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Sniping in Starfield is an effective and fun way to take down your enemies before they even know you’re there. Learn all the techniques to honing your sniping skills in our How to Snipe in Starfield guide.
Starfield is a vast and immersive space-faring game that offers a variety of gameplay styles, and sniping is one of the most thrilling and rewarding approaches. Whether you’re a seasoned sharpshooter or new to the art of sniping, this guide will help you become a formidable sniper in Starfield.
How to Snipe
To perform a Sniper shot in Starfield, simply hold down the aim and enter the cross-hair of the scope. The basics of pulling off a sniper shot are fairly simple and any build with any gun (so long as it has a scope) is technically capable of it. But as you practice your aim and improve your skills, you’ll find that there is a lot more to sniping than first meets the eye.
For example, if you’re going for a full Sniper build, one of the things you should prioritize is a high Oxygen capacity. This is because while you are looking down the cross-hair of the scope you can then steady your aim – but this requires using oxygen to do so. The longer you hold the button down as you seek to place your shot, the more likely you are to build up CO2.
You can plan for this at the very beginning when building your avatar in the character creator. One of the traits you can choose from, called Alien DNA, gives you increased health and oxygen capacity right at the start of the game. The flip side is that healing and food items aren’t as effective, but if you’re mostly sniping enemies from the shadows in combat then you should hopefully not be taking as much damage anyway.
Sniping Skills
Choosing the right skills is another hugely important way you can make your Sniper even more effective. The most obvious skill to unlock is the Sniper Certification skill from the Combat tree. The early ranks of this skill will grant you additional help with your ability to steady your weapon, which in turn helps with oxygen consumption. The later ranks increase the damage of any gun weapon which has a scope equipped.
Additionally, there are a number of other skills across the Physical, Social and Combat skill trees which, when unlocked, leveled and stacked together, will give you an incredible amount of damage. With all, or even some of these skill boosts working together, you will become a formidable one-shot assassin in space.
Below is a list of all the skills that increase your Sniper Rifle damage in Starfield:
- Stealth (Physical Skill Tree): Adds a Stealth Meter, and Suppressed weapons do an additional 5% sneak attack damage.
- Concealment (Physical Skill Tree): Ranged sneak attacks do 2.5x normal damage.
- Isolation (Social Skill Tree): Do +10% weapon damage and gain 15 Damage Resistance for each Spacesuit and Helmet equipped when you don’t have a companion or any crew.
- Armor Penetration (Combat Skill Tree): Attacks ignore 15% of a target’s armor.
- Ballistics (Combat Skill Tree): Ballistic weapons do 10% more damage.
- Marksmanship (Combat Skill Tree): Increase critical hit chance with non-automatic ranged weapons by 3%.
- Rifle Certification (Combat Skill Tree): Rifles do 10% more damage.
- Sharpshooting (Combat Skill Tree): Increase headshot critical damage by 50% with ranged weapons.
- Sniper Certification (Combat Skill Tree): Scoped weapons are steadier and have less sway.
Sniper Rifles
In Starfield, sniper rifles are a type of weapon that uses high-velocity rounds to deliver devastating damage at range. In game, the minimum range for a true sniper rifle is typically considered to be 100 meters. If you have the Sniper Certification skill from the Combat tree unlocked, then technically any gun can be used as a ‘sniper rifle’ so long as it has a scope on it. Since there are only three ‘true’ sniper rifles in Starfield, you’ll likely be making use of other weapons with scopes until you can acquire the best sniper rifles in the game.
The best weapon for a Sniper Build is the Magsniper Rifle shown above, because it can get a 120-meter range, hit for over 400 damage, and have a Recon Scope and Penetrator Rounds. An alternative is the Hard Target Rifle or the Old Earth Hunting Rifle, which you’re more likely to com across early in the game.
Sniper Mods
Weapons in Starfield can have up to 8 modifications depending on the type. Each mod requires materials or resources along with the Weapon Engineering skill from the Science skill tree. You will also have to research mod upgrades via a research station and this can take some time to unlock the gun and weapons full potential.
One of the many modifications you can add to your weapons is various types of Scopes. Scopes will be placed on the Optic slot on your weapon. Here are the types of Scopes you can create through the modification system in Starfield:
- Short Scope: Provides 2x magnified view.
- Medium Scope: Provides 4x magnified view.
- Long Scope: Provides 6x magnified view.
- Recon Scope: Marks enemies while aiming.
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