Starfield: All 17 Traits explained

When starting your journey in Starfield, you’ll have the option to create your own character. Part of this creation process is selecting Traits that help shape the type of character you are.

There are a total of 17 Traits to choose from, each offering something that will impact your gameplay experience. Some will impact your ability to explore, while others will grant you access to special dialogue options and better rewards from missions.

Traits aren’t all good though. With each trait’s perk typically comes some sort of trade-off.

Traits are totally optional, meaning you don’t have to actually select any of them if you don’t want to. In fact, when first playing the game — because I was so confused by all the different systems in the game — I wasn’t sure what was “good” for me. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter but they do provide a nice little wrinkle that could make your journey in Starfield different than someone else.

You can select up to three optional traits to define your character. For those who are new to the game, here are all 17 available traits and what they do for you in the game.

Alien DNA

"You volunteered for a controversial experiment that combines alien and human DNA. As a result, you start with increased health and oxygen, but healing and food items aren’t as effective."

Health is pretty self-explanatory. It’s the amount of damage you can take. Oxygen is essentially your stamina, used for sprinting on planets. Because you run everywhere on planets, having more Oxygen will help you explore more quickly. The trade off is that healing and food items won’t be as effective.

Dream Home

"You own a luxurious, customizable house on a peaceful planet! Unfortunately it comes with a 125,000 credit mortgage with GalBank that has to be paid weekly."

Houses aren’t at all a necessity in Starfield. But they help with the role-playing experience and can serve as a safe haven, allowing you to sleep (heal) and store valuable items. You’ll come across opportunities to purchase houses in the main cities of Starfield, but they range in price. This basically lets you start off with a house right away, instead of having to first save up the credits. You’ll still be paying for the house though in the form of weekly payments.