Are you looking into the best traits in The Outer Worlds 2? Traits are inherent quirks of your character, and you choose them at the start of the campaign. Ideally, you’ll want a combination of positive aspects, and perhaps one negative modifier that remains manageable.

The best positive and negative traits to pick in The Outer Worlds 2

Here’s what you need to know about the available traits in the game:

• There are nine positive traits and three negative traits.
• You can start the game with just one positive trait and leave it at that. However, if you choose two positive traits, you’re required to take one negative trait as a drawback.
• Ensure that you make the right decision that supports your playstyle. You won’t be able to respec your character outside of one instance after the prologue.

List of positive traits

These are the positive traits in The Outer Worlds 2:

• Brawny – Sliding or sprinting into enemies knocks them down; has a five-second cooldown.
• Brilliant – Specialize in one additional skill–i.e. start the game with +2 points in that skill.
• Heroic – Reduces companion ability charge time by -20%.
• Innovative – Create up to twice as many ammo, throwables, and resources when crafting.
• Lucky – Gain +5% critical hit chance; certain opportunities become available to you.
• Nimble – Gain +25% crouch speed and +25% combat sprint speed.
• Resilient – Death is prevented for three seconds the first time you take fatal damage in each combat encounter.
• Suave – Gain a 10% discount when buying from vendors; bounty must be two times higher than normal to be considered an outlaw.
• Witty – Your reputation with any faction will never drop below neutral level.

List of negative traits

As mentioned earlier, you have to pick a negative trait if you select two positive traits. Here are your options:

• Abrasive – Your reputation with any faction can never increase above neutral.
• Dumb – During skill selection, lock five of the 12 available skills. You can never allocate points into these skills.
• Sickly – Reduces base health by -15%; reduces toxicity crash threshold by -15.

Best traits combo

While it’s recommended to just play the game with only one positive trait, it’s really viable to pick two along with a negative effect. If that’s to your liking, then we recommend the following combo:

• Positive traits: Brilliant and Lucky
• Negative trait: Dumb or Sickly

Brilliant essentially grants a bonus skill point, which is great since you’ll ideally specialize in at least three skills anyway. Lucky, meanwhile, grants additional options when progressing through the campaign. Perhaps the most noteworthy early in the game involves the decision to crash the Vox Relay facility.

As for the negative traits, Dumb locks you out of certain options, but you probably won’t be using the vast majority of other skills anyway. Sickly is another decent choice, as long as you can avoid taking the brunt of the damage from enemies. We definitely don’t recommend Abrasive since more opportunities and benefits become available the higher your reputation with a faction, and Abrasive becomes a huge detriment to that.

In any case, that does it for our tips on the best traits in The Outer Worlds 2. Since we’re talking about how to properly build your character, you can also head over to our best skills guide and best flaws guide.