✧ Best Builds: Science | Stealth | Gunslinger
✦ Best Background | Best Traits | Best Skills
✧ Missables and Points of No Return
✦ Best Weapons | Best Armor
✧ Unique Weapons | Unique Armor
✦ Best Flaws | Best Perks

This lists all of the best Perks to unlock in Outer Worlds 2. Find out which Perks are the overall best, as well as which Perks are the best for each Skill.
| Perks-Related Pages | |
|---|---|
| List of All Perks | Best Perks |
List of Contents
| Tier | Unique Weapon |
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Pickpocket Gain the ability to pickpocket others. Pickpocketing can be activated by crouching up to an unaware human and havving enough backpack skill.
Commando You unlock an additional weapon slot.
Trophy Hunter You gain Critical Hit Chance with all weapons against all enemies. The chance is increased against Strong enemies, such as Leaders and Bosses that aren't heavily damaged.
Bulletshield You gain a bonus to damage resistance and max health, just enemies are more likely to target you over your companions.
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Shiny New Toy You gain bonus to damage for a moderate duration after swapping weapons.
Pitch/Tossball Hacker Your melee attacks ignore a portion of the target's armor.
Assassin After scoring a kill from stealth, your movement speed is dramatically increased for a short time.
Pitch/Tossball Hacker Your melee attacks ignore a portion of the target's armor.
Face Reader In conversations, options that reduce reputation with a faction are highlighted before choosing them. Additionally, gain a bonus to damage against humans.
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Hot Blooded You can now apply Burn faster and heal whenver Burn deals damage or reaches max stacks.
Contingency Screen When your health hits 25%, the Gas-Energy Deflection Apparatus gadget automatically activates without spending energy.
Tinkerer Your modded weapons now deal bonus damage, increasing with your Engineering skill.
Wholesale Spender Buying or selling items with a vendor accrues goodwill. After accuring enough, you gain a permanent discount and sell bonus with that vendor.
Contingency Screen When your health hits 25%, the Gas-Energy Deflection Apparatus gadget automatically activates without spending energy.
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The best Perks in the game are Commando, Trophy Hunter, Restricted Access, Bulletshield, and Pickpocket.
Commando, Restricted Access, and Pickpocket are all Perks you can get early on in the game with minimal Skill investment, and have effects that are useful on all builds. Pickpocket lets you pickpocket NPCs and access quest items that you otherwise cannot, and Commando provides an additional weapon slot, and
Trophy Hunter and Bulletshield, on the other hand, are not aligned with any of the skills, and provide increased Critical Chance and more Health and Damage Resistance respectively.
| Jump to a Skill! | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Guns | Melee | Sneak | Lockpick |
| Engineering | Explosives | Hack | Medical |
| Science! | Observation | Speech | Leadership |
| Tier | Unique Weapon |
|---|---|
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Commando You unlock an additional weapon slot.
Sharpshooter Marksman, assault, and sniper rifles deal increased damage at distances >20m, but less below that distance. Sneak attack damage for these weapons is also increased.
Point Blank Artist Damage with shotguns, SMGs, and pistols is increased against targets within 10m, but less above that distance. These weapons also gain increased sneak attack damage.
Gun Runner You can now fire while sliding, mantling and sprinting with assault rifles, shotguns and SMGs. Additionally, the spread for these weapon types is reduced.
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Serendipitous Slayer You gain an innate critical hit chance with pistols and SMGs. Additionally, critical hits with these weapons automatically reload a small portion of the weapon's magazine.
Crabble Rancher Marksman rifles, pistols and shotguns deal increased damage. While the magazine of one of these weapons is half-empty, also gain a bonus to critical hit chance.
Eden Windage Marksman rifles, pistols and sniper rifles have increased range and weakspot damage.
Hail of Lead Guns with automatic or burst fire deal increasing damage the more you fire. This bonus resets after swapping weapons or not firing for a few seconds and has a cap of +100%.
Penetrating Shots Your shotguns and SMGs ignore a portion of armor, making them effectiev against armored enemies.
Shiny New Toy You gain bonus to damage for a moderate duration after swapping weapons.
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Trick Shot Weakspot kills ricochet, dealing damage to a second nearby target.
Suppressionist Pistols gain increased sneak-attack damage and are quieterr. Guns of any type with Silencers make no noise whatsoever.
Multitasker Your holstered weapons reload automatically when you manually reload your active weapon.
Lucky Strikes Critical hits do significantly more damage. Critical hits that kill cause the target to explode and deal damage to nearby hostiles.
Deep Drums Machine Guns, Special Weapons and Assault Rifles slowly reload automatically. Additionally, all weapons have an increased magazine size.
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The best Guns perks are Commando, all the damage increase perks, and Gun Runner. Commando itself is at the top of the list because you can slot it in any build of your choice, while Sharpshooter is a close second since it is a reliable damage boost with a gun-focused playstyle.
| Tier | Unique Weapon |
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Heavy Handed Melee power attacks knock down the enemies hit. Has a cooldown between activations. 10 second cooldown.
Shiny New Toy You gain bonus to damage for a moderate duration after swapping weapons.
Echoing Blows Your melee attacks deal a small portion of damage in a large cone in front of you. The damage of the cone is increased for two-handed weapons.
Pitch/Tossball Hacker Your melee attacks ignore a portion of the target's armor.
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Duelist You gain the ability to perform a perfect block with melee weapons. Timing your blocks against incoming melee attacks will stun the attacker.
Run and Hitter After sprinting for a short duration, the first melee attack performed gains bonus damage. This damage increase is larger for 2-handed melee weapons.
Commando You unlock an additional weapon slot.
Tit for Tat A percent of outgoing melee damage is returned as health.
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Vital Striker Sneak Attack damage with light melee weapons is increased. Additionally, in combat your light melee weapons always deal half of their sneak attack bonus.
Assassin After scoring a kill from stealth, your movement speed is dramatically increased for a short time.
Lucky Strikes Critical hits do significantly more damage. Critical hits that kill cause the target to explode and deal damage to nearby hostiles.
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The best Melee perks are Heavy Handed, Shiny New Toy, Echoing Blows, and Pitch/Tossball Hacker.
Generally, if you are going for a melee build, you will be trying to lessen the amount of time you expose yourself to damage, so perks such as Heavy Handed, Shiny New Toy, and Pitch/Tossball Hacker allow you to efficiently deal with enemies at the first point of contact.
Additionally, Echoing Blows is included since it covers the innate weakness of melee builds in terms of their crowd control. This perk allows you to deal with a group of bunched-up enemies quickly.
▲Return to Top▲
| Tier | Unique Weapon |
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Assassin After scoring a kill from stealth, your movement speed is dramatically increased for a short time.
Stalker You gain increased sneak attack damage against hostiles that are investigating you, a distraction device, or a corpse you've left behind.
Suppressionist Pistols gain increased sneak-attack damage and are quieterr. Guns of any type with Silencers make no noise whatsoever.
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Light Step Walking over traps and mines will never set them off.
Vital Striker Sneak Attack damage with light melee weapons is increased. Additionally, in combat your light melee weapons always deal half of their sneak attack bonus.
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Silent Steps After leaving stealth, your footsteps are silent for a short duration.
Ghost If yo're crouched when an NPC starts investigating you, gain Camouflaged for a short duration. Has a cooldown between activations, which decreases based on Sneak skill.
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Most of the Sneak perks are quality-of-life improvements, but the best one out of those is the Assassin perk, as it allows you to quickly reposition yourself after a stealth kill; opening possibilities that would otherwise get you caught.
Lastly, Stalker and Suppressionist are what make you branch off to either focusing on melee or ranged stealth by increasing your damage, making them the core of all stealth builds.
| Tier | Unique Weapon |
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Pickpocket Gain the ability to pickpocket others. Pickpocketing can be activated by crouching up to an unaware human and havving enough backpack skill.
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Sleight of Hands Pickpocketing is significantly faster and you gain a bonus to sneak attack damage based on your Lockpick skill.
Through the Keyhole The contents of a locked container can be viewed before lockpicking. Also, you gain an increased range bonus with guns.
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Bag Check While crouching, you can see the contents of a person's inventory before pickpocketing them. Gain a small bonus to critical chance.
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The best perk of the Lockpick skill, arguably the whole game itself, is the Pickpocket perk. Not only is it easy to get, it allows you to access content you would otherwise miss; especially choices that lock you out of some rewards.
All of the other skills in the Lockpick skill are situational and niche at best, but Sleight of Hand is the best out of all of them, as it increases your sneak-attack damage!
| Tier | Unique Weapon |
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Tinkerer Your modded weapons now deal bonus damage, increasing with your Engineering skill.
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Master Armorer Your body armor gains an additional armoring mod slot, allowing you to add a second mod to your armor.
Makeshift Armorer Whenever you craft items, your armor gains a temporary bonus to its armor value that degrades from incoming attacks. The bonus armor can take more hits before degrading as your Engineering skill increases.
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Scrapper Automechanicals always drop some additional crafting materials.
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The best perk of the Engineering skill is the Tinkerer perk. Generally, it is best practice to attach mods to your weapon as they are always a net positive. The Tinkerer perk makes this aspect better by providing a damage boost based on your Engineering.
All of the other skills in the Engineering skill are bordering on the weak side, but Master Armorer allows you to get an additional Armoring mod slot for more build customizability.
| Tier | Unique Weapon |
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Secret Recipe Your explosives deal full damage across their entire blast zone.
Demolitionist All of your explosives have increased area of effect and can no longer deal damage to you. Hazards left by explosives are still dangerous.
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Incendiary Chef Unlocks the recipe to craft Volatile Grenades. Volatile Grenades deal signifcant damage, but holding them for too long can cause them to explode in your hands!
Grenadier You unlock an additional throwable equipment slot. You also gain a small bonus to explosives damage.
Hot Blooded You can now apply Burn faster and heal whenver Burn deals damage or reaches max stacks.
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Defuser Whenever you disable a mine, it is added to your inventory so you can place it yourself.
Pitch/Tossball Winger Direclty hitting anyone with a grenade or mine will deal damage and scatter them. Explosives also deal more damage
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As the tertiary damage skill, Explosives' best skills are Secret Recipe and Demolitionist. This perk combo allows your explosives to always deal the optimal amount of damage, despite them being far away from the center of impact, which has enhanced range and is unable to damage you!
| Tier | Unique Weapon |
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Manual Reset You can hack into automechanicals, forcing them to restart, temporarily disabling them. Also gains a bonus to damage against automechs.
Restricted Access You can access the restricted inventory of vending machines.
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Automech Jammer You passively jam automechanicals, reducing the speed of which they detect you and making it easier to sneak by them. You also gain a small critical hit chance against automechs.
Automech Anatomist Your weakspot hits against automechanicals cause shock damage to chain to nearby enemies.
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Bit Transfer Bounty terminals now have an option to immediately cash out bits by hacking into bank accounts. You'll need to earn 7'200 EXP to access drained accounts.
Plug Puller Hacked automechs are permanently disabled rather than temporarily disabled. Permanently disabled automechs reward XP and can be looted.
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Most of the perks in the Hack skill are only appealing to roleplaying aspects, but Manual Reset and Restricted Access can see use within a playthrough.
While a weak perk on its own, Manual Reset can have a build centered around it using The Black Helmet to make Automechanical encounters trivial. Restricted Access, on the other hand, allows you to get some rare materials and consumables, such as Trauma Kits, from Vending Machines that you otherwise cannot.
| Tier | Unique Weapon |
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Inhaler Overload Using the Medical Inhaler costs an extra inhaler charge and increases toxicity cost but grants a large amount of bonuses for a moderate duration. Activate overload by holding down Use Inhaler in combat.
Pharm-thusiast You unlock an additional primer slot, allowing you to use multple primers at once and toxicity gained is decreased. Using the inhaler with multiple primers applies both effects but all toxicity is combined.
Lasting High You can now use your medical inhaler while crashing, but at reduced efficacy. Crashes now last longer.
Hungry Guns Guns that use bio-mass as ammo can hold twice as much before needing to be reloaded. You also deal more corrosive damage.
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Crash Recovery While crashing, you continuously regenerate a small amount of health.
Caustic Researcher You now apply Vulnerable faster when dealing with Corrosive damage. Additionally, your critical hit chance against Dissolved foes is increased.
Zyranium Absorption You accumulate zyranium poisoning much slower and are immune to Light and Heavy poisoning after accumulating too much. Maxing out your zyranium poisoning will still kill you, however.
Connoiseur Consumed food and drinks heal for more. Additionally, drugs add additional inhaler charge.
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Nature's Friend You can temporarily tame hostile creatures by sneaking up to them and having enough Medical skill. Gain a bonus damage against creatures.
Nature's Best Friend Tamed creatures are now permanently tamed, rewarding XP but can't be looted.
Survivalist Creatures always drop raw meat, which can be eaten as food.
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The Medical skill's best pers are Inhaler Overload, Pharm-Thusiast, Lasting High, and Hungry Guns! While not as conventional of a damage perk, Medical can be a primary skill to focus on, especially if you want to play a tanky and fast-paced character.
The combo of Inhaler Overload, Pharm-Thusiast, and Lasting High enables the strategic use of Inhalers, essentially giving you long-lasting buffs and high survivability. In terms of offense, Hungry Guns makes the corrosive damage compete with all of the other damage types.
| Tier | Unique Weapon |
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Rapid Recharge After dropping to 10% or less gadget energy, energy recharges faster for a few seconds.
Electro-Therapist You now apply Electrocuted faster. Weak Automechs become Scrambled instead and will attack their allies for a duration and take damage over time. Does not work with leaders and bosses until health has been sufficiently reduced.
Cold Blooded You can now apply Chilled faster when dealing Frost damage, and enemies killed while Frozen will shatter, dealing frost damage to hostiles in the area.
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Slow-more When using the Tactical Time Dilation gadget, you gain increased Evasion chance, ignoring enemy attacks and restoring a small amount of gadget energy. Occurs whether gadget is equipped or not.
Contingency Screen When your health hits 25%, the Gas-Energy Deflection Apparatus gadget automatically activates without spending energy.
Targeting Scanner Focusing on a target with the N-Ray Scanner will mark them. Marking targets prioritizes them for companions and causes the party's attack against them to regenerate your energy.
Weakspot Scanner Weakspots are highlighted and damage dealt to them is increased when using the N-Ray Scanner.
N-Radiator Once every few seconds, when you deal damage, you will deal the damage again as N-Ray.
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Sprayer Prayer Auntie's Acidic Dematerializer can be charged, allowing its projectile to travel further and deal more damage. Charging the gadget costs more energy.
Zyranium Powered Your energy recharges faster based on the amount of zyranium poisoning you have accumulated.
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For the Science! skill, the best perks are those that improve on your damage output and allow you to use Gadgets more reliably: Rapid Recharge, Slow-More, Electro-Therapist, and Cold-Blooded!
With Rapid-Recharge and its easy accessibility, your Gadgets will have more uptime, and you will have an advantage during fights. Electro-Therapist and Cold Blooded then allows you to spec more into their respective damage types to build around.
| Tier | Unique Weapon |
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Treasure Hunter Searching through containers can occassionally reward you with bonus bits of crafting materials.
Trick Shot Weakspot kills ricochet, dealing damage to a second nearby target.
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Tracker Hostiles on the mini-map are no longer hidden by the shroud - the area outside the player's filed of view - and have their facing shown.
Keen Observer You gain increased weakspot damage when crouched and not moving.
Sharpshooter Marksman, assault, and sniper rifles deal increased damage at distances >20m, but less below that distance. Sneak attack damage for these weapons is also increased.
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Face Reader In conversations, options that reduce reputation with a faction are highlighted before choosing them. Additionally, gain a bonus to damage against humans.
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The Observation skill, while advertised as a damage skill, is best understood as a utility skill. Its best perk, Treasure Hunter, allows you to gain a surplus of materials by making most containers you come upon have extra goodies for you to collect.
Additionally, the close second, Trick Shot, allows you to disperse your damage, making builds designed around one taps have better crowd control!
| Tier | Unique Weapon |
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Space Ranger Your Speech skill also scales damage.
Intimidator Dealing damage to Weak humans or creatures Frightens them for a short duration, with cooldowns between triggers. Strong enemies will not be frightened until their health is sufficiently reduced.
Charlatan Many of your lies are more believable and will more likely be accepted as true. Additionally, the likelihood that enemies will target you is reduced.
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Negotiator Your companion abilities charge faster and you gain positive reputation with all factions. As long as a faction doesn't dislike you, you will become Exalted with them.
Grim Visage Scoring a kill will temporarily apply Frightened to human and creature enemies. Strong enemies and bosses cannot be Frightened until their health is reduced.
Tall Tale Teller Only your most outlandish lies aren't believed, being able to lie about more things. Gain damage to enemies not targeting you directly.
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Palm-Greaser Bribes now cost less and stolen items sell for more.
Wholesale Spender Buying or selling items with a vendor accrues goodwill. After accuring enough, you gain a permanent discount and sell bonus with that vendor.
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The Speech skill, by itself, is one of the best skills in the game. Additionally, its best perks, Space Ranger, Intimidator, and Charlatan, allow you to translate that high charisma into something more dangerously practical.
Space Ranger is the best perk in Speech as it generally increases your damage output with each point you allot into the skill. Intimidator and Charlatan increase your potency in battle by lessening aggro on you while removing some opponents from the fight entirely due to fear.
| Tier | Unique Weapon |
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Inspiring Commander Kills scored by either you or the party charge each companion's ability a small amount.
Negotiator Your companion abilities charge faster and you gain positive reputation with all factions. As long as a faction doesn't dislike you, you will become Exalted with them.
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Comradery The party gains significant damage resistance for a short period of time after reviving or being revived by a companion. Taking damage no longer reduces your progress to reviving a companion.
On Your Feet You can revive your companions from a distance.
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Busy Bodies Your companions will gather crafting materials and items for you while you're away from the ship. The amount gathered is based off of XP earned while away.
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As for the Leadership skill, while weak in itself, it can be strong when taking into consideration all of your companions' broken abilities.
With that in mind, the best perks are Inspiring Commander and Negotiator as they keep your companion abilities going live more consistently during battles by converting kills to more charge and increasing the rate charged per second!




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