Discover everything you need to know about the best skills ranked in The Outer Worlds 2, including what makes them the best or worst ones.
Skills in The Outer Worlds 2 are the passive bonuses that grant you the ability to dominate the game. They affect combat effectiveness, exploration, dialogue options, and interactions throughout the game. Choosing the best skills in The Outer Worlds 2 is crucial, as your gameplay and build mostly depend on them. Gun is the best skill to invest points in because it improves ranged weapon damage and armor penetration.
Speech is also another best skill because it helps with dialogue and persuasion. You cannot freely respec later in the game. Each time you level up, you gain two skill points to allocate, so choose the skills wisely that suit your playstyle and complement the build. In this guide, we’ll discuss the best skills in The Outer Worlds 2, including how they influence your gameplay.
What Are Skills In The Outer World 2
Skills are your primary progression method and are used for basically every action that you take. The maximum level for skills, by the way, is 20, and your maximum player level is 30. Each time you level up, you’ll gain two skill points unless affected by certain flaws. So, you can get multiple skills to max level with some careful planning.
The skills you have also define what perks are available to you, which we will cover very shortly. Now, they’re quite important to level the right skills for those perks, but also just. Make a decision based on your overall build, as they come up very regularly in object and dialogue checks, and just overall your effectiveness in combat.
Best Skills Ranked in The Outer Worlds 2
Below are the best skills to invest your points in based on the build you’re running in The Outer Worlds 2.
1. Guns
Guns in the Outer World is mostly a combat skill. It increases your range damage as well as your armor penetration. This does come up sometimes in dialogue. This skill is very rarely used in object checks, but mostly as flavor text options when it comes up in dialogue. It’s basically like in dialogue, you typically would have like a good option and a bad sort of tough guy option.
It’s kind of like a tough guy altered option that you can pick. It’s never really going to give you access to something that you couldn’t otherwise have. It’s mostly just that combat skill, or my decision here for you would be to either invest in guns or melee, definitely not both.
2. Speech
Speech is similar to Leadership, but Speech occurs very often in dialogue checks, rarely in object checks. This skill itself also increases your damage to humans. You’re going to fight a lot of humans for the most part here. It’s creatures, humans, or mechs, and there are a lot of humans, especially in the late game. So, having a high speech is really valuable. Plus, it also gives you one of the best perks in the game that scales your damage based on your speech skill.
There’s even gear that scales based on your speech skill as well. So, there are a lot of benefits to having a higher amount of speech, especially in main quests and being able to convince, like the characters. This is a skill that you would want to consider investing in at least for one playthrough. This is just to see if you can take things a certain way compared to the standard path the game takes you on.
3. Engineering
Engineering is a decent skill to invest your points in because mechanical systems with a difficulty at or below your skill level can be fixed. This skill also allows you to gain a +1 damage resistance. The game has several jammed doors that can’t be unlocked easily. If you’re going to run the Brawny trait, you wouldn’t really invest in engineering. This is because you mitigate that. There’s some overlap there, but
Engineering does come up quite a lot outside of that. There are a lot of mechanical systems that you’ll interact with. So, having that skill highly is definitely beneficial. There are also perks related to crafting in the Engineering line.
4. Lockpick
Lockpick in The Outer Worlds 2 allows you to unlock locked containers and doors. Investing in Lockpick skill allows you to select perks that provide the ability to pickpocket humans. This skill does give you an evasion chance, which is nothing to sneeze at. So, you just avoid damage. There are going to be a ton of things to lockpick in this game, like doors, chests, etc. Definitely one to invest in, and at least one point for a specific perk. It is worthwhile investing in this or hack or both because lockpicking is just fantastic in every video game ever.
5. Science!
Science! is a skill that’s focused on your gadgets, like the time dilation, but there are multiple gadgets in this game as well. Plus, it also affects your non-physical damage types as well, and the amount of damage that those attacks actually do. This will come up occasionally in dialogue and object checks. One that I would consider picking up for a science-focused build or some sort of brilliant build. It increases the duration you can slow down time.
6. Hack
Hack is one of the core skills that is very similar to Lockpick in that you’ll come across computers all the time that can be hacked. This skill will also give you additional damage to auto mechanics, which are everywhere throughout the game. So, a little bit of effort benefits them. Hacking itself does come up occasionally in dialogue. Definitely, there are a lot of things that you can hack here, like bounty terminals, even the vending machines.
You can actually hack them if you get the skill high enough and the perks for it, as well as disabling those automech and then just general computer stuff. So, this is quite a useful skill that I would definitely recommend investing in. Though if you don’t, it’s not the end of the world. I actually chose not to invest in Hack on my main playthrough and solely invested in lockpick, and I didn’t feel like I missed out on anything.
7. Observation
Observation in Outer Worlds unveils hidden objects in the world. Investing in this skill allows you to find. This skill is basically useless in the game. What this skill does is that hidden objects with difficulty at or below your skill level can be found.
This just gives you a little UI pop-up, and if you go and hover over a certain object, it’ll then be highlighted for you. 80% of the time, this is simply just highlighting a mine on the ground that you already saw. But the second half of the time, it does bring up locked doors or something like that. Most parts you can already see them because they’re just obvious.
There is a companion that comes with the observation skills, so not much point investing in this skill if you’re going to run that companion. Observation does have its benefits, specifically for weak spot damage, because hitting weak spots is kind of like a critical hit. It gives you additional damage when you hit that spot.
8. Sneak
Sneaking in The Outer Worlds 2 makes you harder to detect. It gives you additional sneak damage and makes enemies harder to see you in terms of that detection radius. Almost no object or dialogue checks across the game did I ever actually see this come up. Probably wouldn’t invest in this unless you’re doing a full stealth build. Otherwise, it’s just kind of wasted skill points, as even the perks aren’t really valuable.
9. Medical
Medical enhances the maximum Toxicity in The Outer Worlds 2. This allows you to use more Medical Inhalers at a time and enhances resistance to Zyranium Poisoning. If you had that lower base health as well as a lower toxicity crash threshold, then this gives you a toxicity crash threshold.
It alleviates that problem, plus extra damage to creatures. It helps you heal yourself as well as come up occasionally. Sometimes you’ll have object checks where you might be able to pass that object check like a trauma kit, which allows you to give yourself a free revive in combat.
10. Melee
Melee enhances damage dealt with melee weapons. Use this skill to improve the ability to use melee weapons. You must only invest in this skill if you’re not investing in guns. It’s really up to you as to the overall combat build that you want to run. The game offers several melee weapons that you can wield to eliminate the enemies. Increasing the damage of these weapons allows you to dominate the enemies and progress quickly.
11. Explosives
Explosives is one that I legitimately wish I had invested in. This skill allows you to disarm mines. It also buffs your explosive damage and gives you damage resistance against explosives. This is an absolutely overpowered combat skill because there are a lot of explosive weapons in the game.
One of the best weapons in the game is called Agatha, which is an explosive weapon. There is a bunch of gear that just gives you health when you deal explosive damage. So, you can just basically become an unkillable explosive machine. It does actually come up sometimes in dialogue and in object checks.
12. Leadership
Leadership is an interesting skill in The Outer Worlds 2. So, Leadership’s main role is in combat to improve your companions’ damage and their overall health. However, it does actually come up in dialogue checks a little bit, typically as an either-or with speech. So, it’s one that I would consider not investing in both Speech and Leadership. Even though they kind of seem to go hand in hand, it’s a little bit odd that they often come up together or even in some conversations.
