Star Trek Online Character Creation Guide

In terms of storylines: TOS is best as it gets to play every fed mission including the DSC arc but no other Fed faction gets the TOS missions.

If I ran DECA I would be sending you and Spencer and other content creators a 👍free promo box to say thanks for what you all do for the game

Romulans are the best. In addition to other positive traits, they get twice as many duty officers as any other faction

Star Trek Online story can be summed up with the phrase "It's all Sela's Fault"

Stu I been playing Sto on and off for years. I know my way around but when I'm in a battle field and I see other players I'm blown away by how deadly most everyone else is compared to me. I try to get better by watching your videos but I don't understand half of what you're talking about. I guess the greatness of this game is that there's always something to learn. I like your content.

Just a headsup for anyone using this as a guide: Romulan Republic has 2.5 free races. Romulan, Alien, and you can buy Remans. Alternatively, if you get later into the game with another character and reach Tier 5 of the Romulan Republic Repuation, that will unlock the Remans for free.

One of the best character creation engines ever.

Hot take but I view STO as the preferred alternate timeline than Picard. It's pretty much accepted that STO is in it's own universe so contradictions don't matter post-Nemesis, but because I actually prefer the game's story over Picard overall, it suits me fine to accept BOTH universes as seperate and my head canon leans on STO more, at least up until the Iconian War where the arcs got very lackluster after that.

A month old, but I'm a long term player since beta, since thick and thin. While not as good at min-maxing as some people I'd give the following advice: 1. Despite a lot of people talking about how you should star tactical, I actually recommend engineering as the first profession. The reason is simply that you quickly get an ability called "Miraculous Repairs" that will pretty much fully heal your ship, and there is a trait just in the default trait pool that will instantly reset this if you take too much damage, too quick. STO is a DPS focused game, so many people talk about how Tactical and Science are the best as they both have different approaches to DPS, with Science going for exotic particle builds mostly which are harder to do early on, and even then to really maximize usually take a lot of investment in the game, including in many cases real money. Tactical on the other hand is straight forward "pew, pew, pew" kill everything. The thing is when your new, and starting out, I just think engineering will save you more often, and the basic fighting style with turrets and drones is easy to set up and intuitive for a new player. Not to mention you can do high DPS with any character, so while tanking focused by design, you can still wind up doing just as much with engineering. Not to mention I find some of their holiday kits like that "Anchor Of Grethor thing" from Christmas that pulls everyone into a fire with hellraiser chains to be amazingly powerful and underrated and that's pretty much free and something you'll get by just sticking around until Christmas and working on the event. That said I do find basic engineering bridge officer skills to be the most boring, that said things like emergency power to weapons are great for enhancing your general "pew, pew" in space, and some of the rarer skills you can get from the exchange from lockboxes like the recent "Malicious AI" can be a lot of fun. 2. One thing Stu didn't mention is that if your doing Federation or Klingon, one early power boost, if minor, is to go to the bridge officer vendor on the base and buy Cardassian Bridge officers, and use them in lieu of the ones you get from missions, and then just use the bridge officer training guy to customize their skills. They do have some minor space enhancement due to their photographic memory. So use them for your ship slots as much as possible to begin with, and later when you get better bridge officers with better space traits you can retire them. The highest quality bridge officers you get otherwise are best for your ground team as they generally have traits useful for ground combat. This is something I think 99% of players don't consider, especially when people talk about how KDF has Nausican Boffs with space advantages early on/for free players, and the Romulan ones (which to be fair the best) almost all have space traits, including the one Stu mentioned. As far as I can tell you do not need the Cardiassian species as a player race, to recruit them as bridge officers. So this can bring any of the Federation factions (once you reach the star base) up to snuff there. 3. Most paid items can be obtained from other players for in-game currency, albeit due to the age of the game the market is inflated. As a general rule though, unless you are going to be buying an account unlock or something like slots, it's typically best to buy lockbox keys and the sell them on the exchange and then buy what you want for energy credits using the money. This is more reliable than lockbox gambling if you are going to put money into the game to begin with (I am aware many players will not). Just a point I am making because it does not occur to many people who are new, and simply look at the shop, or the items coming from lockboxes and gambling mechanics. Selling the keys and buying what you want actually winds up being more cost effective. Not a character tip, but something to consider. 4. Of the starting factions I think the two best are "Original Series Star Fleet" especially if the "Temporal Agent" special recruiting event is running, or Romulan Republic (best to do when Delta Recruit is going on, which I believe it is now). That said the basic "current timeline Star Fleet" does give the widest option of races. As a general rule TOS Star Fleet has access to some starting missions no other faction does, where say Discovery Era Star Fleet has most of it's missions accessible to the other Star Fleet factions. Also the TOS intro missions are done in the spirit of the old TV show (which might turn off some players) including homages to some of the terrible special FX, and well... the way they depict Gorn speaks for itself. The Romulan Republic has some of the best writing of any of the factions despite some janky bits here and there in the mission structures. As a long time player they are my second favorite.

My first Delta recruit (2012?) was an alien gen half Cardassian, half Lethean who was a product of the Dominion War. He didn't feel at home on Cardassia or Qo'nos and found where he belonged in Starfleet! 😊

I like Discovery era warp jumping effect but disappointed that there is no equivalent effect with the KDF side. Beside the storyarc,Romulan character and crew have some field advantages for DPS captains

The character creator was the only reason I gave STO another chance. I was done with the game but then one day I was drawing a Star Trek OC when I thought, man wouldn’t it be nice if I could make this in STO. I took a chance and I mean it’s not perfect obviously but still close enough and I haven’t stopped playing since.

My advice to new players would be a Romulan Tactical aligned with Starfleet. Then you make a new toon for each Recruitment Event. You'll end up having: 1 Romulan Tactical (Starfleet), 3 Delta Recruitment toons: Starfleet, Klingon, and Romulan (Klingon), 1 Temporal Recruitment TOS Starfleet, 1 Klingon Recruitment Klingon, and 1 Gamma Recruitment Jem'Hadar (Klingon). To round it out, you add a DSC Starfleet toon. You'll have 4 of each Starfleet and Klingon

I've been playing since 5th Anniversary. I still have no idea what I am doing in STO. However I love watching your vids Stu.

Made a character that looks like Frasier Crane. 10/10 best character I've ever made in any game.

Another great video, Stu, and your comments are spot on. Funny(?) story: I've only been playing this game for the last couple of years, but even with all of the info out there, I didn't really look things up before I started because I wanted to just start playing. I made my first character (which was and is still my main) a Disco Fed because it was chronologically earliest and that made sense in my head. Didn't realize all characters eventually merge into the same timeline and now I'm a tiny bit sad because I definitely prefer the 2409 transporter and warp out animation. Honestly though, this is my biggest regret and it's just a cosmetic thing, so I think I'm doing pretty good overall.

0:45 the storyline actually revolves around the Romulan faction because 2409 Starfleet doesnt really have a story. The Nimbus, Dyson, Iconian, and J'ula arcs are all have direct immediate connections and context to the Romualn faction exclusive missions and Cryptic said TOS Starfleet doesnt have aliens because they want it to be a 1960s exerpience and would have to make all kinds of custom 60s style alien gen parts and they dont have time for that

Wow, learned something new as a Veteran. I had no idea the Star Trek Online wiki had migrated off of the Fandom platform.

Really appreciate you shouting out the fan-run wiki instead of Fandom.

For me, the part of the Romulan start that I have trouble ignoring is the fact that Tovan's voice actor quite clearly recorded some of the newer bits on markedly better recording equipment, and also did a better job of emoting the second time around.