Starfield BEST Starting Skills [Top 8]

Starfield has a wide variety of perk passive skills for players to choose from, out of which I have shortlisted the top 8 best starting skills. In this guide, I’ll go through each of these skills individually and why I think you should unlock them as soon you can so let’s begin!

Medicine

Tier: 1

Type Of Skill: Science

• With the medicine skill at your disposal, your healing kits restore more health points and regenerate health points back at a faster rate.
• Suppose you’re struggling to survive in combat situations against enemies early on in the game, regardless of the game’s difficulty settings. In that case, this skill is a must-have as it will assist you a lot in boosting your survivability chances.
• Investing more ranks into medicine will further improve your healing amounts and rates as you progress more in the game and encounter difficult enemies.
• Not only that, but medicine also has a great synergy with the Wellness skill, as that increases your total health exponentially. Hence, both skills together are excellent for survivability in the form of bonus healing and additional health points.

Fitness

Tier: 1

Type Of Skill: Physical

• This skill increases your oxygen meter capacity. Your oxygen bar depletes when you perform exertive actions like melee-powered attacks on enemies and sprinting for exploration, running away from, or chasing down enemies. To counter that, Fitness skill is the key solution.
• As you rank up this skill to the maximum, you add more oxygen space and consume fewer oxygen points when performing any of the exertive actions.
• As a result, you have more room to perform all these exertive actions without worrying about your oxygen bar running out quickly, giving you more time in explorations and running down towards or away from enemies.

Stealth

Tier: 1

Type Of Skill: Physical

• By far, the Stealth skill has a fantastic feature that is super crucial for the early game. You get access to a stealth bar, which indicates if your presence is hidden or in danger in a particular location filled with enemies when you crouch.
• This is vital information in many situations, like during combats and secretly passing areas without alerting enemies, so it’s worth spending 1 skill point on it.
• Adding on, this is also perfect for landing bonus sneak damage with suppressed weapons, as it is more efficient and quick to annihilate enemies this way without compromising your own life.
• Furthermore, I recommend ranking up this skill to increase the difficulty of enemies detecting you, inflicting more sneak damage, and preventing enemies from detecting you when opening doors, making space for you to roam enemies-filled areas quickly and secretly.

Boost Pack Training

Tier: 1

Type Of Skill: Tech

• This skill allows you to use your jet-pack armor piece at its full potential, which allows you to jump and hover at great heights momentarily for a brief time if the planet you are currently located on has a lower gravitational value.
• Adding on, Boost Pack Training is excellent for exploration means. Upgrading this skill’s rank to the max will cost you less fuel and refill your jet-pack more quickly, 2x more than the previous value.
• As a result, the jet-pack at your disposal can be used frequently for longer durations, travel further distances, and cover more altitude while jumping and hovering for more extended periods.
• Remember that as you hover, you’re also replenishing your oxygen meter, which is essential after sprinting or jumping continuously.

Targeting Control Systems

Tier: 1

Type Of Skill: Tech

• This skill is essential for ship combats, allowing you to lock onto enemy ships and fire shots consecutively without missing. Once you lock onto them, their firing rate also reduces drastically, buying you enough time to act against them.
• Its uses are also exceptional for wrecking enemy ship flight systems, creating space for you to board them via docking, and looting everything you see.
• Furthermore, as you rank this skill up, the target lock time reduces, chances of inflicting a critical strike increase, and damage taken by the enemy ship system also increases.
• Personally speaking, I found space fights to be super challenging, so I took this skill along, which assisted us a lot in ship combats. So I also recommend you take this skill should you find space fights extremely difficult.

Piloting

Tier: 1

Type Of Skill: Tech

• This skill gives you access to configure your ship’s thrusters, allowing improvement in ship handling, ease in strafe controls on the ship, and helps significantly in staying behind enemy ships during combats, which makes it difficult for them to target and shoot you down.
• Additionally, Piloting is an excellent combination with the Targeting Control Systems skill, where both synergize, providing easy and manageable ship controls and decent combat capabilities. As a result, you can adapt to these space voyages easily early on.

Commerce

Tier: 1

Type Of Skill: Social

• Now, this ability is a mandatory option you should opt for. Not only does it significantly reduce your buying costs, but it also increases your selling costs, making you profitable in terms of earning credit points.
• Regardless of purchasing loads of healing kits, investing in ships, giving credits to gather information from individuals, or paying off enemy threats, this skill will always prove helpful as it will ensure your credits are not exponentially decreasing, which is a super important factor to consider.
• Last but not least, if you want your time dedicated to the game to be more rewardful in terms of credits, this early skill is worth the cost, even at rank 1.

Persuasion

Tier: 1

Type Of Skill: Social

• This skill significantly increases your success in persuading individuals during dialogue challenges. It would be best to use persuasion at every opportunity, as this will significantly help you stay on good terms with other NPCs or avoid hostile combat situations.
• For instance, when dealing with Shaw in the main questline, The Empty Nest with Sam Coe, you can choose between fighting her and her crew members or persuading her to let you go.
• In situations like these, if you choose to persuade, then you’re gambling a bet as there is no guarantee whether it will prove to be successful, so investing a point in this skill is worth the cost to improve your persuasion chances to turn the tides in your favor during dialogue challenges.

Summary Table

Name Of Skill	Tier	Type Of Skill	Ranks	Ranks Unlock Challenges
Medicine	1	Science	Rank 1-4: Med Packs, Trauma Packs and Emergency Kits restore 20%-50% additional Health 20%-50% faster. (4) Have a chance to cure an affliction.	Rank 1-4: Use healing items 20-100 times while wounded.
Fitness	1	Physical	Rank 1-4: You have 10%-30% more oxygen available. (4) Sprinting and power attacks now use significantly less oxygen.	Rank 1-4: Use up all available oxygen 20-100 times.
Stealth	1	Physical	Rank 1-4: You are 25%-100% more difficult to detect when sneaking. Suppressed weapons do an additional 5%-20% sneak attack damage. (4) Doors you interact with while in stealth no longer alert enemies.	Rank 1-4: Perform 10-40 sneak attacks.
Boost Pack Training	1	Tech	Rank 1-4: (1) You can now utilize boost packs. (2) Using a boost pack expends less fuel. (3) Boost pack fuel regenerates more quickly. (4) Doubles previous bonuses.	Rank 1-4: Boost jump 10-50 times while in combat.
Targeting Control Systems	1	Tech	Rank 1-4: (1) Unlocks ship targeting functionality. 2-4: Time to lock onto enemy ships is reduced by 15%-60%. (2) Target-locked ships fire at you 25% slower. (3) You have a 10% increased chance of critically hitting a target-locked ship. (4) Deal 20% increased system damage in targeting mode.	Rank 1-4: Destroy 5-30 enemy ships while in targeting mode.
Piloting	1	Tech	Rank 1-4: (1) You can now utilize ship thrusters. (2) Increased ship turning rate and maneuverability. 3-4: Unlock the ability to pilot Class B and C ships.	Rank 1-4: Destroy 5-30 enemy ships.
Commerce	1	Social	Rank 1-4: Buy for 5%-20% less and sell for 10%-25% more.	Rank 1-4: Buy or sell 25-150 unique items.
Persuasion	1	Social	Rank 1-4: 10%-50% increased chance of success when persuading someone.	Rank 1-4: Succeed in 3-10 speech challenges.

To wrap up, I now conclude my guide on the best starting skills in Starfield. In the end, the skill choices depend on your preferred playstyle, whether it’s for exploration, ship handling, credit-boosting, or combat purposes, but these skills are the ones I feel are a must-have for everyone at the start of the game to cover all these aspects.

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