Starfield's BEST & WORST Legendary Armor Effects | Complete Analysis

if you've ever wondered what the best and worst equipment effects are in Starfield then you're in the right place I've set up a new lab on the beautiful copia 1 this week and with the help of my willing test subjects I've tested all 32 equipment effects in the game and have compiled the results on just how useful they are and which ones are worth your time to hunt down some have surprisingly potent and hilariously unintended effects While others are straightup dumpster fires that have left me wondering how they were even approved to be part of the game in the first place by the end of this video you'll know exactly what each one does instead of working off of often vague or incomplete descriptions and also where each of them can most effectively be used make sure to stick around to the end to see just how useful those legendary effects really are to start we'll do a very quick breakdown of how equipment effects are tiered this is the same as how weapon effects work where you have rare epic and legendary effect tiers and you will roll a single effect from each tier depending on the Rarity of the equipment for example legendary equipment has one legendary epic and rare effect while a rare only has a single rare effect you can't have three legendary effects on a legendary or two epic effects on an epic piece of gear unfortunately I didn't have a reliable testing method for spawning thousands of pieces of gear this time around so it's not possible to say with certainty that every single effect can spawn on packs helmets and Suits now there are IDs in the game tied to some of these effects that say things like legendary Helmet or Legendary Pack but despite the naming conventions of these I know for a fact that I've seen some of these effects spawn on Alternate pieces of gear than what they're named to so I'm not ruling out any possibilities quite yet if anyone has specifically seen Sentinel on a helmet or a pack please let me know in the comments because I'm more curious about the answer to this one more than anything else and you'll see why later on as always my testing method involved practical tests to validate each of these conclusions as we've seen enough cases of misinformation being spread on how things work in this game but please let me know if you've observed differently or have alternative thoughts on what you think of each effect and it's its relative usefulness might be first on our list today is chameleon which is a fantastic effect geared towards stealth players but it's also useful for just about anyone while standing still and in sneak mode you'll become invisible which can help Shake enemies off your tail while in combat and can also allow you to perform stealth attacks in otherwise more exposed areas once you've gone invisible what's interesting about this effect is that with only one piece of gear with chameleon you can't fully shake off an enemy if they're in your line of sight but with two or more pieces you can stand right in front of them even while they're shooting at you and you can shake off their aggression pushing your stealth meter back into caution instead of danger and then it'll begin to slowly reset sometimes they'll continue to fire the rest of their current clip of ammo at you but they'll almost always stop shooting once that's used up this is incredibly useful for stealth play if you need to reset aggression or are looking for more ways to get your stealth attacks off or you simply want to get some annoying enemies off your tail if you don't care as much about some of the more conventional damage mitigated type effects this is an excellent effect to seek out especially if you can get your hands on two pieces of gear with it to get the enhanced effect in a way you could also consider this a form of damage mitigation because you prevent enemies from attacking you with the Dio that it provides chameleon is definitely a top tier effect and the fact that it's a rare is also a nice bonus so it'll be much more common than some of the other effects bolstering is an interesting effect that provides you with up to 100 physical and energy resistance the lower your health gets the resistance seems to be applied in increments of 10 resistance for every 10% missing HP with the first 10 being applied as soon as you take any damage at all this is actually a pretty solid amount of resistance especially earlier on in a playthrough when you might not have Superior gear to help juice up your stats because it's more effective the lower your health gets you're almost incentivized to keep your health not fully topped off as you'll get more value per HP by keeping it lower on average this appears beautifully with the weapon effect cornered which boosts your damage the lower your HP is rather than your defenses you can also stack this effect multiple times so if you got a pack helmet and suit with bolstering you'll be able to boost up to an additional 300 resistance at 10% HP if you're someone who really likes getting up close in personal in fights this is a great allaround option for mitigating damage though it may not be quite as strong as some of the pure percentile damage mitigators that work at full potency regardless of what your health is at of course those will only be for damage from select enemy types or damage sources which we'll get into next there are six different percentile damage mitigation effects in the rare tier that all have the exact same 15% damage reduction for their respective sources these six effects are abla for energy damage anti-ballistic for range damage Beast Hunter for damage from Aliens combat veteran for damage from humans sturdy for melee damage and finally technician for damage from robots all of these have the ability to be stacked multiple times and it's it's very important to note that these stack additively with each other when they're in the same effect bucket so if you triple down on combat veteran for example you'll receive a whopping 45% damage reduction against humans I would argue that this is probably the best one of the bunch since combat against humans is typically the most common though you could look to run Beast Hunter or sturdy if you're doing a large B of surveying where alien combat will be more prevalent if you were to mix and match these effects for example doing two pieces of combat veteran and one with anti-ballistic these would interact multiplicatively so if you took 100 damage and you had 200 physical resistance from your gear you would reduce that 100 damage to 80 then that 80 to 56 with two combat veteran stacks and then that 56 to 47.6 with the anti- ballistic had you just done three combat veteran Stacks it would have actually been a lower number going down to 44 instead of 47.6 the reason being that multiplicative damage always suffers from more Cooks in the kitchen because each additional effect in the mix ends up working with a smaller and smaller number as each effect gets applied to that original value the opposite of this is true for damage calculations so it's actually always better to mix things up in that case because you end up working with a larger and larger number each time in short if you're going to run any of these six effects you're best off stacking it into a single type to get the most bang for your buck out of it for the enemy type you'll be most likely to face off in the long run I would suggest combat veteran for most average players O2 boosted is nothing special you simply gain 20% more oxygen capacity for each piece of gear equipped with this effect this does not act multiplicatively and does not factor in any additional bonuses like ranks from Fitness when calculating that 20% bonus if you console command and pull your characters out2 value you'll see that you always start with a base of 1002 points Fitness increases this by 10 points per r R from 1 to three and O2 boosted increases it by 20 points you won't be getting any fractional amounts for having multiple O2 increasing sources here while it's not useless I wouldn't say this is particularly useful in most cases as there aren't many situations where you really need the additional O2 except for holding your breath longer while sniping typically you can get by with your base O2 and if you really do need more then just put a point or two into fitness if you do want that boost I'd prioritize other effects the rare tier over this for sure O2 filter is another oxygen related effect that decreases your O2 drain rate by 25% rather than increasing the capacity this effect does stack which is kind of wild because if you have three of these active then your drain rate is actually reduced by 75% and you can Sprint for multiple minutes without ever depleting your O2 meter it also applies to melee attacks as well which is a great boost for melee builds and even with just one gear slot with O2 filter you can almost do Infinite Power Attack of course this is definitely Overkill but it's interesting nonetheless it's worth noting that this does not decrease the drain rate of o2 while holding your breast sniping which is a bummer similar to O2 boosted I'd prioritize other effects here but this is good for melee build that was pretty quick since six of our 11 rare effects were pretty much all identical so let's take a look at the 11 epic effects now which is also a bit of a mixed bag first up is automatic which is a nice to have effect more than anything but pops a med pack when you're hit while below 25% HP this can only be triggered once every 60 seconds but what's interesting is that it will pop one med pack per piece of gear that has automic applied to it so you can get some very rapid healing activated if you've got all three slots outfitted with this this can be good for Close Quarters enthusiasts who might be too busy blasting to pay attention to their HP so it's a nice get out of jail free card when this hasn't been triggered yet just don't rely on it to do all of your healing for you as it might be on cool down when you think it's not or you could be fighting something strong enough to push you right from 26% HP down to zero and kill you probably a little Overkill to have three pieces of gear outfitted with this effect but I'd say it's worth having at least a single piece of gear with it just to help prevent some accidental deaths in some dicer situations resource hauler is a straightforward effect that reduces the weight of all Resources by 25% this effect cannot be stacked so one piece of gear with it is all you'll ever need it's useful earlier on if you need to get your Outpost set up and you want to Lug more resources from a shop or your storage to and from your ship or if you're a big fan of being self-sufficient and want to ensure you can scavenge more resources especially higher tier crafted components while you're out adventuring it's far from game changing but it's all right weapon holsters is very similar in effect but it's significantly more useful than resource huler in my opinion you reduce the weight of all weapons in your inventory by 50% which will give you more flexibility in how many weapons particularly heavier and highly modded weapons you can carry along with you while still having room for looting and other items you probably also realized that weapons are one of the best weight to Value ratio kind of item to loot and sell so you'll be able to take a lot more with you before having to offload them in your ship or at a vendor to sell for credits this also does not stack so no need to Triple or double up on this effect either very similar to the rare effects we have a pile of Epic effects that all provide the same value bonus across different resistances antiseptic galvanized lead lined and liquid cooled each provide 25 resistance against Airborne corrosive radiation and thir Al environmental effects respectively these effects can be stacked so you can pump up 75 points into leadline if you're very radiation averse to be perfectly honest I've completely ignored these environmental effects over hundreds of hours of play because they simply don't do enough for me to care about them at all yes they can have mildly negative impacts on your gameplay but I'm far too lazy to be swapping to gear that has more suitable Environmental Protections for the planet I'm landing on I'm not even sure that it makes much of a difference at all because even if I throw on a bunch of specific specific protective gear my suit still has all of its defenses depleted most of the time anyways maybe we'll get a more properly fleshed out survival mode down the road that could make it significantly more important to itemize properly but until that happens I'll be slotting my highest defensive gear and Best Equipment effects first before something like this all right so acrobat gives you 50% reduced fall damage and you might be thinking Ah that's useless fall damage almost never happens and I'm generally inclined to agree with you but if you stack acrobat onto two different pieces of gear you become completely immune to fall damage altogether which is kind of insane considering the majority of the Epic effects are next to useless this is actually a really fun combo to look out for when hunting for legendary gear if you want to never deal with breaking your ankles after a 10-ft jump again with only one stack I'd agree that this is pretty trash and in general if you're careful about cushioning your Falls with your Boost pack you'll find this to not be very good plus most low G planets are next to impossible to even take fall damage on so I'd say you're much better off passing on this guy in favor of of something else unless you're explicitly chasing the zero fall damage fun mode from running two pieces in case you are looking for some sort of fall damage mitigation you could always also put some points into gymnastics as an alternative hacker does exactly what the description says nothing complicated here you increase your max bankable Auto attempts by two for each piece of gear with the effect what's interesting is that if you take off the gear with hacker on it it will visually show that your Auto attemp Max has been decreased which we can see in this example going from eight and a bit down to eight and then down to six but if you actually try to use the auto attempts you still actually had that eight and a bit saved up and they're still usable it's just hiding so you don't have to worry about unequipping the gear and losing the charges but if you do want to save up additional banked attempts you do need to make sure that the gear is equipped before completing a lock to contribute to your total reserves realistically though I find the base number of bankable Auto attempts to be more than enough to reliably have charges is saved up for Master locks which are really the only locks worth using them on and that's if you even bother picking locks at all anymore given how bad the loot typically is All Things Considered it's still a nice to have but it's not necessary at all if you're looking for a more permanent way to increase your auto attempts without investing further into the skill or you already have done so there are a couple of skill magazines that provide permanent boost to your auto attempts analyzer is a selectively useful damage amplifier that gives you 10% increased damage against scanned enemies the only place this is really going to be useful is in Long exploration bouts on the same planet where you're killing a lot of the same enemy while bumbling around or you're trying to power level without an XP farm and you're mowing down high level alien enemies for extended periods of time this is the only truly offensive effect in the epic tree so it's Unique in that sense but again very situationally useful fastened is another incredibly simple one here where you get 20 additional carrying capacity for each piece of gear with fastened on it it's a nice to have for you loot hoarders and that's about it all right we're onto the legendary equipment effects and we've got a few more unique Buffs than the previous two tiers have had reactive provides you with a 10% chance to Stager nearby attackers but it doesn't do a particularly good job of describing exactly how it functions specifically it means when you are attacked by an enemy there's a 10% chance if you are pretty much within spitting distance of them that they will be briefly staggered this is not a percent chance for you to stagger them when you perform your own attacks against them there's also definitely a higher than 10% chance for the Stagger to take place if you get melee by someone with a Chance honestly feeling like it's closer to 50% it's tough to say if this effect actually Stacks or not because it felt pretty similar with one versus three pieces activated and I almost suspect that there's a cool down between new staggers being possible to apply regardless this is actually a pretty powerful effect for melee builds and any other play style where you'll be right up in the enemy's Grill the active range is pitifully short though so this will be next to useless for any other play style which is kind of a bummer if you're like me repulsing was an effect to you were bornless so you won't need to seek out any additional gear to work this magic it's very similar to reactive only it gives you a 5% chance to disarm targets with every successful hit instead of Staggering them repulsing seems to work similarly to how weapon effects do where receiving damage from multi-shot weapons increases the chance for the effect to proc though the effect in general behaves quite oddly you still need to be very close to an enemy for the disarm to take place and the 5% proc chance just doesn't quite feel right in practice it's almost like the effect charges itself up or is able to roll the disarm chances from a distance and once you get properly close enough to a Target it can instantly disarm them again this is another case where it's very difficult to say if it's impacted by multiple pieces of gear here but I've tried a few different tests and I do want to say that it also doesn't stack personally I think this is just a worse version of reactive because the proc chances half of that of reactive and you still need to get stupidly close to the enemy and realistically by the time you proc the effect on average your enemy should probably be dead unless you have very bad weapons if reactive and repulsing don't stack multiple times it could be worth considering running both individual effects when running those CQB and melee builds that will make proper use of these effects mirid is a very very bad effect that reflects 4% of incoming attacks back at your enemy this 4% is truly next to unnoticeable and it only works against gunfire melee attacks are not fair game here most of the time the damage being reflected back is panut damage and this should not be something you rely on as a form of damage mitigation there are just better options here this is garbage incendiary sucks ass and is a shameful legendary effect you have a 10% chance of setting nearby attackers a blaze and this effect cannot be stacked the effect can only proc if you're pretty much touching tips with an attacker and it's a flat energy damage burn for 3 seconds that does next to nothing especially if they have any significant energy resistance which most humanoids have seriously we're talking an absolute maximum of 30 damage there is no way someone willingly approved this and thought this was cool I'm not sure why they couldn't have made this Force enemies to react to the fact that they've been set on fire and maybe briefly incapacitate them or at least make the damage percent HP based like the Laser's four perk here's my take on a cooler version of the perk instead when having the effect proc your character radiates a fiery explosion around them that deals burn damage and each additional piece of gear would increase that blast radius and damage and potentially knock them down if you had three pieces Supernova already exists in the starborn powers and boost assault training has a similar fiery effect so something like this would surely not be much more difficult to code plus if you really had to you could give it a cool down if there was any concerns around performance from multiring without bringing some additional benefits to the table here the incendiary effect can burn in health mechanized is another carrying capacity booster but this time you get an additional 40 kilos for each piece of gear bearing the effect we've seen a few of these already so no need to explain much more about where this is useful it's just a better version of fasten and you'll benefit from this as a loot Goblin or someone who enjoys having a variety of options to choose from when it comes to weapons and gear in your inventory armor plated is a true defensive effect that provides you with damage reduction across the board for each piece of gear equipped you'll take a full 10% less damage up to 30% less at Max while the 10% may be lower than the 15% air effects because it covers all combat scenarios it's much more generally useful this is definitely something you want to keep your eyes out for if you're playing on a higher difficulty level and you're looking for some extra damage mitigation Head Hunter is a fantastic effect that makes your next shot after hitting a head shot deal 25% more damage I really like this as it actually incentivizes aiming for the head so that I don't feel like I'm giving up DPS but I'm instead rewarded with more after hitting the head shot you can actually miss as many shots as you want and you won't lose the damage amp it's only when you land your next shot that it uses up the buff this can be a regular body or limb shot or you can do another head shot to use up the buff and simultaneously reapply it for your next shot allowing you to chain it if your headshot accuracy is on point this works interestingly with multi-shot weapons as well if you shoot a shotgun that applies multiple instances of damage in a single shot only the first pellet will be the reduced damage on the first head shot but the rest of the pellets will gain the damage benefit so you can get an even quicker activation of the effect here the flip side is that if you don't head shot on the next shot it will instead only be the first pellet that lands that gets the damage bonus and the rest will be normal which does actually make sense I'd say it's a very strong effect with a solid potential to increase DPS that rewards skilled Sharpshooters highly recommended for sniping but this is clearly effective with almost any weapon type assisted carry causes you to drain 75% less O2 while running while encumbered which is a significant reduction but the likelihood of this actually being useful is extremely low what you might not realize is that running is different different from sprinting sprinting is specifically when your O2 meter is being drained while moving very quickly whereas running is what most people will actually think of as their default walking speed this is probably easier for you to distinguish on Console where it's just a matter of how far you're pushing your analog stick but on PC it's a specific toggle for whether you're walking very slowly or running so this 75% reduction is only actually properly being applied in situations where you are just bumbling around which is next to useless this is a bait effect disguised as something more useful than it actually is plus we all know at this point that you won't die if you're over encumbered and most scenarios where you're going to be heavily over encumbered are in safe areas where you're hauling resources to and from your ship for Outpost or crafting purposes you're much better off just going for carrying capacity boost so that you can still fast travel if you're vacuuming up loot well exploring decreased O2 drain while running but not sprinting is not very useful if you really need the extra extra help while over enumber then just get your personal atmosphere going as it'll be effective up to a reasonably High weight of a few thousand kilos though it is not unlimited as I used to think when the game first came out but it's still useful in more than 90% of practical scenarios Sentinel is an incredibly powerful effect and I definitely think it's worthy of being legendar here you have a 75% chance to reduce damage by 50% while standing still that effectively translates to 37.5% damage reduction which is massive honestly this is best suited to medium to longrange builds where you want to hold the position but don't necessarily want to waste time weaving in and out of cover you can also opt for a start and stop play style even if you're doing more Close Quarters running gun shooting as long as you've closed enough of a gap to get your damage off and you can plant your feet to activate the effect even better you can use this while boost assault hovering or jumping and as long as you're not running the Sentinel effect will persist what's wild about this effect is that you can technically stack it if it's possible to find it on anything other than SPAC suits and if you do stack it it will actually have a 75% chance to completely reduce incoming damage while standing still which is insane you can go one step further and put it on three pieces of gear and if you have something attack you with enough kinetic energy like a terramorph if you were to block that attack it actually launches your character back sometimes a stupid amount of distance away which is hilarious this is obviously not intended behavior and I personally haven't seen Sentinel on anything other than the anti-zeno space suit from the UC Vanguard quest line but if you do stumble across it on other pieces of gear I would definitely hold on to it this is easily one of the best effects in the game if not the best legendary effect in my opinion wow I almost completely forgot to include this one because Peacemaker doesn't change the prefix of your equipment in your inventory and it gets overwritten by lower tier effects there's nothing special to discuss here you just get a 10% bonus to Rifle damage and this does not stack it's nice for boosting up your damage as it is another unique source of damage amplification but you won't need more than one that's it last on our list is sensor chipped and it's supposedly provides you with a 20% boost to accuracy while firing on the move but honestly it seems to mean jack if you're up close and personal Barrel stuffing someone and it didn't make a distinctly noticeable difference from medium to long range for me to even acknowledge that it works at all if it does in fact work and that 20% accuracy boost does translate into some sort of meaningful amount of damage increase then sure maybe it's got some utility but I genuinely believe that this is more trash filler because bullets seem to land at about the exact same rate from unfavorable ranges I would definitely not rely on this effect to do any of the heavy lifting for you and instead just position yourself between enemies based on the weapon type you're using and just properly scope in from longer distances and get real close with your shotgun to make sure you're not losing DPS from range fall off anyways I say this is pretty underwhelming unless anyone can prove with some legitimate testing that it does more than what I've observed all right we' made it through our 32 equipment effects so let's quickly recap here for rare effects chameleon bolst string and combat veteran are definitely the best all around especially if you stack them multiple times the rest of the damage reducers are situationally useful and I'd say the O2 influencing ones are whatever for epics a single automic can be useful weapon holsters is better than resource hauler and all the resistance effects are dog unless a survival mode update makes them relevant two points in acrobat is Fun Since you eliminate all fall damage hacker is nice but not necessary one point an analyzer helps for long exploration bouts and fastened is okay finally for legendary effects re active and repulsing are good for CQB and melee builds where you'll be close enough to enemies to regularly proc it whereas Mir and incendiary are embarrassing excuses for legendary effects mechanized is a better fastened armor plated is very good head hunter is a well-designed damage amplifier assisted carry is bait Sentinel is hella op and super funny with three pieces active if it is possible to find Peacemaker is whatever and sensor chip is questionable as to whether it works at all I hope you enjoyed this entry to the Starfield handbook there still much more on the way so be sure to subscribe if you haven't already and help me hit my absurd new end ofe stretch goal of 100K Subs as always a special thanks to all patrons your support means the world and if you haven't already watched the weapons effects analysis video yet you can check that out here next I'll see you in the next one peace

Channel: UncleMumble

Views: 76,731

Keywords: Starfield, Starfield news, Starfield rumors, Starfield weapons, Starfield Outposts, Starfield Crafting, Starfield Story, Starfield Lore, Starfield Quests, Starfield Spaceships, Starfield Traits, Starfield Skills, Starfield Backgrounds, Starfield Economy, Starfield Research, Starfield Planets, Starfield Factions, Starfield Crew, starfield direct, bethesda, todd howard, skyrim, fallout, goty, star, field, premium, settled systems, handbook, constellation, bgs, starfield handbook

Id: gsfTKD3yKcI

Length: 25min 14sec (1514 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 02 2023