This guide was (mostly) made after a measly 20 hours of playtime, in hopes of improving the experience of players who are more patient and wise than I, when the regular priced game releases tomorrow on 6SEP2023. I will avoid spoilers regarding the story, while providing the raw information that should have been provided in the tooltips.

I will attempt to be as brief and unbiased as possible. Note that although I am currently playing on Normal difficulty, my preference in Fallout 4 and Skyrim has always been Very Had, usually as a stealth archer and/or unlimited mana mage. (Despite numerous attempts to indulge in other playstyles, I might add!)

Given my limited hours of gameplay, personal playstyle, errors and inaccuracies are inevitable. Please offer corrections in the comments.



PS: I tried to keep my complaints about the NPCs to a minimum. It's just... look, you'll meet them for yourself if you haven't already. I wouldn't exactly feel comfortable entrusting them with an ethical dilemma, much less the galaxy or my starship keys.

Professions are the LEAST important aspect of character generation. They alter a handful of insignificant lines of dialogue, and provide three starting skills. That's it. If you pick a profession purely for roleplay, it will barely dent your gameplay.

That said, if you hate having a useless skill point mocking you 20 hours later, read on. All skills with a useless (or situationally useless) skill will be marked. You'll want all the good skills eventually, so all professions without useless skills are equally good.

Note:
Crafting skills are rated poorly. Most weapon mods provide negligible benefits compared to legendary prefixes and weapon skills. Same situation for armor mods. I suppose you could craft large quantities of consumables with outposts, but that's another can of worms.

Bounty Hunter - S Tier

No disclaimers at all. Every single one of these skills is something you want, some of them quite early in the game, some much later.

Piloting: Not needed until mid game, but completely necessary by midgame.

Targeting Control Systems: Completely mandatory to board and steal ships (outside quests).

Boost Pack Training: One of the best skills to spend your first level up on.



<File Not Found> - A Tier

Great profession with a single minor disclaimer. Has the most RP flavor, in my opinion.

Wellness: Unless you're running a 1HP challenge, or a glass cannon that stays at low HP for damage bonuses, having more HP is never a bad thing.

Ballistics: Energy weapons and ballistics both have decent late game options, but good ballistic weapons are easier to find (and thus get legendary variants of) sooner. They also require fewer skills to mod effectively. Last, but not least, they have the best range. Range is king on planet surfaces, as otherwise you'll get swarmed.

Piloting: You WILL want Piloting 4 for C class ships, as soon as possible. It doesn't matter how good you are at ground combat if you can't survive space combat.



This is the only entry for A Tier. The only reason you might not like this profession is if you're doing a laser only / melee only challenge run, are running a 1HP challenge, or a Ship Class A challenge.

I'll explain the okayish professions in detail.


Cyberneticist - C Tier

Lasers: Suboptimal, at least at chargen. Energy weapons aren't bad, but their good mods take more research, and fewer enemies carry good laser weapons, so it might take awhile to find a good legendary of a weapon you like.

Medicine: Suboptimal, at least at chargen. You are generally better off investing in avoiding damage (usually by killing things faster) than healing damage.

Security: YMMV. The best use of lockpicking that I've found so far is peaceful options when working against factions I like, and an extra chance at looting legendary gear in some dungeons.


Diplomat - C Tier

Commerce: The best T1 social skill. It applies to ALL buy and sell interactions, include starships.

Persuasion: Useful if you like the dialogue. I don't. Most quests are designed such that you can fail dialogue with minimal consequences (that matter).

Wellness: Max HP is good.


Long Hauler - B Tier

Weight Lifting: An early must pick. Your rate limiting step in acquiring money is in how many weapons you can carry. Money is used for things like ammo, medicine, rocks, and ship cargo upgrades. Note that in the early game, you will have VASTLY more inventory capacity than the ship you are flying on - especially if you're willing to get a little encumbered.

Piloting: You want Rank 3 by midgame, rank 4 by lategame. Few things are more disheartening than loading a quicksave because you aren't allowed to use good shields, weapons, or reactors. If you build a ship well, it will serve 90% of the functions of an outpost with a fraction of the time investment.

Ballistic Weapons Systems: You might prefer missile or laser weapons, but ballistics are perfectly viable, especially Class B and up.


Soldier - C Tier

Fitness: Suboptimal, but more O2 for sprinting/walking encumbered isn't bad.

Ballistics: Energy and ballistics are both viable in terms of overall damage, but ballistics are easier to mod, easier to find ammo for, easier to find legendaries of, and have more variety.

Boost Pack Training: Absolutely necessary for enjoying mountains, cities, combat, and hauling 3 times your carry weight in loot to the general store for the 100th time.

In the interests of brevity, I'll only be listing the skills that are dealbreakers.


Beast Hunter - F Tier

Gastronomy: Crafting Skill. Bad even by crafting skill standards, as some of the best food items are quite good even when eaten raw.

Fitness: Oxygen is used for sprinting, and walking while encumbered. That's it. An extra 10% won't matter, especially once you <REDACTED>.


Bouncer - F Tier

Boxing: Remember Paralyzing Palm from Fallout? This is that, but I haven't found ANY fist weapons. You'll be guaranteed to sloooowly win any 1v1 fight. If a fight isn't 1v1, and the hard fights aren't, you're a sitting duck.

Fitness: Oxygen again.


Chef - F Tier

Gastronomy: Crafting again.

Dueling: Pretty good with the late game weapons, skills, armor, and lots of medpacks. A very bad idea for the early game.

Scavenging: You're rate limiting step in hoarding loot isn't finding it, it's carrying it back to base.


Cyber Runner - F Tier

Theft: Anything you can safely steal from, you could safely be killing.


Explorer - F Tier

Astrodynamics: Grav Jumping is already free, and even Class A ships have plenty of range. My opinion might change depending on how Survival Mode update/DLC/mods are (im)balanced.

Scanning: Doesn't matter unless you're hunting for outpost locations, which is a late game thing.


Gangster - F Tier

Boxing: Boxing again.

Theft: Theft again.


Homesteader - F Tier

Geology: The best way to get rocks is to buy them. If you insist on mining them, a tiny boost won't make a difference. In the ultra late game, outposts will produce most if not all of your rocks.

Surveying: You might want a level or two at some point, as a luxury, but scanning is more about being a completionist than anything practical.


Industrialist - F Tier

Persuasion: Dialogue again.

Research Methods: This gives you a discount. On rocks. When used on one-time research unlocks. Also a crafting discount, if you find anything worth crafting in the first place.


Pilgrim - F Tier

Scavenging: Even more loot!

Surveying: Scanning!

Gastronomy: Crafting!


Professor - F Tier

Astrodynamics: Grav Jumping!

Geology: Rocks!

Research Methods: One time discount on rocks!


Ronin - F Tier

Scavenging: Even more loot!

Dueling: Melee is a bit risky to base your build around.


Space Scoundrel - F Tier

Pistol Certification: Can be viable, but I prefer rifles.

Persuasion: Dialogue.


Xenobiologist - F Tier

Surveying: Again.

Fitness: Suboptimal, but not terrible.

Unlike Fallout New Vegas, the traits are terrible. There are teeny tiny things you can minmax, but there's nothing exciting or gamechanging. Your best bet is to ignore traits altogether unless you have a very specific reason.


Warning: I am still on my first character, so I obviously don't have personal experience with most of these traits!

Alien DNA - S Tier

More Max HP and Oxygen, in exchange for food being less effective. How much HP and Oxygen? No idea. Personally, I don't like consumables anyway, so this was a no brainer pick for me.

I don't know if the "food is less effective" refers to just the HP bonus or to the other effects of food. Either way, the few good food items are still good and the many useless food items are still useless.


Terra Firma - S Tier

Planets have things like pirate snipers in open fields, hiking trips measured in kilometers, and multiple abandoned mining outposts worth of loot. You will want the HP and the O2. Even and especially if the planet has a breathable atmosphere!


Introvert - A Tier

If you have pack mules/decoys companions you likely won't need O2 for sprinting or walking while encumbered, so even _IF_ you like companions, this is still a good trait when running errands solo.


Hero Worshipped - C Tier

It's really sad that a joke character with "annoying" in the tooltips, is far more entertaining and lovable than the characters you're supposed to like. Offers no meaningful gameplay benefit, and I don't know if it's possible to evict/kill the fan if you get sick of him. I'd pick this trait on a challenge/speedrun/achievement playthrough, not on a main playthrough.


Wanted - ? Tier

I'm really regretting not picking this trait. I don't even know what the health threshhold is, or what the damage boost is, but I've been on low health enough times to wish I had a tiny extra edge to keep my alive.

Stealth archer builds can safely lower their health on any planet with gas vents. S Tier.

Berzerker builds will frequently find themselves at much lower health than expected. A tiny damage boost just *might* keep one alive longer. B Tier.

Sporadic EXP + Loot delivery service. Loot and EXP are plentiful, but still nice. D Tier.

If you find EXP + Loot self delivery services to be annoying, this is F tier. If you are playing on a sufficiently high difficulty or a permadeath challenge, sporadic ambushes are FFF Tier.


Taskmaster - ? Tier

A well designed Class C mothership shouldn't be getting damaged, but if it does, the rate at which you repair your shields and weapons is a matter of life and death. If you are playing a bronzeman permadeath challenge, this is easily S tier.

Note that this requires having crew on your ship. Only select named NPCs can become crew. Crew are people who you will be stuck in close quarters with, over and over again, every time you use your starship. Even likable NPC's become less so the third time they try to start the exact same conversation with you.

Alien DNA - S Tier

More Max HP and Oxygen, in exchange for food being less effective. How much HP and Oxygen? No idea. Personally, I don't like consumables anyway, so this was a no brainer pick for me.

I don't know if the "food is less effective" refers to just the HP bonus or to the other effects of food. Either way, the few good food items are still good and the many useless food items are still useless.


Wanted - S Tier

I'm really regretting not picking this trait. I don't even know what the health threshhold is, or what the damage boost is, but I've been on low health enough times to wish I had a tiny extra edge.

If you find EXP+Loot self delivery services to be annoying, this is F tier. If you are playing on a sufficiently high difficulty, with a permadeath challenge, this is FFF tier. Otherwise, it's as I said: a routine EXP+Loot self delivery service.


Hero Worshipped - C Tier

It's really sad that a joke character with "annoying" in the tooltips, is far more entertaining and lovable than the characters you're supposed to like. Offers no gameplay benefit, and I don't know if it's possible to evict/kill the fan if you get sick of him.


Dream Home - F Tier

At the end of the tutorial you get access to the main faction base. It's basement has all crafting stations right next to infinite storage chests.

you'd only pick this trait for a challenge, and earning credits isn't a challenge.


Kid Stuff - FFF Tier

2% of ALL your savings, for a home you don't want or need? Yikes! As above, not annoying enough to be a challenge but far too annoying to be fun.


Taskmaster - ? Tier

A well designed Class C mothership shouldn't be getting damaged, but if it does, the rate at which you repair your shields and weapons is a matter of life and death. If you are playing a bronzeman permadeath challenge, this is easily S tier.

Note that this requires having crew on your ship. Only select named NPCs can become crew. Crew are people who you will be stuck in close quarters with, over and over again, every time you use your starship. I want to rate this as F tier, but I can't rule out the existence of ethical, mature, competent NPCs just yet.


Empath Vs Extrovert

Empath - D Tier

Useful if you are speedrunning companion affinity/quests. I would rate this higher if there was a single companion I liked.

Extrovert - A Tier

If you have pack mules/decoys companions you likely won't need O2 for sprinting or walking while encumbered, so even _IF_ you like companions, this is still a good trait when running errands solo.



Spaced Vs Terra Firma

Spaced - F Tier

Outside of some unusual circumstances I've yet to encounter, you don't need HP or O2 in space. Wild, I know. Space Stations have plenty of air, lots of cover, short travel distances, and less loot, so you REALLY don't need this buff.

Terra Firma - S Tier

Planets have things like pirate snipers in open fields, hiking trips measured in kilometers, and multiple abandoned mining outposts worth of loot. You will want the HP and the O2. Even and especially if the planet has a breathable atmosphere!



Freestar Collective Settler VS Neon Street Rat VS United Colonies Native

Freestar Collective Settler - D Tier
I like the faction itself, but I've yet to meet a named faction NPC with dialogue I liked, and I certainly don't need more loot from quests, and I REALLY don't want the bounties I'll inevitably accrue against the Var'uun and UC to be more expensive than they're already going to be.

Neon Street Rat - F Tier
As above, except I don't like the faction. Also, Neon is a single city on a single planet.

United Colonies Native - F Tier
As above, except I don't like the faction.


Raised Enlightened VS Raised Universal VS Serpent's Embrace

Raised Enlightened - F Tier
Doesn't even promise dialogue, just a one time loot chest.

Raised Universal - F Tier
As above, but a less likeable faction.

Serpent's Embrace - FFF Tier
As above, but an even less likeable faction. Additionally, your Max HP and O2 get penalized if you don't jump to different systems regularly, in exchange for a very temporary bonus to the above when you do.

The rate at which skills are acquired slows down over time. It's hard to get to level 100 if the average level of enemies is 50 or less. I assume this can be mitigated by NG+ (haven't done so yet).

The rate at which content gets more difficult accelerates by the same token. It's much easier to kill a level 10 pirate with no combat skills than it is to kill a level 100 pirate with no combat skills.

Therefore, it is important that your first ~30 skills are chosen to maximize your ability to survive and acquire EXP. Nothing hurts like seeing a skillpoint in Gastronomy when you are one skillpoint away from the capstone of your build.

Note that I haven't had time to take my own advice yet, on account of still being on my first character. Take all my opinions with a grain of salt.

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Since there are so many viable builds, and I assume you can read the tooltips for yourself, I will only discuss a few of the most important skills, and then move on to warning you on what NOT to take.

The first priority is to know what NOT to take. There are plenty of viable builds, and even a suboptimal build can be fun if you have good skills and strategy. Still, there are no regrets like a skillpoint in an useless skill, with no hope of a respec in sight.


The physical tree is mostly good, but there are a few things to ignore:

Physical Tier 1
Brawling - Great at cheesing 1v1 fights (which are easy anyway), tedious and dangerous when outnumbered (which is almost always).
Fitness - You should have plenty of O2 from traits and equipment. Anything more is a lategame luxury.

Physical Tier 3
Cellular Regeneration - Testing needed. Healing items are plentiful, and I *think* you automatically heal from injuries over time anyway, so this is a lategame luxury.
Decontamination - As above, but for infections (airborne) instead of injuries (thermal/kinetic)

Physical Tier 4
Neurostrikes - See note on brawling. Provides short range AOE CC, but doesn't help against guns at mid-long range.

Rejuvenation - YMMV. I like not needing medpacks when fighting things my level and below. That said, this ruins any traits or prefixes that rely on keeping health below a given threshhold.

The social tree is mostly bad, but it has two gems gem.

Social Tier 1
Commerce - Take this, ignore the rest. It applies to buying and selling starships and starship parts, the biggest sources and sinks of money in the game.

Scavenging - Avoid. It looks good on paper, so I'll explain. If you're running low on medpacks and ammo, you can fix both problems by doing more damage per bullet with combat skills. If you max out all combat skills and STILL manage to run out of ammo, consider using a weapon or backup weapon with more common ammo. Might be useful for collecting rare ammo, depending on how this skill works.

Social Tier 2
Isolation - The only good social skill, and possibly the best skill. At max rank, you're looking at +40% damage to ALL weapons and +120 armor to ALL damage types while without a companion.

Diplomacy - Avoid. It looks good on paper, so I'll have to explain. Works only if you're willing to be very good (miss out on corpse loot and EXP) or very evil (shoot surrendering combatants in the face). Only works on human enemies with a level no more than 20% higher than yours. Note that +20% of 10 is 14, while +20% of 100 is 120.

After 20 hours of playtime, on normal difficulty, I was level 30 and farming level 75+ enemies. +20% of level 30 is 36. Completely useless for the fights that are actually dangerous. Use only for pacifist challenge runs, or to avoid killing innocents if you make a mistake on an ironman playthrough.

Most social skills have the same flaw. Take them only as a luxury for inflicting shennanigans.

Social Tier 3
Outpost Management - Avoid everything related to outposts like the plague until you are well past the mid game. Hopefully some updates/exploiters/mods will prove me wrong, as I normally love settlement building.

Social Tier 4
Avoid entirely.


Most of these options are good, but some are better than others.

Combat Tier 1
Dueling - Avoid early. Very good in the late game, but only against enemies you could easily kill anyway. As a luxury, it's great for saving ammo, but when outnumbered against truly dangerous enemies, close range is a bit risky.

Shotgun - Avoid early, for similar reasons to the above. Don't get me wrong, shotguns are really good, even before you invest skills in them, but I wouldn't want to be stuck with using just shotguns.

Combat Tier 2
Incapacitation - Avoid. You can't loot unconscious enemies, not sure about EXP.

Demolitions - Avoid early. The bonuses are REALLY good, but the weapon selection is incredibly limited, and explosive ammo tends to be quite expensive. Worth it if you have the right mods/weapons. Not sure if it applies to explosive prefixes on legendaries.

Combat Tier 3
Marksmanship - Avoid. I made the mistake of taking a similar perk in Skyrim. At close range, knocking down enemies sounds nice, but at close range you have plenty of options. At long range, getting headshots is a lot harder when a pirate takes a 15 second nap after every few bullets to the head. The crit chance is meh unless you have a way to stack it.

Rapid Reloading - Avoid early. If your weapon runs out of ammo before the enemy is dead, the weapon is the problem, not the reloading.

Targeting - Avoid. In theory it's great, tier 4 makes disarming enemies trivial with automatic weapon. In practice, the "Highlighting" highlights enemies so well that you can't see the cover they are standing behind. This can lead to wasting a lot of bullets on the broadside of a barn. Besides, between the muzzle flash, compass indicators, and verbal insults, pirate aren't hard to find.

Combat Tier 4
Commenting on this tier would require an understanding of criticals, downing threshholds, and armor that I don't have. They seem good on paper.


Science is a bit weird. There are quite a few gems, but most of it is late game luxuries. In retrospect, I may have judged some professions too harshly, as a good Tech 1 pick doesn't exist.

Science 1
Medicine - Least bad? Medpacks are plenty effective as is, and the healing stacks, so no need.
Research Methods - A 60% hand crafting discount would be great if anything was worth crafting.
Surveying - Shaving a few seconds off of an hour of searching feels nice, at least.

Science 2
Weapon Engineering - Avoid early game, get eventually.
Spacesuit Design - Avoid early game, get eventually.

Science 3
Avoid everything. Pick the least bad option from Tech 1-2 instead.

Science 4
Anuetronic Fission - Avoid early, get eventually. There aren't many ways to get more ship power.
Special Projects - Avoid early, get eventually. Mostly used for modding energy weapons.
Avoid anything involving outposts.


Tech only has a few bad picks, and they aren't even bad so much as competing with better choices. Obviously, avoid investing in more than one weapon type at first.

Tech 1
No bad picks, though ship performance won't matter until mid-late game.

Tech 2
No bad picks, though ship performance won't matter until mid-late game.

Tech 3
Robotics 4 - Avoid. Same deal as Persuasion: If you aren't farming enemies twice your level, something's wrong with your build. The first three ranks are nice, but skip the fourth.

Starship Engineering - Avoid. I'm pretty sure no ship parts require it. If you're taking hull damage, something is wrong with your build or your tactics.

Tech 4
Automated Weapons - Avoid at first. Automated weapons have poor targetting priority, poor stats, don't focus fire, are reported to bug out, and have friendly fire issues. Until you have an invincible mothership that can afford to blast or pay off any faction, avoid turrets.

Em Weapon Systems - Regular weapons can get ships 90% disabled just fine. You don't need much power from an EM weapon to disable the remaining 10% of a ship.

I'll try to keep this as short as possible, to accommodate freedom of play in an open ended rpg.


The early game essentials are Loot, Damage, and Mobility. Which skills you choose, and in what order, matters less than ensuring you have at least something in each category. Below are my opinions on the best skills for each quality.


Weight Lifting - Physical Tier 1

Loot is money, money buys stuff, stuff keeps you alive. Being able to move quickly while burdened with said stuff will also help keep you alive. AFAIK encumbrance penalties are based on percentages, not flat values, so +100 unburdened carry weight means +200 slightly burdens, and +400 heavily burdens. For comparison, your starting character inventory is about 135 and your starter spaceship has about 300 carry weight. Get this to rank 4 ASAP, you'll thank me later.


Boost Pack Training - Tech Tier 1
A single point unlocks the use of boostpacks. Boost packs are the only way to move at a full sprint, while encumbered, aside from <REDACTED>. They are also helpful in dealing with wildlife, <REDACTED> "puzzles", hiking up and down mountains, etc. You're going to do a LOT of walking. Might as well make it fun!


That's 5 skill points so far. I highly recommend spending at least 4 points (more on higher difficulties) on stacking damage modifiers on your weapon(s) of choice.

Options include:
Social Tier 2: Isolation. With no companion, +40% damage to ALL weapons and +120 to ALL armor types.
Combat Tier 1-2: Damage type of choice. Ballistic is the most flexible and common.
Combat Tier 1-2: Weapon type of choice. Rifle is the most flexible and common.
Combat Tier 3-4: Additional modifiers, such as bypassing armor, crit chance, etc.
Physical Tier 1-4: Stealth. I would avoid stealth skills until late game, but you can make it work.
Physical Tier 1-4 + Combat Tier 1-4: Melee. I heavily advise against it, but you can make it work.


You can spend leftover skills however you want, but I'd advise spending no more than 8 or so skill points in luxuries - in my case Rejuvenation from Physical Tier 4 - before investing in the mid game necessities.

By this point you'll start running into a problem.

The level of pirates your comfortable with attacking on foot is rapidly increasing, but your ability to upgrade your ship has hit a brick wall. To survive high level dogfights - and therefore reach high level pirate bases safely - you'll need to invest in your ship.

You have two options:


A) Fully invest in a fast Class A ship. Max out your reactor and engine. Ditch all but the longest range weapons, if you even bother with weapons. Grab the best shield that your reactor supports, not that it matters.

The idea is to jump into a system, outrun any dogfights, and jump until you aren't being attacked. In the worst case, you can probably outrange attackers and whittle them down with missiles.

This is a relatively cheap but risky short term solution. I haven't tested it. Might require the Starship Engines Tech 2 skill.


B) Fully invest in a massive Class C ship. Enjoy the best engines, shields, reactors, jump drive, weapons, AND cargo space! You won't fit on small landing pads anymore, but that only applies to player owned outposts, and even then you can build bigger landing pads if needed.

Counter intuitively, Piloting is NOT the skill you'll be rushing! Invest two points ASAP for maneuvering, but don't bother getting your Class B license until you can actually afford Class B ship parts. Class A parts are expensive enough before the jump to B, much less to C!


C) Join the crimson fleet, steel a class C ship? Can you do that? Would you still need the Piloting 4 skill? I need to check that quest out.


Assuming you are going with B), here are your priorities, in order of importance:

Social Tier 1
Commerce 4.

Tech Tier 1-2
Invest 8 points between the following:
Targetting (at least 1)
Boost Pack (at least 1)
Piloting (at least 2)
Security (no more than 3)

Tech Tier 3
Starship Design (4)

Last Step
Finish getting Piloting to 4.


Commerce 4 and Targeting of at least 1 is necessary to farm vast quantities of money efficiently. Go to a bounty board (in a low level area at first), take a space pirate hunting mission, go to the location, survive the dogfight. Don't kill the last pirate, target and disable the engines instead. Board and steal the ship.

Land the boarded ship at any friendly spaceport. Pay the registration fee (90% of the ship cost) then sell the ship (10% of the ship cost + commerce bonus). After selling the pirate ship, use the landing pad to summon your original ship, then go pirate hunting again. Earns EXP and cash, both of which you'll need for creating your dream ship.

Presumably, you can build or find an outpost with a bounty board in a high level star system, for a better chance at finding bigger and pricier pirates. I'm not sure on that.


You might wonder why you'd rush Starship Design 1 before Piloting 4. That's because Design unlocks a lot of parts that are technically Class A, but better than normal Class A parts and better than some Class B or even C parts - all while being far cheaper than Class B. Sure, Class C might have the best reactor and shields, but the best engines (that I know of) is Class A with a Design 1 requirement! You'll need the engines before your ship can lift an ultraheavy reactor anyway.

For more advice on building a ship, consult a ship guide. Due to some quirky but flavorful game design, building a good ship is quite the challenge.

What matters is that you can now build any ship part, provided you can afford it and find the right spaceport. You might find it worthwhile to own multiple ships - one minimalist ship for looting, and one mothership that you slowly improve as you earn money.

I'm basing my assumptions based on the starship parts available in the starting area, at level 1, with no skills.

Talk to the Starship Technician, near the trade terminal, at the landing pad, city of New Atlantis, planet of Jemison, system of Alpha Centauri. He'll let you modify the Frontier. (You can't sell the Frontier, so you are better off modifiying it than letting collect dust in a ship storage slot.)

Different landing pads, NPCs, and star systems offer different parts. Consult a specialized guide for a complete list. More expensive / skill heavy parts are usually better, but I found LOTS of exceptions.

Below is a heavily abbreviated list of my favored parts, assuming you are level 1 with no skills, and your only Starship Technician is the one at the New Atlantis landing pad.


Nova Galactic 2x1 Frontier. Has a bed (sleeping heals you), cooking and research.
Noba Galactic 2x1 Infirmary. Has medical and research.
Nova Galactic 2x1 Workshop. Has all crafting except medical, research, and cooking.

Note: I only use the above habs as mounting points for other modules, I craft at the main faction HQ - the chests in that basement can hold unlimited items, unlike ships or outposts. That's why I don't use habs unless they give me more mounting points per mass than a structural part.

Magellan C2X Cockpit for storage space. Best view. The C1 variant has less mass. One per ship.

Cargo Hold: Ommitted. The player can technically carry infinite weight - being overburdened will damage but not kill you.

Reactor: Whatever grants the most power. Every dozen level ups or so check to see if a better reactor is available.

Shield: Whatever grants the most shields. Max shields are more important than shield regeneration, since you can always run away while you wait for shields to recharge.

Grav Drive: Whatever grants the most jump thrust. If you keep your ship small, you won't need much.

Landing Gear, Bay, Docker: the Frontier default are fine for the early game.

Fuel: At first the 200G He3 Tank has the best fuel to mass ratio. As a rule of thumb, tanks with more fuel have a better fuel to mass ratio.

Engines: The White Dwarf 1000 and 2000 series have the best early game mobility per power and thrust per power. One of each should be enough to max out Mobility (which affects boost speed) and Max Speed (which affects max speed with or without boosting). Note that engines must be fully powered to provide their maximum speed - if you can get the maximum 100 mobility and 150 speed with less power hungry engines, you'll have more power to spend on weapons.

Weapons: I recommend the PB-30 series of particle beam weapons, as they have 3500 range - triple that of most weapons used by pirates. I have the regular particle beams as my first weapon group, the PB-30 Automatic variant as my second weapon group, then either missiles or an EM weapon on the third.

All spare power goes to the first weapon group, one power keeps the Automatic variant loaded. The third group has one power if needed. This provides the best balance of DPS and burst damage at a low power cost.

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When ambushed by pirates, boost away immediately, wait until the closest pirate is ~5000 meters away, then turn around. At ~4000 meters away begin firing. Once the pirate is ~2000 meters away, start fleeing again. Repeat until pirate is dead. This is how I defeated ALL the pirates at <REDACTED> using a cheap ~50,000 value Class A fighter, without any ship skills.

Being fight capable means sacrificing luxuries like crafting and cargo space. Eventually, with better engines and reactors, it will be possible to have cargo space without sacrificing combat performance.

If you're expecting the mods of Fallout 4 or the enchantments of Skyrim, you'll be dissapointed. Most of the power of a weapon is in it's random prefixes (explosive, poison, bleeding, etc.), it's quality (calibrated, advanced, refined) and it's rarity (rare, legendary, etc.). You're looking at multipliers in the +300% to +1000% range.

The remaining bulk of combat power comes from skills. +40% damage here, +30% damage there, another +30% damage with a chance of a status effect... it all adds up to a lot, even if we assume all the bonuses are additive. Knowing bethesda, I suspect that some of those multipliers are going to be multiplicative.

Then we have weapon mods. We're looking at +10 damage to a 40 damage early game weapon, or +10 damage on a 150 damage late game weapon, a little extra accuracy, larger magazine size, small chance of a status effect, your scope of choice, etc. I'm not saying you shouldn't invest in mods, I'm just saying it will likely be your last priority in your pursuit of minmaxxing.


Same concept applies to armor. I will say that Spacesuit 3 is nice, as it lets you customize the boostpack, but the rest is more of the same. +10 damage resistance doesn't mean much on a helmet with the Bolstering prefix (+100 damage resistance while at low health), 100+ base armor, and another 100+ armor from the Isolationist social skill.

What do you need to make outposts work? First, ask what you want from an outpost.

Credits? Nope. Selling guns is so profitable, that selling everything you find is more trouble than it's worth.

Resources? With enough storage and extractors, you can harvest thousands of resources, instead of the dozens offered by traders.

Medpacks? Weapons? Armor? You can't craft those, sorry. No, not even medpacks. Yes, I know medpacks are on the cover of the Medicine 1 Research, but if you check the tooltip it just lets you make non-healing items that treat injuries and conditions.

You'll have to wait for the inevitable DLC, I'm afraid, though we should get mods sooner.

NPCs? Sure, you can hire unnamed civilians to man outposts, though I'm unclear on what the benefit is. You could also build a fort (or a prison) for named companions, just to store them somewhere other than the Lodge.

Missions? AFAIK, the only thing an outpost needs to generate missions is a bounty board, and possibly a landing pad for convenient fast travel. No skills required.

Challenge? Prestige? I can work with that. There are few tasks that consume more time and resources than building an elaborate museum.

EXP? THIS is where outposts shine. It takes a short while to get going, but you're looking at EXP farms that grant an excess of 50,000 EXP an hour. This is THE fastest known way to gain EXP. This is what propels you from late game (levels 40-50) to late game (levels 50-100+).

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So, let's talk skills.

Outpost Management (Social Tier 3)
Tier 1 Additional cargo links, required for complex recipes, especially across multiple planets.
Tier 2 Additional robots can be constructed. Includes logistics robots, farming robots, etc.
Tier 3 Additional crew can be consigned to outposts.
Tier 4 Outposts extractors work twice as fast.

Only Tier 1 is needed for most EXP farms, but eventually you'll want Tier 4.

Research (Tech Tier 1)
Tier 4 Crafting and Research costs 60% less. Craft over twice as much with the same ingredients (not including rounding errors).

Botany (Tech Tier 2)
Tier 1 Unlocks farms, for harvesting resources from plants. Results vary by planet, but generally you can get fiber, nutrient, adhesive, structural material, etc. Likely not the best for EXP farms, but great for crafting mods.

Zoology (Tech Tier 2)
Tier 1 Unlocks ranching, for harvesting resources from animals. Results vary by planet, but generally you get fiber, nutrient, meat, bone, etc. Likely not the best for EXP farms, but great for crafting consumables.

Scanning (Tech Tier 2)
Tier 4 You can detect unique inorganic resources on planetary surfaces. Mandatory if you want land your ship somewhere that borders multiple rare resource types.

Astrophysics (Tech Tier 3)
Tier 2 You can scan any planetary body in the current system. Saves on a LOT of jump drive cutscenes. Worthless if you are patient enough to jump to planets, or if you look up a guide to figure out which resources are found on which planets.

Outpost Engineering (Tech Tier 3)
Rank 3 You can research and build max rank outpost modules.
Rank 4 Outpost modules cost 50% less to build.

You'll want Rank 4 eventually, but Rank 2 is enough to get most farms started.

Planetary Habitation (Tech Tier 4)
Rank 1 You can build outposts on planets with extreme temperatures of hot or cold. +4 max outposts.
Rank 2 As above, but for pressure. AFAIK needed for airless worlds, which most worlds are. +8 max.
Rank 3 As above, but for corrosion. Needed for acidic planets, which often have certain resources. +12 max.
Rank 4 As above, but for gravity. Needed for most moons, where you find necessities like He-3 fuel and other rare resources. +16 max outposts.

Special Projects (Tech Tier 4)
Tier 2 Craft rare components.
Tier 3 Craft exotic components.
Tier 4 Resource extractors collect more resources.

20k EXP an hour farms are possible without investing in crafting skills, but for 60k+ EXP an hour farms you'll need to be crafting advanced recipes.

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The exact method and mechanics of outpost EXP farms are beyond the scope of this guide. Look for a specialized guide if you want details, but it boils down to the fact that all crafts grant a minimum of 1 EXP, you can batch craft 99 items at a time, and you can build massive storage units that can hold tens of thousands of materials.