The Outer Worlds 2: Best Traits tier list

When you create your character in The Outer Worlds 2, you can pick two out of nine positive traits, and one out of three negative ones. It's important that you take your time to consider these and only pick the best traits for your build, since they cannot be changed afterwards.

The only chance you get is a single respec opportunity at the end of the tutorial, and afterwards, you're stuck with whatever trait combo you picked. Due to this restriction, picking the rght trait can be a very demanding decision that paralyzes players before the action even kicks off.

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Tier list ranking the in The Outer Worlds (and why)

Before we dive into what we think are the best traits in the sequel to Obsidian's sci-fi RPG-lite, here's a quick explanation of the system. Essentially, you can either pick just one positive trait with no negatives, or two positive traits and one negative trait.

Here's my tier list on the positive and negative Traits in The Outer Worlds 2:

Tier	Traits
S	Sickly, Brawny, Lucky
A	Brilliant, Innovative
B	Resilient, Witty, Heroic, Nimble
C	Suave, Abrasive

Now, some of these will go up and down a tier or two depending on what kind of build you're thinking of. Plus, there's subjective preference involved, because if you want to experience the unique Dumb dialogue, Dumb is an automatic S-tier by that account (you can see why doing a tier list seems like a bad idea for these traits).

However, some other traits are either too situational, insubstantial, or have notable downsides that limit your experience of The Outer Worlds 2. Instead of going tier-by-tier, I'll just break down my two cents on each trait in an order that makes sense.

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Negative Traits: Why you should always take one

The Outer Worlds 2's negative traits aren't actually that negative (Image via Xbox Games)

Right off the bat, I think Sickly is a no-brainer negative trait that basically gives you one free positive trait slot. On anything less than Very Hard difficulty, a 15% Health and Toxin gauge penalty is nothing major to worry about.

Meanwhile, Dumb is where the call becomes more subjective. Players from the first Outer Worlds (or even some of the older games with Obsidian DNA, like Black Isle Fallout games) will know that Dumb presents some uniquely funny dialogue choices.

But from a gameplay perspective, too, Dumb is a perfectly viable way to play, and a 5-Skill limit is enough to put together a focused build. As a rule of thumb, only keep away from Dumb if you don't like the roleplay implications, or want to do a close-to-completionist run with your character.

Abrasive a relatively tougher call to make to juggle Faction standing, but it doesn't actually lock you out of any quests (that we are aware of). However, you will miss out on some quest routes, which are gated behind gaining a more friendly disposition with specific factions.

So to summarize: Sickly is the best negative trait, Dumb is less viable if you want a swiss knife character, and Abrasive is probably best to avoid in your first playthrough.

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Good positive traits in The Outer Worlds 2 (and the best ones for your build)

To separate the hay from the chaff, lets just get the more situational positive traits out of the way:

• Suave is only good when you plan to be a murder-hobo-thief type of character, and want to get away with some daylight robberies when in faction areas. If you play a more grounded, reasonable character, the vendor discount from Suave in The Outer Worlds 2 isn't worth blowing a trait slot on.
• Witty is only good for hyper-completionist crowd-pleaser runs where you're planning to experience the most amount of content possible in one playthrough. In my opinion, The Outer Worlds 2 holds up well over repeat playthroughs, so Witty is not really that good of a trait.
• Resilient is only ever useful on Hard or abvoe difficulty, as otherwise you seldom need to rely on two lives. Plus, a consumable called Trauma Kits exist to give you free revives. If you hoard Trauma Kits for the harder fights, Resilient is not a particularly game-changning Trait in The Outer Worlds 2.

Now, here are the actual best positive traits in The Outer Worlds 2 (in my opinion): Brawny and Lucky.

• Brawny lets you do a basically free knockdown in this game (if you've played Skyrim Requiem, it's bull-rushing from that mod but more powerful and easier to execute). You can already see why this would be indispensable in a melee build, but it can also come in clutch for anything other than a sniper build. Plus, the Brawny trait also lets you open jammed doors more often than you'd expect, effectively letting you bypass something that would sometimes be keycard-locked or require Engineering investment to open.
• Lucky is yet another time-saver of that nature, where you get it as an alternative wildcard option to solve some specific skill-checks. On top of that, it gives you +5% flat crit chance, which is good on almost any build.

The other positive traits range from good to best-in-slot depending on what build you're playing:

• Brilliant gives you three Specialization skills, meaning you can put points in those skills beyond your current level. Crucially, the main reason this is good is because this opens up more perk variety earlier in the game, but otherwise hyper-boosting three specs would still thin out your build potential in other ways. It seems counter-intuitive, but Brilliant pairs up well with Dumb for this reason.
• Innovative makes crafting economy quite a bit easier, and makes it so you'd get much more use out of checking every corner and picking up bits and baubles. Craftables in The Outer Worlds 2 are very useful, so it's a practical trait that pays great dividends in the long run.
• Nimble is good for stealthy characters. Not much else to explain here.
• Heroic, similarly, is only worth it if you play The Outer Worlds 2 like the original Dragon Age games, focusing on comboing companion abilities. Like in the first game, this can indeed be quite a fun way to play, but you'd have to commit fully to a Leadership build to utilize the potential of the Heroic trait in The Outer Worlds 2.

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