Given the size and depth of Starfield, it is understandable that many players want to ditch the main story and start roaming the farthest places of the universe. However, those unprepared will have a hard time during the game’s early hours. Thankfully, there are many ways to level up initially, and you’ll reach the first ten levels quickly. With them, you’ll get many skill points that you should use wisely. That’s why we’ve prepared a list of the best skills you can grab early during your playthrough in Starfield.
Starfield: Best Skills to Grab Early in the Game
For this list, we’ll discuss the ten best early skills you should get in Starfield. While many would like to focus on a single category, we recommend you mix and match and try to get different skills to help you explore and fight. With that out of the way, let’s begin.
Best Physical Skills
The Physical category focuses on movement speed, endurance, stealth, etc. While these skills might not sound too important, we recommend you grab a few as soon as you begin. Provided you don’t have them already as a background, here are the ones we think you should get first:
Weight Lifting
This skill determines how much you can carry without being encumbered. As soon as you start exploring planets and gathering resources, you’ll notice how heavy some things are. For that, we recommend taking Weight Lifting as the first Physical Skill to increase your carry capacity by 10kg. After that, you can finish the first challenge quite easily. All you have to do is sprint while above 75% of your load capacity.
Fitness
The Fitness skill is one of the best you can grab early in Starfield. This skill will increase your total oxygen, which is important for many reasons. First and foremost, exploring. If you’ve landed on a planet, you might want to check every landmark near your landing area. Some places are far from each other, and you’ll need to run there due to the lack of mounts of ground vehicles. Having more oxygen will let you sprint for more before running out of it; in turn, completing the challenge is quite easy as you need to run out of oxygen a certain number of times.
Best Social Skills
Social skills are a must during the early hours of Starfield. Even if you don’t want to convince everyone or talk your way out of situations, these skills offer great things regarding buying and selling prices. Due to that, we recommend the following skills:
Commerce
This skill will allow you to get better prices when buying or selling. Since credits are scarce during the game’s first hours, this one’s a must. Plus, completing the challenge is easy, and you’ll fulfill it without even noticing. All you must do is sell 25 unique items for the first rank. You can do this easily by grabbing different misc items in the game’s hand-crafted locations.
Persuasion
Many quests in the game can become shorter thanks to this skill. Given how much fast travel you’ll be doing in the game, some might look for ways to shorten certain missions. With the Persuasion skill, you’ll get better chances at certain dialogue choices. You’ll notice you get a +1 and +3 chances to persuade people, but with this skill, you’ll get +2 choices and more. This skill can also get you out of difficult situations, such as being chased by bounty hunters.
Best Combat Skills
Combat is the bread and butter of the game, and Starfield has adopted and improved its gunplay. The game has many weapons, and grabbing a type early can make a big difference. Plus, some perks will provide bonuses to certain types of weapon types. Here are the ones we recommend:
Ballistics/Lasers
These skills are virtually the same regarding their challenges. You must kill 20 enemies with a Ballistic or Laser weapon to rank up. We listed both because we recommend you focus on one weapon type. Here we went with ballistics as we think there are more weapons of this type in the game during the first hours. However, you can also pick lasers if you prefer flashier effects.
Shotgun Certification
It might be a while until you find a shotgun, but enemies are in for a world of pain when you do. If you want a shotgun, head to Akila City and buy it from the weapons shop closer to the entrance. After that, focus on this skill, as shotguns are some of the best early weapons. Given how some of the game’s most difficult fights are in closed space, having a shotgun will be handy. To rank up, all you must do is eliminate foes with this weapon type.
Best Science Skills
While these skills might not seem the best to grab early in Starfield, they are. There are a couple of skills here you should grab to unlock some of the best ones down the list. Investing in this category will open up options to craft better mods. These are the two we recommend:
Geology
This is one of the game’s easiest categories, and you should grab it as soon as possible. When exploring planets, you’ll encounter various resources. The Geology skill gives you more resources, reducing your exploring time and netting you a bigger yield. To complete the challenge, all you must do is harvest resources while traversing a planet; it is quite easy.
Medicine
This is a must for all difficulties in the game. The Medicine skill will increase your healing capabilities and speed up how Med Packs work. The challenge involves using healing items several times while wounded, which translates to healing. This is a must, especially if you want to tackle difficult missions early in the game, such as the Mantis quest.
Best Tech Skills
Tech skills focus on the functionality of your ship and other gadgets you can use while on a planet’s surface. This might not be a priority for many, but there are a few you should grab as soon as you ignite your thrusters.
Boost Pack Training
As mentioned, exploring can get tedious due to the lack of mounts. However, unlocking boost packs early in the game can make a small difference. When you grab this skill, you’ll unlock the ability to use your boose pack by pressing the jump button twice. This is useful when exploring and fighting. At first, you won’t have a lot of fuel for your boost pack, but keep ranking up, and you’ll be hopping over your enemies’ heads soon.
Piloting
Starfield features an intricate ship system. When exploring, you might encounter some good-looking ships you might want to add to your collection or hijack to sell them. For that, you should grab this skill first. If you invest in this skill, you can grab some of the game’s rarest and most expensive ships. Unlocking authorization to fly class B and class C ships is crucial in the game, and you should focus on this skill as soon as possible.
Related:
Here’s How To Play Starfield as Cheaply as Possible
And that’s a wrap on the best skills you can grab early in Starfield. While some players might opt for others, these will make your journey easier during the first hours. However, this game encourages experimenting, so don’t feel bad if you grab other skills. Ultimately, your character is your own, and you should roleplay as the one you enjoy the most.
Starfield is available now on Xbox and PC.
