One of the deepest and most complex aspects of Starfield is its skills. It offers a very wide range of possibilities for specialize our characteradds additional objectives and a huge replayability factor. In short: they are very, very important.
The system is a hybrid of what was seen in The Elder Scrolls and Fallout: We have a huge amount of skills and each one is improved through very specific actions. Below I will tell you everything you need to know and which are the best skills.
How do Starfield skills work?
The first encounter with the skills of Starfield It is during character creation, specifically in the tab of Background. We choose our character’s past and three basic skills. While this choice sets the tone for many NPCs, the reality is that we can ultimately specialize in any direction.
Choose your background wisely, but don’t let your life depend on skills. The interesting part comes once you start playing and access the skill tree complete. There are a lot of skills, so I recommend taking some time to look through them all. How does it all work?
There is a total of 82 skills and are divided into 5 branches: Physical, Social, Combat, Science and Technology. In turn, each branch is subdivided into 4 tiers or colored lines (from smallest to largest): gray, blue, purple and yellow. These colors also serve to identify the tiers of the weapons and the three parts of the space suit (suit, backpack and helmet).
- Physics: They focus on the character’s endurance both in combat and against the inclemency of the planets. Everything is focused on life, oxygen and recovery from altered states.
- Social: This branch focuses on everything that has to do with interactions with the world, from persuasion and trade, to having more crew members, to forcing certain humans and animals to do our will.
- Combat: Anything that has to do with shooting and creating explosions is in this branch.
- Science: A very interesting branch. It focuses on research, exploration, resource gathering, and crafting items/upgrades. It also has skills focused on energy production and building outposts.
- Technology: If you love your ship, this branch is for you. Plus, it includes the jetpack unlock.
Each tier has its requirements: you have to invest a certain amount of points in the grey skills to access the blue ones and so on with the rest. As a general rule, skills get better as the tier increases, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be useful for your character build.
Unlocking each skill costs a Skill Point. Once unlocked, we gain access to Rank 1 and the quests for it. For example: Persuasion grants us a 10% chance of success when trying to persuade someone. This is just Rank 1, the basics. The first challenge is to successfully complete 3 persuasion minigames. Once done, we can spend a Skill Point on unlock rank 2 and a new challenge. It can be the same (with more repetitions) or a different one.
What are the best skills overall?
It may seem contradictory to tell you that There are no better skills after the post’s headline. The truth is that the best skills vary depending on your character build. Melee combat, stealth, exploration, and crafting all require very different skills.
There are certainly some skills that are useful at a general levelwhich you should have unlocked and upgraded in any of your builds. While they don’t have to be the best of all, they are the most practicalThey are going to help you a lot, so let’s say they are the best at least for the first ten hours… and even beyond.
- Physical Fitness (Physical): increases available oxygen.
- Weight Lifting (Physical): Increases inventory capacity.
- Welfare (Physical): Increases maximum health.
- Pain Tolerance (Physical): Reduces physical damage.
- Environmental Conditioning (Physical): resistance to inclement weather.
- Rejuvenation (Physical): You regain health over time.
- Trade (Social): buy cheap, sell dear.
- Persuasion (Social): allows you to avoid conflicts and tackle problems.
- Negotiation (Social): Unlocks bribes.
- Ballistics (Combat): Increases the damage of ballistic weapons.
- Fast Recharge (Combat): Increases reload speed.
- Probe (Science): Improve scanner.
- Weapons Engineering (Science): Weapon upgrades.
- Spacesuit Design (Science): Suit upgrades.
- Backpacker Training (Tech): Unlock the jetpack.
