‘Set Course’ is the most helpful button in your menuĪs we mentioned above, you’re going to need to get used to the star menu if you want to go anywhere in Starfield. We break it all down in our guide to how fast travel actually works in Starfield. You’ll have a lot of options to fast travel - both on a planet’s surface and between systems and planets - but it takes a bit of work to unlock and there are some unexpected restrictions on what you can and can’t do. Navigating the stars of Starfield’s Settled Systems involves a lot of digging through menus.

Navigating and fast travel involve a lot of menus You can see if you have any auto-slots or auto-persuades banked by looking in the bottom right corner of your screen. Auto-slot, meanwhile, places one ring on your digipick for you instead. In the case of a Persuasion attempt, it results in an automatic success. You’ll generate these bypasses pretty quickly as you play. And as you hack and persuade more people, you’ll bank “auto-persuade” and “auto-slot” options into your conversations and hacks respectively. Once you get the Persuasion and Security skills, you’ll find more methods to get through several situations. We explain why in our guide to the best skills. Aside from the three skills you get from your background, there are a few that will make your life a lot easier right from the beginning of the game, specifically Boost Pack Training, Persuasion, and Security. Starfield has a lot of skills - a total of 82 (with four ranks each). Get the Boost Pack Training, Security, and Persuasion skills ASAP This includes things like pickpocketing ( Theft), using a boost pac k ( Boost Pack Training), seeing a Stealth Meter ( Stealth), targeting specific systems on an enemy ship ( Targeting Control Systems), and several kinds of upgrades to your suit, ship, weapons, and outposts that won’t become available until you drop a point into their Skills. A lot of the game’s mechanics are locked behind the first level of an associated skill - which means you’ll have to put at least one skill point into that skill to even use the ability. Starfield’s skills do more than just improve abilities. Best of all, you don’t have to commit to just one.

Every factions offers sweet gear, a ton of XP5, and missions that are far more interesting than your average side quest (and are in some cases more compelling than the main story). You can join four factions in Starfield: the United Colonies Vanguard, the Crimson Fleet, the Freestar Rangers, and Ryujin Industries.

The main quest is doable at a low level, if you just want to mainline it, but you’ll have a better time if you don’t get randomly killed by a high level enemy mid-campaign. It’s worth mentioning in the same breath that you should also maybe step away from the main quest for a bit after this mission. “Into the Unknown” rounds out the story of Starfield, and not playing that far before you wander off the critical path leaves out a huge part of the game. ” After you beat the first two missions, you get three missions you can tackle in any order. We won’t go into any details due to spoilers, but we do recommend you play through the main story missions until you complete “ Into the Unknown. If you can’t choose, our guides on the best backgrounds and best traits can help you decide. Instead, you should focus your choices on which skills you want to start the game with. Sure, you’ll get some bonus dialogue options here and there, but nothing that significantly alters the story. And that means some missions will have you visiting different systems, planets, and moons than other players.ĭon’t spend too long choosing a background and trait(s) Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygonĭuring “ One Small Step,” Starfield’s first campaign mission, you’ll be directed to choose a background (a backstory for your character that also determines three skills you start the game with) and up to three traits (optional perks that both help and hinder your character). The settled planets and major cities you’ll visit are all predefined, so they won’t change or differ between players, but some smaller things on planets (like caves or bases) do appear to be randomly generated and randomly located. Sure, there’s the whole “your choices have consequences” part to any sprawling RPG, but, in Starfield, the variation goes a little deeper. We’ve collected 21 tips and tricks we wish we knew before starting Starfield.Įveryone’s playthrough will be a little different The game itself, though, isn’t really forthcoming about a lot of the details of playing it. There are ships to fly, stuffed animals to smuggle, outposts to build, and, oh yeah, artifacts to collect (and great mysteries of the universe to solve).

Space crew lets loose