In this Starfield Shotgun Build Guide I’ll be teaching you how to create a fun, action-packed build that lets you stay highly mobile and charge into enemy camps with abandon. This Shotgun build will help you take down enemies quickly without even aiming, and is viable on Very Hard difficulty.

Please be mindful that this build contains unavoidable early game spoilers due to showing some combat mechanics you might not be aware of. If you want to avoid all spoilers, read our written guide and don’t go past the section labelled spoiler!

Shotgun Sprinter – Starfield Build Guide

The Shotgun Sprinter is a Starfield Build focused on maximizing the damage output of shotguns and optimizing your equipment to be able to absorb attacks while you clear a camp.

This is a high-damage, high risk, high reward build, perfect for those wanting combat to feel challenging but who still want to be able to take out enemies with one or two hits. This build begins to come together early in the game and will shine when perfected over level 30, making it a good all-game loadout.

How to Build a Shotgun Sprinter Starfield Build

Your first decision will be to select a background and traits for your character. Since this is an in-your-face kind of build, I suggest you pick one of the following:

As I’ve mentioned on my previous guides, traits are a big decision because you have to opt for gameplay or roleplay. Some of the trait choices are story or quest focused, such as “Kid Stuff”, but I will focus on traits that benefit the build. If you want to pick roleplay traits you can and it won’t really affect your performance, these are just my suggestions for optimization.

1. Alien DNA – this gives you a bonus to oxygen and health at the expense of food performance. It’s well worth it in my opinion, particularly during the earlier sections of the game before your build has fully come together.
2. Extrovert – This will increase your performance when out with your companions, which should be all the time as you won’t be doing any stealth.
3. Terra Firma – I spend most of my oxygen sprinting when exploring planets so this is a must-have for me.

Starfield Build Guide – Shotgun Sprinter Weapons, Armor & Mods

This Starfield Build is meant to completely come together at levels 30+, because you are aiming for two of the Master Skills that are only unlocked after spending 12 points in the combat skill tree. For this reason, your weapons and mods will have an impact on your performance as you level up, before things are completely fleshed out, and you should pay close attention to these.

Your first task will be to procure a Shotgun or Particle Beam Shotgun with some good quality perks. This can be done by visiting the vendors of the game. An early but very useful place to check out is Rowland Arms or Laredo Firearms in Akila City (Akila – Cheyenne), and the general vendor there as well.

You may get some drops or loot of good weapons as you go, but keep in mind that weapon rarity (the color) doesn’t always mean the weapon is better. The base damage of your weapon is its most important aspect, and that changes based on weapon LEVEL so you want to make sure to keep updating your weapon as you level up.

Weapon Perks

There are four different rarities in Starfield, and each is inherently related to the amount of Perks the weapon possesses. You will not be able to change, remove, or add Perks to your equipment so you need to make it work with what you find.

• Common – Drops with no Weapon Perks
• Rare – Drops with one Weapon Perk
• Epic – Drops with two Weapon Perks
• Legendary – Drops with Three Weapon Perks

For the Shotgun Sprinter Build, you’ll want to find the following bonuses, which are available for Rifles:

• Instigating – Deals double damage to targets with full health – This is massive as it will give you a good chance to kill enemies in one hit.
• Anti-Personnel – +10% Damage against humans – Most of your enemies will be human so this is a useful increase to your damage.
• Rapid – +25% increase in attack speed – This is nice to have when you’re dealing with legendary enemies that have shields and need many hits.

Weapon Mods

Weapon Mods are also very important for this build, so you will want to spend points into Research Methods and Weapon Engineering to unlock all the mods available. My favorite mods to slot are:

Ballistic Shotguns

• Long Barrel – Improves Accuracy and Recoil Control, at the expense of Aim Down Sight Speed. We don’t really use ADS, so this is a good trade off.
• Compensator – This reduces long-range Accuracy, which isn’t great, but does improve Stability and Hip-Fire accuracy, and we Hip-Fire 99% of the time with this weapon.
• Choke – This is not a bad alternative to the Compensator, since it reduces shotgun spread, making it more likely to hit the target.
• Slug Shots – This changes your ammo to Slugs that doesn’t spread nearly as much and hits much harder. This helps with both Accuracy and Damage, and is a must if you want to play a Ballistics Shotgun Build.
• High Powered – Increases damage done. You want as much damage as you can, so you can kill enemies in 1 or 2 shots.
• Semi-Automatic – The fire rate on a Shotgun is not that much different between Full and Semi Auto, so you might as well take Semi Auto so you can take advantage of the Marksman Skill eventually

Particle Beam Shotguns

• Amplifier – This increases damage significantly and is a great mod to take when we’re looking to do as much damage as possible with each single shot.

Space Suit & Apparel

Armor and Apparel can actually make a big difference on this build because you’ll be in the open very often. For Apparel, I would suggest trying to get one of the ECS uniforms, such as ECS Captain Actionwear as they give you a small % increase to your reload speed.

For your Space Suit and Helmet, you will want to be on the lookout for mods that improve your resistance to damage, give you healing benefits, or optimize your oxygen for sprinting. I suggest the following perks:

• Bolstering – This increases your Energy and Physical Resistance the lower your Health goes. Great for keeping you alive in a pinch.
• Combat Veteran – Reduces the damage you take from Humans by 15%. This is the most common enemy type in the game by far, so this is a great pick up.
• 02 Filter – This reduces your Oxygen consumption by 25%. You Sprint nonstop with this Build, so this is a great one to have as well.

Spacesuit Mods

Spacesuit Mods are also a factor with this Build because you can use them to further reduce the damage you take. Staying alive is much harder when you are constantly running up to enemies, and anything you can do to reduce damage is vital. I like the following Mods for your suit:

• Ballistic Shielding – A Helmet & Spacesuit Mod to increase Damage Resistance
• EM Shielding – If you’re having more trouble with EM than physical, opt for this mod instead of ballistic
• Emergency Aid – This will make your suit auto-heal you and it’s invaluable when in a big fight.
• Heavy Shielding – This is a must-have as it will greatly improve your damage resistance

Consumables: Chems & Food

I have a tendency to ignore chems and foods in these kind of games, but for this build there are some specific items that make a very crucial difference. I was able to clear camps with enemies double my level (35 levels above me!) with a good combination of the skills and setup, and some assistance from chems.

You should stock up on:

• Med Packs – This is a no-brainer, buy all the medpacks you find as they will be applied automatically by your suit if you select that mod, and allow you to be reckless in battle
• Trauma Packs – A stronger medpack, buy them whenever you find them!
• Battlestim – Gives you +250 Damage Resistance for 5 minutes. This is a really huge boost. You can buy these from vendors everywhere
• Boudicca – Gives you +300 Damage Resistance and +30 Oxygen for 3 minutes. You can buy this from Mary Cartwrite at The Rock in Akila City
• Heal Gel – Gain +150 Damage Resistance for 5m, You can buy this from most vendors including Cydonia, Akila, and Neon City
• Zipper Bandages – Gives you +150 Damage Resistance for 5 minutes. Can be bought from Trade Authority at Akila City

Shotgun Sprinter Skills Guide

As with any build that you’re making for Starfield, you will have to balance out the combat skills with the quality of life skills that you want for your gameplay.

I will assume that you can balance combat advancement with your own questing skills based on how you’re finding the combat and how important that is to you. I will not revisit here how the skill system works in full, you can check our Starfield Best Skills Guide to get the full picture.

How to Spend Your Skillpoints

You will not be able to refund skill points or respec your character, so make your choices wisely! You will need to consider a smart combination of combat and quality of life skills, and you will need to level up each skill challenge to progress as well. This means there’s no easy way to tell you “put 1 point here at this level” because your own progress will vary.

IMPORTANT! I will actually give you two builds at once in this guide: one focuses on ballistics (the normal shotguns) while the other gives you an option for playing with Particle Beam Shotguns. The Combat Skills distribution is different for each so I will divide them into two sections.

For the Ballistics Shotgun Sprinter Build:

Your first order of business will be to begin unlocking and spending 4 points into the “Basic” tier of skills. This means putting points into these Tier 1 Skills, and upgrading them

• Weight Lifting – you will want more carry weight and you need to put 4 points here to unlock the damage resistance skills of Tier 2
• Ballistics – Increases your damage done with any ballistic weapons and we’re using ballistic shotguns
• Shotgun Certification – Increases your damage done with Shotguns
• Research Methods – Makes your research less costly and more efficient and enables you to unlock Tier 2 Science Skills
• Piloting , Boostpack Training & Security (QOL skills, just 1 or 2 points is enough for most of game, you can get these from Backgrounds rather than levels)

These skills set up your basic character with quality of life features, while enabling you to research a lot more efficiently. Combat-wise, ballistics and Shotgun Certification will buff your damage.

My preferred approach here was to max shotgun certification, weight lifting and ballistics ASAP, with piloting and research lagging behind based on what I needed. If you picked a background with persuasion or hacking just one level can be enough for those for now.

Once I unlocked the Advanced Skills (Tier 2, requires you spend 4 points on tier 1 skills), I put points into:

• Pain Tolerance – This is a damage reduction skill. You could take other skills if you wanted, but I prefer to have the security since I made this build for very hard.
• Spacesuit Design – This Skill will allow you to install good mods on your armor, and you absolutely should take it and do your research to get the full benefits of your suit.
• Weapon Engineering – This Skill will allow you to install better mods on your weapons, and it’s incredibly important that you take it in order to optimize your offense, as you will have to swap weapons when leveling up due to damage degradation.

After Spending 8 points on a category, you will be able to put points into Expert Skills. Aim for:

• Targeting – This skill improves accuracy and range when shooting without aiming, but also MARKS enemies that hit you. As you level it up, it increases the targets marked and the range it applies to, making it really useful
• Rapid Reloading – Just one point into this skill will greatly improve your reload time!

Once you have spent 12 points on the Combat category, you will be able to unlock the master skills. These skills are very powerful and make the build fully come together. After maxing these out, I could take on level 74 legendary enemies at level 36 and kill them in 2 or 3 hits even on Very Hard.

• Armor Penetration – This master skill is deceptive because you can’t quite know how much armor your enemies have as you go about. I put 3 points into it to get my attacks to ignore 50% of enemy armor, and it made a big difference against legendary enemies.
• Sharpshooting – This incredibly powerful master skill starts off by making your headshot crits with ranged weapons do a fantastic 50% more damage. It ramps up to include leg crits, and all crits, eventually giving you a 25% crit chance buff when you kill an enemy with a ranged critical. You can aim your shotgun for “center mass”, but I usually try to aim to blow upper or lower heads up so it works well for me!

Other Skills you should consider

• You can opt for Physical Skills to reduce damage and regenerate health as well, which would make you just a bit less deadly but a lot more survivable. Eventually, you can get all of them as you reach 50+. So here are some extra skills I would take:
• Energy Weapon Dissipation – This can help when you’re fighting against enemies with energy weapons, much like Pain Tolerance does against ballistics
• Marksmanship – If you opt to not have your shotgun fully auto, marksmanship gives great critical boosts that will play very well with Sharpshooter.

For the Particle Beam Shotgun Sprinter Build

Your choice for physical and science skills will be the same, but your combat section will look a bit different. Put points into these skills:

1. Shotgun Certification – This is a shotgun build so you need this skill for sure.
2. Particle Beams – This will increase the damage and crit chance of your particle beam weapon
3. Targeting – Same as the other build, this gives you a boost to your accuracy and range while marking enemies that damage you
4. Armor Penetration & Sharpshooting – Same as before

Powers to use with the Shotgun Sprinter Build

Beware of mild story SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT!

After doing a couple of the main quest steps, you will arrive at a point where you visit a temple and discover your first Power. Powers are special abilities that you gain by completing special events inside Temples spread across the Galaxy. These can have a huge impact on your gameplay, so knowing to go get them early on can save a lot of frustration.

Powers can be acquired in different orders and can be swapped on the fly, so you can adapt to situations and make the best use of them.

For this build, we will be aiming to get the power “Reactive Shield” as soon as possible. This power allows you to cast a shield in front of yourself to protect yourself from damage and even reflect enemy projectiles. Since you are playing a very forward build and will be in the line of fire constantly, this can be a life saver.

• Effect: Form a shield of pure cosmic light that can weaken and even reflect enemy projectiles
• Temple:  
• Location:  
• Cost: 35 Power
• Total: 60 Power

Another very useful power for any build is “Sense Star Stuff”. This power will allow you to cast a sensory net that makes living creatures shine in a special light, allowing you to see them through walls and from good distance. When playing a run ‘n’ gun character, knowing where enemies are is vitally important, so this is a fantastic power to pair with your style.

You can obtain “Sense Star Stuff” by completing Temple Chi in the planet Piazzi IV-C

• Effect: Bind yourself to the particles of creation, sensing the life force of any human, alien, or Starborn
• Temple: Temple Chi
• Location: Piazzi IV-C
• Cost: 15 Power
• Total: 60 Power

Final Tips & Tricks

The key to this build is to enter fights prepared with damage resistance and position yourself smartly as you charge so that you don’t take unnecessary damage on your way to the enemies. Using extra items that grant bonus movement speed can be useful in closing gaps quickly as well.

Leveling up does not take long if you maximize your scanning, crafting and questing, as discovering systems and locations also gives XP. You can also get an XP buff from sleeping in a bed, such as the one available on your ship.

Your general gameplay approach will be to cast “Protective Shield” and then quickly charge into the fray, aiming to take enemies down quickly with from-the-hip shotgun blasts. Keep on the move and be very aggressive, you want to kill everything before it has a chance to kill you! Looting can be done after combat.

There are some good fixed weapons like the particle beam shotgun “Big Bang” that players may find that work perfectly for this build, so I’d love to hear about what you have found in the comments, and I’ll add the notes to the written version of this guide for other players to check it out. Make sure you include where you found your loot!

Hopefully you found out Starfield Shotgun Build Guide useful. Check out more our guides in Starfield Beginner Guide – Best Tips Before You Play and Starfield Skills Guide. For all your Constellation needs head to our wiki.

The post Starfield Shotgun Build Guide appeared first on Fextralife.

In this Starfield Build Guide I’ll be teaching you how to create one of the most powerful builds in the game, the Stealth Sniper! Following the long tradition of Skyrim players making Stealth Archers, we have taken the concept to intergalactic travel in Starfield, and with fantastic success. Read on to find out how to make the most OP build that makes Very Hard play like Very Easy.

Please be mindful that this build contains unavoidable early game spoilers due to showing some combat mechanics you might not be aware of. If you want to avoid all spoilers, read our written guide and don’t go past the section labelled spoiler!

Stealth Sniper – Starfield Build Guide

The Stealth Sniper is a Starfield Build focused around Critical Hits and the damage multipliers from sneak attacks, dealing devastating damage without having to get too close to enemies and staying out of harm’s way most of the time.

This is an excellent build for those of you who want to get more into the combat and ramp up the difficulty, but don’t want to feel like you’re fighting bullet sponges. The damage you will deal is so good that you will get the benefits of hard mode (more legendary enemies), without having to empty entire clips into a single enemy, which can happen if you’re not setup properly or haven’t invested in Combat Skills on higher difficulties.

How to Build a Stealth Sniper Starfield Build

Your first decision will be to select a background and traits for your character. Since this is a stealth-focused build, I suggest you pick one of the following:

Now when it comes to picking traits, there are some big decisions to make based on your intended gameplay. Some of the trait choices are roleplay or quest focused, such as “Kid Stuff”, but I will focus on traits that benefit the build. If you want to pick roleplay traits you can and it won’t really affect your performance, these are just my suggestions for optimization.

1. Alien DNA – this gives you a bonus to oxygen and health at the expense of food performance. It’s well worth it in my opinion, particularly during the earlier sections of the game before your build has fully come together.
2. Introvert – I usually recommend Extrovert because I love having companions. But for this build your companions will be seen by enemies (even if you’re not pulled out of stealth from it) which can get annoying so I started leaving them behind.
3. Terra Firma – I spend most of my oxygen sprinting when exploring planets so this is a must-have for me.

Starfield Build Guide – Stealth Sniper Weapons, Armor & Mods

This is Starfield Build is meant to completely come together at levels 30+, because you are aiming for two of the Master Skills that are only unlocked after spending 12 points is their respective skill trees. For this reason, your weapons and mods will have an impact on your performance as you level up, before things are completely fleshed out, and you should pay close attention to these.

Your first task will be to procure a Rifle or Sniper Rifle that has some quality perks. This can be done by visiting the vendors of the game. An early but very useful place to check out is Rowland Arms or Laredo Firearms in Akila City (Akila – Cheyenne), and the general vendor there as well.

You may get some drops or loot of good weapons as you go, but keep in mind that weapon rarity (the color) doesn’t always mean the weapon is better. The base damage of your weapon is its most important aspect, and that changes based on weapon LEVEL so you want to make sure to keep updating your weapon as you level up.

Weapon Perks

There are four different rarities in Starfield, and each is inherently related to the amount of Perks the weapon possesses. You will not be able to change, remove, or add Perks to your equipment so you need to make it work with what you find.

• Common – Drops with no Weapon Perks
• Rare – Drops with one Weapon Perk
• Epic – Drops with two Weapon Perks
• Legendary – Drops with Three Weapon Perks

For the Stealth Sniper Build, you’ll want to find the following bonuses, which are available for Rifles:

• Hitman – +15% damage when aiming. You will be aiming all the time so this is a flat % increase to your damage
• Instigating – Deals double damage to targets with full health – This is massive as you’ll be aiming to take things down with one headshot.
• Anti-Personnel – +10% Damage against humans – Most of your enemies will be human so this is a useful flat increase to your damage
• Rapidshot – +25% increase in attack speed – This is nice to have when you’re dealing with legendary enemies that have shields and need more than 1 bullet.

Weapon Mods

Weapon Mods are also very important for this build, so you will want to spend points into Research Methods and Weapon Engineering to unlock all the mods available. My favorite mods to slot are:

• Suppressor – A must have Mod to reduce the sound made when firing your rifle. If you don’t have this, enemies will hear you and Stealth will be impossible. GET THIS ASAP!
• High Powered – More damage per shot is always good. One shot, one kill is the name of the game, so you want as much damage as you can.
• Extra Large Magazine (or the largest you can find) – This means more shots before reloading. Less useful on standard rifles, but a must have on Sniper Rifles or you’ll be reloading very often.
• Long Barrel – The increased Range is needed to make sure you deal full damage at longer ranges. Increased Accuracy is also nice from this.
• Tactical Grip – The reload speed is nice, since rifles can have long reload speeds. Additionally, Stability is good as well.
• Medium Scope or Long Scope – This is personal preference, depending on your skill. However, Long Scopes will be too zoomed in tight quarters, making Medium the better all-around option, though it won’t be as good as Long in wide open areas.

Space Suit & Apparel

Armor and Apparel do not play a big role in offensive combat, but there are some special ones that you can get and benefit from. For Apparel, I would suggest trying to get one of the ECS uniforms, such as ECS Captain Actionwear as they give you a small % increase to your reload speed.

For your Space Suit and Helmet, you will want to be on the lookout for the following perks:

• Chameleon – Available for Helmets and Spacessuits, lets you blend with the environment when not moving (Similar to what you get from Concealment Skill)
• Mechanized – A quality of life Space Suit perk, gives you +40 carry capacity
• O2 Filter – A helmet perk that gives you -25% Oxygen Consumption, great for sprinting
• Combat Veteran – A helmet perk that reduces incoming damage from human enemies by 15%

Stealth Sniper Skills Guide

When it comes to Skills for this Starfield Stealth Sniper Build, players will likely be very torn about how to progress because there are some quality of life, non combat skills that make other facets of gameplay smooth. For the purpose of this build, I’ll lay out the combat and build skills that you must have, and then mention the extras that you may want to get.

I will assume that you can balance combat advancement with your own questing skills based on how you’re finding the combat and how important that is to you. I will not revisit here how the skill system works in full, you can check our Starfield Best Skills Guide to get the full picture.

Understanding Stealth

Stealth in Starfield works very similarly to other Bethesda games, so most players will be familiar with the concept. Crouch (B) or (Left Control) to enter stealth and stay still to remain undetected. A small bar appears on the top center of your screen that will show “Hidden”. This bar will change colors to yellow and red and become “caution”, “danger” based on whether enemies are close to detecting you or have made you out.

The objective of the Stealth Sniper is to remain hidden all or most of the time. For this purpose, we’ll put points into stealth and eventually make it so we can move faster while crouching without being detected.

While you’re hidden, all of your attacks on enemies will count as “sneak attack” and this will trigger any special effects associated with it. Your companions will not pull you out of stealth, but they are easily seen by enemies and can become a hindrance, so I suggest going into combat alone for the most part.

How to Spend Your Skillpoints

You will not be able to refund skill points or respec your character, so make your choices wisely! You will need to consider a smart combination of combat and quality of life skills, and you will need to level up each skill challenge to progress as well. This means there’s no easy way to tell you “put 1 point here at this level” because your own progress will vary.

Your first order of business will be to begin unlocking and spending 4 points into the “Basic” tier of skills. This means putting points into these Tier 1 Skills, and upgrading them

• Stealth – self explanatory since this is a stealth build!
• Weight Lifting – you will want more carry weight
• Ballistics – Increases your damage done with any ballistic weapons and we’re using ballistic rifles
• Research Methods – Makes your research less costly and more efficient
• Piloting (QOL skill, just 1 or 2 points is enough for most of game)

These skills set up your basic character with two quality of life features, piloting and weight lifting, while enabling you to research a lot more efficiently. Combat-wise, stealth will introduce you to the intended gameplay for the build, and ballistics will buff your damage.

My preferred approach here was to max stealth, weight lifting and ballistics ASAP, with piloting and research lagging behind based on what I needed. If you pick a background with persuasion or hacking just one level can be enough for those for now.

Once I unlocked the Advanced Skills (Tier 2, requires you spend 4 points on tier 1 skills), I put points into:

• Pain Tolerance – This is a flat damage reduction skill for the rare instance when you’re found out. You could take other skills if you wanted, but I prefer to have the security since I made this build for very hard.
• Rifle Certification – This Skill gives you a % increase to your rifle damage, which will compound with all the other bonuses you’re looking to get.
• Weapon Engineering – This Skill will allow you to install better mods on your weapons, and it’s incredibly important that you take it in order to optimize your offense, as you will have to swap weapons when leveling up due to damage degradation.

After Spending 8 points on a category, you will be able to put points into Expert Skills. Aim for:

• Sniper Certification – This Combat skill has an incredibly powerful bonus at rank 4, giving you 50% more damage when using a scope. This is huge and will soon merge with other bonuses to create fantastic numbers.

Once you have spent 12 points on the Physical and Combat categories, you will be able to unlock the master skills. These skills are INCREDIBLY powerful and make the build fully come together. Once you max these, you’ll be able to one-shot enemies 10-20 levels above you without any issues.

• Concealment – One of the most overpowered skills in the whole game, it will make your sneak attacks do 4 to 10 times their normal damage, in addition to giving you chameleon stealth which is very nice.
• Sharpshooting – This incredibly powerful master skill starts off by making your headshot crits with ranged weapons do a fantastic 50% more damage. It ramps up to include leg crits, and all crits, eventually giving you a 25% crit chance buff when you kill an enemy with a ranged critical.

Powers to use with the Stealth Sniper Build

Beware of mild story SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT!

After doing a couple of the main quest steps, you will arrive at a point where you visit a temple and discover your first Power. Powers are special abilities that you gain by completing special events inside Temples spread across the Galaxy. These can have a huge impact on your gameplay, so knowing to go get them early on can save a lot of frustration.

Powers can be acquired in different orders and can be swapped on the fly, so you can adapt to situations and make the best use of them.

For this build, we will be aiming to get the power “Sense Star Stuff” as soon as possible. This power will allow you to cast a sensory net that makes living creatures shine in a special light, allowing you to see them through walls and from good distance. When playing a stealth character, knowing where enemies are is vitally important, so this is a fantastic power to pair with your style.

You can obtain “Sense Star Stuff” by completing Temple Chi in the planet Piazzi IV-C

• Effect: Bind yourself to the particles of creation, sensing the life force of any human, alien, or Starborn
• Temple: Temple Chi
• Location: Piazzi IV-C
• Cost: 15 Power
• Total: 60 Power

Final Tips & Tricks

The key to this build is to manage your early game progression by procuring a rifle with the right bonuses and learn how to use Stealth and Sneak Attacks. If you’re playing on very hard, you’ll want to take a slow and steady approach until you’re familiar with the mechanics.

Leveling up does not take long if you maximize your scanning, crafting and questing, as discovering systems and locations also gives XP. You can also get an XP buff from sleeping in a bed, such as the one available on your ship.

Your general gameplay approach will be to sneak into an enemy base, cast “Sense Star Stuff” and then position yourself to take out each enemy from a distance without alerting others thanks to the Suppressor on your weapon and the distance you will be firing from. This will get easier and easier as you progress this Build and gain more passive damage benefits, especially once you have Concealment.

There are probably a ton of fixed good weapons that players may find that work perfectly for this build, so I’d love to hear about what you have found in the comments, and I’ll add the notes to the written version of this guide for other players to check it out. Make sure you include where you found your loot!

Hopefully you found out Stealth Sniper build useful. Check out more our guides in Starfield Beginner Guide – Best Tips Before You Play and Starfield Skills Guide. For all your Constellation needs head to our wiki.

The post Starfield Build Guide – Stealth Sniper appeared first on Fextralife.

In this Starfield Skills Guide, we’ll be going over how skills work in Starfield, and which are the most useful and Best Skills of the game.

If you are worried about spending your points and want to plan your character for success, make sure to read through and I will help you to prioritize what you should be aiming for first.

How Skills Work in Starfield

When you make your character, your choice of background will give you the first level of 3 skills. After this, you will gain 1 skillpoint per level of your character, which can be used to either unlock higher ranks of the same skill you are already using, or to get new skills.

Starfield Skill Guide

Starfield Skills are not slotted or used actively, they are all passive bonuses for your characters, and they are divided into 5 Core Groups: Physical, Social, Combat, Science and Tech Skills.

Each group then has sub-categories: Basic, Advanced, Expert and Master. You have to spend a certain amount of points in each category to unlock the higher subcategory tiers.

• Tier 1: No requirements
• Tier 2 – Advanced: Spend 4 points in previous Skills to unlock Tier 2 Skills
• Tier 3 – Expert: Spend 8 points in previous Skills to unlock Tier 3 Skills
• Tier 4 – Master: Spend 12 points in previous Skills to unlock Tier 4 Skills

The Best Skills in Starfield

Since you cannot respec, picking your Skills can be a rather paralizing affair. The best way to go about this is to think about your character and gameplay, and consider what you find the most important.

If your core aim is to excel at combat, then you’ll want to focus on mastering physical and combat traits. If your dream is to be a space pirate, then you’ll need to learn about space combat and starship design. If you just plan to explore and set up outposts, you’ll want to focus on scanning and outposting features.

There are a total of 16 skills in each of the 5 categories, and all skills can be upgraded to max with 4 points. This means you would need 320 points to completely unlock everything – which I don’t think is possible from what I have played as the max level I saw was 70+. Even if it were possible, getting there would take so long that it’d be a waste not to optimize.

Quality of Life

My recommendation is to immediately take these specific skills because of the quality of life they provide:

1. Piloting: This skill improves the handling of your ship, which is really sorely needed early on, but also leveling up will let you pilot better ships which makes the entire game a lot better.
2. Weight Lifting: This skill gives you extra carry weight. I do not know one person playing a Bethesda game that’s not over-encumbered with forks and spoons, so take this and start upgrading it asap!
3. Persuasion: There are so many quests where a persuasion check will determine the legwork you have to do to complete your objective that this feels like one of the most useful skills in the game.
4. Ballistics: While you may prefer to use different types of weapons, it’s very likely you’re going to be running around with some sort of gun with ammo. The boost you get from Ballistics is quite worth it as it applies to pistols, shotguns, rifles, snipers, etc.
5. Research Methods: This is a time-saver that makes research and crafting cheaper. If you don’t mind going around looking for materials, then it’s not needed.
6. Boost Pack Training: Exploration is simply SO much better with a boostpack! And some quests need one, so I suggest you get this one very soon after starting.
7. Security: This allows you to use digipicks to hack into safes and doors. It’s essential for looting and exploring so do not skip it under any circumstances.

Utilise Background Skills

You can get several of these skills from your Background, so if you pick right you’ll be able to get them all by level 5. From there, your choices become a lot harder as they’ll depend on what exactly it is you want to do.

The next skills you pick will depend on your playstyle, so I will describe the categories and the best skill within each.

Physical Skills

Physical Skills: These are for those of you looking to play stealth or who want physique boosts. They are generally underwhelming or very situational as many of the bonuses are easily achieved via consumables or equipment, so it doesn’t seem smart to put points into them.

Some recommendations for them are:

1. Fitness: This will give you 10-30% more oxygen and eventually greatly reduce the cost of sprinting. It’s a nice to have if you find yourself struggling with this aspect
2. Stealth: Yes, I know you want to make a stealth archer, so take stealth and level it up and you can get great damage boosts for sneak attacks!
3. Pain Tolerance: I didn’t find many enemies coming at me with non-physical damage so this flat damage reduction would work best. It is completely unnecessary on normal, however, so only consider this if you are finding yourself getting more hurt than you like.
4. Concealment: This is the master skill for stealth gameplay, and it is very very good if that is your style, enabling you to run in stealth and do incredibly high damage from sneak attacks (4x to 10x)

Social Skills

Social Skills: These skills are a catch-all for NPC interactions and questing. Your choices here will heavily depend on how you like to approach situations. I found that persuasion took care of almost everything and I didn’t really need bribery or such.

Some recommendations for Social Skills are:

1. Commerce: If you want to make credits fast to buy expensive ships or houses, this is a good skill. If you don’t, then it’s utterly useless. I played the game normally and quickly ramped up a fantastic amount of credits, particularly by boarding and taking over pirate ships I had disabled.
2. Theft: If you are looking to play a stealthy outlaw, this is an excellent skill. For everyone else, not so much unless you’re after a specific item that you want to get from a specific NPC or quest.
3. Leadership: This is a very useful skill for everyone, as it will help you bring up your companion affinity higher, and increase their carry capacity. Both of those are excellent bonuses!
4. Outpost Management. If you plan to delve deeply into the outpost system, you cannot skip this skill. If you are unsure, you can wait a while and play and come to it when you feel you’re lacking.
5. Ship Command: This is a master skill that pretty much everyone should take, as it will allow you to have up to eight active crew members. This is invaluable and a lot more fun than the default, so I absolutely recommend getting to this soon.

Combat Skills

Combat Skills: This category features all the combat bonuses for your character. We already mentioned ballistics, but if you want to specialize in a particular type of gun or melee combat, there are plenty of options here. Since this is all very personal to your playstyle, I’ll highlight what may work for most people rather than trying to focus on what each “build” may pick as they are quite self-evident.

Combat Skills: This category features all the combat bonuses for your character. We already mentioned ballistics, but if you want to specialize in a particular type of gun or melee combat, there are plenty of options here. Since this is all very personal to your playstyle, I’ll highlight what may work for most people rather than trying to focus on what each “build” may pick as they are quite self-evident.

Recommendations for Combat Skills are:

1. Marksmanship: This skill is useful if you aren’t using automatic weapons. Most of the guns I picked up where not automatic and you had to mod them to make them so, making this a good option
2. Rapid Reloading: This skill makes you reload faster and it’s amazing. Get it!
3. Targeting: This is a useful skill for those of you who prefer to shoot “from the hip” as it increases your accuracy when not aiming. It’s very specific and not for everyone, but if you are a run-and-gunner make sure to take it at some point.
4. Sharpshooting: This is one of the master skills for combat but the one that I found the most useful, as it increases critical damage for body parts and in general with all ranged weapons. It’s a great skill to have on any build that uses ranged weapons.

Science Skills

Science Skills: These are skills that cover a lot of very important aspects for exploration and character optimization. I suggest you focus on these and Tech skills early on as they can take a lot of tedium out of the game, and open up new gameplay opportunities.

Recommendations for Science Skills are:

1. Scanning: This skill should be on everyone’s radar as it greatly improves your planet and ship scanning capabilities, saving your time.
2. Spacesuit Design: A must-have skill if you want to apply spacesuit mods and optimize your Armor. I suggest taking this early on as leveling it up needs you to create mods, and it’s a resource-consuming affair.
3. Weapon Engineering: Another must-have skill if you want to optimize your Weapons. You will find legendary weapons and spacesuits so it’s not going to stop you if you don’t get it, but you’ll be missing out on most of the crafting fun if you neglect these two skills.
4. Astrophysics: This is INCREDIBLY useful if you’re a completionist, as it gives you the opportunity to discover planet traits from orbit, and allows you to scan planets from very far away (up to 30 Light years!). Since traveling to each system or planet to scan can become a horribly tedious endeavor, this was one of my favorite skills to take early on.
5. Outpost Engineering: If you want to delve into outposting you will need this to make it work, and for the excellent 50% discount for construction resources.
6. Special Projects: This is a unique master skill that gives you the opportunity to research unique, experimental things. It’s a lategame toy for those wanting to delve deep into the crafting systems.

Tech Skills

Tech Skills: Finally, Tech Skills are all about your spaceship and robotics. Many of these skills have a deep and meaningful impact on your gameplay, so you should be looking to spend your points here from early on.

1. Payloads: This increases your ship cargo hold capacity by up to 50%, which is massive and incredibly useful when doing quests or if you are a resource hoarder like me.
2. Starship Design: This skill allows you to upgrade your ship parts with better modules, which is invaluable for optimizing your space combat. Rather than putting points into the specific and individual combat categories, doing this one first could give you a faster edge as you can just make what you have work better.
3. Starship Engineering: This one is useful as a general defense boost for you ship as it will improve your repairing and give you a flat 25% damage mitigation. It’s not necessary but a nice to have.
4. Any other combat skill for ships: Depending on how you play, and particularly if you’re a pirate, you’ll need to invest in the many systems here. For normal players, the 3 options above would suffice, but if you are REALLY into space combat you can pick more skills from here.

And that’s a wrap for all the skills available in the game! As a final tip I will mention that companions and crew also have skills, and this will determine where you assign them. Use the Ship menu to assign companions and hired crew to your ship or any outpost with a “Crew Station”. Each companion or crew member provides unique passive bonuses to make your ship or outpost run better.

If you’re looking for more Starfield content, check out the wiki, our Beginner Guide, or our Starfield Review!

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In this Starfield Beginner Guide I’ll give you my top tips & tricks for a smooth start of the game. Starfield is a truly massive game and you cannot respec or undo your choices, so keeping a few pointers early on could save you a lot of time!

Starfield Beginner Guide

I won’t post anything spoilery about the story, but it’s inevitable to mention some mechanics and I’ll mention some specific quest rewards. If you want to avoid those spoilers, skip based on the headings for each section! Let’s start with Character Creation Tips.

1. Background Selection:

Your Background gives you a combination of 3 Skills that you can use right after you start. This is the equivalent of 3 free Skillpoints, so it can be very valuable early on. You can see a full comparative list of backgrounds on the wiki.

I personally found combat to be quite easy on normal, and with a game this big there’s little reason to pump up the difficulty much, so if you’re going the balanced explorer route, it is best to get backgrounds that save some work on exploration or quest progression:

2. Pick your Traits!

Traits are unique characteristics applied to your character. They have positive and negative outcomes, but overall they are pretty balanced.

You can pick any trait that you like for Roleplay purposes for your allegiances or perhaps faction bonuses, but my recommendation is that you take:

3. Take and level up these Skills ASAP!

You will obtain 3 Skills from your background, and then you will gain 1 skillpoint to use to upgrade or unlock skills for every 1 level you gain. Since this is a rather slow process and there seems to be no re-spec option, planning can save you a lot of heartache.

You need to do specific challenges or activities to be able to level up your skills, so taking some of them early on is the best option to avoid getting stuck doing “tedious” stuff later in the game. Full lists of all skills and their unlock challenges and bonuses can be found on the Skills page on the Starfield Wiki. But these are my recommendations:

4. Do These Quests ASAP

Your first step should be to Check your “Activities” tab when you’re first in The Citadel, I mean, New Atlantis, and track each of the “talk to this person” to start a series of quests.

You should also Gather Faction quests so you can get started with them. The first factions available are from United Colonies and you will be sent to pick up Freestar Collective and Ryujin Industries later on. You can also get contracts from the Tracker’s Alliance (first encountered on Mars), Constellation, and random small allegiances.

This game is really massive and it’s very easy to get distracted and overwhelmed. To avoid doing what I did with Skyrim (played 350 hours before I ever did step 2 of the main quest!), I suggest you try to stick to doing the main quest where possible. The progression is necessary to unlock companions and useful bonuses. Don’t get too caught up in planet scanning and landing, as there are skills that make it easier and faster so you should do just what’s needed to level them up then move on until you have it all maxed and can optimize your time.

Generally, I do the main quest then check the other quests in the area and update them if they are nearby, and then I continue with the main quest.

HOWEVER, you should always prioritize your companion quests as soon as they become available, just to be sure you don’t miss any.

One side-quest that you should absolutely aim to complete is called “Overdesigned”, as you get the opportunity to obtain a Top Tier Ship for free. This means you need to max your piloting to 4, however, so make sure you engage and kill enemy ships to unlock the higher levels of the skill.

5. Things to Buy and Have!

I generally ignore vendors in RPGs because I feel I want to get my loot from exploration and drops, not just buy it. However, there are some things you should not go without.

1. Buy a bigger ship. Your default ship is nice but it’s pretty weak, has low cargo and only allows two crew. Level up your Piloting as quickly as you can and then buy something more resilient with more cargo like Marathon first, then add more crew and other fancies when your budget allows. You can also upgrade your ship parts, although this gets involved with the Starship Design Skill that is sort of wasted points if you are ok with the basics.
2. Buy Digipacks and Med Packs from every vendor you visit – you’ll be using both of those very often! You may also want to pick up wine when you find it, as it gives you +% persuasion that can be a nice and quick boost when in need. I would also buy a suit early on from any vendor that sells one (There’s one in Neon) as that makes you a walking charmer.
3. If you track the resources you’re needing for research and mods, you may find them easier in shops than by creating them or scavenging them. Titanium, for example, seems to be needed for a lot of outpost construction and is available from many shops around the galaxy.

6. Quality of Life

The game has many aspects that can feel rather confusing due to controls, UI, and the overall feel that you’re way above your head. This sections covers some tips that may help you navigate your first few hours:

1. It’s very likely that you’ll get Lung Damage or other Afflictions while exploring planets. They will self-cure over a long period of time. You can remove them with aid items, but it’s a lot easier to go to a town and pay credits to a doctor that will take care of all of them at once.
2. Being Over-Encumbered sucks, but you need to sprint while being at 75% capacity to upgrade your weightlifting skill. To manage your weight, use all your companions as mules for your resources, as well as your ship, and the infinite storage chest in the Constellation basement. Keep in mind items in the storage chest won’t count when you’re Crafting!
   The ship’s cargo can be viewed from anywhere from the “Ship” on the left of the wheel menu, but you can only transfer items if you’re near the ship. The skills weightlifting, piloting, payload and leadership can also help, by giving you more carry capacity, increasing your companion capacity, letting you get bigger ships or increasing ship cargo capacity.
3. Fast Travel can be confusing! You must first travel to a star system to discover it before you can land on a planet. After that, you can quickly fast travel and to places you’ve discovered, and even pick a “Land” option on those you’ve explored from the Star menu. If you’re on the surface, be it in a city or a planet, using your Scanner (LB) and then RB will prop up a “local” surface map that allows you to travel to discovered areas. This feature often displays local quests too, but not activities. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for the quest markers to be placed awkwardly, but hoping this is addressed with a patch.
4. Ship Combat is sort of a nightmare at first! You will go to a training Mission to join the Vanguard if you do the UC faction quest. This is highly advisable as you can use this to get some practice. Even so, you’ll find the controls can be very confusing and adjusting elements during combat can be complicated.
   
   There’s a few things you should do to make this smoother:
   • 1. Get the Piloting skill and level it up so you can use thrusters and buy better ships!
   • 2. Upgrade your ship parts before taking off.
   • 3. Invest on the ship skills that improve your performance if you want to focus on this aspect and realize your interstellar piracy dreams.
     
5. Use the Research Station! If you want to craft anything or add mods to your Weapons and Armor, you need to research them first, and this needs materials. Make sure to visit often and take notes of the requirements. Crafting what you need can become a complicated process when you consider you may need to go get materials as well, so it’s not a bad idea to keep track of what you’re after.

7. Outposts & Crew

I actually struggled to understand the controls and systems for the outpost, as it’s too much information all at once. My first recommendation is to not worry too much about this aspect initially, at least until you’ve had enough time to familiarize yourself with other mechanics and gather quite a few materials from going about adventuring.

You’ll then be able to set up Outposts in the worlds you visit, that can work to extract resources from the planet or moon. You can place cargo links that connect outposts to other outposts in the same system, or even in other systems. You can also obtain quests that request specific cargo delivered to specific areas.

All of this can only happen if you have researched the right outpost components so that you can generate power, collect materials, store them and then transport them off world. It’s a rather complex management process so if you need help on how it works and the controls for it, use the “help” menu on your settings and scroll down to the many, many options there are.

You can also recruit and assign crew besides your actual Companions with storylines. The extra crew can join you on your ship or can go to an outpost and improve production there. If you recruit crew as you find them but don’t have outposts, they’ll just wait around the planet they were found on until you have an assignment, but fortunately, you can assign them remotely too!

Starfield is a huge game and there’s a lot to learn and find. I’ll be posting more in-depth and specific guides for how things work, including ships, outposts, etc., but for now, these guidelines should help you get going with the game.

We hope you found our Starfield Beginner Guide helpful. Don’t forget to check out our Starfield Wiki for all the latest info on Weapons, Armor, Missions, Locations and more.

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