Outer Worlds Best Starting Builds, Attributes & Skills

Starting builds are a big issue when starting to play Outer Worlds. The attributes and skills you choose then will shape your entire playthrough, and you might bar yourself from stuff you’d like just by making the wrong choice at the very beginning, while you still know nothing of the game. You can spend hours reading the descriptions and in-game tool tips, or you can just check out our Outer Worlds best starting builds guide, which will suggest the best choices for every style of play.

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outer worlds best starting builds skills attributes — Outer Worlds Best Starting Builds, Attributes & Skills

Where to invest Attribute and Skill points

At the start of the game, during character creation, you can spend 6 points on attributes, 2 on skills and 1 on an aptitude. While attribute and skill points have a deep impact on the game, the aptitude just adds a personal touch to your history. You can gain more points by lowering one of your attributes – the default for everything is 6, so lowering it to 5 will give you a point to spend elsewhere. You can invest up to 3 points in any one attribute, since 9 is the cap.

Before you invest any points, all your starting attributes will have a base level of 6, which is average. Investing one point into an attribute will increase the corresponding skills by 3 if the new level is 7, 4 if it’s 8 or 5 if it’s 9. For example, investing one point into intelligence would raises long guns, persuade, hack, medical, science and determination by 3 each. This means you can improve the specific skills you want by 12 points just by beefing up a single attribute. Now, since there’s more than one attribute that has an impact on some skills, you can boost these numbers up to 30 by maxing out attributes. For example, you can do this for two handed melee with investing into strength and temperament.

The attribute points are the most important part of the build, since you can’t improve them afterwards. Thankfully, the game allows you to finely tune your build by taking away points from one attribute and investing into another. This can have a “negative” impact, and even open up some new gameplay options, like unlocking dumb dialog options if you lower your intelligence.

The two skills points you can spend at the start can increase a skill by 10 each. This raises the bar to 40, if you’ve maxed out an attribute or two. This is extremely important, because if you want to reach level 100 with a skill, you’ll need to keep these points invested into the same places. For example, if you invested 3 points into strength, you’ll want to spend the two skill points on either melee, defense, dialog or leadership.

The final touch during character creation are the aptitude options. You can only add up to one point through this process, so it serves more as background information than anything else.

One Handed Melee Build

Attribute: +3 points to strength and dexterity;
Skills: melee and defense;
Aptitude: sub sous chef

Pros	Cons
One handed melee and block 40-points goal unlocked, giving you: TTD location hit effects and weapon durability loss from blocking -25%. Decent amount of points (18) invested in: dodge, sneak, lockpick, inspiration, handguns, and heavy weapons	Lack of persuade, long guns, lie, hack, medical, science, engineering and determination points. You’ll really have to fight your way through.

Two Handed Melee Build

Attribute: +3 points to strength and temperament;
Skills: melee and defense;
Aptitude: bureaucrat, rank 0 (you can go with the other ones as well, especially the ones with other defensive perks);

Pros	Cons
Unlocked two handed melee 40-points goal: TTD location hit effects Block and one handed melee are near 28 points, while a decent (18) amount is invested in: heavy weapons, lie, intimidate, sneak (two handed rogue here we come), medical, engineering, inspiration and determination. Great passive health regeneration and other perks make it a true barbarian build.	Lack of handguns, long guns, persuade, hack, lockpick, science points (6). Relying too much on melee.

Handguns Build

Attribute: +3 points to strength and dexterity;
Skills: Ranged priority, as secondary either stealth (to reach lockpick 40) or melee (1-handed 28) and tech (engineering 28);
Aptitude: If you go with tech as secondary, the best aptitude is elevator operations specialist, otherwise it’s all the same;

Pros	Cons
Unlocked 40-points handgun bonus: critical damage +50% Lockpick and dodge at 30, long guns and heavy weapons at 28, engineering, sneak, blocking and one handed at 18 (all without a secondary skill chosen)	Lack of dialog points (6). It doesn’t really matter at the start, since all are at 5 locked. Lack of companion-themed abilities, like inspiration and determination (both at 6)

Long Guns Build

Attribute: +3 points to intellect and perception;
Skills: Ranged priority, as secondary either tech (medical, science and engineer at 28) or stealth (hack and lockpick at 28), leadership (determination 28), dialog (persuade 28);
Aptitude: If you go with tech as secondary, then elevator operations specialist, medical technician junior grade or scientist assistant level 0 class A;

Pros	Cons
Unlocked long guns 40-points perk: long guns critical damage +50% Decent amount of points invested in other firearms (handguns 28, heavy weapons 28) Secondary skill points investment gives you a bit of freedom.	Poor melee, with only the starting six points. Defense is not your good side, you’ll have to rely on weak spots and head shots, but you can rely on sneaking a bit.

Let’s Talk Build

Attribute: priority +3 points to Charm, secondary depends on what dialog skill you want to focus on. For persuade, put +3 to Intelligence, for lie – +3 to temperament, for intimidate – +3 to strength;
Skills: Dialog as priority, second best is stealth (hack at 28), tech (science at 28) or leadership (inspiration at 28);
Aptitude: For persuade, go with the cashier sub-grade non-supervisory, or tossball team mascot if you want plus one on inspiration;

Pros	Cons
A build that relies on the dialogue options, with persuade, lie and intimidate at 38, 39 at the start. Having all the dialogue options to choose from also yields additional experience.	Lack of any attack or defense advantages (all are at 6). There is shooting in this game?

Companion Build

You can have inspiration and determination-heavy companion builds. They both impact your companions in some way, but this build tries to focus on something between these two worlds.

Attribute: +3 points to charm, +3 points to temperament (for two handed melee combat) or +3 points to intellect (for long guns combat);
Skills: Leadership is a priority, melee a good secondary if you chose Temperament, or ranged if intellect is your thing;
Aptitude: No discernible aptitude (determination +1) or tossball team mascot (inspiration +1);

Pros	Cons
Point relocation gives you more freedom later on, as it focuses on companions and one weapon, giving more points for other attributes (defense not included). Dialog options start with 18 points – if you go melee, you get to lie better, if you go ranged, you get to persuade better.	Defense is bad. Companions needed, send some.

Hard Mode Build

I’ve tried to ruin the build as much as I could. Is it going to be that bad? Be the first to find out.

Attribute: -1 point to strength, intellect and temperament, +3 points to dexterity, perception, charm;
Skills: leadership and melee;
Aptitude: medical technician junior grade ;

Pros	Cons
You actually end up with a lot of 30 and 15-point skills. Jack-of-all-trades	Nothing at all! This is the best build, don’t trust anyone who says otherwise!

If you have some great builds of your own to share, please leave them in the comment section, and we’ll be sure to add the best ones to the article.