Welcome to the Ronin Build for Starfield. The Ronin is a melee focused blade for hire. It has some similarity to the Brawler build, however the Ronin has more of a stealthy approach to melee combat.
We will now go through the elements of this build step by step.
Ronin Build Table of Contents:
Ronin 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 Ronin Build, we are using the Ronin background. This will give you a head start with the following skills:
- Duelling – Increases your damage with melee weapons
- Stealth – Enemies will have a harder time detecting you, and you deal more damage while hidden
- Scavenging – You are more likely to find extra money or items when looting
Ronin 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 up to three traits, or none at all. Some traits can turn out to be detrimental depending on your playstyle and choices in the game. So if you’re unsure then it’s better not to choose any.
Ronin 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.
It’s difficult to give a step-by-step guide for what order to upgrade your skills due to the prerequisite challenges for each skill improvement, however we recommend progressing through the following skills for the Ronin Build:
- Stealth – Improves your ability to stay hidden from enemies, and gives you bonus damage when attacking while undetected.
- Gymnastics – Allows you to slide in combat and move around more quickly.
- Martial Arts – You gain buffs when unarmed or using a melee weapon, such as increased crit chance, a chance to disarm enemies with power attacks and the ability to deflect damage when blocking.
- Fitness – You have more oxygen (stamina) and power attacks consume less oxygen.
- Dueling – Increases your damage with melee weapons.
- Wellness – Increases your maximum health by up to 40%
- Medicine – Your health packs will heal you for more health, and may cure afflictions.
- Security – Improves your proficiency with lockpicking
- Ballistics/Lasers – While this is a melee build, sometimes you will inevitably need to use ranged weapons, so you should invest in either the Ballistics or Lasers skill and have a gun of that type handy for when you need some range.
After the full release of Starfield we will create a full step-by-step progression guide for the Ronin Build.
Ronin Build Weapons
The Ronin build is best played with melee weapons most of the time. Keep trying out different types of melee weapons such as knives and cutlasses when you find them, in order to determine which ones you like using the most. Then keep an eye out for high quality weapons with good stats.
While this is a melee focused build, it’s recommended to have at least one ranged weapon on you, as sometimes you will be forced to fight at long range. Use either a ballistics or laser type weapon, depending on whether you want to focus on the Ballistics or Laser skill. Rifles are a solid choice, as they are versatile and effective at most ranges.
Ronin 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.
