Much like Bethesda’s other popular RPGs, Starfield also comes packed with a robust skill tree system. There are 5 of these Starfield skill trees in total: Physical, Combat, Tech, Science, and Social. Each tree branches out into a wide variety of ‘Skills’ that will shape your experience in unique ways. One of those skills, Intimidation has a huge impact on your roleplaying capabilities and we are here to show you how to use it to intimidate people in Starfield.
Starfield Intimidation explained
Intimidation is a tier 2 skill that can be quite useful to keep on hand in case of dangerous combat settings above your pay grade, ensuring your survival when the going gets tough. Unlike some other skills, Intimidation is a combat skill. You need to target the enemy you wish to intimidate and then use the skill.
As expected, the enemy will be scared of you and run away from you for an amount of time that is determined by your Intimidation skill rank. This makes intimidation really useful if you wish to reduce the number of enemies you are fighting at once.
You can unlock the Intimidation skill in Starfield by navigating to the ‘Social’ skill tree and spending a skill point on Intimidation. Since it is a tier 2 skill, you will first need to spend at least 4 skill points in Social before you can get Intimidation. Luckily the Persuasion skill also falls under the Social skill tree so that should definitely be one of your unlocks.
Whether you’re just too curious to leave a high-level, unexplored area untouched, or seeking the thrill of taking on enemies technically beyond your natural capabilities, Intimidation is a good skill for both cases. Allowing you to avoid troublesome encounters and retreat to safety, or turn the tide of battle and give you the initiative to strike first / recuperate if the initiative was lost.
How to upgrade Intimidation
Ranking up skills is a little different this time around. Rather than directly invest points into it to rank up further, you must first complete a skill’s associated challenges. This will unlock the next rank of the skill. Now you can spend a skill point to upgrade your skill.
For instance, to unlock Rank 2 of the Intimidate skill in Starfield, you must first successfully use the Rank 1 variant on 5 different NPCs. Once your progress bar is filled, level up to rank 2 Intimidation by spending a skill point. As for the benefits of each rank:
At Rank 1, Intimidate will cause an NPC at or below your level to stop fighting.
At Rank 2, You can now Intimidate NPCs up to 10 levels higher than you. This causes them to flee for a short time.
At Rank 3, You can now Intimidate NPCs up to 20 levels higher than you.
At Rank 4, Your intimidation now causes NPCs to continue fleeing for a very significant period.
