What are The Outer World 2 skills? To adjust your playstyle and tweak your build, you can invest skill points into 12 different skills to thoroughly change the way you approach each situation. When you’re building your character, you can pick three specialized skills which start at two points, allowing you to establish a base for your build.
Though skills have been condensed in The Outer Worlds 2, what’s on offer is much more impactful this time – gone are the days of putting loads of points into individual weapon types. You can use skills in the RPG game to further your build to complement The Outer Worlds 2 traits, changing how you interact with the world or approach combat.
The Outer Worlds 2 skills
The skills you pick will shape everything you do in The Outer Worlds 2, from being proficient with specific weapons to finding ways to answer dialogue choices; your range of options is drastically increased depending on what you pick. It’s worth looking at our list of The Outer Worlds 2 perks to see what upgrades you can unlock when you hit certain skill thresholds.
Skills like Sneak and Guns will mainly affect combat situations, whereas Speech and Science will shine during conversations, so it’s important to maintain a healthy balance, as you’ll be doing a lot of shooting and talking.
Here’s a list of all The Outer Worlds 2 skills:
- 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
Now that you’re caught up on The Outer Worlds 2 skills, here’s what to expect from The Outer Worlds 2 companions you can recruit and which factions they are a part of.
Original article by Gina Lees.
