Are you concerned about the various flaws in The Outer Worlds 2? These effects pop up from time to time as you go through the campaign. They tend to be helpful, though they always come with a caveat in the form of a penalty, too. It’s up to you to choose the ones that you really need, but be forewarned that they can no longer be removed once selected.

Which flaws should you choose in The Outer Worlds 2

There are over a dozen flaws that can appear as you’re playing the game. Upon meeting the conditions for their hidden triggers, a pop-up will appear on your screen, prompting you to choose or reject the flaw.

We’ve formatted our guide to focus primarily on those with manageable effects, and we’ve even included tips in case you want to select these flaws. A bit later in our article, we list the options that have more drastic effects, such as randomized occurrences that can be a hassle for your first playthrough.

Consumerism

• Unlock: Purchase the Premium Edition of the game.
• Positive effect: -15% vendor prices when buying.
• Negative effect: -10% selling prices.

Keep or discard? Keep – Vendors items tend to have exorbitant prices, which makes this flaw in The Outer Worlds 2 quite viable. While you won’t earn as much when selling junk, you can still earn a lot of cash from quests and loot.

Easily Distracted

• Unlock: Allocate your points into different kinds of skills–i.e. at least four or five different specialties.
• Positive effect: +1 skill point gained per level.
• Negative effect: While leveling, you can only add skill points to your lowest non-zero skill or any skill you have no points in already.

Keep or discard? Discard – Having no choice but to spend points on options that you don’t necessarily need at that given time can be a huge problem, especially if you’re trying to raise certain skills just to unlock new perks.

Overprepared

• Unlock: Reload your guns regularly, even if they still have ammo.
• Positive effect: +50% magazine size.
• Negative effect: -40% damage for eight seconds after a weapon’s magazine is empty.

Keep or discard? Keep – This flaw in The Outer Worlds 2 might seem like a bad choice at first. That said, if you’re mindful of your weapon’s current ammo count, then you won’t have too many issues with the debuff.

Dependent

• Unlock: Have companions with you often when you get in combat.
• Positive effect: +25% damage to enemies recently damaged by companions.
• Negative effect: -10% damage.

Keep or discard? It depends – There are some caveats if you select this flaw. It’s pretty much dependent on the recruitable companions that you currently have in your squad. Ideally, you should have characters that can deal area-of-effect damage or damage-over-time, just so you can retain the +25% boost more consistently. This is further bolstered by unlocking each companion’s mod kit to improve their capabilities in combat.

Treacherous

• Unlock: Repeatedly do sneak attacks to take out enemies.
• Positive effect: +50% enemy awareness depletion rate; +100% sneak attack damage.
• Negative effect: -25% base health.

Keep or discard? It depends – It’s really up to you if you want to keep this flaw, as it’s primarily for players who’ve invested a lot into the Sneak skill and related perks. The main downside is that you still won’t be able to instantly kill enemies with sneak attacks if they’re at a significantly higher level.

Teetotaler

• Unlock: Regularly avoid toxicity by not using inhalers that often, or by staying away from Zyranium gas.
• Positive effect: +25% health restored by medical inhalers.
• Negative effect: +25% toxicity from medical inhalers.

Keep or discard? It depends – Get this if you have access to unique armor or unique helmets that grant toxicity reduction. Alternatively, if you often bring support characters like Valerie or Inez, then you can rely more on their healing abilities instead of your inhalers.

Luddite

• Unlock: We’re still uncertain as to how we unlocked the Luddite flaw in The Outer Worlds 2. We surmise that it might be due to avoiding the use of gadgets for a prolonged period while playing.
• Positive effect: +10% damage resistance as long as your gadget energy meter is full.
• Negative effect: -25% gadget meter max; -25% energy recharge rate.

Keep or discard? Discard – You probably want to have your gadget usage at the ready, instead of having to wait for it to fill up.

Flawed

• Unlock: Select at least two flaws.
• Positive effect: Gain an extra perk point every 5 levels. This bonus is retroactive.
• Negative effect: Flaws must be accepted.

Keep or discard? Discard – The pop-up even warns you that selecting this option is a bad idea for your first playthrough. Once you’ve beaten the game and you want to do another run where you accept every flaw that comes your way, then you definitely need to pick this.

Kleptomania

• Unlock: Keep stealing valuable items in houses and settlements without getting spotted.
• Positive effect: +100% vendor buying price for stolen items.
• Negative effect: You’ll occasionally steal things automatically.

Keep or discard? Discard – This, too, has a warning telling you that it should be avoided for your first playthrough. We’re a bit wary due to the effects on faction reputation and bounties, especially if our character suddenly grabs goodies in front of NPCs.

Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome

• Unlock: Regularly skip through dialogue–i.e. press the spacebar whenever an NPC is talking to you.
• Positive effect: +15% experience gained.
• Negative effect: Choices in conversations are randomly picked for you after enough time passes.

Keep or discard? Keep – We’ve opted to include this entry here given that the randomization can have drastic effects on your playthrough. Still, Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome is one of the best flaws in The Outer Worlds 2. Naturally, the bonus XP gain helps you level up faster. The penalty can be ignored since you have around 10 seconds to pick a reply. As long as you don’t accidentally leave the game idle while talking to a companion–where you might accidentally dismiss them for good–then you shouldn’t worry too much.

That does it for our guide on how to unlock flaws in The Outer Worlds 2. We’ll let you know once we’ve discovered others, so stay tuned.