Tips and Tricks: A Beginner's Guide to Starfield

Get a head start in Starfield with our comprehensive beginner's guide! Learn how to be victorious in combat with helpful tactics, and make the most of your exploration with essential tips and tricks.

Getting Started in Starfield

Essential Tips

Stock Up at New Atlantis After One Small Step Complete Challenges to Unlock Skills Be Persuasive to Avoid Unnecessary Conflict Pick Companions to Suit Your Needs Mod Weapons to Suit Your Playstyle Stealth is Always an Option Melee to Conserve Ammo Move Around While a Gunfight Use Jetpack to Gain High Ground Use Grenades When Outnumbered Allocate Power on Your Ship Appropriately Putting Weapons and Items in Quickslots

Stock Up at New Atlantis After One Small Step

Stock up essential items like ammo and Med Packs during your first arrival in New Atlantis to prepare for your upcoming missions and adventure!

Early Game Guide: What to Do First

Complete Challenges to Unlock Skills

Each skill has 4 ranks, and completing challenges unlocks higher ranks that you can level up by using skill points. Higher ranks improve each skill, giving them different of higher-leveled uses. Try to aim toward unlocking the skills you want for your build by completing their requisite challenges.

Best Skills Tier List

Be Persuasive to Avoid Unnecessary Conflict

Being persuasive in conversations can usually resolve conflicts peacefully, without having to resort to combat.

If you so desire, you can invest a few skill points into the Social branch of skills, in order to have a golden tongue and talk your way out of most situations.

How to Build Persuasion Meter

Pick Companions to Suit Your Needs

A large selection of companions will be able to accompany you on your questing, and each one will have their own special skills and perks.

Choose which skills you need on certain missions, and you can also leave some companions behind at outposts to increase outpost efficiency.

You can also equip your companions with weapons and armor of your choice!

Best Companions and Followers

Mod Weapons to Suit Your Playstyle

Weapons can be modded to improve their efficacy, or to tune them toward a certain playstyle. For example, stealth builds will be at home with silencer-equipped guns that dramatically lessen firing noise.

List of All Weapon Mods

Stealth is Always an Option

Combat can also be avoided entirely by moving around stealthily. Crouch around, and quietly take out enemies from behind. Don't forget to pickpocket them, too!

How to Stealth Kill Enemies

Melee to Conserve Ammo

Despite being a game with lots of guns, Starfield doesn't shy away from melee combat. If enemies are close enough to you, you can save a few bullets by running up and giving them a good ol' whack.

Best Melee Weapons

Move Around While in a Gunfight

While in the heat of battle, stay on your feet and always keep moving around to make it harder for enemies to hit you. Moving around will also open up opportunities to melee them, saving you some ammo.

Combat Tips and Mistakes to Avoid

Use Jetpack to Gain High Ground

The combat of Starfield allows the player to attack from the skies. Use your jetpack to gain high ground and rain bullets on all enemies below. Doing this will allow you to have the jump on them, while making them unable to hide behind cover.

How to Use Jetpack

Use Grenades When Outnumbered

Grenades can help you get out of a pinch, especially when you're outnumbered. Pop a grenade around a corner or into a room with multiple enemies to take them out immediately.

How to Throw Grenades

Allocate Power on Your Ship Appropriately

Your spaceship will have a limited amount of power to work with, so allocate power depending on the situation. Pump more into your engines to move faster, to your shields when you're in danger, or to your weapons to deal quick, powerful damage.

Space Battles Combat Guide

Putting Weapons and Items in Quickslots

To put weapons and essential items in your quickslots, you'll have to mark them as favorites in the Inventory menu. You're allowed to add a total of 12 weapons or items in your quickslot.

How to Quick Swap and Switch Weapons

Things I Wish I Knew Sooner

Essential Tips
Use the Hand Scanner Often Distinguishing Resources from Junk Unlock the Essential Skills Sleep to Fully Restore Health and Get an XP Bonus Wait 24 Hours to Restock a Vendor's Money Container with Infinite Storage Faster Mining

Use the Hand Scanner Often

Bring up your scanner every now and then to log new flora and fauna you encounter in every new world. Tracking these species will give you info on what resources they drop for crafting. Completely scanning a new species will also give you XP rewards.

The scanner also highlights all lootable items and containers, which is very useful for dark areas. When you have a mission selected, opening the scanner shows arrows on the ground for you to follow to reach your objective.

How to Use the Hand Scanner

Distinguishing Resources from Junk

The game tells you whether an item is a crafting component or not to help you distinguish what and what not to loot.

It is recommended to collect all materials you find during exploration, as these materials and resources will help you in crafting things like weapon mods, armor mods, and outpost structures.

List of All Resources and Materials

Unlock the Essential Skills

Essential mechanics such as the stealth meter, pickpocketing, using the jetpack, and targetting a ship's engines are all locked behind skills. You'll need to unlock them to gain access to these mechanics.

List of All Skills and Skill Trees

Sleep on a Bed to Fully Restore Health and Get 10% EXP Bonus

You can sleep on any unoccupied beds as you explore to fully restore your health and obtain a 10% EXP bonus. This comes in handy as you can use this as an alternate to restore your health if you do not have any Med Packs in your inventory.

How to Increase Health

Wait 24 Hours to Restock a Vendor's Money

If a vendor has run of cash while you are selling items to them, find a place where you can sit down or sleep on a bed and wait for 24 hours. This resets the vendor's base money to its original amount.

How to Restock a Vendor's Money

Container with Infinite Storage

This storage can be found in your room at The Lodge, which is pointed out by Noel after speaking to her. Store all your resources and other items here to avoid getting encumbered, and to also have one place to store all your items.

Do note that the workbenches in The Lodge's basement area cannot use the resources stored in the infinite storage in your room.

Where to Store Items

Faster Mining

With your Cutter equipped, you can hold down the aim key or button and you'll notice the lines on your crosshair starts to come closer together, which indicates a stronger beam.

This lets you mine resources quicker, but it uses up more of your Cutter's charge.

How to Mine Faster

All Tips and Tricks Guides

All Tips and Tricks

Starter Guides: Game Features Explained
UI and Menu Explained	Periodic Table Explained
All Stats Explained	Reputation System Guide
All Religions Explained	Level Scaling Explained
Bounty System Explained	Digipick Guide
Persuasion Guide	Stealing Guide
Durability Guide	All Crimes You Can Commit
Zero G Effects Explained	How to Cure Infections
Space Piracy Explained	What to Do First
Oxygen System Explained	All Environmental Damage and Resistances
How to Avoid Getting Encumbered	How to Cure All Status Afflictions and Effects
How to Cure Broken Bone Affliction	How to Cure Burn Affliction
How to Cure Addiction	All Damage Types Explained
Crew Explained	Red and Yellow Item Icons Explained
How to Use the Quest Marker	Health Bar Explained
Weapon Tiers and Rarity Explained	-
Combat Guides
Combat Tips	Aiming Guide
How to Stealth Kill Enemies	How to Throw Grenades
How to Block Attacks	How to Mantle and Climb Ledges
How to Remove Weapon Mods	How to Combat Slide
How to Detect and Disarm Landmines	-
Ship Guides
Space Battles Combat Guide	How to Increase Jump Range
Ship Customization Guide	How to Get Fuel
How to Dock Your Ship	How to Upgrade Ship
How to Target a Ship's Engine	How to Get Shielded Cargo Holds
How to Power Up the Grav Drive	How to Fix Unattached Modules
How to Repair Ships	How to Get and Fire Turrets
How to Sell Ships	How to Rename Ships
How to Change Home Ships	What is GRV?
Missing Weapon Assignment Error Explained	Ship Classes Explained
Farming Guides
How to Level Up Fast	How to Farm Credits
How to Farm Legendary Weapons and Armor	How to Get More Digipicks
Infinite Money Glitch	Infinite Weapons Exploit
General Tips and Tricks
All Names Companions Can Say	Best Settings for PC and Console
Character Creation Options	All Romance Options
Where to Sell Items	All Planetary Traits
Difficulty Differences	Where to Store Items
Crafting Guide: How to Craft	How to Increase Companion Affinity
How to Hijack Ships	How to Access Computers
How to Pay Off Mortgage and Bank Loans	Where to Find Industrial Workbenches
Where to Find Weapon Workbenches	How to Install Mods
Where to Find Spacesuit Workbenches	How to Get Free Ships
Endings Guide	Nova Galactic Staryard Skip
How to Restock Vendors	Keybinds and Controls for PC and Xbox
All Missables and Points of No Return	Best Mods List
List of All Unlockables	List of Easter Eggs and Secrets
How to Show Damage Numbers	Language Options and How to Change Language
List of Exploits	How to Turn on the Flashlight
List of Error Prompts	List of All Random Encounters
New Game Plus Explained	All Universe Variations
Where to Find Cooking Stations	Where to Find Pharmaceutical Labs
Rescue Barrett Skip	How to Speedrun New Game Plus
Quest Objective Guides
How to Dock with the Nova Galactic Staryard	How to Complete the Vanguard Simulation
Equipment Guides
How to Get the Hunter Armor and Weapon	How to Get the Emissary Armor and Weapon
Exploration Guides
How to Get Cold Resistance	How to Get Radiation Resistance
How to Get 100% Survey Score	How to Mine Faster
How to Go to the Ocean Biome	All Unexplored Ecological Features and How to Scan
Location Guides
Sanctum Universum Location in New Atlantis	How to Unlock the Door in the Well
How to Access the Dev Room	Almagest Casino Jackpot Location
All Earth Landmarks	-
FAQs
How to Get Rid of Adoring Fan NPC	How to Hide Spacesuit and Helmet
How to Change Background	How to Change FOV
How to Fast Travel	What Happens When You Die
How to Remove Traits	How to Wait and Skip Time
How to Skip Dialogue and Cutscenes	Best Houses and How to Get All Houses
How to Holster Your Weapon	How to Scrap Junk
Can You Change Crosshairs?	How to Increase Health
How to Use Photo Mode	How to Intimidate People
How to Use Jetpack	Can You Kill NPCs?
How to Avoid Jail	Are Mechs Usable?
What is the Max Level?	Can You Get Pets?
How Does Free Roam Work?	Is There Underwater Exploration?
Are There Land or Water Vehicles?	Is There Fishing?
Are There Black Holes?	Are There Cybernetic Enhancements?
Can You Build a Fleet?	How to Pickpocket Successfully
How to Sneak and Avoid Detection	How to Increase Carrying Capacity
Is There Fall Damage?	How to Increase Jump Height
Can You Adopt Kids?	How to Use the Hand Scanner
How to Bribe NPCs	What to Do if You Can't Get in the Game?
Can You Change Pronouns?	How to Change POV
How to Turn Off XP Pop Up	Should You Do the Main Quest First?
How to Claim Pre-Order and Deluxe Edition Bonuses	Can You Respec?
How to Access Ship Storage	How to Use Quick Slots and Switch Weapons
Is there a Survival Mode?	What Is Inside the Master Lock in The Lodge?
How to Change Companions and Crew	Who to Choose for Your First Follower
How to Change Your Name	How to Display FPS Counter
What to Do If You Get Stuck	What to Buy First
Where to Sell Survey Data	Do Companions Need Ammo?
Reasons Why You Cannot Fast Travel	Can You Dismantle Weapons?
How to Save	How to Remove Stolen Label on Items
Can You Craft Ammo?	Can You Add More Saves?
How to Put Out Fires	How Does Procedural Generation Work
Are There Radio Stations?	How Do Tiles Work?
How to Reenable Achievements	Can You Steal the Fortuna?

Starfield Related Guides

Starfield Walkthrough and Guides Wiki

Starfield Wiki
Main Quests	Side Quests
Factions	Best Weapons
Armor	Weapons
Tips and Tricks	Console Commands
Ship Parts	Ship Manufacturers
Planets	Star Systems
Cities and POIs	Choices
Skills	Traits
Resources and Materials	Outposts
Companions	Builds
Ship Designs	Ships
Starborn Powers	Collectibles
Shops	Items
Houses	Mission Board
Puzzle Solutions	Backgrounds
Enemies	Research Projects
Achievements	Bugs
Weapon Mods	Armor Mods
Fauna and Alien Creatures	Flora and Plants
News and Updates	-