The Comprehensive Beginner's Guide to Starfield

So Starfield has recently just released

and the game is massive. Even as a veteran

RPG player, the game can be very confusing

and overwhelming. So I decided to put

together a comprehensive beginner's guide

to help you get started in this massive

game. So even before the game begins,

when you're creating your character,

you've got a load of different options to

choose from. You get to pick your

background and you get to pick some

traits, and these are quite important

choices to make. Based on your decisions,

it's really going to affect how the game

plays in the early game. So as you can see

on the right-hand side, we have to pick

from a list of different subclasses like

Chef, Combat Medic, Cyber Runner. And this

basically means you're going to get 3

traits to pick from. In Starfield, there

are dozens of different skills you can

choose from. Every time you level up,

you'll get 1 skill point which you can put

into one of these skills and unlock

something. But based on the subclass that

you pick in the beginning of the game,

you'll be able to get rank 1 of 3 skills

straight from the beginning of the game.

So depending on the kind of playstyle you

have in mind, then you have to pick very

carefully. Do you want to focus on weapon

damage, or do you want to focus on melee

damage, or do you want to be stealthy and

sneak around and pick locks and stuff like

that? I personally went for the Cyber

Runner build because I like stealth and I

like stealing things. But then after

leveling up a bit, I put more points into

physical attributes because it is very

useful to be able to run faster for longer

or be able to carry more stuff. You also

want to get the Boost Pack Training in the

tech tree so you can boost around using

the jetpacks. But apart from those basic

skills, whatever else you choose Basically

depends on what kind of playstyle, if you

want to go for ranged weapons, shotguns,

pistols, it's up to you. So once you've

picked your background, you now have to

pick 3 traits. Now you don't have to pick

the traits, you can see it says optional,

but they are kind of fun, they give you

little perks. As you can see on the right

side, there's a huge list of things like

alien DNA, dream house, empath. I

personally chose dream house, and what

that means is you get a house on a planet,

but you have to pay off a mortgage of like

125,000 credits. And once you pay that

off, you actually get the house and it

belongs to you, or you can just set it off

to the bank. The thing is with the traits

is you'll never get a good thing for free.

You'll get a good little perk, but at the

cost of something else. For example,

there's another perk where you have to

give an allowance to your parents, and

then you can either choose to cut off your

parents or keep paying them the allowance

in return for maybe some bonus items.

Some of the perks give you bonus dialogue

options depending on which faction you

want to belong to or which faction you're

interacting with. Next, let's talk about

where the health bar is, CO2, and O2. So

the health bar is at the bottom right,

that bar says health, and you can heal

this by pressing Q and choosing your med

pack. And when you're sprinting around,

you're going to be using O2 or oxygen.

You can see a little white bar at the

bottom left of the circle depleting. If

you're overburdened and you try sprinting,

the O2 will deplete even faster. And then

when you finally run out of O2, you'll

start seeing a red bar start filling up.

That is your CO2, and if the CO2 maxes out

and you keep trying to sprint even when

the CO2 is maxed out and you don't have

O2, then you'll start losing health.

Next, let's talk about traveling around

Starfield and visiting other planets and

other star systems. So this game is kind

of different to No Man's Sky. Although you

can jump into your ship and then take off

and then go into space and then launch to

another system, it's not seamless like it

is in No Man's Sky. There's going to be

several loading screens. And it's going to

be kind of annoying having to see these

loading screens over and over again. So to

reduce the amount of loading screens you

have to see, you can actually just

teleport to planets that you've already

been to and just land on the surface

without even getting into your ship. So

what you want to do is pick a planet

you've already been to, for example this

one, and then you can just click on the

surface of the planet to choose a landing

point. And then all you do is hold X to

land, and then there'll be a loading

screen And then eventually you'll appear

on the surface of that planet. It does

make traveling around very fast when you

realize you can just teleport to places

you've already been to. However, you

cannot do this if you're trying to

teleport to a system or a planet you've

never been to. If you've never been to a

system, you will have to jump there first,

and then after a loading screen, you'll

end up in the space around that system or

in that system, and then you have to pick

a planet by pressing M, and then you set a

landing point, and then you can land on

the planet. So there's just like one extra

step before you can land on the planet if

you've never been there before. And when

you land on a new planet, it is a good

idea to do a quick scan because then you

can see if there's any outposts or any

kind of interesting resources lying

around. As you can see, there's an outpost

there, there's a cave over there. You

might be able to find some interesting

artifacts or interesting locations. Like

over there seems to be some kind of

signal, unknown signal. There's another

cave. And some beryllium. You can also

track a mission, and if you press R to set

course, it will basically just take you to

wherever you need to go. First, it'll take

you to the system if you've never been

there before, and you'll have to jump

there. And if you wait a few seconds,

it'll activate the grav jump, or whatever

it's called in this game, like the

hyperdrive. And you'll see like a couple

seconds counting down, and then it will

take you there. And then you enter the

star system, and then you have to approach

the planet. Sometimes you'll get scanned

by the security ships in that area, and

then you just have to go towards the

planet, press R, and then pick a landing

spot, and then just land. It's pretty

basic and pretty simple, but it can be a

bit confusing if you're new to the game

because it does seem like there's quite a

few ways to get around in the game. Next,

we need to talk about storage. So as with

any typical Bethesda game, there's loads

of stuff to loot just lying around on the

floor. There's loads of junk and items and

nice stuff like weapons and gear. So

everything is sorted in menu systems.

There's weapons, apparel, aid, ammo, and

the amount of stuff you can carry will

depend on the total amount of mass your

character can carry. If you put points

into the fitness skills, then you can

increase the amount of mass you can carry.

And if you press B while selecting weapons

or grenades, you can assign it to a quick

slot and then press Q when you're in the

game to choose the weapons quickly or use

the number that you assigned to the

hotkey. And you can get additional cargo

in your ship, and actually I didn't even

know where to find this. I had to Google

it. But if you go into the cockpit and

look to the left, if you're in the

Frontier ship, the first ship, you'll have

a captain's locker which has a total mass

of 40. And then to the left there's a

little screen that says cargo hold, and

here is where you have a total mass of

like 495, which is massive. If you do any

space mining, the materials you mine will

be placed in here automatically. But if

you press transfer, you can then see you

have a total mass of 495, and you can

basically just store loads of stuff in

here. And then go down to planet surface

and use some kind of terminal where you

can then— you can then sell your ship's

inventory directly from the terminal.

Your companions can also carry stuff for

you. If you do Let's Trade Gear, any

companion that's with you will have around

135 mass that you can give them items to

carry. They're kind of like a pack mule

that follows you around. You can give them

stuff to hold. And if you have a house or

some kind of outpost, then even better,

because then you can build storage boxes

inside of the house. This is why I like

the traits— when you choose the traits in

the beginning of the game, I like the

house one because because you basically

get a free house even though you gotta pay

a mortgage. Even if you don't have the

money to pay the mortgage, you still get

the house and you can use the house. So by

accessing the terminal inside of the

house, you can build stuff like furniture,

but most importantly, you can build

storage crates. And each of these big

storage crates can hold like 150 mass. So

yeah, you just loot a load of stuff,

store it in your house or your ship, and

if you got contraband items that you can't

take with you on your ship, good to store

it at your house. You can also get a

weapon rack which goes on the wall, and

you can place your weapons on it, and it

displays the weapons hanging there, which

looks quite nice. So there's plenty of

options when it comes to finding storage

places for all of the loot you're going to

be picking up. The crafting system in this

game is also very extensive. So you've got

the cooking station, the industrial

workbench station, you've got the weapon

workbench, and you can actually modify the

weapons quite a lot. You can basically

change everything— the barrel length, the

ammunition, the magazine size, the sights,

different types of stocks and barrels.

There's loads of stuff you can do with all

the weapons, and they're gonna require

loads of materials to be able to get these

different modifications. So you can

literally spend hours and hours, hundreds

of hours, looking for materials and

upgrading your weapons so that they're

like your perfect ideal weapon. You can

also do cooking in this game. There's

quite a lot of different meals you can

prepare, but you need the skill— you need

the skill for cooking unlocked. And you

can cook all kinds of stuff like alien

sandwich, alien jerky, and they all give

you different kind of buffs. There's also

a research station which allows you to

unlock new things to create and craft.

You can create new kinds of food and

medicine and potions that can give you

certain types of buffs and also unlock new

furniture for your house. There's loads of

different things you can research to

improve your gear, and it takes a lot of

materials and time to finish these. Next,

we have the shipbuilding system in

Starfield. It is a very complex system,

and there's quite a lot of things you can

do with it. There's so many different

parts and different components you can buy

and upgrade your ship with, and then you

can actually place each individual part

however you want to, as long as it slots

together without going red. Now, there's a

lot of problems with shipbuilding, such as

if you put too many components, your ship

will be too heavy, and then you need a

more expensive, more powerful engine and

thrusters, and also has to have good

stability with legs. You can't just whack

parts of the ship together in any way you

want to and expect the ship to actually

fly. You can even buy more cargo holds and

just slap them on the sides and increase

your total amount of storage your ship can

hold. But then you got to test if your

ship could actually fly, or if you need

more thrusters, or if you need more legs

to create more stability. It can be quite

a complex process making your own ship,

but it is fun. As for the space combat,

it's pretty easy and straightforward.

Basically Basically all you have to do is

aim the circle at the other circle and

then hold down to fire your weapons. And

at the bottom left you have a bunch of

systems that you can choose. You can

choose to allocate energy on different

systems like the shields or the engines,

or maybe you put more energy into your

weapons so you do more damage. You can

also dock enemy ships or just dock ships

that are floating around because there

might be enemies on it and there's going

to be loot and rewards inside of that

ship. For example, in this ship, after I

cleared out all of the enemies and I did a

little puzzle to open the doors, I found 2

crates. One crate was full of some nice

stuff and some credits, but the other

crate was locked and you needed a higher

level of lockpicking to be able to open

that crate. So keep in mind that you might

want to spend some points into your

lockpicking skills because that'll give

you access to some stuff that you wouldn't

usually have access to.