Highlights
- Starfield's Skill Tree is designed to make every Skill Point feel impactful, but players often forget that Skill ranks require completion of accompanying Skill Challenges.
- Some Skill Challenges, like the Fitness Skill Challenge, can be frustrating due to finicky triggers and repetitive tasks, making them unnecessary requests for players.
- Skill Challenges like Theft and Outpost Management can be tedious and time-consuming for players trying to complete multiple Skill advancements in one sitting, requiring surplus materials and repetitive actions.
The way that Starfield handles its Skills and overall Skill Tree is incredibly refreshing. It's clear that the team designed the game in the hopes that every Skill Point would feel impactful. But, players often forget that each Skill rank doesn't 'just' require a Skill Point, it also requires players to finish the accompanying Skill Challenge.
Without having the pre-requisite Skill Challenge completed in Starfield, players can't spend that Point on their Skill of choice. Thankfully, most of these Challenges are either fun or unintrusive, but there are a few that are more irritating to complete than anything, especially given that the game doesn't track any of the Challenge's progress until players are actually at the associated Skill Rank.
8 Fitness
Rank | Description | Skill Challenge |
|---|---|---|
1 | You have 10 percent more oxygen available. | N/A |
2 | You have 20 percent more oxygen available. | Use up all available oxygen 20 times. |
3 | You have 30 percent more oxygen available. | Use up all available oxygen 50 times. |
4 | Sprinting and power attacks now use significantly less oxygen | Use up all available oxygen 100 times. |
First up let's start with one that a lot of players are likely going to invest in early, the Fitness Skill. While Starfield can be played in many different ways, almost every playstyle is going to involve a lot of running around.
As a result of this, players will want to have as much oxygen as possible as often as possible so that they can sprint for longer. However, the 'trigger' for adding another count onto this Skill Challenge seems to be a bit finicky, and the fact that players need to use up all their oxygen 170 times total just to make running around a bit more enjoyable is a bit of an unnecessary request.
7 Neurostrikes
Rank | Description | Skill Challenge |
|---|---|---|
1 | 10 percent chance to stun an NPC with an unarmed attack. | N/A |
2 | Unarmed attacks now deal additional EM damage. | Stun 10 enemies with an unarmed attack. |
3 | 20 percent chance to stun an NPC with an unarmed attack. | Stun 30 enemies with an unarmed attack |
4 | After stunning an enemy, players also knock down any enemies in close proximity. | Stun 75 enemies with an unarmed attack. |
Making an unarmed build actually work well in Starfield takes a whole lot of fine-tuning. The game might incentivize unarmed combat at the start, given that multiple backgrounds include the 'Boxing' Skill, but players will quickly realize the main problem with this playstyle.
For some reason, there's no intuitive way to 'switch to fists', meaning players need to go into the menu and unequip their gun (which will likely always be the better damage option) each and every time they want to start swinging. In regard to Neurostrikes, once the 10 percent stun chance is unlocked, it's just a matter of time until each Skill Challenge is completed. But because this relies on the 'chance' of enemies being stunned, players actively grinding this Skill Challenge will likely feel slighted every time it doesn't trigger.
6 Commerce
Rank | Description | Skill Challenge |
|---|---|---|
1 | Buy for 5 percent less and sell for 10 percent more. | N/A |
2 | Buy for 10 percent less and sell for 15 percent more. | Buy or sell 25 unique items. |
3 | Buy for 15 percent less and sell for 20 percent more. | Buy or sell 75 unique items. |
4 | Buy for 20 percent less and sell for 25 percent more. | Buy or sell 150 unique items. |
This next Skill Challenge is a bit of a nitpick more than a frustration, but that also depends on the player. Buying or selling 25, 75, or 100 unique items is an easy task to do, and players will likely complete each of these three Skill Challenges within one or two play sessions.
However, for the players actively grinding this one out, it just involves a lot of time spent in menus, spamming the 'Sell' input so that they can go through all the random junk they've picked up throughout their adventures and finally give these items a useful function. To summarize, it's just a bit tedious of a Skill Challenge.
5 Theft
Rank | Description | Skill Challenge |
|---|---|---|
1 | Unlocks the ability to pickpocket targets | N/A |
2 | 10 percent greater chance to successfully pickpocket. | Successfully pickpocket 5 times. |
3 | 30 percent greater chance to successfully pickpocket. | Successfully pickpocket 10 times. |
4 | 50 percent greater chance to successfully pickpocket. Players can now also pickpocket holstered weapons. | Successfully pickpocket 20 times. |
Maybe this is more of a player-by-player experience thing, but a lot of players are mentioning how difficult it is to steal from people in Starfield and actually get away with it. Surprisingly, people seem to rarely be alone in this game, and even if players do manage to pilfer something, it'll just get stolen back from them the next time they're caught committing a crime, which will likely be their next pickpocket attempt.
Players can likely get this challenge done quickly by just warping between locations, pickpocketing out in the open, adding to their bounty, and then paying off that bounty when the challenge is complete. However, paying to successfully pickpocket seems like an ironic way to waste Credits.
4 Outpost Management
Rank | Description | Skill Challenge |
|---|---|---|
1 | Additional Cargo Links can be placed at Outposts. | N/A |
2 | Additional robots can now be constructed at Outposts | Build Cargo Links on 6 different planets. |
3 | Additional crew can be assigned at Outposts. | Construct 8 robots at Outposts. |
4 | Outpost extractors produce twice as fast. | Construct 10 crew stations at Outposts. |
Readers may notice a pattern here, as this is another Skill Challenge that really only feels frustrating if players are trying to do most or all of them in one sitting. This is because basically all of Starfield's Skill Challenges are well-designed for passive completion as players complete missions, explore planets, and so on.
However, a lot of players are following the playstyle of saving their Skill Points to use on multiple Skill advancements which are locked behind multiple Skill Challenges. And, to get through these Outpost Management Challenges quickly, players are going to need a lot of surplus materials for Cargo Links, a great Grav Drive, and a good amount of time to sit through all those small cutscenes showing the player's meticulously customized ship hopping from system to system.
3 Crippling
Rank | Description | Skill Challenge |
|---|---|---|
1 | Human enemies have a 30 percent increased chance to enter a downed Bleedout state after taking enough damage. | N/A |
2 | Human enemies have a 50 percent increased chance of not 'naturally recovering' from their downed Bleedout state. | Put 20 enemies into the Bleedout state. |
3 | Human enemies may now enter the downed Bleedout state earlier. | Put 50 enemies into the Bleedout state. |
4 | Previous ranks now apply to all enemy types. Players now deal 100 percent more damage to downed enemies. | Put 100 enemies into the Bleedout state. |
The Bleedout State in Starfield is something that a large portion of players have likely already seen, but didn't know that this was the name for it. Basically, whenever an enemy takes a huge chunk of damage in a short amount of time (especially to their limbs), they have a chance to enter this Bleedout state where they're basically helpless, crawling along the ground.
However, while the first rank of Crippling does make it a lot easier to get enemies into the Bleedout state, doing it 170 times in total, and only to human enemies (as creatures won't suffer from Bleedout until Crippling is at max rank) takes an absurd amount of time.
2 Robotics
Rank | Description | Skill Challenge |
|---|---|---|
1 | Players now deal 10 percent more damage to both robots and turrets. They can also force a target robot up to 10 levels higher than them to stop fighting for a limited time. | N/A |
2 | Players now deal 20 percent more damage to both robots and turrets. They can also force a target robot up to 10 levels higher than them to flee for a limited time. | Destroy 5 robots. |
3 | Players now deal 10 percent more damage to both robots and turrets. They can also force a target robot up to 10 levels higher than them to attack their allies for a limited time. | Destroy 25 robots. |
4 | Players can now force a target robot up to 10 levels higher than them to obey all their commands for a limited time. | Destroy 50 robots. |
Here's a bit of a unique case, as this next one is pretty much RNG-dependent. Unless players look up where Robots tend to spawn or confirmed locations, it's sort of a dice roll as to whether they'll encounter a lot of Robots in their adventures or not. Usually, when clearing out say, an Ecliptic Mercenary underground outpost, players can find and activate at least one Robot and then immediately destroy it, but thats not an incredibly common occurrence. And again, the 25 Robots destroyed for Rank 3 of the Skill don't at all count towards the 50 needed for the final rank. Just to give a bit of scope for how often Robots are encountered, our playthrough character is at level 30 with 50+ hours, and they've only seen maybe 10 Robots in total.
1 Boost Assault Training
Rank | Description | Skill Challenge |
|---|---|---|
1 | Nearby enemies take damage when the player boosts and also have a chance to catch on fire. | N/A |
2 | Enemies now have a chance to be knocked down when a nearby player boosts. | Deal 200 damage to enemies using the Boost Pack. |
3 | Players aiming down sights while boosting will now hover in place. Boost Pack fuel is still expended until empty. | Knockdown 20 enemies with a boost. |
4 | While hovering, time slows down for players and the world moves 70 percent slower. | Deal 500 damage to enemies using the Boost Pack. |
Lastly, while this final Skill is a ton of fun to actually use, it's another Skill Challenge that heavily incentivizes an overly aggressive playstyle of basically running right up to the enemies to Boost near them. Really it's just the 20 Knockdowns Skill Challenge in particular that seems to take the longest, though it does also take a while for the damage done to add up to 500 too, even for players who are using Boost Assault on every single enemy.
Starfield is available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.