The Outer Worlds - Stealth Assassin build

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Here is a build for The Outer Worlds that emphasizes not just exploration but saving time on fighting.
We emphasize stealth and trying to get one-shot kills because it is fast and efficient, and much easier to manage than companions in combat.

Attributes

You have 6 points and can make an Attribute Below Average to get another point to spend. Here is what we recommend:
  • Strength Very High (3)
  • Dexterity Below Average (-1)
    • The most severe effect here will be Weapon Durability loss. We will mitigate this in two main ways:
      • Use your weapon less often. Which we will do with an assassin build as we'll aim  to kill enemies in one hit.
      • Take the Perk "High Maintenance" which reduces durability loss by 25%, almost cancelling the effect.
      • Keep one low-durability melee weapon for use against non-hostiles like weak Sprats, and one low-durability Light Ammo firearm for shooting mines. No point using good weapons for these menial tasks and even at minimum durability they'll be good enough.
  • Intelligence Very High (3)
  • Perception Very High (3)
  • Charm Below Average (-1)
    • The most severe effect here will be Reputation gains and losses.
    • Use a consumable (alcohols) that temporarily increases Personality Attributes by +1 before any Reputation gain/loss.
      • If you are currently in the alcohol withdrawal period and need to accept more Reputation, just drink more alcohol again as the Alcohol buff will replace the Hangover debuff.
      • If you want to quickly get rid of a Hangover, go to Sleep in a bed for any period of time.
    • You only need 80% Reputation to get the maximum faction discount of 25% and a few percentage points isn't going to make a big difference.
  • Temperament Below Average (-1)
    • Not having Health Regeneration is not so severe since passive Health Regeneration only works out of combat anyway.
    • Adreno (the "healing potion") is extremely plentiful, and if you play assassin carefully you should be taking few to no hits at all anyway.
    • For free healing you can pick up the Defective MoonMan Helmet once you get to the Groundbreaker.
    • You can hold your health at around 25% and permanently take advantage of the Tier 3 Perk "Last Stand" which gives you +30% damage while at 25% health.
      • If you need your health lowered, try some falls to trim your health carefully. There are also occasionally environmental hazards such as campfires or explosive containers.
      • Don't take the Tier 2 Perk "Harvester" (15% Health Restored per Kill) if you want to try this.
      • There is a bug (?) where loading a save game can cause the buff to disappear despite having infinite duration and your health still 25% or less. You can use the Defective MoonMan Helmet to heal slightly, causing the game to reevaluate your health percentage and restore the Last Stand buff.
Strength, Intelligence, and Perception all have damage modifiers which are good for loading up a strong Sneak Attack. But we have also incidentally chosen probably the three least severe penalties.
If you don't like your Dexterity Below Average you could trim one point from Strength and make your Dexterity Average.at the cost of 10% Melee Damage. This is not so bad and in any case you can focus on using guns instead of melee, even when up close with the enemy.

Skills

For the starting Skills during character creation we recommend Stealth and either Dialog or Leadership. If you want to minimize the possibility of losing a few dialog options, choose Dialog. Once you can get Inspiration to 60, the skill that your companions can provide becomes insane, so you might want to choose Leadership instead to get there faster.
If you are worried about skill checks because of the potential XP loss, don't worry bout it at all since you can farm XP (and loot) anytime you want by respawning overland enemies and killing them. Marauders are especially good for getting some replacement weapons and other loot as creatures typically only have their creature parts.

For Aptitude, we recommend "Scientist Assistant, Level 0, Class A". This provides a bonus to Science (not a flat skill point into it, and it will not activate Skill tier unlocks). In the very long term, Science will help with the use of Science Weapons, which are more viable than Guns for high level Tinkering because of the possibility of capping the cost.

You will probably end up spending a few points here and there to manage some skill checks, but in general your skill priorities should look like this:
  • 40 Sneak for Pickpocket
  • 60 Sneak for Crouch Move Speed +25%
    • Movement Perks that increase Walk and Sprint movement do not affect your Crouch Move.
    • Sometimes if you are out of line of sight of alerted enemies, it is better to just not move because any movement results in footstep noise that could make the enemy Awareness meter go up. If you don't have to rush up to enemies, you might consider leaving this for later.
  • 60 Inspiration to double Companion Skill Bonuses
    • If you are comfortable with stealth kills so far you can detour to get this for greatly increased companion skill bonuses to help with skill checks. Otherwise leave it for later.
  • 60 Hack for Hack Automechanicals
    • This optional but in the early game it can help a lot. Or just sneak past the lot of them and come back to kill them later.
    • You can disable an Automechanical and attack another so that you don't alert both.
    • The three-legged Mechanical Sentries and Mechanical Guardians often face their midsection weakpoint away during combat so it's harder to hit even with TTD (Tactical Time Dilation).
      • If you hack them you can then circle around to the front and shotgun them in the weakpoint.
      • Later in the game when your Sneak becomes high enough for you to literally walk in front of them while their Awareness Meters are still filling up (they haven't detected you), this becomes less important.
    • Just like with Pickpocketing, you can move while you Hack so you don't have to wait for it to stop moving and you can move a bit to account for them turning to look.
    • You can disable friendly automechanicals without incurring any penalty. This can let you steal and pickpocket without being observed by them.
  • 150 Sneak to not alert other enemies if your Sneak Attack kills an enemy
    • Not always reliable for unclear reasons -- see video at the end of this section for an example.
    • This is ultimately your goal and makes stealth play way more convenient, and therefore general exploration goes a lot faster.
    • If you can do without anything else, then go for this as soon as possible. If you care about promptly doing quests with all skill checks, then it's going to be pretty irritating. You could try holding a reserve of 10 or so unspent Skill points in case you really need to improve another skill to make a skill check.
    • The Tier 3 Perk "Boom, Headshot!" creates an explosion that can ruin this effect by harming another target.
  • 20 Melee Weapons
    • If you use them a lot, Power Attack helps you load up your Sneak Attack. Otherwise wait for Science to upgrade your Prismatic Hammer first.
    • The noise radius of melee weapons can be as much as 10 meters, so getting your Sneak to 150 has higher priority.
    • Stop at 20 if you are going to use the Prismatic Hammer because you'll be developing your Science anyway and at 150, Science Weapons get their Critical Chance from Science instead of weapon skills and the other Two-Handed Melee Weapon skill unlocks are not really worth it when we are aiming to assassinate enemies with the first hit.
  • 100 Science for reduced Tinkering costs
    • At Normal difficulty we did not Tinker at all for a very long time but instead just found higher-level versions of good assassination weapons such as the Hunting Rifle, The Vermin, and Tactical Shotguns.
      • Even late-game, a Sneak Attack to a weak spot with a shotgun tends to kill most things.
      • Once you get your Science up however you may want to consider using mods to change weapon damage into a type that Science will enhance. At 100 Science this is worth +30% Plasma or +30% Shock damage.
    • Tinkering a gun several times becomes exponentially expensive even with a 90% discount from Science. But Science Weapon Tinkering have costs capped at 200 so they are more viable.
      • Even with this, the only really viable Science Weapon is the Prismatic Hammer, and that's not even taking into account the Power Attack.
      • If you want to keep playing well past the original level cap of 30, then this is probably what you'll be using combined with the insane ability to sneak right in front of enemies and still not be detected long enough to Sneak Attack them in the face. The base game locations are more or less level-locked but the DLCs scale enemies to your level.
      • Other Science Weapons upgraded to level 30 and even with +100% damage from both Science Weapon damage perks are inferior to a carefully selected normal gun that's not Tinkered to be upgraded at all.
    • If possible, limit your Tinkering though you will probably need to do some if you are playing at Hard difficulty to properly take advantage of the 150 Sneak skill unlock.
  • 60 Engineering to make Pristine gear
    • The cost reduction for repairs isn't that much. The real benefit is the level 60 unlock that gives you a chance to make items you Repair into Pristine versions, which in turn further reduce the need for repair.
    • You will probably really only need to do this for Science and Unique gear since you can generally find copies of other gear, so when something gets worn you can just swap it for a 100% version.
In the short video below, you can see that the 150 Sneak unlock is not always reliable. Most of the time it is, but when it doesn't work, it's not clear why.

Perks

Here are the key Perks to get. Mostly we try to stack damage bonuses but note that bonuses appear to be additive, not multiplicative. So +25% and +30% totals 155% damage, not 162.5% (125% x 130%)

Tier 1
  • Lone Wolf - Damage when alone in party +25%
    • Good boost for the early game but eventually you will probably want to do without it if you can, especially when you start needing skill checks of 100-150. Companions help you get those scores without skill point investments of your own.
    • Can later be sort-of replaced by Nyoka's unique perk of +20% Sneak Attack damage.
    • Once you get a really good weapon like the Tactical Shotgun or an upgraded Prismatic Hammer doing Power Attacks, you won't need this as much and still get one-hit kills.
  • Slow the World - Tactical Time Dilation Meter Max +25%
  • Quick and the Dead - Tactical Time Dilation Recharge Rate +50%
  • Nietzsche's Reward - Damage per Flaw +5%
    • There are two Flaws that are not particularly severe so this can be at least +10% damage
      • Guilt-Ridden
        • Weapon Sway and Weapon Spread penalties when fighting Humans
        • Personally kill lots of humans until this Flaw is offered
      • Impediphobia
        • Attribute penalties when Encumbered (when carrying more than your weight capacity)
        • (?) Be frequently Encumbered until this Flaw is offered
  • High Maintenance - Weapon/Armor Durability Loss -25%
    • Not so important if you decided to leave your Dexterity at Average, but even then you might still want this perk as the others won't or shouldn't see a lot of use.
Tier 2
  • The Reaper - Tactical Time Dilation Meter restored by +25% per kill.
  • Scanner - Bonus to Extra Headshot / Weakspot Damage +20% when using TTD
  • Lone Master - All Skills +5 when alone or +10 if no Companions recruited
  • Weird Science - Science Weapon Damage +50%
    • For much of the game Science Weapons are just a novelty and don't have the same killing power as the guns you want to snipe with. However in the very late game, because Tinkering costs for Science Weapons have a cap with the Science 80 skill unlock, they remain viable for Tinkering to improve damage at very high levels.
  • Assassin - Quiet Weapon Damage +25%
    • Potentially good but there are very, very, few weapons that qualify, and even if they do the 25% bonus might not make them better than another non-Quiet weapon even with this Perk bonus.
    • Consider a respec to take this Perk only when you find a Quiet weapon you want to use.
Tier 3
  • Last Stand - +30% Damage while under 25% Health
    • Using our Below Average Temperament we can maintain this bonus indefinitely because we don't have passive Health regeneration.
  • Confidence - Your next attack after killing an enemy is a guaranteed Critical Hit.
    • With TTD you can sometimes snipe three or more enemies before the meter runs out, especially when you have the Perks to increase your TTD meter.
      • Note that without the 150 Sneak effect, two shots (even if they are one-shot kills) generally exposes your location no matter how far you are from the enemy.
  • Concentrated Fire - +10% stacking damage per subsequent hit in TTD
    • If the first shot doesn't do it the second one had better.
  • Armor Master - Armor Rating Bonus +10%, Armor Skill Bonus +100%
    • We're not aiming to get hit at all so the Armor Rating isn't important, but the Armor Skill Bonus is good for not only helping to pass Skill checks but when you are wearing gear with Sneak bonuses or Stealth Skills bonuses.
  • Solo Sneaker - Detection Radius of Enemies -33% when you have no companions in your party
    • You can probably take this one quite late as by the time you qualify, you will have adapted to not having it.
  • Wild Science - Science Weapon Damage +50%

      Early Game Tips for this build

      Basic Strategy
      Kill one enemy and run away until they lose track of you.
      • If you can't hide from them until their detection meter drops, you might have to run far away until they turn back. However, this causes their health to be restored to full.
      • You can try circling around an obstacle while crouched/sneaking. If you deny them line of sight long enough even though they are circling trying to find you, they eventually lose sight of you. Alternatively, this could buy you enough time for your TTD meter to refill enough for a shot or two.
      • Animals don't know how to open doors so you can get behind a door and shut it, then stay Crouched and wait until they stop searching. Could take a while, though. Alternatively, just wait for your TTD to fill then open the door and fire off a few more shots before closing the door again.
      • If there are several weak enemies -- generally Humans -- you can try sniping everyone during TTD. You can save some TTD meter by sniping the first one and then immediately activating TTD to line up the rest of your shots. It's possible to wipe an entire camp of three to five enemies if you can one-shot all of them. A tougher enemy can be saved for last if you need two or more shots on them.
      Find Good Weapons
      Various weapons are placed in the world and not random. You can use a third-party map to help locate some strong ones that you just have to go and pick up (although they aren't always complete and you might still find some goodies not marked).
        Buy Over-leveled Weapons
        What you find or loot is generally related to the level of the location -- enemies and placed loot and random container loot are generally level appropriate to a location.
        So if you do a lot of quests you will gradually over-level quest locations (the DLCs however have NPCs and monsters scaled to your level). At that point you can try to refresh vendors (including vending machines) to buy gear that is generally closer to your character level, no matter your location. It takes about 24 game hours (?) to refresh vendors, and you can pass this time quickly by sleeping.
          Parvati
          If you are playing on Supernova difficulty you'll probably want to keep your Companions out of combat because we won't be focussing on their combat ability or survivability at all.
          • Parvati is especially troublesome because in the early game, once you recruit her you cannot leave her anywhere and on Supernova, if a companion dies they are permanently gone.
          • Instead, you can start the main quest and in Reed's office where you first meet her, DECLINE to take her.
          • Clear the way on the main quest until you're ready to decide where to send the power from the Geothermal Plant in the main mission Comes Now the Power.
            • Don't talk to Adelaide yet either.
            • Once you make that choice, a Power Regular becomes available and that also means your ship is unlocked and you can send companions out of your party. But don't do that yet.
          • Go to Edgewater and recruit Parvati. She'll be at the Maintenance Shed, which is also where the town's Workbench is located.
          • Recruit Parvati, talk to Vicar Max, then talk to Adelaide to advance the quest step to "deliver Reed's message".

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