There are fewer things in Starfield that feel more rewarding than fully leveling up a skill.
Having your character be fully proficient in one aspect of the game is something that takes a bit of dedication, considering how much grinding you have to do for certain challenges. The juice, though, is worth the squeeze, especially if you’re focusing all your efforts on one particular skill.
In a thread posted to the Starfield subreddit yesterday, players discussed which skills they grinded to rank four first. And in a game with so many options, the answers were quite varied.
The most common answers among Starfield players were skills of convenience, such as Piloting, Security, and Weightlifting. These skills, among others, removed barriers of entry for certain elements of gameplay and essentially made the game easier to navigate. When you have maxed-out Weightlifting, for example, your character’s carrying capacity is increased by 100 kilograms, which is a night-and-day difference that makes the game feel so much more convenient.
Other players maxed out typical RPG necessities, such as weapon skills and maximum HP. With skills for each type of gun, as well, those answers varied, too.
Security, which is the lockpicking skill, drew mixed criticism from fans as players in the thread concurred that it was “pointless” to rank up the skill all the way if you’re someone who’s actually got a knack for puzzles. Although the Security skill makes the puzzles easier with more ranks, it’s not entirely necessary to max it out if you can figure out the minigame. Personally, I got to Security rank two and stopped leveling it, simply because the blue ring is enough of a helper with those puzzles, and the lack of master-level locks that I’ve encountered just hasn’t warranted the extra point.
I often found myself putting points into skills as I needed them, especially in the later stages of the game. When I encountered missions that required Stealth (such as the Ryujin Industries quest line), I put a point in Stealth. When I needed to level up my ship’s shields to progress the Crimson Fleet storyline, I did so. That’s kind of how I’ve been playing the game, and I’ve been finding that leveling up skills on an as-needed basis has actually been an extremely convenient way to play. It gets me excited to level up my skills and keeps me on my toes for what I’m going to potentially level up next.
What’s most important, though, is that in Starfield, the progression feels meaningful, and I often find myself looking forward to my next level-up because assigning a skill point and unlocking the next challenge associated with it feels rewarding. Plus, seeing the fully realized version of each skill’s patch in the skill tree is a badge of honor that’s worth the grind.
