Disco Elysium does not have builds in the sense other RPGs do, because you cannot lose. You can only fail differently, and the failures are often the better scene.
That said, the character sheet still decides which version of the story you get. Four attributes, twenty-four skills, and every one of them is a voice that talks to you during the game. A high skill is not a bigger number. It is a louder opinion, and some of those opinions are wrong.
The four attributes and the detective each one produces
Intellect is the analytical one. Logic, Encyclopedia, Rhetoric, Drama, Conceptualization, Visual Calculus. Build here and you solve the case by reasoning, and you get an enormous amount of extra text, because Encyclopedia in particular interrupts constantly with context.
Psyche is the emotional one. Volition, Inland Empire, Empathy, Authority, Esprit de Corps, Suggestion. This is the detective who reads people and occasionally talks to his own necktie. Inland Empire produces the strangest and best writing in the game.
Physique is the body. Endurance, Pain Threshold, Physical Instrument, Electrochemistry, Shivers, Half Light. Shivers is the city itself speaking to you and is worth points on its own merit. Electrochemistry will encourage you to take every drug in Revachol.
Motorics is coordination and perception. Hand-Eye Coordination, Perception, Reaction Speed, Savoir Faire, Interfacing, Composure. The most practically useful group and the least dramatic.
Two stats will kill you and they are not obvious
Endurance sets your health. Volition sets your morale. Run out of either and the game ends.
Morale deaths catch people out because nothing is attacking you. A bad conversation, a humiliating failure, learning something about yourself you did not want to know, any of these can take morale points, and a character with Volition at 1 can die from a remark.
If you dump both Physique and Psyche to chase Intellect, you are playing a detective who can be killed by a chair or by his own thoughts. Both of those are real deaths that real players have had.
Keep one point of buffer and carry healing items. Cigarettes and magnesium are not flavour.
White checks and red checks
White checks can be retried. Level the skill, change your clothes, learn something relevant, and the check reopens.
Red checks are permanent. One attempt, and the result stands for the rest of the game.
This changes how you should play. A white check you fail is a check you come back to. A red check you fail is a piece of the story you will simply never see, which is fine, because failing red checks produces some of the best moments in the game.
Save-scumming a red check is legal and, in my opinion, a waste of what the game is doing.
Clothes are equipment and nobody treats them that way
Every item of clothing carries skill modifiers. You can change clothes at any time, including in the middle of a conversation, right before a check.
This is not an exploit, it is the intended system, and it means your effective skill for any given check is your base value plus whatever you dressed for. Keep a set for each attribute in your inventory and swap before difficult checks.
The horrific necktie gives Inland Empire and it will talk to you about it.
The Thought Cabinet is the actual build system
Thoughts arrive from conversations and choices. You slot one into the Cabinet, and after a number of hours in game it internalises and gives a permanent effect.
Most thoughts give a penalty while researching and a bonus once complete. Some give a permanent penalty, which is the cost of having thought them. You have limited slots and unlocking more costs skill points.
The good ones are worth planning around. Some give straight skill bonuses, some unlock unique dialogue, and a few change how the game treats you entirely. You can forget a thought later for a skill point, so nothing is truly permanent, but the cost is real.
Low skills are content, not a penalty
This is the part that separates Disco Elysium from every other RPG on this site: dumping a stat gives you different writing rather than less writing.
A detective with 1 Logic reaches conclusions that are gloriously, confidently wrong. Low Composure means your face betrays you constantly. Low Authority means nobody respects you and the game finds that funny.
So the honest advice for a first playthrough is to build unevenly. A spread character sees a flat middle of the game. A character with two attributes high and two low sees the extremes, and the extremes are where the writing is.
The Disco Elysium walkthrough covers the days in order without spoiling the case.
