Beginner's Guide to Starfield and Tips - Starfield Guide - IGN (2024)

Welcome to IGN's Starfield Beginner's Guide, the home of all starting tips, tricks, and How-To Guides to help you familiarize yourself with the galaxy. In this guide we've cataloged a lot of basic data and easy to miss concepts from control schemes to flying your ship and exploring planets just in case you happened to miss them.

While Starfield is very similar to Fallout and the Elder Scrolls in many ways, it introduces lots of mechanics you may not be aware of, or may seem fairly complicated, especially early on in the game. This applies to everything from combat to exploration, and especially new concepts like traveling through star systems, flying, and upgrading your ship.

This Beginner’s Guide is divided up into several sections - which range from character creation to your first mission and prologue, and includes movement, scanning environments, to weapons and spacesuits, crafting, combat and stealth, maneuvering spaceships, making money, and lockpicking.

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While you begin the game nameless and in the first person perspective, you’ll very shortly be able to confirm your identity - which expands far beyond your looks. If you’re worried about getting hung up on your visual appearance, you need not worry. Each major settlement has a place for a total makeover called Enhance!, and as it only costs 500 credits, you can give yourself a full makeover as much as you’d like!

One thing you cannot change is your character’s background and associated starting skills. Each background offers a point in three different skills to give you an early leg up in your preferred playstyle. This won’t necessarily lock you out of anything, as all the skills are on the basic tier of each tree, and you can easily course correct and start investing in new skills once you get a feel for what you want. Your background is also a point of lore for the character you wish to make. In certain situations, you may find an extra piece of dialogue or option is given that reflects your character’s history.

Do note that since there is no way to refund your skill points, you’ll still want to give it some thought to help get your character pointed in the right direction. For example, if you plan to be sneaky or underhanded, having points already allocated to Stealth, Security, Persuasion, and Pickpocket can lessen the time it will take for you to make use of these systems. There are also a few Skills that lock you out of performing specific actions until you have invested at least one point:

• Pickpocket allows you to attempt to loot a character’s inventory without them realizing it by interacting with them while in stealth.
• Boost Pack Training gives you the ability to make use of Packs that have boosts installed, giving you extra mobility and height in both exploration and surface combat.
• Piloting allows you to make use of your ship’s thrusters for an extra type of maneuvering in combat.
• Targeting allows you to directly identify and lock onto an enemy ship’s specific functions, letting you disable their weapons, shields, engine, or grav drive instead of outright destroying them.

In addition to Skills, you will also have the option to pick up to three passive Traits that will stay with you for the duration of your adventure. These are usually designated as little quirks that can have both good and bad bonuses - like being randomly hunted by bounty hunters, but gaining a damage boost at low health. Unlike your starting skills, it is possible to remove these Traits if you decide at some point you’d no longer like to deal with them, though each Trait has its own way of being removed that may take a bit of work on your part.

Movement and Control Basics

Your journey in Starfield won’t wait too long before throwing you up against some dangerous encounters, and with some tooltips being very brief, it pays to know about how you’ll move around and traverse both in and out of combat:

• Once you start to find a few weapons you like, press B on PC or Y on controller when selecting them in your inventory to bring up a menu to bind them to a numeral (and note that 0 is your quick healing medpack by default).

• When in scanning mode by pressing F on PC or LB on controller, drawing your weapon will instead bring up the Cutter mining laser that you can use to harvest various inorganic resources. Some may take longer than others, but your laser will always recharge after a short duration.
• Whether you need to drag a dead body or just rearrange some items in your ship, you can hold the interact (E on PC or A on controller) button to begin dragging something around. Smaller items can be rotated with mouse clicks, though the degree is fairly limited.
• Remembering how to view multiple inventories can be a bit of trouble, so always be sure to view the bottom row of the menu screen to see what’s available. Q usually lets you swap to the person you are trading with, but in certain instances you can hit it again to swap to your Ship’s Hold.

• If you want to look your best in settlements and not be strapped in your bulky suit, there’s an option hidden in your inventory. When in the spacesuits section, press T on PC or RB on controller to visually turn them off (and keep them equipped) in towns. The same can be done for helmets in breathable spaces.
• You can holster your weapon by holding down the reload button - and it also works for closing containers you’ve opened when standing over them.

This section of the Beginner’s Guide focuses on things you’ll encounter after leaving the Argos Extractor Mining Colony, and includes how to make use of your scanner, survive hostile environments, and utilize combat on the ground.

Using Your Scanner

Once you arrive on Kreet in the first mission, you’ll be able to make use of your Scanner to gain additional info about the planet, and scan indigenous alien life, plants, and rocks - but you may not realize that it has a multitude of uses. You may need to scan several flora or fauna in order to bring the total to 100%, which will then let you see at a glance what resources can be harvested from them.

In Scan Mode, your HUD will change slightly, and you won’t be able to use weapons (aside from the Cutter mining laser). Nearby interactive targets will now be highlighted, and depending on the target, you’ll have a host of new actions:

• Each planet often has several types of inorganic ores and resources, ranging from iron to titanium and everything in between. These resources can come in a few different shapes, including large patches of the ground that can be mined using outposts, rocky geodes sprouting from stone, basins of liquid, and ore hiding in hazardous vents. Those found in rocks will need to be mined using your Cutter tool.

• Your Scanner will also highlight nearby flora and fauna. Various types of plants grow on each planet and even some moons, and can be harvested for resources like toxins or nutrients that are often lighter than other variants. Alien fauna will come in all shapes and sizes — some may be docile, but others are territorial and may attack you and other lifeforms.

• Looking along the horizon, your scanner can detect nearby points of interest and show them on your HUD with the distance from the target. You can get a topographic view of the area by pressing G for the surface map, which will add any points of interest that have popped up on your scanner to the map.

• More than just a tool for information, the Scanner’s targeting reticle can also be used to quickly get where you need to go. Center your target over a point of interest that you have already discovered (like your ship), and you can press E on PC or A on controller to fast travel back to that spot instantly (unless you’re over-encumbered).

• If you scan each resource, flora, and fauna to 100% on a planet or moon, as well as logging a certain amount of anomaly traits found by exploring, you can complete your survey of a planet. This will add that planet’s Survey Data to your inventory in the Notes section, which can be sold to traders for money — though certain people will pay a much higher rate than others.

Inventories - Gear, Consumables, and More

With so much loot to find in Starfield, you can expect to spend a good deal of time navigating menus to make sure your character has everything they need, or figure out what you need to offload when you reach your carry limits.

The most important thing to remember is there are two main inventories to be aware of: Your inventory, and your ship’s hold. Each can only carry so much, but since the inventory in your ship’s cargo hold can interface directly with crafting benches, or with Trade Authority kiosks at a spaceport. If you begin to carry more than your weight limit, continuous movement will drain your O2 meter, which will then fill up with red CO2, and begin to damage you if you keep moving when it fills. Luckily, you can always stop moving for a bit, use various items to briefly increase your capacity or O2 levels, or even trade with a companion to ease your burden.

Your inventory is divided into several sections for you to manage, from weapons to aid and every random piece of junk you may find in your travels. The equipment sections will also show your currently equipped gear, and can be clicked on to view the full list of items in that category:

• Weapons - this section is for all your ranged and melee weapons - from pistols to knives, ballistic weapons to particle beams, and everything in between. Weapons tend to weigh more than most items, and modding them will only increase their mass, so it’s a good idea to stick to a few tried and true weapons, and sell the rest.

Note that most equipment can come in several tiers of rarity: Common items are listed in white, but can also have mods installed in them. Rare items are a light cyan blue, and can have one additional effect. Epic items are purple and can have two effects, while Legendary items are gold and can have three extra effects.

• Spacesuits - These protective spacesuits in Starfield are like armor in a way, and will bolster your damage resistance whether in a city or in a hostile planet environment. All defensive gear is measured in several ways - their protection against ballistic, energy, and electro-magnetic attacks, and the resistance they offer against thermal, airborne, corrosive, and radiation that you can experience when exploring a planet or getting exposed to a harmful vent.

• Packs - Boost Packs are a type of back armor that’s main use comes from their ability to be modded with air-boosting capabilities. In addition to defensive armor, they can be used by pressing jump while already in the air to grant several short bursts of extended air time. Different boost mods can enhance their vertical or horizontal power. Note that you will have to have at least one point in the Boost Pack Training Skill to be able to boost jump!

• Helmets - Protecting you on unknown planets when there’s no air to breathe, Helmets are another piece of armor that can offer extra protection against the elements. They can also be modded to provide extra effects, if you allocate Skill Points or happen upon one that’s already been enhanced.

• Apparel - A strictly cosmetic section, Apparel offers very little in the way of defense, but can sometimes provide a few perks depending on the type for both your body and head. Since you’d normally be wearing your suit at all times, you’ll need to press T when viewing spacesuits to disable them when in town so that your character’s chosen apparel can be viewed instead.

• Throwables - This section for Throwables covers all types of thrown explosive devices, which can include many types of grenades and mines. Once equipped, your character will ready and toss one when you hold down and release the G button.

• Ammo - Thankfully, no Ammo in Starfield has an associated weight, meaning you can carry as much as you want without worry. There are many types of ammo to keep track of, so be sure to double check which ammo your favored weapons use and stock up on the right kinds.

• Aid - Starfield is full of many types of items that can provide you Aid, from cubed food packages called Chunks, to hand-crafted meals, highly desired Medpacks, and a host of chems that can cure Afflictions or raise your stats temporarily. There are many ways to gain afflictions in Starfield, which can be viewed in your Status screen. Each affliction has its own color coded symbol that different aid items can cure outright, otherwise you’ll need to wait until its prognosis improves, or see a doctor. You should also take care when abusing Chems, as addiction can set in and lower your O2 and carry weight while fighting its effects!

• Notes - Notes is a place for lore, as well as your Survey Data when you complete the scanning of a planet. Here you can find sellable books, logs and audio slates, and even Skill Books that will grant small permanent bonuses when encountered for the first time. Luckily, most of these items have no weight attached — except for books, but reading some of them may give you interesting missions.

• Resources - The many resources you can find all over the galaxy can easily sneak up on you and deplete a lot of your capacity. Everything found that can be used to craft and upgrade - from inorganic rocks and ore, to organic items harvested from plants and animals, and even structural items needed for outpost creation are all stored here. Depending on where the resources are harvested, it may weigh as little as .05 when looted from a tree, or .50 when found in a jar in a science lab, so be sure to sell off your heavier resources! It’s usually a good idea to store these in your ship’s cargo hold as much as possible, as crafting and outpost building will pull from the hold. There’s even a shortcut button to quickly transfer all of your resources to the hold by pressing T on PC or RB on controller and putting them in your ship — if they’ll fit.

• Misc - For everything else, there’s the Misc section. Most of the junk you find will go here, and unlike Fallout 4 you can’t break down junk into useful resources, so it’s better you sell them off at the first chance. The only things you’ll want to keep on hand are keys you’ve obtained, and Digipicks to break the locks on doors, safes, and terminals.

Note - Some items you pick up can have color-coded squares you need to be aware of. Any item with a red square is stolen goods, and if attempted to pick up while someone is watching, you can expect the law to hunt you down. Items with a yellow square are contraband, and faction-controlled planets with cities and settlements will scan you for contraband before you can land — meaning you’ll need to jettison it, pay a fine, or install cargo with shielding to try and bypass their scanners. The good news is that most bustling places will have a Trade Authority shop where you can sell off stolen and contraband goods in person. See our Essential Tips on Smuggling Contraband.

Leveling Up - Experience and Skill Challenges

Much like other Bethesda RPGs, many tasks you perform will gain experience for your character, culminating in a level up. There are many ways to gain experience, so you won’t always have to resort to killing things (though that does help). Activities like exploring and discovering new planets and star systems, scanning and surveying flora and fauna, crafting, completing lockpicking or persuasion minigames, and of course completing quests will all earn you a ton of experience over time.

Each level will give you 1 Skill Point to spend in any of the five different skill trees, and each tree has multiple tiers, and will require a bit of investment before the next tier can unlock. Once you’ve assigned a point to a skill, you’ll find there are four ranks of each skill, but you’ll need to complete a challenge before you can unlock the next tier. These challenges are always related to the skill at hand, so by making use of said skill often, you’ll be more likely to unlock the next rank by the time you earn another skill point.

Things like killing enemies with certain weapon types, utilizing the skill in question, or crafting a certain amount of items may be required of you, so sometimes it may be beneficial to hold off on engaging in these challenges until you’ve unlocked the next rank so that they can go toward completing the next challenge tier.

Making and Saving Money

There are many, many ways to earn a quick buck in Starfield, but here are some quick tips for you:

• When you first get access to Vasco and the Frontier, pick up as much as you can in those starting tutorial areas. Between being able to let your companion lighten the load, and transferring items to the ship’s cargo hold, you can stand to make a good amount of money the moment you land in New Atlantis and sell all of your random loot to the Trade Authority Kiosk.
• Be mindful of the weight to value ratio that all items in Starfield have. Certain resources and most gear are usually pretty heavy, so at a certain point it’s not worth looting every pirate’s gun. Be on the lookout instead for antiques and desktop ornaments and displays, or even old books that don’t weigh much.

• Crime can pay — a lot. People tend to carry a good deal of credits on them, and you can even hack ATMs for more money. If you find yourself loaded with stolen goods or contrabands, seek out the in-person Trade Authority shops in every major city to sell them off.
• Mission Boards are located in every corner of the galaxy, and will randomly generate short quests to offer payouts from everything from bounty hunting to surveying unexplored planets.

• Don’t sell your Survey Data until you meet Vladimir on The Eye. He’ll offer to buy them at a premium price far above what any other trader will pay.

Space can be lonely, so it’s not a bad idea to have someone you can trust watching your back. Starfield allows you to pick from multiple companions to tag along with you, but you can also have other comrades serving a purpose while waiting in the wings.

When you begin to meet new faces — either as part of Constellation during the main story missions — or completing side quests and visiting bars and spaceports, you may find some people are willing to travel alongside you. Any potential applicant will display their list of Skills in the top right corner when talking to them, so you’ll have an idea of what they bring to the table.

A companion’s skills can benefit you in multiple ways, as not only does it improve their capabilities, but many of their skills can bolster your own. These skills can effectively increase your own, or fill gaps in skills that you may not have yourself when it comes to your crew. This applies both to a character that is actively following you, and to those you assign to your crew in your ship’s menu to work aboard your home ship, or one of your outposts.

For example, the laser skill Sarah Morgan has makes her more proficient at taking out enemies with a good laser pistol or rifle, but when assigned to part of the ship’s crew, she can also increase the range of your grav jumps with her Astrodynamics Skill. A bigger ship can allow for more crew to be assigned, and can in turn bolster your ship with more potential skills your crew possesses. Do note that you’ll only be able to assign 3 people maximum to a ship, and increasing that number will involve both upgrading your ship’s crew quarters, plus your Crew Command Skill.

Of all the potential Companions you can meet, the four humans of Constellation each have their own likes and dislikes that can affect their affinity for you, making them fight harder alongside you, or even refuse to work with you if you do something they don’t approve of. Each of them has potential romance options you can unlock by continuing to work alongside them and gain their approval.

Other named companions you can meet and recruit may still have their own personalities and backgrounds, but they cannot be romanced. Additionally, there are usually always random “Specialists” you can find hanging out in bars that can offer a single skill towards your ship’s capabilities. These can make for some of the best crew members for your ship.

Factions and Quests

Starfield is home to various factions that you can learn more about, and even join to take part in new adventures and meet new people. Some factions, like Constellation, are ones that you will automatically join as part of the main story, but most others you will be given the option to special organizations within the factions that have their own sprawling questlines:

Note that despite their differences, you won’t be locked out of any faction by joining another. So feel free to inquire about joining each group to get all their benefits.

• Constellation is a group dedicated to exploring the galaxy and uncovering its mysteries. Lately, they have devoted their time and funding to researching mysterious alien artifacts, and your discovery of one such artifact will bring you to their doorstep. While they may be a relatively small group, they are dedicated to the task at hand and will help you in your journey. Members include Sarah Morgan, Sam Coe, Barrett, Vasco, and Andreja.

• The United Colonies are one of the two major factions of humanity that have evolved to live among the stars, and keep the peace in the majority of the Settled Systems. Tensions with those who wanted to live free culminated in the Colony War with the Freestar Collective, and though the war has ended, the UC Vanguard is committed to securing peace against all threats, and always on the lookout for new applicants to earn their UC citizenship. See how to Join the UC Vanguard Faction.

• The Freestar Collective are a collection of colonists and settlers wishing to live outside of the UC’s government, and believe in taking care of their own. After reaching a tentative peace following the Colony War, the Freestar Rangers continue to dispense justice while protecting their citizens, and need new recruits to help those in need. See How to Join the Freestar Rangers Faction.

• While many outlaw Spacers can be found around the Settled Systems, the most feared criminal group is known as the Crimson Fleet. A ruthless group that makes their home on a commandeered space station known as The Key, they are the hub of lawlessness that don’t take kindly to newcomers. However, the UC System Defense is looking for the right people to infiltrate their ranks — but who you choose to betray is your choice alone.

• In the Freestar protected planet of Volii, the city of Neon is home to Ryujin Industries, a powerful corporation that values corporate espionage, sabotage, and dirty dealing. If you have what it takes to make it to the top, consider applying at their job terminal in New Atlantis.

One of the most important aspects of Starfield is managing your space ship, and there’s a lot of systems to keep in mind after you’re given control of The Frontier.

Ships come in many shapes and sizes, and can be customized and upgraded as well. The Frontier contains a habitat module, docking port, and pilot seat, but you’ll find that other ships can have bigger or smaller crew quarters, and can include beds or crafting tables, and many other additions. Each ship also has a cargo area, which can be accessed either by a small computer console near the pilot seat, or by selecting the ship menu and accessing the cargo from there. You can also access a much smaller Captain’s Cargo container for stashing a few key essentials.

When piloting your ship into space, you’ll begin to see how all of its various systems work, and how you can interact with each of them:

• Your ship’s Reactor generates power for all of your systems, indicated by the bars at the bottom of the window in the left corner. On PC, you can hold Left+Alt and use directional WASD to navigate between systems to raise and lower their effectiveness based on your available power, and the system’s maximum output. This can be done at any time while piloting — even in battle, and knowing when to strengthen certain systems by pulling from others can be the key to victory.

• The left three systems represent your Weapons, which can be assigned whenever you customize your ship and its turrets. By default, they usually relate to Lasers, Ballistics, and Missiles, but you can also swap them out for Particle Weapons, and non-lethal EM Weapons — but only three weapon types can be active at a time. Lasers are great against an enemy ship’s shields, while Ballistics are better against the actual hull. Missiles can deal a lot more damage, but require you to lock targets and are depleted fairly quickly.

• Your ship’s Engine dictates how fast you can move around, and how good your top speed can get. Diverting more power to your engines gives you much more mobility and speed, but if damaged, you’ll be a sitting duck!

• The Shields are a necessary defense to stop your ship from taking real damage, as indicated by the bubble around your ship icon in the right corner. Unlike hull damage, it will replenish over time, so if you start to see your hull taking too much damage, use Ship Parts (pressing 0 in battle, or pressing F when viewing your Ship Menu) to heal up.

• The Grav Drive is how your ship can travel between the stars, and the more you upgrade it, the farther you’ll be able to travel between two points. You don’t necessarily need to allocate points from your reactor when in a fight, but you will need at least one point if you try to escape or otherwise travel to another system. The more points allocated to the Grav Drive, the faster you can make your escape — which can become vital if you find yourself outmatched!

Keeping an eye on the numbers along the circular HUD is essential, as it will tell you how much firepower your weapons can dish out before needing to replenish over time, as well as your top speed and when you can boost to avoid incoming missile locks.

Once an enemy is inside your circular HUD, you can begin to lock onto them and open fire. Once the lock is complete, your missiles will automatically seek them out. To fully destroy an enemy ship, you’ll need to deplete their shield, and then inflict enough hull damage to destroy them. However — once you learn the Targeting Systems Skill, you can specifically fire upon specific systems like an enemy’s engine to disable their movement, at which point you can fly close and attempt to board them instead.

There’s more you can do when piloting than just attack, as your ship can also interact with the environment of space. Swapping to your scanner by pressing F will give you additional info on whatever is in range - including planet details, points of interest on the surface, and nearby ship health. You can also press E when aimed at things in space like ships, stations, and cargo to select them, and then hail from afar, or get within 500m to dock or loot cargo.

Fast Traveling - Traveling Between Planets and More

Since the galaxy is vast, you can expect yourself to be doing a lot of fast traveling — even if you enjoy taking in the sights of each star system. It may sound surprising, but fast traveling works in several different ways depending on where you are and where you want to go.

The most important rule to remember is the obvious one: You can’t fast travel to a place you haven’t been before. This applies to everything from City Districts, to points of interest on a planet, or a new star system. However, this isn’t the same as traveling to a new planet or system for the first time, which requires a different type of fast traveling. You also cannot travel past a star system that you haven’t visited at least once before, which is why all systems past your closest unexplored star system are marked in red on the galactic map.

When you wish to explore a new planet or system, you’ll need to get in your ship and head into orbit. You can do this manually by entering your ship, sitting in the pilot’s seat, and lifting off into space — or you can simply open your galaxy map and select the system and hold X to jump to it. You won’t be able to view the solar system in detail until arriving for the first time.

Once you’ve arrived in the system, you can select a planet or moon, which may display a small variety of points of interest that your scanners have picked up. This can include both structured areas like settlements, and randomized points of interest like abandoned facilities that may be different for each player. You’ll need to hold X again to fly into orbit around the planet before you can select where you want to land.

Thankfully, the return trip will be much easier, as you can fast travel as much or as little as you want to head home. After you’re done exploring a planet, you can choose to fast travel directly to your ship by selecting it on the surface or planet map, or target it with your scanner. You can also bypass going to your ship entirely and simply select the planet you want to return to, and the city or point of interest you wish to go back to. Even if it’s several star systems away, you won’t need to stop in each system if you have the required fuel or grav drive. However, you’ll be stopped in orbit of a planet with a city to be scanned for contraband, requiring you to wait until the scan is complete to select the place to travel to once more.

Note that when you arrive at a planet that you cannot fast travel directly to a point of interest on the surface and are pulled into your ship’s view of the planet, you don’t need to pull out the map again if you have already selected a place to land. Simply press F on PC or RB on controller to pull up your scanner while piloting the ship and center your view on the point of interest, and you can fast travel directly to the surface.

Quick, Necessary, How-To Guides

These things may seem simple, but given how much there is to keep track of, you might want a refresher:

• How to Find Planets with Settlements
• How Photo Mode Works
• How to Choose the Right Star in Double Systems
• How to Board Ships
• How to Land on a Planet
• How to Use Stealth and Silence Weapons
• How to Win Ship Battles
• How to Pickpocket and Steal
• How to Cure All Status Afflictions
• How to Get and Use Jetpacks (Boost Packs)
• How to Sell Weapons, Items, and Gear
• How Space Combat Works
• Persuasion System Explained
• Lockpicking Explained - Best Tips for Success