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!
Key Takeaways
- The medicine skill increases your survivability rate by increasing the healing amount and rate from healing consumables.
- Fitness is excellent for increasing your total oxygen capacity to compensate for the oxygen loss as you execute exertion-based actions like sprinting or using powered attacks.
- Stealth provides you with the assistance of a stealth bar, decreases your detection rate from enemies, and bombards enemies with burst sneak damage from noise-suppression weapons.
- Boost Pack Training allows you to fully use your jet-pack armor on your back to jump, fly, and hover for brief moments, which can be used as a super helpful kit in explorations.
- Targeting Control Systems is helpful in quickly taking down enemy ships by locking them and successfully landing damage without missing.
- Piloting makes flying and handling your ship in flight more accessible and more manageable.
- Commerce reduces your buying costs and increases your selling costs, exponentially increasing your credit profit.
- Persuasion increases your chances of persuading individual NPCs successfully on particular requests.
With more than 100 hours invested in Starfield, Shoaib offers you a firsthand look at the game, ensuring the information he provides is based on practical experience.

Medicine
Best Healing Skill.

Why did I Choose Medicine?
Better Healing is always required, such as exploring planets, fighting creatures, or being engaged in combat.
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
Best Skill For Planet Exploration.

Why did I Choose Fitness?
You will always need more oxygen to run the extra miles when carrying a heavy bag pack, or just exploring.
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
Best Skill For Combat.

Why did I Choose Stealth?
Stealth is a must-have skill, as you need to be sneaky in most combat situations when you can’t handle a large group of mercenaries at once.
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.
- 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
Best Skill For Boost Pack Usage.

Why did I Choose Boost Pack Training?
You need to use Boost Pack when exploring any planet, and the larger boost spans can get you more elevation.
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, essential after sprinting or jumping continuously.
Targeting Control Systems
Best Skill For Space Combat.

Why did I Choose Targeting Control Systems?
When fighting other ships in space, you need this skill to lock targets on them quickly and take them down.
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.
- 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
Best Skill For Ships.

Why did I Choose Piloting?
To Unleash the full potential of your ship, master the Piloting Skill so you can test every attribute your ship holds.
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.
- 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
Best Skill For Buying Items.

Why did I Choose Commerce?
Negotiation when purchasing items from a Merchant is necessary, as it will get you to reduce the price of the item you are buying.
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
Best Social Skill.

Why did I Choose Persuasion?
When in conversation with other Companions or NPCs, you need the persuasion skill to get them to agree with you.
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 that 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
Here is a summary table of my best Starting Skills in Starfield The quick and precise in formation is given in the table below:
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. |
Summary Table For Best Starting Skills.
Why Others Were Not Chosen?
- Ballistics: Although you will get more damage from weapons, it is not a necessary thing you must have at the starting phases.
- Weight-lifting: You will not need extra bag space for the early game, hence try to pick only the useful items.
- Pistol Certification: This will increase your pistol damage, but the opponents at the start are easy to handle, so this is not compulsory.
- Security: This skill will not suit every character, hence I recommend you don’t invest in it in the early game.
Personal Opinion On The Best Starting Skills
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. To get you started with Starfield, its important you strengthen your basics, such as driving a ship, getting to explore a new area, and dive into intense combat situations. For all the reasons, I chose the most suitable skills, therefore stick with them and get more experience.
If you have more queries, do share them in the comments section below, as I am always trying to answer those in this guide.
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Shoaib Rashid is a passionate Gamer and an experienced writer who has been covering the Gaming Industry for over 3 Years. He started his career as a freelance journalist, writing reviews, previews, news, guides, and features for various industries. He joined VA Gaming as a Writer in 2022 and was promoted to Content Editor in 2023, where he oversees the editorial tasks and ensures the quality and accuracy of the content.
Shoaib loves to play all kinds of games, from Competitive shooters to the latest AAA releases, you name it, and he got them all covered; a PC Enthusiast who loves to stay upgraded with the latest hardware, and he enjoys sharing his insights and opinions with the Gaming Community.
While being a hardcore competitive Gamer he also a big Anime fan so his IGN goes by #SHiNiGaMii. and you can join him on Steam and checkout his library to learn more about his accomplishments.