Fighter or Scout in Stardew Valley?

In any RPG, the kind of character class you should play depends heavily on your personal gameplay style and preferences. Are you aggressive? Do you mind taking damage? How fast do you want to win a fight? These are all important questions to consider. Stardew Valley may be a sim game first and foremost, but you’ll still need to consider these questions to pick your ideal profession. Specifically, which is better, the Fighter or the Scout in Stardew Valley?

Fighter or Scout in Stardew Valley?

When your Combat skill in Stardew Valley reaches level 5, you’ll be prompted to choose a profession to begin specializing your skill set. Your starting choices are Fighter, which provides a 10% attack buff and an extra 15 max health, and Scout, which multiplies your critical hit chance by an additional 50%. While these seem like simple choices, the path you choose here will affect how your Combat prowess evolves going forward.

Fighter

The Fighter path is for old-fashioned combatants, players who don’t mind getting right in the thick of things and getting their hands dirty. Its flat boosts to damage and health are unquestionably beneficial, and its upgrade paths, Brute and Defender, can either boost your strength further or round you out with some additional health.

Related: How to Set Up a Co-Op Farm in Stardew Valley

Scout

Playing a Scout is a little more complex than a Fighter. A Scout banks on utilizing their crit-boosting abilities to make every blow a devastating one. Going down this path requires some extensive specialization and tweaking, but if you can make it work, it’s devastating. Scout’s upgrade paths include Acrobat, which halves the cooldown on special moves, and Desperado, which doubles the damage of all critical hits.

In short, if you don’t want to spend too much time kitting out your character for combat and just want to be able to hold your own, go for the Fighter path. If you don’t mind a bit of min-maxing, on the other hand, you may get a little more entertainment value out of playing a Scout.