Best The Outer Worlds 2 Traits to pick

The Outer Worlds 2 Traits add a unique benefit or two to your character that can help you lean into a specific build, from the ability to shove people over slide-tackling them to ensuring the game's factions can never hate you. However, it's not an easy choice for your character in The Outer Worlds 2 as your options are either picking only one of the nine Positive Traits or picking two but also having to put up with a Negative Trait, which can be highly detrimental. So, to help you decide, I've laid out the best Outer Worlds 2 Traits you can choose and have explained how all 12 of them work and how they might suit a particular playstyle or build.

All Outer Worlds 2 Traits explained

The Outer Worlds 2 features twelve Traits (nine Positive Traits offering unique buffs and three Negative Traits that can be a massive hindrance) that you can pick during character creation:

• Positive:
  • Brawny: Slide or sprint into hostiles to knock them over (this ability has a 5-second cooldown).
    • Being able to effectively stun enemies by running at them is great for close-range combat builds, especially ones focused on melee weapons.
  • Brilliant: You get to choose one additional Skill to specialize in for a total of three in the next step of character creation.
    • Good for pretty much any build as it lets you access more Skills and therefore a greater variety of Perks early on.
  • Heroic: -20% Companion ability charge time.
    • Great if you're going for a more Companion-focused build that invests heavily into the Leadership Skill too.
  • Innovative: Crafting recipes for ammo, throwables, and resources create up to twice as many of those items for the same amount of crafting materials.
    • If you're not prepared to scavenge for materials at almost every opportunity, I'd avoid this Trait, but it's excellent for saving materials and Bits for any build.
  • Lucky: +5% Critical Chance and certain opportunities are just accessible to you.
    • If you're really not sure what to pick, this is a good all-rounder Trait, occasionally broadening your options in certain situations and can be quite funny. The bonus crit chance is nice too!
  • Nimble: +25% Crouch Speed and Combat Sprint Speed.
    • Good for players that want an easier time sneaking around or those that want to charge through combat – or both.
  • Resilient: Death is prevented for 3s the first time you would have died in combat.
    • While a chance to cheat death each combat sounds great, I think this Trait sounds a lot better than it actually is compared to some of the others.
  • Suave: 10% discount at all vendors and bounty must be two times higher than normal to be seen as an Outlaw.
    • Both are good benefits but aren't necessarily game-changing. You might want this if you're not crafting much and therefore need to buy and steal what you can.
  • Witty: Your reputation with any of the game's faction can never go below Neutral, helping you avoid any penalties (such as vendor surcharges) from having a negative reputation.
    • Factions aren't very impactful at the start of the game, but this Trait can come in handy later, ensuring you aren't really on anyone's bad side.
• Negative:
  • Abrasive: Your reputation with any faction can never go above Neutral, so you'll miss out on any bonuses gained from being a faction's good side, such as vendor discounts.
    • This Trait isn't terrible as you can work to maintain a Neutral reputation to avoid downsides but missing out on the benefits of the factions isn’t ideal.
  • Dumb: During skill selection, choose five skills to lock off, meaning you can never spend skill points on them.
    • Effectively removing almost half the available skills is a huge penalty! I'd avoid this unless you really want to play into it.
  • Sickly: -15% base health and -15 Toxicity Crash Threshold
    • This is effectively a hard-mode option, making combat trickier since you have less health to begin with and you can crash out more easily when using your healing inhaler.

Like Outer Worlds 2 Backgrounds, Traits can also provide their own dialogue options and skill checks in certain situations – for example, Brawny can substitute the Engineering Skill when opening broken doors, letting you rip them open with brute force rather than fix their mechanisms – though, overall, they are a lot more impactful than your backstory!

Crucially, you must choose one Positive Trait, and you can add a second at the cost of also having to pick one Negative Trait. My advice would be to stick to just one Positive Trait, unless you really want to delve into a particular build or roleplay path, and bear in mind that Perks and sometimes even Flaws will help you fill out your build.

Once you've settled on your Background and Traits, it's time to pick some Skills. Remember, you can go back to previous steps during character creation to tweak things as nothing is set in stone just yet! And you will get an opportunity to respec in The Outer Worlds 2 shortly.

Be aware that how long it takes to beat The Outer Worlds 2 might even by affected a little by your Traits, especially negative ones.

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