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If there’s one thing Bethesda does beautifully, it’s offer players choices. It’s up to the player to decide who to befriend, where to explore, and how to play. Thanks to its multitude of Backgrounds, Traits, skills, and weapons, Starfield offers a high number of viable builds. One of the most satisfying is the melee build. Taking foes down from afar might be safer, but there’s nothing quite like the adrenaline rush of bringing a sword to a gunfight. Ground combat is something Starfield gets right, and this build lets it shine. Here’s everything you need to know about putting together the best melee build in Starfield.
How the Melee Build Works in Starfield
This build ditches subtlety for pure aggression. Its optimal strategies involve rushing the enemy as fast as possible to maximize the DPS of close-range guns and, of course, melee weapons. It lacks the skills and equipment to put up a fight at long range, so enemies will tend to outgun you at a distance. This build can be played like a cover shooter, moving from one piece of cover to another until the character is in range. Alternatively, you can simply blitz the enemy, tanking most of their attacks until you get in blade range.
Grav Dash, Reactive Shield, and Anti-Gravity Field are the best powers for this Starfield melee build. Grav Dash allows the player to close the gap on enemies in an instant before hitting them hard with melee attacks. Reactive Shield keeps the player alive whenever they are forced to cross open spaces to get at their enemy. Anti-Gravity Field not only shuts down nearby enemy attacks but also leaves floating foes vulnerable to your own strikes. This is an aggro build, and you can expect to have the enemy’s attention most of the time, so you need to get the job done fast.
Best Melee Background in Starfield
The Ronin Background is ideal for this Starfield melee build because it starts with a level in Dueling, the bread and butter of any good warrior. Stealth might seem like a wasted skill slot, but it gives the player a bit of leeway if they find themselves low on health and healing items and are forced to take a more strategic approach. Scavenging helps the player stay stocked up on items and put a few more credits in their pocket, which isn’t critical to this build but certainly doesn’t hurt.
Gangster and Soldier are solid alternatives if you want to try something different. Obviously starting with Dueling is nice, but it’s not absolutely necessary since you can always spec into it later. The Gangster’s skills make it a good alternative if you’re planning on doing some thievery or leaning into shotguns as a backup weapon. Whatever the case, make sure to put skill points into Dueling as soon as possible, since it’s the backbone for everything else and the point of the entire build.
Best Melee Skills in Starfield
When putting together the best Starfield melee build, the most important skill trees are Physical and Combat. These skills do the most to determine your DPS as well as how much punishment you can take. Given that you’re going to be in full view of enemies most of the time, having high survivability is a must. It’s not impossible to run a melee build as a glass cannon, but it’s not advisable either, especially for new players. Here are the most important skills to get as soon as possible:
- Dueling (Combat)
- Shotgun Certification (Combat)
- Armor Penetration (Combat)
- Crippling (Combat)
- Marksmanship (Combat
- Wellness (Physical)
- Pain Tolerance (Physical)
- Martial Arts (Physical)
- Rejuvenation (Physical)
- Cellular Regeneration (Physical)
The shotgun is the ideal backup weapon for a melee build, given that it allows the player to soften up their target while rushing them, and then finish them off in melee combat. The chosen skills focus on maximizing the player’s damage with melee weapons and shotguns. In addition to providing raw DPS, this build also gives the player a large health pool, regeneration, and the ability to rapidly recover from serious injuries. With these skills, few enemies can stand toe-to-toe with the player for long.
Best Melee Traits in Starfield
Traits are optional, but they can make the best Starfield melee build even better by enhancing its abilities or even its roleplay potential. Arguably the three best traits for this build are Alien DNA, Neon Street Rat, and Wanted. Alien DNA increases buffs your health and oxygen while nerfing the effect of food and healing items. Given that our chosen skills will take care of healing, the trade-off for more HP and endurance is worth it. Neon Street Rat is a commonsense roleplay tie-in, but the build isn’t really weaker if you omit it. Last, Wanted causes you to do more damage when your health is low, which will frequently be the case.
Wanted causes mercenaries to pursue the player throughout the game and attack from time to time, but even that can be turned into a strength. More battles equals more opportunities to level up your skills, after all. Take every chance you get to fight these mercenaries. You’ll be rewarded with a melee build that’s even stronger than it would have been otherwise. It’s a testament to the quality of Starfield’s design that even weaknesses can be turned into strengths in this way.
Best Melee Weapons in Starfield
For the best Starfield melee build, the Wakizashi is an ideal early-game weapon. Its DPS wildly outperforms the other early melee weapons, and it also just looks great. There are a few good shotguns to choose from, and it doesn’t really matter which one the player picks. The melee weapon is the star of the show here. Late in the main story, The Last Priest becomes available. This lightweight blade has a higher DPS than the Wakizashi and randomly deals Corrosive, Radiation, Poison, and Incindiary damage. It’s a bit of a wildcard, but it gets results and looks stylish too.
Starfield is available for PC,
