14 tips to improve your Starfield adventure

Philipp Rüegg

6.9.2023

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

Don’t make your space trips any harder on yourself. Here are a few tips that all Starfield pilots should know.

Like the universe, Starfield is almost infinite and often just as mysterious. Numerous game mechanics are never explained or explained poorly. To make things a bit easier for you, I’ve summarised my key findings for you.

Track what you’re after

Whether it’s for weapon mods, research projects, or outposts, you’ll need plenty of resources. Since there’s much more to loot than will fit in your pockets, you have to pick and choose (unless you heed my next tip). And who can remember the myriad of materials required? To help you remember what’s necessary to pack, you can mark required items on all workbenches with the R-/X-/Square key. Afterwards, you can immediately see whether each item is on your shopping list or not by looking for a blue magnifying glass icon.

How to fix full inventories

For me, it took just about an hour before I was overencumbered for the first time. If you carry too much around with you, you’ll use more oxygen while running, which will eventually impact your health. As in all Bethesda games, inventory management quickly becomes a chore. However, there are a few tricks to improve your inventory.

Use your Companions as pack mules: talk to your Companions and you can trade with them, giving them equipment. Both to use, and to lug around.

Your combination spaceship/garbage dump: the storage space in your spaceship also fills faster than your grav drive charges. But that doesn’t include the floor. Embrace your inner hoarder and just throw all your loot on the floor. True, walking around the ship becomes a bit harder, but at least your cargo hold is empty. But watch out: even this way, contraband will still be detected by a scanner.

If that still sounds too cumbersome, you can resort to console commands on PC. Open the console. Depending on your keyboard layout, using either the ö,@,! or ~ key. After that, type «player.setav carryweight #». Replace the # with your desired inventory capacity. You will lose out on achievements, but who cares if you can scrounge everything to your heart’s content? Otherwise, there’s always a mod for it too.

Collect skill books

Starfield is full of useless junk you can pick up. On the other hand, you should pay special attention to magazines. These booklets are scattered throughout space and when you pick them up, they give you lasting bonuses. This includes more weapon damage, better spaceship navigation or more carrying capacity. Once you’ve collected them, you can alternatively sell them.

Automatically removing your spacesuit

«The air isn’t that dirty, you don’t need a spacesuit». The moment an industrial magnate points this out, I finally realise how many NPCs find my outfit weird. Starfield contains both normal clothes you can wear in cities and the spacesuit-helmet combo that you need in space. Taking it off and on manually every time is too much of a chore for me, which is why I didn’t bother. I’m fine being the only weirdo walking around the flashy cyberpunk city of Neon prepped and ready for a moon landing. If this breaks your immersion, you can deselect «Show suit in settlements» at the bottom of the inventory when equipping the spacesuit and helmet. After that, your character will automatically change their outfit to match the location.

Use cover correctly

This tip comes from colleague Domagoj Belancic. My philosophy in fights is more «head down and charge». Cover? What cover? If you play a bit more defensively like Domi, you’ll be thankful for the following tip: if you’re behind a wall or cover, you can aim (right mouse button/LT/L2) and your character will automatically lean forward.

How to recognise loose ship parts

Sooner or later, you’ll construct your own vessel or modify your starting ship. The editor is pleasantly accessible and allows for kooky creations. The game immediately notifies you if your creation isn’t airworthy. This could be because you haven’t fixed on certain parts. Unfortunately, what the system doesn’t do is indicate where the parts actually are. And so the search begins. Depending on the size of your spaceship, this can be a tedious task. Therefore, a good trick is to select a ship part and press the LB/L1 key, respectively click the left mouse button twice. All fixed parts will then be marked in red and you’ll immediately see which elements are loose.

Enable DLSS

Bethesda entered into a partnership with AMD for Starfield. For this reason, PC gamers will only find the FSR upscaling method in the settings. This way, the game renders at a lower resolution and is scaled up artificially, improving performance. Nvidia and Intel’s alternatives, DLSS and XESS respectively, are nowhere to be found. Fortunately, there’s already a mod that swaps FSR for the other two upscaling methods. You can find it at Nexusmods.com.

Steal ships

If you want to expand your fleet or simply want a new spaceship, you’ve got three options: buy a new one from the merchant, capture an enemy ship in a space battle, or simply steal one. On planets, you’ll see ships land in the distance every now and then. Book towards it, get rid of any crew and jump into the cockpit. Just crack the front door with a digipick and you’re in. The ship isn’t marked as stolen property and can be sold or refitted at any merchant.

Standard skills that aren’t standard

A surprising number of skills that enable basic functions must first be unlocked in Starfield. Which exact ones depend on what background stories you chose. Among other things, I chose Bounty Hunter, so my character is proficient with jetpacks from the off. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to fly around even with the appropriate equipment. That’s why you should unlock the following skills early:

• Theft: allows you to steal from people
• Security: necessary for lock picking, computer hacking, etc.
• Targeting Control Systems: to attack individual ship areas. Without it, you can’t capture enemy ships.
• Boost Pack Training: allows the use of jetpacks
• Piloting: lets you use the boost

Use the Trade Authority kiosk instead of merchant

Instead of tediously logging tonnes of loot to a merchant every time, you can sell all your stuff directly at a kiosk. These are small stations that you’ll find at all major landing sites. They even buy your stolen goods, apart from contraband, and regularly replenish their credit stock. Other dealers are usually already broke after the sale of two or three weapons.

Asteroids as resource wells

Resources for your construction projects aren’t just found on planets, but in space too. You can shoot down asteroids with your spaceship and collect valuable ore afterwards.

Remember outpost locations

Outposts are important resource suppliers. The problem is, how do you find your creations on the confusing star map? It’s very simple: just zoom out really far and wherever you have an outpost, you’ll see a kind of bunker icon.

Bypass locks

Many glass display cases contain complete outfits. Of course, the best equipment is usually locked away. Same goes for the basement of the Lodge, always worth stopping by. Without a Master-level Security skill, you may only be able to admire the spacesuit on display from afar – unless you follow the following trick. If you look between the crack in the door, you can highlight the suit behind it and grab it without having to pick the lock. Bethesda will surely patch this vulnerability, until then you can look forward to free outfits.

Be impatient

Starfield is extremely comprehensive. Its 1000+ planets will probably only be seen by the most ambitious – or bored – gamers ever. Since they’re procedurally generated, among other things, the quality varies accordingly. Same goes for missions. While the main story kept me entertained, plenty of side missions are boring filler. Ergo, my tip: be impatient! Be picky! If you don’t like a place or a mission doesn’t appeal to you, ignore it. Of course, it may take a surprising turn. But in my now 40+ hours, this has rarely happened. And besides, you can always return later. It’s always better to travel to the next solar system and choose a mission that really appeals to you.

Philipp Rüegg

Senior Editor

Philipp.Rueegg@digitecgalaxus.ch

Being the game and gadget geek that I am, working at digitec and Galaxus makes me feel like a kid in a candy shop – but it does take its toll on my wallet. I enjoy tinkering with my PC in Tim Taylor fashion and talking about games on my podcast http://www.onemorelevel.ch. To satisfy my need for speed, I get on my full suspension mountain bike and set out to find some nice trails. My thirst for culture is quenched by deep conversations over a couple of cold ones at the mostly frustrating games of FC Winterthur. more

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