From Novice to Legend: Chart Your Path with Backgrounds, Traits, and Epic Character Progression

A Starfield Ultimate Preview Series – Part 4

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If you’re just jumping into our Ultimate Preview Series, we’d advise you read our previous articles in the series if you’d like a better understanding of where your journey begins.

Part 1 – Your Journey Begins Here

Part 2 – A Cosmic Journey of Love, Customization, and Companionship Among the Stars

Part 3 – The Ultimate Planetary Odyssey: 1000+ Planets, Thriving Cities, and Personal Outposts

Backgrounds and Traits

No good RPG is complete without a deep and interconnected progression system and to understand that we have to take things all the way back to character customization and really explore how backgrounds and traits can influence our characters right from the beginning of the game.

As we’ve discussed previously, backgrounds provide some details about who you are in Starfield. Each option comes with a little story, so the ‘RP’ element of the game is alive and well. When and where this background will matter in the world is still largely a mystery. As the developers have pointed out before you never know when your background will come into play. 

The team has even gone so far as to showcase the Beast Hunter background having a unique dialogue option when conversing with someone in the middle of a luxury restaurant. It’s those sort of “curveball” moments the team is hoping to set up, but until players have dozens of hours with the game, it’ll be hard to know when and where all of these backgrounds will come into play.

What’s more potent is the starting skills that come along with choosing a background. Now, it’s important to understand that your selection here is, as far as we know, permanent so what you choose as your background can’t be undone. That being said, skills are a rather flexible system and just because you start with a skill doesn’t mean you need to fully invest in it if your desire to play a different way means forgoing one skill that’s tied to your background.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the backgrounds we’ve already seen to give you a sense of what options you’ll have at the start of the game. We’ve seen the details of at least 6 backgrounds so check these out:

Chef

• Gastronomy – Gain access to unique ingredients
• Dueling – Increased effectiveness with Melee attacks
• Scavenging – Increased ability to find items in the world

Combat Medic

• Pistol Certification – Higher starting skill with a pistol
• Medicine – Increased healing resources and skill
• Wellness – Potentially gain more base life

Cyber Runner

• Stealth – More effectiveness in stealth
• Security – More effective at lock picking
• Theft – More effective at stealing from NPCs

Cyberneticist

• Medicine – Increased healing resources and skill
• Security – More effective at lock picking
• Lasers – Increased effectiveness with Laser weapons

Diplomat

• Persuasion – Increased effectiveness with persuasion in conversation
• Commerce – Potential lower cost for items and resources
• Wellness – Potentially gain more base life

Explorer

• Lasers – Increased effectiveness with Laser weapons
• Astrodynamics – Increased ship grav drive capabilities
• Surveying – Increased effectiveness when surveying

While we haven’t seen all of the backgrounds, we do know the names of some other options including:

One of the benefits of a futuristic space game is that the team can really stretch their wings in terms of creative options. Things like ‘Bounty Hunter’ feel right at home next to something like ‘Professor’ because the spectrum of what’s believable is so wide considering the content of the game. What that really boils down to is options for the player, and options are a great thing.

Traits

However, things don’t stop there, and I want to take a second to revisit the second system tied to character customization, Traits. While not something that can be leveled-up or enhanced throughout the course of the game, traits are an important building block that have gameplay impact.

Much like your background, players will have the option to choose up to 3 of these during character creation. You can choose to allocate 0 to 3 traits depending on the character you’re hoping to create. Nonetheless we’ve seen a good number of these traits already, so I wanted to run through what they are, and their impact in the game because I think they’re pretty interesting. 

Hero Worshiped

• Will trigger an Adoring Fan to show up randomly throughout your adventures, who can join your crew, and will also give you the occasional gift.

Introvert

• Allows you to use less O2 when adventuring alone but you use more O2 when adventuring with companions. This trait can’t be combined with Extrovert.

Kid Stuff

• When you assign this trait, you’ll be able to visit your parents somewhere in the game world, but you have to send back 2% of your credits home to them every week.

Neon Street Rat

• Grants you access to special dialogue option and better rewards from some missions on Neon. However your crime bounty by other factions is greatly increased. This trait can’t be combined with any other faction allegiance trait.

Raised Enlightened

• Gives you access to a special chest full of items in House of the Enlightened in New Atlantis. However, you can no longer access the Sanctum Universum chest. This can’t be combined with any other religious trait.

Raised Universal

• Which grants you access to a special chest full of items in Sanctum Universum in New Atlantis. If you choose this you can no longer access the House of Enlightenment chest. This can’t be combined with any other religious trait.

Serpent’s Embrace

• While Grav jumping you’ll gain a temporary boost to health and endurance. However, health and endurance are lowered if you don’t jump regularly. This can’t be combined with any other religious trait.

Spaced

• Grants increased health and endurance when in space. However, health and endurance are decreased when on a planet’s surface. This trait can’t be combined with Terra Firma.

Starter Home

• Allows you to own a small house on a peaceful moon but comes with a 50,000-credit mortgage from GalBank.

Wanted

• Gives you a damage buff when your health is low, but you will have to deal with random mercenaries that show up to try and hunt you down.

We also saw a number of traits without any details including:

It’s amazing to think you’ll have to make so many important decisions before ever stepping off on your grand adventure, but the Bethesda team has said they’re excited to re-introduce these sort of impactful game system back into the starting point of the game because it helps establish character identity, and for those that are curious they did leave the door open to removing traits if that’s something you feel so inclined to do.

The Skill System

If backgrounds and traits are the first step to building a character then the second step is understanding skills, and this is a really central aspect of your character progression within Starfield. The team was rather candid that this approach to skills combines what’s worked in the past, in previous Bethesda games, with some new ideas.

As you level up, you’ll gain skill points, that’s pretty standard fare, but once you unlock a skill, you’ll then have to complete challenges to gain access to the next rank of that skill. For example, when you unlock ‘Security’ you’ll also unlock the first challenge, to pick 5 locks. Once you do that, you’ll have access to rank 2 of the skill. You’ll also need those skill points to unlock the initial skill, so as you can see its progression tied to gameplay tied back to progression. This is true of every skill across the 5 major categories:

We’ve only seen a few skill details, but these are the skills that we know of by name at this point:

Research

The final traditional progression system is one we’ve come to know and love across a number of different genres, and that is research. Previously we talked about building an outpost, and one of the things you can do on that outpost is conduct research at the research lab. Keep in mind we’ve seen very little of this system but there’s a lot we can infer from the menus we have seen.

Within the research lab are 5 major categories:

Within Pharmacology I anticipate being to research better recipes for consumable items that primarily enhance our abilities in combat, but I wouldn’t rule out any sort of temporary enhancement consumable that aids across any aspect of the game. Pharmacology projects we’ve seen so far are Medical Treatment 1 and Performance Enhancement 2.

Food and Drink will most likely allow us to create better quality items that have better regen-over-time effects, whether that be health, stamina, or something else. As with most games I think food will have longer duration buffs, but less impactful effects.

Outpost Development is where things start to get interesting. Much like an RTS, or even mobile game, you’ll need to research advanced versions and new components for your outpost. This will enhance and potentially unlock new aspects of outpost management either yielding more resources or making your outpost more efficient. The one outpost project we’ve seen so far is Resource Extraction 1.

Equipment will allow the player to research and unlock new and better sets of armor and mods to craft while.

Weapons will allow players to unlock and create new weapons and weapon mods. Equipment and Weaponry projects we’ve seen so far are Helmet Mods and Barrel Mods 1 and 2.

While rather straightforward I’m curious to see how deep, how impactful, and how grindy this system really is. We’ve noticed next to each category the total number of available projects is nearly a dozen or more per section. If you add them all up could be a huge grind, but it’ll all depend on how easy it is to collect the various required materials needed to start a research project.

The Bottom Line

Progression is at the heart of any good RPG and Starfield looks to be no different. From selecting your character’s background, to the research projects you’ll complete along the way every step of your galactic journey will take you one step closer to universal domination.