Starfield fans spend 200 hours working out game's massive skill tree

According to my calculations (and by that, I mean I googled it), at the time of writing, there’s around 1,016 hours to go until 6 September, AKA Starfield launch day. In fact, it’s about 896 hours until the start of the game’s early access period.

If Bethesda’s upcoming space-exploration RPG is all you can think about, that probably sounds like a really long time to you. I mean, it is. There’s loads of ways to pass the time, though - you could build your space ship in advance, lament of the seemingly tragic state of the in-game economy, or simply admire the in-game romance options. Alternatively, you can bask in the glory of the game’s enormous skill tree, which one fan has pieced together using all the evidence they could find from screenshots and gameplay footage (and fleshed out with some speculation).

Take a look at the story trailer for Starfield below.

Reddit user asd8dhd spent around 200 hours compiling all the skills, including the Intimidation skill (which can help the user escape or attack in a fight first), Ballistics (which boosts the power of ballistic weapons), and Security (which allows you to attempt to hack into locks). They’ve also come up with pages upon pages of unconfirmed skill descriptions - looking at them, most seem to be totally reasonable based on their names and associated icons, but obviously some things could be wildly different in the actual game. They’ve shared an enormous document detailing everything, and have posted all their supporting evidence on Imgur. It’s a seriously impressive project.

Other fans are blown away: “Okay, this is actually an impressive level of reference checking,” TheRealGC13 wrote. “The sheer complexity of this game is… Ugh. I’ve been patiently waiting, but I don’t think I’m ready for its vastness,” commented Ptoney1.

Starfield will release on 6 September, but fans can get stuck in from 1 September thanks to its early access period.