Persuasion is arguably one of the most useful skills in Starfield, but it's also one of the most complex. On the surface, it all looks relatively straightforward, but as players will soon realize, there's a lot more going on under the hood than first meets the eye, and a lot of key details that the game never fully explains.
Figuring out how to persuade people in Starfield can take a bit of practice, as the system is a lot more nuanced than just looking up the best possible responses online. Players will need to get an idea of how the character they're trying to persuade thinks and learn what they need to do in order to stack the odds in their favor.
How Does Persuasion Work in Starfield?
It's important to note that persuasion attempts in Starfield are random, at least to a certain degree, meaning that there are no right or wrong answers. Some answers are more likely to succeed than others and there are things that players can do to increase their chances of succeeding. Ultimately, however, it's effectively a roll of the dice each time they choose a response. As such, the only surefire way to guarantee that a persuasion attempt will be successful is to save beforehand and then reload if things go wrong.
As for how persuasion works in Starfield, players will be given a number of different responses to choose from, each of which has a number and a color assigned to it. The number indicates how many sections of the bar to the left will be filled up if the response is successful, while the color indicates how likely the response is to succeed. As one might expect, green means very likely while red means unlikely. To succeed in a Persuasion attempt, players will need to fill the bar on the left before running out of turns, which are shown to the right of the persuasion bar.
Players can increase their chances of successfully persuading somebody by unlocking and upgrading the Persuasion skill, which at Rank 4 will increase the odds of success by 50%. Players can also use chems to boost the probability of them passing Persuasion checks, with Hippolyta providing a 20% Persuasion boost for five minutes and Paramour granting a 25% bonus for ten minutes. These stack with the bonus provided by the Persuasion skill meaning that it's possible to boost one's chances of succeeding by up to 75%.
As players begin to unlock more skills, they'll gain a few additional options to make their persuasion attempts easier. Those with the Negotiation skill unlocked will sometimes get a chance to bribe people, while the Intimidation and Manipulation skills also grant new dialog choices during certain persuasion attempts. In fact, there are a lot of skills that can come in useful during negotiations, though things like Medicine and Fitness are a lot more situational than the aforementioned skills and so tend to pop up a lot less frequently.
How to Pass Persuasion Checks in Starfield
As mentioned above, save scumming is the only way to guarantee successful persuasions in Starfield, but there are a few things that players can do to greatly increase their chances. For starters, unlocking and leveling up all of the associated skills can make a huge difference, as too can knowing when to gamble on a red dialog option and knowing when to play it safe. A big part of this comes down to understanding who exactly one is attempting to persuade and how they're likely to respond to certain prompts. For example, tougher characters won't be frightened by intimidation and honorable ones won't be interested in taking bribes.
Starfield is available now for PC and Xbox Series X|S.