Best Skills and Traits for Beast Hunter Background in Starfield

There are quite a few good starting backgrounds to choose from in Starfield. The Beast Hunter background in particular is actually quite a strong all rounder. While it indicates that you’re a hunter of threatening alien wildlife, the starting skills provide a solid foundation for general on planet exploration, missions and combat. Here’s what you need to know about the Beast Hunter background and the best skills and traits for your build in Starfield.

Best Skills and Traits for the Beast Hunter Background in Starfield

Taking on the Beast Hunter background in Starfield provides you with three solid starting skills that are all very useful:

• Fitness – This skill provides additional Oxygen. This is the stamina mechanic in Starfield, so you’ll have extra capacity to sprint around with this skill.
• Ballistics – This skill is all about improving the damage dealt from weapons that fire bullets. Most of the ballistic-based weapons in Starfield are excellent to use, making this a strong skill.
• Gastronomy – This skill lets you understand how to craft specialty food and drinks. You’ll also be able to research new recipes at the Research Lab. This is very useful for restoring HP, curing status effects and granting benefits such as extra damage.

Related: How Long Does It Take to Beat Starfield

How to Build a Strong Beast Hunter

Traits

Traits aren’t all that impactful in Starfield, so you can really choose to run what you prefer. I’ll simply be choosing some that suit the Beast Hunter background.

• Freestar Collective Settler – It’s only natural for a Beast Hunter to be more inclined towards more remote settlements and planets over main cities. This trait will give you extra dialogue options and rewards from the Freestar Collective.

• Taskmaster – With this build you’ll be focused more on being a force to be reckoned with on planet than in space. This trait will help you with managing your ship health with a more effective crew, but they will cost more as a trade off.

• Terra Firma – This trait trades better health and oxygen on planet for worse health and oxygen in space. Our focus with this build is on planet activities making this an excellent trait for the build.

Skills

• Gastronomy – Leveling through this skill will provide better and better food and drinks for you to create. Gathering materials and hunting wildlife on various planets will give you the resources you need to take advantage of this skill. Some food and drinks, especially at the high end, have amazing effects!
• Intimidation – Beast Hunters are tough as nails and have an intimidating aura about them. This skill can help you frighten off unwanted scuffles with pirates.
• Outpost Management – Having a good outpost can make a big difference on many of the planets you’ll explore. This skill will allow you to unlock new outpost features and make things run much more efficiently.
• Xenosociology – As a Beast Hunter you understand your prey better than they do. This skill allows you to have a lot of power over alien creatures. You can force them to stop attacking, make them flee, attack their own kind or even obey your commands for a limited time. Yay pet aliens!

Related: Can You Have Multiple Ships in Starfield?

• Nutrition – Nutrition makes the food and drink you consume up to 50% more effective. This skill goes hand in hand with our Gastronomy skill to get maximum effect out of our creations.
• Decontamination – A lot can go wrong on alien planets. This skill gives you the ability to resist and recover from infections. This will save you medical supplies and trips to the doctor!
• Ballistics – Maxing out the Ballistics skill is a great idea to really get a big increase in your damage and range. You’ll have to stick to bullet based weapons, but it will be worth it.
• Rifle Certification – Hunting down alien beasts is no joke, some of them are incredibly strong. You’ll need this skill for the extra damage and reload speed to be able to fight effectively. Specializing in rifles is also thematically nice for a Beast Hunter.
• Marksmanship – This skill gives us better critical rates and improves range. You’ll need to use a non-automatic weapon and scope when you fire. If you do you’ll deal double damage with critical hits. A very strong damage skill.

That covers off the best traits and skills to use with the Beast Hunter background in Starfield. With these traits and skills you can truly become the apex predator on any alien planet you step foot on!

If you’re looking for more help building your character in Bethesda’s epic sci-fi action-RPG, you should read our explanation of all the factions in Starfield so you know what you’re getting into.