Summary
- Melee weapons in Starfield are limited, lack attachment options, and can only be upgraded through skills.
- Many weapon effects in the game don't properly apply to melee weapons, making them less valuable.
- The unique melee weapons in Starfield have varying levels of usefulness, with some offering better utility and damage than others.
In the base game of Starfield, there is an extremely limited amount of melee weapons as well as unique melee weapons, which makes them quite rare overall. Unlike any of the other types of weapons in Starfield, melee weapons don’t offer attachment options or any other ways to modify them whatsoever. The only way that players can currently upgrade the performance of their melee weapons is to invest in the skills that apply to them, which fortunately include Starfield’s stealth-related skills.
What this ultimately means for the game’s unique melee weapons is that their performance is entirely based on whether they happen to have certain favorable weapon effects. While the community is hopeful that Bethesda will address the lack of depth in Starfield’s melee weapons in a future update, for now, players will have to rely on either community mods for Starfield or specific skills to expand upon the game’s melee weaponry.
Starfield Unique Shotguns Tier List
Of the few unique shotguns available in Starfield, there are some extremely powerful early-game weapons that players can get ahold of.
At least one of the game’s unique melee weapons arguably highlights a common problem with the melee weapons in Starfield: most of the weapon effects that are currently available in the game don’t seem to apply properly to melee weapons. However, despite their incompatibility, certain weapon effects can still be found on melee weapons regardless. Overall, this can be extremely frustrating, given that it takes away from the excitement of finding rare weaponry, which ultimately turns out to be as valuable as common loot. This especially seems like an oversight, considering that the game’s unique melee weapons suffer from this problem, despite being curated items.
S-Tier
The Last Priest
Elemental weapons in general offer some extremely useful utility, like being able to stun enemies, damage them over time, weaken them, or sometimes a combination of these effects, all while still dealing base-weapon damage. Not to mention, House Va’ruun weapons in Starfield as a whole are extremely powerful, and fortunately, this trend seemingly carries over to this Va’ruun melee weapon. Since this unique weapon has the benefit of utilizing a relatively strong base weapon along with an enjoyable weapon effect, this makes it the best out of the three unique melee weapons from the base game of Starfield. Hopefully Starfield’s upcoming first expansion will give this weapon some healthy competition.
A-Tier
Syndicate Enforcer
The Berserker weapon effect in Starfield is essentially a worse version of the Cornered effect, which makes weapons deal more damage proportional to how low the user's health is. Especially on a melee weapon, intentionally limiting the player’s armor rating to utilize the Berserker weapon effect is a disaster waiting to happen. While late-game stealth builds in Starfield can generally utilize this weapon’s full damage potential, chances are that players will have found a random melee weapon with better stats than the Syndicate Enforcer by this point in the game. Still though, considering that this weapon’s Bleed damage capabilities can be useful, the Syndicate Enforcer still has some merit.
B-Tier
Fortune's Glory
This knife’s signature ability to stagger enemies is extremely underwhelming, considering that power attacks with practically every melee weapon can stagger enemies anyway. Not to mention, even bashing enemies with a firearm will generally stagger them, so this weapon effect in Starfield is essentially non-existent for melee weapons.
Overall, the Staggering weapon effect in Starfield is quite lackluster compared to other weapon effects that can offer immense damage boosts or a unique utility. Consequently, players interested in collecting every unique item in Starfield may want to collect this weapon due to its rarity, but that’s this weapon’s only appeal. Otherwise, players looking for a short-range weapon can find better options between Starfield's unique pistols and shotguns, or even random loot in general.
Starfield
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 85 /100 Critics Rec: 83%
WHERE TO PLAY
- Platform(s)
- PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- How Long To Beat
- 20 Hours
- File Size Xbox Series
- 101 GB (September 2023)
- Metascore
- 86
