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Creating a build inStarfieldis much easier than one might think. While there are a myriad of backgrounds, traits, and potential skills to invest in, the game’s difficulty is fairly low and doesn’t require any degree of min-maxing. With that said, you can make some combat and social encounters far easier if you have a build in mind before making your character.
Related:Starfield: Beginner Tips
If you’re interested in exploring the Milky Way as an old-school gunslinger with a loyal crew, you can’t go wrong with a pistol build. This guide will showcase how to create a traditional gunslinger in Starfield, covering everything from recommended traits to skills. We’ll also cover some powerful weapon recommendations for those just starting their playthrough.
Explore the Settled Systems and unknown regions with this gunslinger build. By taking various weapon and critical skills, this pistol build can output some serious damage with an equal amount of style. Other skill points are spent in the Social tree to give your character a silver tongue that can defuse nearly every situation. It requires some good weapons to scale its damage to the fullest on Very Hard difficulty, but this build can otherwise handle Starfield’s toughest combat encounters with little issue. And if you later discover that you dislike pistols, you can easily spec into a different build with little opportunity cost.
Background And Traits
Backgrounds And Traits In NG+ (No Spoilers)
Entering a New Game Plus (NG+) cycle doesnotallow you to respec your traits or starting background. Traits may be removed mid-playthrough by speaking to certain NPCs, but new traits may not be acquired.
Pick your background and traits carefully. If you wish to change them, you’ll need to start a new playthrough.
Soldier
Fitness, Ballistics, Boost Pack Training
Choosing a background in Starfield determines your character’s starting skills and adds rare dialogue options tagged with your selected upbringing.you may learn any skill, so backgrounds don’t lock you out of any skills.Feel free to pick any background that sounds interesting to you.Our recommendations focus on good starting skills, but they are by no means mandatory.
Bounty Hunteris both thematically and mechanically fitting for a pistol build. You’ll gain a free point in Piloting, Targeting Control Systems, and Boost Pack Training. Piloting and Boost Pack Training are core skills that every build will want, as they unlock basic features with spaceships and booster packs. Targeting Control Systems unlocks a version of Fallout’s VATS system for use in space combat. You can slow down time to target specific ship parts, a necessity if you want to board ships by destroying their engines.
Space Scoundrelbiases ground combat with its starting skills, buffing your proficiency with pistols, spaceship piloting, and general persuasion checks. Dialogue options for the Space Scoundrel seldom come up, but the starting skill points are excellent for a gunslinger-themed build like this.
Soldieris a perfect background for any weapon build, pistols included. The Ballistics perk increases your damage with all ballistic weapons in Starfield, including most pistols. Fitness increases your oxygen capacity, and Boost Pack Training allows you to use booster packs. If you want a more generic start that can morph into any build with ease, the Soldier is your best option.
Gain +50 HP and O2.
Healing and food items are 20% less effective.
Empath
Receive a combat buff when your companion likes an action.
Receive a combat debuff when your companion disagrees with an action.
Kid Stuff (Optional)
Your parents are alive. You can visit them at New Atlantis.
The Adoring Fan becomes a recruitable companion.
Jabbers about your character incessantly.
Before you finish creating your character, you may select up to three character traits to further flesh out your character.Traits come with a strong positive with a moderate to severe penalty.In general, taking at least one trait is recommended sinceit’s impossible to acquire traits after character creation,even in NG+ playthroughs. you’re able to remove traits, however, so there’s little reason not to take three.
Alien DNAis a solid option for nearly every build. It gives you +50 HP and oxygen, but it makes all forms of healing 20% less effective. Early on when items only heal for a small percentage of your HP, this is hardly a downside. But when you start reaching higher levels, this downside can become noticeable. You can counter this with the Rejuvenation skill or by stocking up on medical supplies whenever possible.
Empathisarguably the best trait in Starfield. Every time a companion agrees with one of your actions, you’ll receive a two-hour buff that increases your persuasion chance and critical chance. Conversely, performing any action your companions dislike will debuff your character, but you can easily avoid this penalty by quicksaving and quickloading before making any major dialogue choices. It’s fairly easy to impress your companions, so this buff is more or less always active. Just beware thatStarfield doesn’t have many evil-aligned companions, so anyone looking to perform some shady actions would be best off ignoring this trait.
Kid Stuffgives you access to a strong early-game pistol. Speak to your parents after completing the “One Small Step” quest to acquire Sir Livington’s Pistol, a powerful variant of the Old Earth Pistol or M1911. Additionally, your parents will also appear in certain hub areas throughout your playthrough, not just New Atlantis. It’s a great pick for RP-minded players and min-maxers alike.
If you want to RP as more of a wanderer or renegade, we recommend dropping Kid Stuff forHero Worshipped.The listed downside of having an obsessed fan is actually a major upside, asthe Adoring Fan will never dislike your character’s actions.You can steal ships, smuggle goods, and do just about any negative action without hurting your relationship with the Adoring Fan. Evil-aligned companions are extremely rare in Starfield, so anyone that’s interested in this sort of playstyle would greatly benefit from taking this trait.
Hero Worshipped And Empath
While it would seem that Hero Worshipped and Empath have great synergy, Empath seldom procs since the Adoring Fan doesn’t gain affinity with your character in the same way that Constellation companions do. If you use both traits, remember to swap companions on occasion to trigger Empath’s bonuses.
Related:Starfield: All Character Creation Traits And What They Do
Skills
A gunslinger relies on their trusty sidearm to take down their foes, usually doubling as a social character. Starfield allows you to create this archetype of character with ease through theSocialandCombattrees.
Some key skills for this build include:
Socialskills are somewhat misleading in Starfield. While their descriptions imply that they only impact combat, many social skills add unique dialogue options that can make persuasion checks far easier. ThePersuasion skillitself increases your chance of persuading someone through dialogue by 50%, a massive boost for just about every social check. The second row is rather lackluster, but we found thatDiplomacyandNegotiationcome up fairly often in dialogue. Consider leveling Negotiation if you plan to bribe others often. Finally,LeadershipandShip Commandgreatly boost the effectiveness and max capacity of your ship’s crew. Both skills at max rank allow you to recruit eight crew members,each offering double their usual combat bonuses. This lets you more or less ignore the combat-related ship skills in the Tech tree.
Combatskills allow you to spec heavily into pistols. TheBallisticsandPistolskills greatly increase your damage with both categories of weapons. Since most pistols in Starfield use ballistic ammunition, both skills will stack. Outside of finding better pistols, your only other method of aggressively scaling your pistol damage is through critical hits, so we’ll be takingMarksmanandSharpshootingto scale your critical chance and damage, respectively. You can also opt to take some of the stealth perks in the Physical tree, but we are going to avoid those perks for this particular build. Finally, you can also opt to take theTargetingperk if you want to fire your pistols without aiming. This is quite useful for controller players since it greatly increases your weapon’s aim assist, but it does cause some targets to glow a bright orange color. If that bothers you, don’t take this perk.
Essential Skills
Outside of the above perks, we highly recommend that you grab the following skills for every Starfield build:Booster Pack Training (Tech), Security (Tech), and Stealth (Physical). You’ll also want to eventually max out the Piloting (Tech) and Starship Design (Tech) skills.
All weapon builds also greatly benefit from maxing out the crafting perks within the Science tree, but it is not required for this build to function.
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Recommended Gear
Even with the right skills, a pistol build will only excel if you own a strong sidearm. The good news is thatthere are many great pistols in Starfield, most of which are obtainable quite early:
The strongest endgame weapon would beany Legendary pistol with theOne-Inch Punch affix, as this turns the weapon into a pocket shotgun with a massive damage multiplier. Pistols with the Instigating affix are also a good option, dealing double damage against enemies with full HP. As for armor,anything that reduces O2 consumption is recommended.Stacking multiple armor pieces with reduced O2 consumption will allow you to sprint without any oxygen cost, even while overencumbered.
And if you want to look like an old-school gunslinger, keep your eyes peeled for theFirst Officer Outfitduring the Freestar Ranger questline. Most merchants in Akila City also sell wide-brimmed hats to help create a space cowboy look.
