Your Skills in The Outer Worlds 2 are a vital component of your build, determining the sorts of checks you can pass and dialogue options you’ll have available to you. However, with 12 available, choosing which Skills to level up and how much you’ll level up is tricky as The Outer Worlds 2 very much favors those who focus on a narrower range of talents, using their available expertise at every opportunity. So, I’ve laid out everything you need to know about the Skills in TOW2 below, including the ones we think are best and how they all work in terms of benefits and levelling up.
Best Skills in The Outer Worlds 2
(Image: © Xbox Game Studios)
All 12 Skills in The Outer Worlds 2 are good but some are a lot more useful than others because of how often their relevant checks and interactions pop up. Bearing that in mind, I think the best Outer Worlds 2 Skills are Engineering, Lockpick, Speech, and Sneak.
Engineering and Lockpick allow you to interact with a lot of machinery and locked-off areas, which will let you scavenge extra loot and perhaps uncover vital information or items that could alter the course of a quest later. You’ll also find that there is a lot of talking in The Outer Worlds 2 and if you want to have as many ways through a conversation as possible, you’ll want to up your Speech skill. But for those more combat-oriented, investing in Sneak and opting for a stealthy playstyle will help you dispatch enemies quickly and with minimal fuss compared to a guns-blazing approach. And all these Skills also grants access to a great selection of Perks that can help you lean into certain playstyles and get through many other situations.
However, while I and some other members of the GamesRadar+ team consider these to be the best Skills, I don’t recommend focusing all your Skill Points on just these four. There are eight others that will help you in plenty of other ways, especially with the perks they can unlock, and sometimes Traits and your Background can help too (Don’t have a high enough Engineering level to fix a door? If you chose the Brawny Trait, you should be able to rip it open).
Outer Worlds 2 Skills explained
Skills determine your character’s core abilities throughout The Outer Worlds 2 and affect pretty much every aspect of the game through passive benefits, special abilities, and unique skill check and dialogue opportunities. They also determine which Perks you’ll have available to unlock, so if a perk catches your eye, make sure you level up the appropriate Skill. So, your Skills, Perks, and Outer Worlds 2 Traits come together to form the basics of your build.
At the start of the game, when you’re also choosing your Outer Worlds 2 Background, you’ll get to pick two Skills to specialize in, which just means that they start at level 2, giving you a small head start. From then on, whenever your character levels up, you’ll be given two Skill Points that you can allocate to any of the 12 Skills – both points in one Skill for a big increase or one point in two different Skills if you want to bolster your expertise a bit more broadly. Crucially, there are no opportunities to respec in The Outer Worlds 2 beyond the start of the game, so you can’t reallocate spent Skill Points.
To help you figure out how you might want to build your character, here’s the full list of Skills in The Outer Worlds 2 and how they can benefit you:
- Engineering:
- You can fix various mechanical systems, such as power systems and doors, with a difficulty at or below your Engineering level.
- Gain +1% Damage Resistance per Engineering level.
- Explosives:
- You can disarm traps and mines and blast open certain doors with a difficulty at or below your Explosives level.
- Gain +10% Explosives Damage and +1% Explosive Damage Resistance per Explosives level.
- Guns:
- Gain +10% Ranged Damage and +1% Armour Penetration per Guns level.
- Hack:
- You can hack into various mechanical systems, such as terminals, automechs, and vending machines, with a difficulty at or below your Hack level.
- Gain +5% Damage to Automechs per Hack level.
- Leadership:
- Gain +8% Companion Damage and +4% Companion Health per Leadership level.
- Lockpick:
- You can pick locks with a difficulty at or below your Lockpick level.
- Gain +1% Evasion Chance per Lockpick level.
- Melee:
- Gain +10% Melee Damage and -2% Damage Received while Blocking per Melee level.
- Medical:
- Gain +7 Toxicity Crash Threshold and +5% Damage to Creatures per Medical level.
- Observation:
- You can spot hidden objects with a difficulty at or below your Observation level.
- Gain +15% Weakspot Damage per Observation level.
- Science!:
- Gain +7 maximum Gadget Energy Meter and +10% more stacks of non-Physical Damage Type side-effects per Science level.
- Sneak:
- Gain +35% Sneak Attack Damage and -2% NPC Awareness Detection Rate per Sneak level.
- Speech:
- You can choose dialogue options and attempt Speech checks with a difficulty at or below your Speech level.
- Gain +5% damage to humans per Speech level.
When it comes to actually allocating your Skill Points and levelling up, I recommend focusing your efforts on three or four skills, occasionally dabbling into others with the odd point to perhaps unlock a useful perk or two. The Outer Worlds 2 is structured such that you will miss a lot of Skill-based opportunities because of your build’s weaknesses and blind spots, but you will miss out on even more if you spread your Skill Points too thin and try to do a bit of everything – with that in mind, do not take the Easily Distracted Flaw if it pops up as it will ruin your build.
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