Starfield’s character creator is using a whole new method of offering players ways to generate their characters. Gone are SPECIALS and races, and instead, you now get to choose traits, backgrounds, and skills. Skills, for the most part, are as they were in Fallout, where players can select the ones they want and begin to specialize their build by leveling skills up, and leveling up in general to create their playstyle of choice. While some are very specialized, others do pack a much bigger punch. So, with no further ado, here’s a look at the best Starfield skills to use for a variety of builds.

Best Starfield Skills in General and for Specific Builds¶

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Here’s a look at what we consider the best Starfield Skills to use for most playthroughs in the game. You won’t find this in the Constellation Space Faring guide, will you? Image via Bethesda.

Below is a list of the best skills we think are worth investing into, for a variety of reasons. Be aware there are 82 skills in Starfield, each with four ranks each. So there’s certainly a lot of build variation to use that will support one another greatly, Ore so, you need to level a Skill up in each row of each skill type to access the next row to reach the desired perk. So, you will likely pick at least 8 fully upgraded per playthrough at a bare minimum.

With that said, these skills below are arguably the lynchpin skills to look for whenever you get the chance to, whether it’s preparing your build for a new game plus playthrough, or the big tickets skills for your specific build in your first playthrough.

Read More:

• Best Starfield Traits
• Best Starfield Backgrounds

Best Physical Starfield Skills¶

• Concealment: This is the biggest and best skill to use for an enemy stealth-themed build. This enables you to get much better stealth interaction when fully upgraded. From running while stealthed, a chameleon skill, and better sneak attack damage. This is something to offer players no matter the way they intend to play Stealth. Not to mention the sneak attack modifiers have the best damage multiplier for any damage-themed skill in the game.

• Wellness: Perhaps the best tank-themed skill in the game. You get a bonus 10% HP for every rank this skill gets. So, when you heal for percentage amounts, this skill synergizes and buffs those healing effects, such as the self-heal in Duelist or Medicine improvements. Not to mention 40% more HP makes for a better experience for harder-difficulty playthroughs. The best bit is it is an early game Physical Skill, so you can easily get access to it for all builds.

• Gymnastics: The third rank of Gymnastics is really good, as it offers better control in Zero-G. This is likely a QoL (quality of life) feature for any build using ballistic weapons, as it means you can control how much you get knocked back. You also get some added perks for less fall damage, a combat running slide, but those are niche for specific build types, rather than god tier. But, the Zero-G stuff is very noteworthy for ballistic players, so it gets the honorable mention slot.

Best Science Skills in Starfield¶

For the most part, Science is related to a lot of crafter or outpost-related technologies, which makes most of the tree very good for those playstyles. However, there are a few stand-out ones for most builds and playstyles, granting a lot more value to be mentioned. This isn’t to say if they are not on the list, it is pointless, but, the ones on the list do have more value in a wider breadth of the game.

• Geology: You get more common and uncommon inorganic resources from planetary surface mining. This is really good for the grinding part of the game for ship building, trading, etc, and is worth it no matter what build you run.

• Zoology: It’s the same as Geology except for organic creatures. Again, it offers better trading, and crafting opportunities, especially for Gastronomy recipes. It’s worth picking up as you will fight many biological creatures in the game that are not human, especially if you start exploring alien worlds.

• Medicine: All healing items are better by 10% for each rank you place, up to 50% and can cure afflictions. Depending on difficulty, some of the Fallout games’ survival features are baked into Starfield. Therefore, this really helps a lot for healing and your general immunity to infections and other ailments.

• Astrophysics: Likely the most broken Starfield skill in the game. This allows you to scan moons on your current planet, with more distant moon scans depending on ranks. When you scan a moon, you have 10, 20, 30, 50% chance to discover a trait, and traits typically affect the procedural generation of the planet’s qualities. This has the potential for more planetary POIs, events or other occurrences for you to enjoy exploring more often with. This might be a skill most players miss since it’s Row 3 in Science, but, it is definitely worth grabbing at some point in a new science-themed playthrough or NG+ run.

Other Good Skills in Starfield¶

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Tech skills in Starfield are largely just improvements to various parts of your ship. They are niche, but are great options for builds spending a lot of time in space. Image via Bethesda.

• Dialogue Option Social Skills: There are a lot of these in Starfield, so, if you take no points in Social, then you lose access to Persuasion, Intimidation, and Negotiation. You can also take things like Theft to enable pickpocketing, Diplomacy to stop fights, Instigation to force an enemy to attack an ally of theirs, and Manipulation to make it a temporary ally, At least consider Social skills at some point if you like any other the above ideas.

• Gastronomy: With this specialty you get access to some very good food and drink, which helps push certain builds or trader playstyles. It’s worth taking at least one point at some point in a playthrough just to make getting consumables easier to get instead of relying on loot table RNG. It’s likely one of the more standout social skills for all playthrough options.

• Combat Skill Options: All of the Combat Skill options are flavor to various types of weapon types. Each one is build specific, or niche to a few types of builds. So, we won’t mention these skills any further on this page, as they are all niche to each player’s choice of combat style.

• Tech Skill Options: Like Combat, there’s a lot of flavor for Tech themes, as it’s largely just various ways to customize or upgrade your ship. It’s not something you necessarily need for every playthrough unless you want a Space Pirate, trader or space pilot-themed playthrough.

• Security: Security is the only low-row tech that stands out the most for all playthroughs, as it grants the ability to hack terminals and doors. This can be very helpful to get a baseline feature of Fallout back so you can explore bases and cities a bit more, similar to everything else in Social.

This concludes the best Starfield Skills to use for a variety of playthrough themes, or general playthroughs at some point, These typically offer some really good options for the wider features of the game, coping with difficulty, or generally offer some better options for many hours of the game’s.