Outer Wilds 2: Which Negative Trait Should You Pick?

In Outer Worlds 2, players can pick one Trait in character creation with no consequences. If you pick a second Trait, though, you will be forced to take what is called a Negative Trait. Negative Traits in Outer Worlds 2 hinder your character in some way, like by reducing their hard stats and leveling options, or shutting out faction progression altogether.

There are three Outer Worlds 2 Negative Traits: Abrasive, Dumb, and Sickly. Each of these three Negative Traits comes with unique drawbacks, but ultimately, some Negative Traits are worth taking over others. Follow this guide to learn the best Negative Traits to take and which ones (or, rather, one) you should avoid taking if you care to work with the game's various factions.

Best Negative Trait: Sickly

A Simple Reduction in Base HP & Toxicity Threshold

Your body is weak, prone to breaks, scrapes, and illness. Injuuries and crashing from primers are more likely.

-15% Base Health
-15 Toxicity Crash Threshold

Of the three Negative Traits in Outer Worlds 2, the Sickly trait is the least restrictive and the least impactful on your overall game experience. Having -15% Base Health is definitely not great, and a lower Toxicity Crash Threshold means you won't be able to use your Healing Inhaler as much.

However, as long as you keep up on your Armor upgrades and mods and pick Perks that help your survivability, having less HP is not as dangerous as one might think. Though the Sickly trait makes your character more fragile, you can easily make up for it by putting some points into Medicine.

The other two Negative Traits narrow your build potential or completely halt positive Faction progression. So, unless you are planning to play a character that hyper-focuses on a handful of skills or want to ruin your reputation with every faction, choose Sickly when prompted to choose a Negative Trait in Outer Worlds 2.

Decent Negative Trait: Dumb

If You Won't Level Those Skills Anyway, What's The Harm?

You weren't recruited for your ability to plan or solve problems. You just can't learn some things.

During skill selection, lock 5 of the 12 available skills
Those skills can never have points added to them

Though Sickly is the best Negative Trait Outer Worlds 2 players should generally pick over others, there are cases where Dumb is actually the better of the two. For example, if you want to play a melee bruiser or a character who rushes to the front lines guns blazing, you might not want to sacrifice any HP, and you likely won't use the scientific and conversational Skills in your build.

So in this example, the build benefits more from picking Dumb over Sickly as you can lock off Science, Engineering, Speech, Hack, and Lockpick and focus exclusively on the more combat-oriented skills like Melee, Guns, Medical, and Explosives.

Most of the time, it's a good idea to keep your options open as your build and playstyle can vary wildly in a playthrough. But if you are certain of the kind of build you want to play, and are sure you won't use five skills in your playthrough, pick Dumb over Sickly to keep your HP and Toxicity Threshold at max.

Worst Negative Trait: Abrasive

If You Can't Raise Faction Reputations, You Can't Access Certain Choices

You're hard on the ears and people don't like talking to you. Others have a hard time accepting you into their communities and organizations.

Reputations with any faction can never increase above Neutral, preventing any bonuses that would be gained from having a positive reputation with a faction.

The worst Negative Trait in Outer Worlds 2 is Abrasive. This trait essentially prevents your character from ever increasing their reputation beyond Neutral with any faction, though it can still go down.

Faction reputation is not just tied to vendor prices; having a very high (or very low) reputation can change the way members of that faction react to you. Sometimes, having a high reputation is required to access certain conversation options.

If you choose the Abrasive trait, you're committing to a playthrough that won't be able to interact meaningfully with the many factions of Outer Worlds 2 or gain vendor discounts. You can still ruin your reputation and become hated by every faction, which might be the only reason to pick this Negative Trait over the others.

If you don't want to restrict your ability to build reputation with Factions, choose the much less restrictive Sickly trait – or, if you're confident in your build, go with Dumb instead.

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