Can you respec in Starfield? Skills & character reset explained

Starfield is a massive RPG where players create the character they want to be, which includes levelling up and choosing skills - but can you respec your skills?

Dave McAdam

10th Sep 2023 15:51

Images via Bethesda

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As an RPG, Starfield features a levelling system and a dizzying skill tree, but it's understandable to want to make changes and respec your character build dozens of hours in.

If you've sworn off your life of piracy and want to become a researcher, or you've decided to test out new weaponry and need the required skills, you'll want to know if you can respec in Starfield.

While we've seen respec options in Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate, Bethesda's RPG does things a little differently. Here's all we know about changing your skills via respec in Starfield.

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Can you respec your character in Starfield?

The skill tree screen from Starfield

Unfortunately, there is currently no way to respec your character and reset all of your skills. This may be surprising for some to hear, but this has been true of most Bethesda RPGs. These games tend to take a more open-ended approach to levelling your character.

Although you cannot reset your skills and respec your character, you don't really need to as there is no maximum level. Each time you level up, you receive a skill point that you can spend to unlock a new skill. There are over 80 skills in the game, each with 4 levels to them, so completing all five skill trees would require you to level up over 300 times.

That said, it is possible that a respec feature could come to Starfield in the future. While Skyrim did not launch with such a feature, it was added with the Dragonborn DLC. Fallout 4 never got a respec option, but Fallout 76 has it. With enough demand from fans, or with from the work of modders, there is a possibility that respec will come to Starfield in the future.

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How to get the best skills in Starfield

A screenshot showing the player and a robot walking under a space ship in Starfield

Without any way to reset your skills, you will need to make the right choices first when spending your skill points. We recommend that you spend some time looking over the skills and deciding which ones are right for you. Make a plan and know, at least roughly, where you want to spend your hard-earned skill points.

The openness of the skill system at least gives us some grace so that if we decide to start spending skill points in a totally different area, we can do that without penalty.

The biggest issue is that not all skills are available at once. Each of the five skill trees has tiers to them, and you can only unlock skills in the first tier first. You must unlock a certain amount of skills in the first tier to unlock the second tier, same for the third and the fourth.

This means that if you are many hours into your playthrough and decide you could really use a skill in the third tier of the tech skill tree, you will need to invest in several skills in that tree in order to acquire it. This is where a respec feature would be very useful in Starfield.

As it stands, if you want to expand your character into some totally different skills, you will have to put the work in.

That is it for our Starfield respec guide. For more on the game, head to our Starfield homepage, or check out our rundown of the best Starfield mods to download right now.

About The Author

Dave McAdam

Dave is a Senior Guides Writer at GGRecon, after several years of freelancing across the industry. He covers a wide range of games, with particular focus on shooters like Destiny 2, RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, and fighting games like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8.

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