Starfield: How To Make Stealth Viable | Sneak Build Guide

Stealth is still S-Tier is Starfield. Sneak attacks deal high damage, and with the right skills, you’ll instantly destroy enemies with critical damage. The trouble is you’ll need to invest lots of skills points into your build before it becomes viable. To truly excel at Stealth, you’ll need to unlock the Concealment Skill — this can be done as early as Level 12 by spending 12 Skill Points in the Physical Tree. Once you have Concealment Rank 4 (16 Skill Points) you’ll become a Stealth God. Literally nothing will be able to stop you from absolutely dominating with deadly instakill attacks.

But getting there can be tough. To make your life easier, here’s what you need to know about stealth builds. Equipment you need to get, skills you need to unlock, and so on.

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Stealth Build | Required Skills

For a Stealth Build to become completely unstoppable, there are only two skills you need to max out.

• Stealth Rank 4: Unlock Stealth Rank 1 first. This increases your sneaking ability, doubles stealth attack damage when hidden. Increasing Stealth will also unlock additional meters to help you avoid detection.
• Ranking up Stealth: To raise your rank, you’ll need to score Stealth Attacks. These are powerful attacks that trigger when you’re Hidden and using a Silenced Weapon. Travel to any Earth-like Planet with a high concentration of fauna. Go into Stealth and shoot fauna to earn stealth attacks. You don’t have to kill. If you’re far away, you can easily score multiple stealth attacks at the same time.

• Concealment Rank 4: The ultimate Stealth skill. Each rank increases damage when stealth further. At Rank 3 you’ll automatically gain the Chameleon ability as a permanent upgrade to your character. When you stand still you’ll turn invisible. At Rank 4, you’ll automatically hide from enemies when sneaking — your stealth attacks will do quadruple damage.

Fully upgrading Concealment will complete the build. Combat from this point on will be trivially easy, even on the hardest difficulty settings. I recommend also unlocking ranks in Ballistics, Rifles, Security and Stealing. All of these skills help make you a well-rounded rogue. But they’re all dependent on what weapons you want to use for your build. I highly recommend going for silenced guns because stealth with melee weapons is extremely difficult.

• Weapon Engineering: Rank 1 in Weapon Engineering will unlock useful skills that allow you to add silencers and other stealth buffs to your weapons. A silenced weapon is key.
• You can skip this skill if you purchase or find Silenced Guns. Akila City weapon vendors sell silenced rifles with scopes you can start using right away to level up Stealth Attacks. Very, very useful.

• Spacesuit Crafting: Rank 3 in Spacesuit Crafting makes using spacesuits much more viable when sneaking. You can add the Chameleon perk and other stealth-focused buffs to your suits.
• This can also be skipped if you collect a Chameleon Suit early. To do this, complete the Mantis mission — learn how to get the Mantis Suit here.

With a silenced weapon and the Mantis suit, sneaking will become much easier.

Stealth Tips | What You Need To Know

To master stealth, you’ll need to follow some basic pointers. Stealth can be very, very powerful — but you’ll have to work for it. Until you get Stealth 4 / Concealment 4, you’ll struggle to deal any damage with stealth at all.

• Stealth requires a silenced weapon. These can be added with Weapon Engineering Rank 1 or you can find / purchase these weapons. Silenced guns are imperative for building up stealth attacks to unlock higher ranks. Stealth is almost impossible to rank up with melee weapons.
• To make stealth easier, complete the Ryujin Industries Faction story. Start this by travelling to Neon on Volii Alpha (Volii System) and getting hired. You’ll earn stealth-based weapons and get a special Operative Apparel that makes stealth much easier.
• Unfortunately, companions make stealth very difficult. I recommend playing totally solo. Select a background / trait to improve your stats when playing solo.
• When sneaking, make sure to remove your spacesuit in areas with oxygen. This will greatly improve your stealth capabilities until you find spacesuits with specific mods. Unlocking Spacesuit Crafting will allow you to add more mods to your suit.
• Play through the main story to unlock new abilities. By progressing the story far enough, you’ll be able to unlock an ability that turns you temporarily invisible. Very useful for making stealth much easier.
• The environment matters when using stealth. Light level, opening doors, moving objects and more can affect stealth. Always sneak during the night if you’re hunting fauna for easy stealth attacks.
• And as stated above, get the Mantis Suit ASAP.

Get the right skills and follow these tips and the game becomes a breeze. Technically, it is possible to max out Concealment before Level 20, but the slog to get there will be rough. If you’re willing to take it slow before becoming an impossible-to-stop stealth killer, then the Stealth Archer is still a viable build for Starfield veterans.