Pistols Build – Starfield

While most people will gravitate towards larger weapons like snipers or miniguns, the real power in the Settled Systems can fit in the palm of your hand. Thanks to Pistol Certification providing up to 50% bonus damage compared to most gun skills’ 30%, these small weapons can pack a punch. They also weigh less, helping you loot more of the countless junk in Starfield.

The guide below outlines a ballistic pistols guide, but if you’d prefer laser weapons you can just swap any ballistic skills to laser skills.

Character Creation

Background

Combat Medic is the ideal background for this build, providing bonuses to pistol damage in addition to health. The bonus to health is very valuable for getting through the first few levels with this build. Combat Medic provides the following skills:

• Wellness
• Pistol Certification
• Medicine

Traits

Your chosen traits are pretty flexible for this build, so feel free to choose what calls out most to you or check out our Best Traits guide for some advice. I opted for:

• Freestar Collective Settler
• Hero Worshipped
• Taskmaster

Progression

Early on, you’ll want to emphasize Combat skills to quickly get your pistols up to par with other weapons. With helpful options lacking in Tier 2 of the combat tree, you’ll pivot to investing into some secondary skills while you complete the Pistol Certification and Ballistics challenges.

• Pistol Certification
• Ballistics
• Wellness
• Medicine

Once you have your two combat skills up to rank 4, you’ll start investing into tier 3 and 4 Combat skills. Once you have three points invested in tier 3, feel free to optionally pick up Demolitions to unlock tier 4 skills a bit earlier.

• Rapid Reloading (Rank 1)
• Marksmanship
• Armor Penetration
• Crippling
• Sharpshooting

After investing some points into the first few skills, feel free to start working on any quality of life skills you might want such as Weight Lifting for improved carrying capacity or Security to hack higher level locks. Naturally, these can be chosen at any time you prefer depending on your priorities.

The Gameplan

Early in the game, you’ll want to approach combat cautiously and make frequent use of cover. Any Eon pistol you find early on should tide you over until you progress further in the main quest. Once you make your way to Akila City and have access to the Freestar Ranger storyline you’ll have access to some seriously powerful pistols.

There’s a valid debate to be had between a high rate of fire, lower damage gun and a lower rate of fire, higher damage gun. Personally, I prefer a higher damage pistol to take down enemies with less bullets, especially with Rapid Reloading helping negate a small magazine size.

There you have it, the best pistols build in Starfield. What do you think the best build in Starfield is? Let us know in the comments below!