Skills dictate how you play in Starfield much like any other RPG. You have to invest your hard-earned skill points into these trees to unlock and upgrade these abilities. So what about those situations where we opted for some skill that turned out to be useless for us? Is there any way to reset your skill points and respec your character in Starfield? Let us find out.
Unfortunately, there is no way to respec your character in Starfield. The reason behind this exclusion is the fact that there is no level cap in this game, unlike other Bethesda RPGs. You can potentially continue leveling up and eventually unlocking all the skills on a character. Though time-consuming, it is the only to get your preferred set of skills.
Skills in Starfield
Like any other RPG, in Starfield as you continue to indulge in its various activities like combat, dialogue exchanges, exploration, etc., you will be raking in experience points. These points will eventually level up your character, and you will be rewarded a skill point.
Skill points can then be used to unlock Skills from the many skill trees in Starfield, like Physical, Social, Combat, Science, and Tech. Some of these skills will already be unlocked depending on the background you chose while creating your character. For the rest of the skills, you will have to put in skill points to unlock them.
There are 4 ranks inside each skill that require certain challenges or tasks to be completed to unlock. You can then spend more skill points to acquire these upgraded ranks.
There are 4 tiers inside each skill tree as well. Each subsequent tier will only be available after you have invested certain skill points in the previous tier.
Again, like any other RPG, you need more and more XP to level up to higher levels. This forces the players to make meaningful choices in selecting their skills to complement their playstyle or acquire skills that seem worthy.
But what if you made the wrong choices and want to allot skill points to other more useful skills? There is an overwhelming number of skills in this game, and sometimes we make mistakes.
Respec in Starfield
Many RPGs have a built-in feature, usually unlocked later in the game, that allows the player to reset all of their skill points so that they can re-invest as they like.
Bethesda, although they have provided this feature in the past, has opted to let go of this core RPG aspect in Starfield. You can not respec your character in Starfield, not even after you have ended the game or heading into a New Game+.
At least for now, this feature is ignored. They might add it later on in the game’s lifecycle but there is nothing announced yet.
Their (somewhat) reason for this missing element is that there is no level cap in the game. Most RPGs have a level cap meaning you can only level up to a specific level thus there are a limited number of skill points to invest.
Starfield has removed this cap, and you can keep on leveling up over your playthroughs and potentially unlock every skill there is in the game.
Not the best reason as leveling up takes a lot more time and XP as you progress to higher levels. We surely hope that this gets patched in some future time so we can make our characters like we want.
For now, make sure the skills you unlock are things that are in line with your playstyle otherwise you are screwed.
Respec is one of the most important features in an RPG. It takes time for players to embrace their preferred playstyle and by then it’s too late, a lot of the skill points are wasted on valueless skills.
It is a shame that Starfield does not include the option to respec. Hopefully, Bethesda makes things right in the near future.