Clocking into your first shift at GATE comes with the heavy burden of pure survival—and with no payslip at the end of the month. Deciding your job at Abiotic Factor is based on what kind of scientist you want to be. Whether stealth or all-out brawling, there’s a career waiting for you during these trying times.
You cannot change career paths or alter your traits once you’ve picked them at the start of Abiotic Factor. You can, however, start a new game if you’re not happy with your selection. Your character’s appearance, job, and traits are tied to the server. Through experimentation, you may find that you prefer a certain playstyle when exploring GATE, be it to evade or take out monsters head-on. There are different builds readily available for you to try out, but not all jobs or traits are worth your time.
Which Abiotic Factor job is best?
The nine available jobs to choose from come with their own exclusive stats and starting points. They’re not so much unique to one another as the only way to differentiate them is by the skills you start out with. Regardless of what you pick, you will inevitably level up your skills simply by playing the game. Whatever you choose to do, be it cooking, fighting, sprinting, or sneaking, these skills will naturally level up the more you perform these actions.
So, our priority shifts to getting the most out of your chosen job. If you want to use stealth and avoid fighting as much as possible, opting for sneak attacks with melee items, then Lab Assistant is the one for you. In the red corner, ready to knock anything out, is the Trans-Kinematic Researcher. The Lab Assistant has Sprinting, Sneaking, and Stealth skills to start off with. Meanwhile, the Trans-Kinematic Researcher has Blunt Melee, Fortitude, Sprinting, and Strength for the more determined scientists out there.
The best of both worlds, however, is the Summer Intern. This job offers a clean slate with the most starting points out of any GATE career. As you will gain skills anyways, the Summer Intern provides the most wiggle room to mess around with your build and go into Abiotic Factor with the best traits in the game. If you weren’t settled on using stealth and want the most out of what’s available in the traits (that you cannot get anywhere else), then Summer Intern is the best starting place for any employee.
Which traits should you pick?
Your chosen traits depend on which job you’ve selected. There is no true benefit (outside of making it easier in the early mgame) to choosing traits that increase your starting skills. Instead, the goal is to pick traits that won’t be too detrimental to your survival and boost your stats in ways you cannot get anywhere else. Here’s a quick rundown on our favorite traits to pair with the Lab Assistant (stealth), Trans-Kinematic Researcher (combat), and Summer Intern (versatile):
Summer Intern
Positive traits
- Wrinkly Brainmeat: Best trait as it increases your XP gain by 20%
- Fanny Pack: Permanently adds two slots to your hotbar, giving you more options to craft, carry weapons, ammo, and healing items. Overpriced for what it is, but very convenient trait to have as it reduces weight of hotbar items by 25%. Incredibly useful early on when your skills are nonexistent.
- Buff Brainiac: Strength increase, making it easier to carry more items.
Negative traits
- Dry Skin: There’s a lot of water and beverages in Abiotic Factor, so you shouldn’t have a problem sourcing it.
- Slow Healer: Healing 1.5 seconds slower than the usual rate isn’t noticeable if you pick this trait every time. It is the best negative trait that gives you three extra points to put back into a positive trait.
- Weak Bladder: These negative traits that effect the survival elements of Abiotic Factor slightly up the difficulty, but a 15% increase isn’t noticeable if you pick this as your negative trait every time.
Lab Assistant
Positive traits
- Wrinkly Brainmeat: Best trait as it increases your XP gain by 20%
- Night Owl: As sleep can kill you, this trait slows down fatigue by 50%.
- Inconspicuous: Helps evade enemies or get behind them without being spotted.
- Self Defense: +3 damage to all weapons. Very helpful in the early game, however, you can avoid most enemies unless you need meat or have to defeat a particular monster to craft a quest item. You could swap this out with Buff Brainiac to increase your strength, as you won’t have the Fanny Pack.
Negative traits
- Dry Skin: There’s a lot of water in Abiotic Factor, so you shouldn’t have a problem sourcing it.
- Slow Healer: Healing 1.5 seconds slower than the usual rate isn’t noticeable if you pick this trait every time. It is the best negative trait that gives you three extra points to put back into a positive trait.
- Weak Bladder: These negative traits that effect the survival elements of Abiotic Factor slightly up the difficulty, but a 15% increase isn’t noticeable if you pick this as your negative trait every time.
Trans-Kinematic Researcher
Positive traits
- Wrinkly Brainmeat: Best trait as it increases your XP gain by 20%
- Fanny Pack: Permanently adds two slots to your hotbar, giving you more options to craft, carry weapons, ammo, and healing items. Overpriced for what it is, but very convenient trait to have as it reduces weight of hotbar items by 25%.
- Self Defense: +3 damage to all weapons. Very helpful in the early-game, however, you can avoid most enemies unless you need meat or have to defeat a particular monster to craft a quest item.
Negative traits
- Painfully Obvious: As this is more about combat, alerting enemies to your position isn’t so much a problem with this build.
- Hearty Appetite: Fighting enemies means you’ll get meat to cook, so getting hungrier quicker shouldn’t have too much impact on your survival.
- Dry Skin: There’s a lot of water in Abiotic Factor, so you shouldn’t have a problem sourcing it.
- Slow Healer: Healing 1.5 seconds slower than the usual rate isn’t noticeable if you pick this trait every time. It is the best negative trait that gives you three extra points to put back into a positive trait.
- Weak Bladder: These negative traits that effect the survival elements of Abiotic Factor slightly up the difficulty, but a 15% increase isn’t noticeable if you pick this as your negative trait every time.
There’s a lot of overlap when it comes to our chosen traits because there aren’t many ways to make each build/job that unique. Lastly, avoid the worst negative traits: Fear of Violence, Slow Learner, and Feeble, as they will hinder your skill tree progression and unnecessarily lower your survival odds.
