardrop to fight until only 1 team is left standing. Besides simple survival, your goal is to find Hexes—valuable items that can be decoded for loot—and transmit them to home base via specialized extractors.
When you first enter an Extraction Royale, you’ve only got your standard cyberlimbs and a pistol. Once you have a chance to loot a few nearby chests and boxes, you should earn enough in-game currency (Rips) to call in a supply drop. This lets you bring in your preferred arsenal via the Loadout section of your inventory screen.
This can swing the tide of a match in a hurry, especially in the first couple of minutes when your opponents might be stuck with whatever random guns they found in a dumpster. If you do some quick looting then ascend to a high rooftop to call in your loadout, you can drop back to street level and establish fire superiority.
The trick is to establish the best possible loadout. You can acquire new guns, backpacks, and cosmetics for your Inventory in two ways: from decoding Hexes or by paying for them with Gun, a currency that’s earned through various rewards like daily missions. Gun can be hard to come by at first, so once you’ve got enough to go shopping, you’ll want the maximum value for your purchase.
Here are some thoughts on solid options for your go-to loadout. Please note that Off the Grid is still in Early Access, so these are all subject to change.
Primary weapons
In Off the Grid, mobility is job one. Every block of Teardrop Island is a warren of tunnels, construction, ledges, rooftops, and accessible interiors. Fighting through the streets is for suckers; the real money is in flanking maneuvers.

As such, your go-to weapon shouldn’t be slow; it needs to be useful at short and medium range, and a high ammo capacity doesn’t hurt. That makes assault rifles a strong go-to pick, particularly the M4 Commodore. It features the highest overall rate of fire in its class, coupled with solid overall stats in other categories. Its damage per round is low, but the volume adds up.
Secondary weapons
For every fight you win at long range in Off the Grid, there’s another that comes down to close quarters. That’s a good reason to bring a second gun for short range encounters.
This is obviously a question of personal preference, but the overall choice comes down to shotguns vs. SMGs. If you’re a shotgun aficionado, Off the Grid players typically swear by the Squall, which features the highest rate of fire. SMG fans favor the Kite due to a higher base magazine size and better control.
An alternative is to stick to an assault rifle for close-quarters work and keep a marksman or sniper rifle on hand for long-range encounters. There are quite a few great sniper nests throughout Teardrop, and a careful team can rack up quite the body count if they coordinate from the right rooftop. If you’re out to snipe your way through Off the Grid, the Kestrel has the edge on damage output, while the Osprey is another popular pick.
Sidearms
The primary use of pistols in Off the Grid is to land a kill shot on a weakened opponent. Even with tricked-out weapons, it’s usually faster to switch guns than reload, so your pistol will see a lot of use as a close-quarters finisher.
With that in mind, the Tap 9 is many fans’ favorite due to its high base damage. It’s worth the investment, as a clean headshot with the Tap 9 hits nearly twice as hard as one from the Kelowna or Type 227.
Left arm
You have quite a few options for cyberlimbs, but one obvious go-to is the Hook Shot. This is a surprisingly long-range grappling hook that can pull you onto distant rooftops and ledges or simply let you zipline out of trouble. If you’re trying to escape from a hazardous zone, the Hook Shot can function as a sprint button with two available charges.
The best cyberlimb for raw damage at the moment is arguably Phosphor Fury, which fires an incendiary dart. This sets its targets on fire and leaves behind a burning pool that can ignite other people. For some real fun, sneak up to a pitched close-quarters fight between two other players and fire a Fury dart into the fray. At least one of them will immediately start to panic once they notice they’re on fire.
Right arm
You can save your team with the Kinetic Field cyberarm, which puts up a short-lived but durable force field that deflects incoming fire. In a game that’s built around ambushes, it’s a solid get-out-of-jail-free card. For defensively-oriented players, it’s a slam pick.
On the other hand—some pun intended—many players swear by Paralyzer. This generates EMP bursts that shut down enemies’ cybernetics. It’s effectively a stun bomb that works through walls, which means it’s probably not going to survive to the release version of the game. Grab it now before it’s toned way back.
Legs
It’s hard to argue against Leapers. These launch you high enough that you can engage your jump jets, which is perfect for long-distance transit, finding new areas, or escaping a bad situation. It’s an easy set-and-forget slot.

If you’re not using Leapers, at least one person on your squad should equip Roadrunners. This gives you a solid speed boost, which is always useful, as well as sharing some of that boost with nearby teammates. There will always be moments in Off the Grid where your best option is simply to get out of Dodge, like if more than one member of your squad suddenly has a Bounty on their head, and that’s where Roadrunners excel.
Consumables
Armor Kits are a popular pick here. These restore one bar of armor per use and work almost instantly. In a game where you can be caught and killed with one lucky burst, keeping full armor at any given time can be the difference between victory and defeat.
Backpack
The only real option here is arguably the Grid Shield. This offers additional carrying capacity for loot and ammunition, but also gives you some flex room in the event you’re caught inside a hostile Grid effect. It won’t work for long, but if you end up on the edge of an expanding Grid, any amount of flex is worth having.
You can play the Early Access version of Off the Grid on the Epic Games Store right now. The free version contains all the currently available content, but a paid Pro subscription gets you multiple bonuses, including a multiplier on how much Gun you earn in any match.