Wondering what skills are available in The Outer Worlds 2? In this highly anticipated RPG, you can mold your playstyle and fine-tune your character build by strategically investing skill points into a diverse array of 12 distinct proficiencies. These choices will profoundly alter how you navigate every situation, from combat encounters to intricate social interactions. When first crafting your character, you’ll have the opportunity to select three specialized skills, each beginning with a two-point head start, laying the groundwork for your unique journey across the galaxy.
While the skill system in The Outer Worlds 2 has been streamlined, the impact of each choice is significantly greater. Forget allocating points to individual weapon types; this time around, your skill investments are designed to be truly transformative. These proficiencies are essential for enhancing your character’s build, working in tandem with various traits to fundamentally alter your interactions with the game world and your approach to combat scenarios.
Understanding The Outer Worlds 2 Skills
Every skill you choose in The Outer Worlds 2 plays a pivotal role in defining your gameplay experience. Whether it’s mastering a particular weapon type or unlocking unique dialogue options, your chosen proficiencies significantly expand the range of possibilities available to you. Remember to also explore how these skills tie into the game’s perks, as reaching specific skill thresholds often unlocks powerful new upgrades and abilities.
Certain skills, such as Sneak and Guns, are clearly designed to enhance your combat prowess. Others, like Speech and Science, come to the forefront during critical conversations and exploration. To succeed in the diverse challenges of the Halcyon colony, striking a healthy balance between these categories is essential, as you’ll frequently find yourself engaging in both intense firefights and nuanced discussions.
Below is a comprehensive breakdown of every skill available in The Outer Worlds 2, detailing their primary effects and how they can be leveraged in your adventures:
- Melee: Increases damage dealt with melee weapons, allowing you to further improve your ability to use melee weapons of various types.
- +10% Melee Damage
- -2.5% damage received while blocking.
- Lockpick: Allows you to unlock locked containers and doors. Upgrade this skill to unlock perks that let you pickpocket humans and preview the contents of locked containers.
- Locks with a difficulty at or below your skill level can be opened
- +1% Evasion Chance.
- Leadership: Increase the damage and survivability of your companions. Upgrade this skill to unlock perks that reduce the cooldowns of your companion’s abilities and improve the effectiveness of your companions.
- +8% Companion Damage
- +4% Companion Health
- Medical: Increases maximum toxicity, allowing more uses of the Pharmaceutical Inhaler and increased resistance to Zyranium poisoning. Investing allows you to select perks that further improve the inhaler, temporarily tame creatures, and better utilize corrosive weapons.
- +7 Toxicity Crash Threshold
- 5% Damage to Creatures.
- Observation: Reveals hidden objects in the world and subtle behaviors in conversations. Investing allows you to select perks that let you find more loot, track enemies, and more effectively use enemy weakspots.
- Hidden objects with a difficulty at or below your skill level can be found
- +15% Weakspot Damage
- Science: Increases your maximum gadget energy, allowing you to use gadgets like Tactical Time Dilation for longer. Investing allows you to select perks that further improve your gadgets and potency with shock weapons.
- +7 Gadget Energy Meter Max
- +10% more stacks of non-physical damage type side effects.
- Sneak: Makes it harder for enemies to detect you while crouched. Investing in this skill allows you to select perks that avoid traps and perform sneak attacks.
- +35% Sneak Attack Damage
- -2.5% NPC Awareness Detection Rate.
- Speech: Increases your ability to influence people in conversations. Investing in this skill gives you access to perks to get discounts at vendors, gain more reputation with factions, and intimidate others.
- Speech checks with a difficulty at or below your skill level can be selected
- +5% Damage to Humans
- Engineering: Increase the effectiveness of all armor, granting inherent damage reduction. In conversations and while exploring, this skill aids in the ability to act on the knowledge of mechanical systems. Investing allows you to select perks that further increase your defenses and benefits from weapon, helmet, and armor mods.
- Mechanical systems with a difficulty at or below your skill level can be fixed
- +1% Damage Resistance.
- Hack: Gives you access to unauthorized access to various mechanical systems such as vending machines, terminals, and auto-mechs. Investing in the Hack skill lets you select perks that disable auto-mechs directly, hack into bounty terminals, and access the restricted inventory of vending machines.
- Hack checks equal to a difficulty at or below your skill level can be overcome
- +5% Damage to Auto-Mechs
- Guns: Increases damage dealt with all types of guns, including ballistic, shock, plasma, and bio guns. Investing allows you to select perks that further improve your ability to use guns of various types.
- +10% Ranged Damage
- +1% Armor Penetration.
- Explosives: Increases damage dealt with explosive throwables, including mines and grenades, as well as weapons with AoE effects like grenade launchers. Allows you to disarm explosives like mines and traps. Investing in this skill increases the potency of explosives and plasma weapons.
- +10% Explosives Damage
- +1% Damage Resistance against Explosives
With this comprehensive overview of The Outer Worlds 2 skills, you’re now well-equipped to strategize your character’s development. Understanding these abilities will be crucial as you delve deeper into the game, especially when considering how they might complement your chosen companions and interactions with the various factions across the galaxy.