Make sure you select the best Starfield skills on your playthrough, with our complete list of Starfield skills and how to get them.
Starfield skills are the building blocks for your character. While your equipment, faction allegiance, and weapon choices will have a significant impact on gameplay and the story, the biggest changes you can make to your character are through the skills you select at the start of the game and when you level up.
Each skill has four ranks which require skill points to unlock. You can unlock the Rank 1 of any skill with a skill point, but you’ll need to complete a rank up challenge in order to advance the skill to Rank 2 or higher.
There are 82 Starfield skills in total split between five categories: Physical, Social, Combat, Science, and Tech.
Here is a list of every Starfield skill:
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- Category Type Science
- Summary
Increases your ship reactor’s power output.
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- Category Type Combat
- Summary
This skill allows your attacks to ignore enemy armor.
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- Category Type Science
- Summary
This skill improves your grav drive range and reduces fuel costs.
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- Category Type Science
- Summary
When scanning a planet, gain the chance to discover traits and other planetary information.
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- Category Type Tech
- Summary
This skill will improve your ship’s automated weapon systems.
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- Category Type Tech
- Summary
This skill confers a bonus to your ballistic ship weapon modules.
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- Category Type Combat
- Summary
The Ballistic skill increases your proficiency with weapons that deal physical damage.
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- Category Type Tech
- Summary
Improves the combat effectiveness of your boost pack.
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- Category Type Tech
- Summary
Make more efficient use of your boost pack by ranking up this vital skill.
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- Category Type Science
- Summary
The Botany skill boosts the resources you get from plants.
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- Category Type Physical
- Summary
The Boxing skill increases damage of unarmed attacks while also reducing O2 consumed.
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- Category Type Physical
- Summary
This skill increases your chance to recover from injuries.
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- Category Type Science
- Summary
The Chemistry skill grants you access to powerful chemical recipes that can grant massive stat bonuses.
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- Category Type Social
- Summary
Allows you to buy items for less and sell them for more
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- Category Type Physical
- Summary
The Concealment skill will make it much harder for enemies to detect you, even when you aren’t crouching.
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- Category Type Combat
- Summary
Allows you to down enemies more effectively.
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- Category Type Social
- Summary
This skill causes stronger ships to surrender, and decreases the effectiveness of contraband scans.
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- Category Type Physical
- Summary
Decontamination allows you to recover from illnesses and conditions much faster with each incremental rank.
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- Category Type Combat
- Summary
The Demolitions skill is centered around the use of explosive devices like the Frag Grenade, and increases the amount of damage you can deal, as well as how large the explosion will be.
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- Category Type Social
- Summary
Diplomacy lets you de-escalate a hostile situation.
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- Category Type Combat
- Summary
The Dueling skill gives a damage boost to all melee weapons such as the combat knife and the Rescue Axe.
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- Category Type Tech
- Summary
Improves the damage of EM ship weapons and reduces cost in targeting mode.
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- Category Type Physical
- Summary
This skill decreases damage from energy weapons.
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- Category Type Tech
- Summary
Improves the damage of energy ship weapons and reduces cost in targeting mode.
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- Category Type Tech
- Summary
Increase your ship’s top speed and improves boosting.
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- Category Type Physical
- Summary
Environmental Conditioning increases your resistance to environmental damage.
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- Category Type Physical
- Summary
The fitness skill increases oxygen available.
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- Category Type Social
- Summary
The Gastronomy skill is centered around cooking and brewing, which will grant you stat boosts and healing.
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- Category Type Science
- Summary
Geology grants resource bonuses when mining.
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- Category Type Physical
- Summary
The gymnastics skill increases your mobility and decreases fall damage.
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- Category Type Combat
- Summary
The Heavy Weapons Certification skill improves your ability to handle heavy weapons like the microgun and various rocket launchers.
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- Category Type Combat
- Summary
This skill increases damage from EM weapons.
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- Category Type Social
- Summary
You can force a target NPC to attack their allies.
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- Category Type Social
- Summary
The Intimidation skill allows you to force NPCs into fleeing, even if they’re a higher level than you when you reach higher skill ranks.
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- Category Type Social
- Summary
Increases damage and damage resistance when you have no crew or companions.
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- Category Type Combat
- Summary
Increases damage from lasers.
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- Category Type Social
- Summary
The Leadership skill boosts the rate at which you form relationships with companions and crew members.
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- Category Type Social
- Summary
Allows you to force NPCs to obey commands.
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- Category Type Combat
- Summary
Increased critical hit chance when using non-automatic ranged weapons.
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- Category Type Physical
- Summary
Increases the lethality of unarmed and melee attacks.
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- Category Type Science
- Summary
The Medicine skill improves how much healing you receive from healing items.
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- Category Type Tech
- Summary
Missile Weapon Systems gives a boost to ship missile weapons.
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- Category Type Social
- Summary
Allows you to bribe NPCs in speech challenges.
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- Category Type Physical
- Summary
Chance to stun enemies when using unarmed attacks.
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- Category Type Physical
- Summary
The Nutrition skill improves the effects of food and drink items.
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- Category Type Science
- Summary
Allows for the construction and research of better outpost modules.
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- Category Type Social
- Summary
Additional cargo links, robots and crew can be placed at outposts.
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- Category Type Physical
- Summary
Reduces physical damage dealt.
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- Category Type Tech
- Summary
Improves the damage of particle beam ship weapons and reduces cost in targeting mode.
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- Category Type Combat
- Summary
Particle beam weapons do more damage.
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- Category Type Tech
- Summary
The Payloads skill grants an immediate boost to the amount of resources and trade goods you can ferry around the Settled Systems in your ship.
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- Category Type Social
- Summary
The Persuasion skill makes it easier to pass speech checks, and convince NPCs to listen to you.
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- Category Type Tech
- Summary
Piloting lets you maneuver better, and pilot advanced ships.
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- Category Type Combat
- Summary
The Pistol Certification skill boosts the damage you deal with pistol-type weapons.
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- Category Type Science
- Summary
Allows for the construction of outposts in extreme environments.
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- Category Type Combat
- Summary
Increases your reload speed.
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- Category Type Physical
- Summary
Allows for health regeneration.
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- Category Type Science
- Summary
Decreases resource cost of crafting and researching.
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- Category Type Combat
- Summary
Rifles do more damage.
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- Category Type Tech
- Summary
The Robotics skill increases the amount of damage you deal to Robotic enemies.
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You get your first three skills at the beginning of the Starfield story by selecting a Starfield background during character creation.
As you earn experience from adventuring, you will earn enough to level up. On levelling up, you will earn skill points which you can use to upgrade existing skills or purchase new skills.
Each Starfield skill tree is divided into four tiers, with higher tiers requiring a set amount of skill points to be spent on lower tier skills within that skill tree.
What are the best Starfield skills?
Your choice of Starfield skills will ultimately depend on how you choose to play the game, but there are certainly some options that are more widely useful than others.
The Ballistics skill is especially useful as an early pick, since so many of the weapons you pick up in the game’s first act are likely to deal ballistics damage. Persuasion is another Starfield skill that’s useful in a wide variety of situations, and will often save you from difficult combat encounters or time-consuming extra steps in Starfield missions.
Wellness and Medicine are also some of the best Starfield skills to choose early on, since extra health is always useful.
What are the best Starfield skills for my build?
If you’re looking for which specific skills you need to harness to achieve the build of your dreams, we’ve got you covered. Below you can find advice on which of the various skills to opt for across a selection of builds. Just keep in mind, you can eventually unlock all the skills through various New Game Plus playthroughs, but it’s still a good idea to prioritize certain skills to get your build off the ground before the main quest becomes too daunting.
Stealth builds – For stealth builds, you should prioritize skills like Theft, Security, Persuasion, Scavenging, Stealth, and Fitness. These five are a great place to start as they give you access to digipicking and pickpocketing, while also making it more likely for you to get through tricky conversations without things evolving into a gunfight.
Social builds – Social builds are all about human interaction, so the Diplomacy, Commerce, Persuasion, Deception, and Manipulation skills all come into play. If you’re particularly combat averse, Instigation and Intimidation also help to turn enemies against each other or force them to flee.
Melee builds – If you’re opting for the hands-on approach to combat, the important skills are Martial Arts, Crippling, Dueling, Boxing, and Neurostrikes. It’s also a good idea to pick up the Pain Tolerance and Wellness skills early on to keep you fighting against enemies with high HP.
Samurai build – While the necessary Ronin background gives you access to skills such as Dueling, Scavenging, and Stealth, the ideal samurai also needs to be equipped with Wellness, Gymnastics, Pain Tolerance, and Martial Arts.