Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Guide – Best Skills To Unlock First

Combat in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order can be challenging, especially once you get through the early areas and start encountering tougher enemies like Purge Troopers and Imperial Security Droids. To help out, we’ve highlighted the best skills to unlock in Fallen Order.

As you learn more Force powers and build new types of lightsabers, you’ll unlock new skills to put points into. At the start, skills only require one skill point but the ones you’ll unlock later will require two or three. With that in mind, it’s to your benefit to save some of your skill points after you’ve invested in the early-game skills that you like. It is in your best interest to hold onto your extra points instead of unlocking something just because you can–it will make unlocking the cooler-looking, and much more powerful late-game skills easier to do without grinding.

For more Star Wars Jedi: Fallen order guides, check out our beginner’s guide and our feature on all the easter eggs and references. You can also read our full Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order review. Otherwise, scroll down for our advice on the best skills to unlock.

Beginner Skills To Unlock In The First Few Hours

Early on in Fallen Order, you don’t have much in the way of attack or defense other than your lightsaber. It presents an excellent opportunity for you to practice parry timing–which you should, especially if you’ve played Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice as the timing between the two games is not the same. Eventually, to stand a chance in a fight, you’ll be encouraged to mix together lightsaber combat and Force powers, so it’s important to get used to parrying until it becomes second nature.

To that end, you’ll want to invest points into all the first tier skills. There are four, though you won’t unlock the final one until an hour or so into your first incursion on Zeffo. Survival Skills (increases Cal’s max health) is ideally the one you want to unlock first. You won’t have many BD-1 stim canisters at the start, so having higher max health will help until you can increase the number of times you can heal. To the same extent, Force Attunement (increases Cal’s maximum Force) is also a good choice.

With those two out of the way, consider unlocking Overhead Slash. This powerful move will dispatch most creatures and standard Stormtroopers in one hit. Though the move loses utility the further into the game you go–it’s a little slow and not ideal for when you’re surrounded by large groups–it’s an excellent attack to have early on.

Once you travel to Zeffo, Cal will remember how to use Force Push. This unlocks numerous skills in his Lightsaber and Force trees, including the final skill in the first tier: Mass Push. If you enjoyed Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, you’ll love Mass Push. It allows you to charge a Force Push and send enemies flying–ideal for Zeffo and Kashyyyk where enemy placement is almost begging for you to send Stormtroopers flying off ledges to their deaths.

Intermediate Skills To Unlock After The Opening Hours

Once you’ve made it past Zeffo, you’ll have to start choosing how to build Cal. Many of his skills start to branch off in the second and third tiers. Some are more advanced variations of Survival Skills and Force Attunement, allowing you to further increase your health and Force or how quickly they regenerate. However, you can hold off on upgrading many of these skills; instead, invest in intermediate combat skills with your lightsaber. They will be much more useful for the bosses you’ll be fighting regularly.

Your journey in Fallen Order will see you face off against other lightsaber and Force users. These combatants are very powerful, and able to carve out huge chunks of your health quickly. In these fights, Fallen Order plays a lot more like Shadows Die Twice, in that both you and your opponent have a guard/posture meter and you’re both trying to wear each other down to land hits. With many of these bosses resistant to certain Force powers and able to counter your standard lightsaber attacks, you should invest in intermediate lightsaber skills as soon as possible.

In the Lightsaber tree, unlock Dash Strike, Sprint Strike, Delay Thrust, and Lightsaber Throw. Certain bosses will use their speed to retreat and refill their guard meter. All four of these lightsaber moves allow you to counter that strategy. Dash Strike allows Cal to leap at his target, Sprint Strike lets him deliver an attack out of a sprint, Delay Thrust gives him some added range to his standard attack, and Lightsaber Throw is Cal’s only long-distance option in combat. Of all four, you’ll have to wait longest to unlock Lightsaber Throw as Cal cannot use it until he relearns Force Pull on Kashyyyk.

The only Force power that reliably works on all enemies–from the smallest spiders to the most dangerous of Inquisitors–is Force Slow. You possess Force Slow from the start and it’s effective right out of the gate, so it’s not a skill you need to improve right away. However, after the opening hours, unlocking Empowered Slow is wise. Though it takes longer to use, Empowered Slow allows Cal to slow enemies almost to a halt for several seconds. It’s ideal for boss battles (as slowing them down gives you time to heal), but it’s also good for the early game to slow down Scout Commanders, Stormtrooper Commanders, Security Droids, and Purge Troopers long enough for you to thin the group that usually accompanies them. All four of those enemies are significantly easier to fight one-on-one.