You're Probably Missing These Free Starfield Skill Points

Skill points are a huge part of progression in , but despite how many skills are in play, they're not necessarily that easy to acquire. Although one skill point can consistently be earned for each level up, there aren't any other proper methods of attaining them, so grinding out XP is the only way to keep the momentum going. is also a massive game with plenty of unique features and unusual quirks, however, and surprising possibilities are still being discovered over a year after its September 2023 launch.

One interesting facet of is how central the New Game Plus experience feels, a diversion from most games where the mode is more of an afterthought than anything. After completing, starting back over in New Game Plus connects to a particular part of the narrative to change the experience on the second go-round. It's also much easier to breeze through the early parts of the story in New Game Plus, as levels and skills are retained, making it possible to explore more of the skill trees throughout the course of a playthrough and build a thoroughly developed character.

A Reddit post from user Zeroone199 makes a note of their experience starting New Game Plus, explaining that there's a seemingly counter-intuitive way to gain more skill points across repeated playthroughs of According to Zeroone199's observation,New Game Plus grants a new rank of a character's background skills at the start. As it's common to pick backgrounds with a specific build in mind and max those skills out before the end of a playthrough, it would be easy to never realize this possibility and waste the opportunity, starting New Game Plus without any skill boost.

To make use of the technique, players are better off picking a background that they don't want to level early, leaving it open for the free skill point application in New Game Plus. In theory,it should be possible to gain nine extra skills across the course of three playthroughs, a substantial boost when moving through the story quickly.