Welcome to the Beast Hunter Build for Starfield. The Beast Hunter is a fast-paced versatile build, particularly skilled in taking down alien creatures and harvesting them for resources, and using these resources to craft useful items such as food.
We will now go through the elements of this build step by step.
Beast Hunter Build Table of Contents:
Beast Hunter Build Background
When creating your character at the start of your Starfield playthrough, you’ll need to select a Background for your character. There are 20 Backgrounds in the game, and each one has three starting skills associated with it, allowing you to get a head start with a particular build idea. Backgrounds may also affect some dialogue options as they change how NPCs see your character.
For the Beast Hunter Build, we are using the Beast Hunter background. This will give you a head start with the following skills:
- Fitness – Increases your oxygen (stamina) and eventually reduces the cost of your power attacks
- Ballistics – Improves your damage with all Ballistic weapons
- Gastronomy – You can craft and research more advanced recipes
Beast Hunter Build Traits
You can choose traits to further customise the abilities of your character at the start of the game.
Most of the Traits are not especially powerful and are more for roleplaying purposes. However one that is strong is the Wanted trait, which will give you a bonus to damage output when you are at low health. However, this trait also causes mercenaries to occasionally come after you (probably works in a similar way to the mercenary encounters in Skyrim).
Please note that traits in Starfield are completely optional – you can choose between one and three traits, or none at all. Some traits can actually turn out to be detrimental depending on your playstyle and choices later in the game, for example choosing Introvert will make you weaker if you later decide you want to adventure with a companion. If you’re unsure, it’s better not to choose any traits.
Beast Hunter Build Skills
Every time you level up in Starfield, you will gain one skill point to spend. These can be spent to improve various skills in the game. For a skill to be eligible for improvement, you’ll need to have completed a challenge that makes use of that skill. For example unlocking the next rank of the Security skill requires you to have picked a certain number of locks.
Due to the prerequisite challenges that must be completed before upgrading a skill, it is difficult to give a step-by-step guide for what order to upgrade your skills in, however we recommend progressing through the following skills for the Beast Hunter Build:
- Fitness – Increases your oxygen (stamina) and eventually reduces the cost of your power attacks
- Ballistics – Improves your damage with Ballistic weapons. It makes sense to choose Ballistics rather than Lasers since we already get a free point in this skill from our Beast Hunter background.
- Gastronomy – Allows you to craft and research more advanced recipes.
- Stealth – You are harder to detect when sneaking, and do more damage from stealth.
- Rifle Certification – Increases your damage when using Rifles
- Sniper Certification – Increases your damage and reduces weapon sway when using a sniper scope
- Sharpshooter – Increases critical damage with ranged weapons, especially when hitting weakspots such as head or legs
- Surveying – You can zoom in further with your scanner, and scan objects at larger range
- Zoology – You gain more resources from creatures, and learn about them more quickly when using the scanner.
If you choose not to adventure with a Companion, then you may also want to get the Isolation skill. This will increase your weapon damage and damage resistance for each Spacesuit and Helmet equipped when you have no companion or crew.
Beast Hunter Build Weapons
In Starfield you will be able to customise your weapons with various attachments that change their behavior in combat. One attachment will be a Silencer, which is obviously an essential feature for any stealth build. You can craft a Silencer upgrade for your weapon by visiting a weapons workstation.
We recommend using a Rifle for the Beast Hunter, as this is a versatile weapon that can be used at a variety of ranges.
Another important weapon for the Beast Hunter Build will be a Sniper. Being able to take out enemies at a long distance before they can mount an effective response is an important tool in the arsenal of any good Beast Hunter. When you are able, make sure your sniper is fitted with a good scope and a silencer, which improve your ability to hit distant targets while avoiding detection.
Beast Hunter Build Armour
Armour in Starfield is expected to fall into four categories, of which you can equip one of each at a time. These are:
- Spacesuits
- Packs
- Helmets
- Apparel
Armour is important for not only protecting your character from enemy attacks, but also shielding you from various environmental effects as you explore different planets in Starfield. High quality armour (especially Legendary armour) will also come with various modifiers that improve your character’s abilities in a specific way (for example a % damage buff when using a particular type of weapon).
Starfield’s loot is mostly random, so it is difficult to create a precise guide for which items you should be using. However look out for high quality armour that gives you good resistances, along with modifiers that increase your offensive or defensive capabilities.
