A Small Sampling of my Starfield Playthrough

[Frag Maniac]

-----SOME VERY SLIGHT SPOILERS HERE-----

I feel compelled to first say I have been able to increase both difficulty level and graphics settings with the latest patch, but learning the nuances of how to get valuable items like a good ship early in the game certainly have helped as well. I've even found that it is possible to grav jump to another system in between waves of a tough dog fight if you for instance have no Ship Parts to make hull repairs during combat. When you jump back, even if you've taken time to pay for repairs at a landing port, the fight you were in will have saved your progress.

I used to run the game at 50% res scale, now I can run it at 65%, even with better performance outdoors than I was getting before. The lowest my FPS dips to now is about 45, whereas before it would go under 40 at times. This means I usually have snappy movement and aim (before it was quite often laggy). Visually the textures are also sharper, most notably faces of NPCs. I'm running a mix of Low and Med settings at 1080p due to my hardware, but the game still looks much better than FO 4 did at much higher settings.

While the ships can make a huge difference in dog fights, and the weapons you carry when you find better ones can dish out quite a bit more firepower, the effectiveness of the latter is determined somewhat by when you take on quests. It's been a bit of a guessing game as to what level of weapons to expect where, but typically enemies will be more closely matched to your player level. So waiting too long to do missions like the ones shown here can result in MUCH tougher fights. Most videos I've seen of the 2nd and 3rd missions shown, are typically done at far less than half the player level I'm on here.

The Ship Builder continues to be my main nit pick about the game, as I (and many others) find it difficult to use. That said, It's not too hard to acquire multiple ships, and you are allowed to have up to 10. So if you have trouble building one ideal ship that does everything well, you can if you choose opt not to build and instead use different ships for different purposes. About the most I've done with the Ship Builder is upgrade the weapons and engines on the starter ship you're given. The reality is, despite what some have said about barren planets and finicky Ship Builder, there is MUCH to do in the game, so no one feature makes or breaks it.

These are 3 of the main missions from the tail end of the Crimson Fleet and UC questlines. I started on Easy mode, which the first mission shown is done on, but the other two are on Normal.

-----MAJOR SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT!-----

Crimson Fleet - Legacy's End

Spoiler

This is the final mission of the Crimson Fleet quest if working as an undercover agent for UC. Your task is to conquer the Crimson Fleet at their main base the Key, after recovering the mass amount of credits from the Legacy ship you were pretending to steal for them. This is one of the biggest payoffs quest wise early in the game, which nets you 250,000 credits regardless which side you take the treasure to. This was before the latest patch, so even the indoor fighting (which is typically higher FPS then anything outdoor), felt a bit laggy, even at 50% res scale.

UC - War Relics

Spoiler

This is the penultimate combat mission of the UC questline where you're tasked to find an old bot named Kaiser to help you deal with Terramorphs, a hostile alien species which UC had given special abilities during the colony wars. I love Kaiser, he gets in your way a bit at times during combat, but I find his tendency to go "hmmm" every now and then to be cute. It was also funny how his head was stuck in a rotating animation when it came to discussing how the Terramorph would be dealt with, as if he was trying to hypnotize me into thinking it had to be killed. Andreja was actually more of a problem than Kaiser was in this mission, because she wouldn't stay where I told her to, which caused me to have to go get her as I could not make the battery he needed while she was in combat.

UC - Hostile Intelligence

Spoiler

The final combat mission in the UC questline, where you're tasked to go to Londinion to collect Aceles samples. Aceles are a near extinct species larger than Terramorphs, which are harmless to humans unless provoked, and were "hound dogs" of the Terramorphs that turned on them and ate them. These samples are to be used to make an aerosolized microbe capable of wiping out the Terramorphs. I liken the Aceles to sort of dino version of an Afghan Hound. This is one of the spookier missions I've played so far, especially if you play it at level 40, vs less than 15. At that level the Terramorphs can regen their armor like 3 times. I acquired some heavy hitting weapons on this quest just before encountering them, one of which has very high DPS, but things can get out of hand easily. This is because it's dark, they can use an invisibility cloak, and they have an attack that can blur your vision a bit and make you hear discouraging voices. The very last Terramorph is fought in brighter lighting, but it is larger and tougher, and can influence other lesser aliens that spawn in to fight for it.

 

[Frag Maniac]

-----VERY SLIGHT SPOILER HERE-----

OK, one last video from this playthrough on Normal mode. I got tired of waiting for Vlad to say he had more temple locations to explore, so I decided to do the Revelation quest.

-----MAJOR SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT!!!-----

Spoiler

There are several things I realized in doing this quest that are a huge let down for me, but that is because I caught a glimpse of the One Giant Leap quest that follows it. I did this partly to decide whether to include a One Giant Leap video here as well, but also to confirm whether my assumptions about what happens in it are correct. I was correct in that it is merely a fairly short conversation/decision based quest where you travel to Unity, the center of the universe, and decide whether to enter it and continue via New Game +, or backtrack toward empty space and resume your current playthrough. For me, there's some big positives, but also big negatives in how New Game + works. What I like is you become a Starborn, and are given a pretty decent space suit and ship. You also keep your player level and ALL your skills and powers. However you lose any ships, outposts, weapons, ammo, and gear you had.

This means all the time you spent scavenging, trading up, and modding weapons, along with all the gear and ammo you collected and stored, suddenly vanishes. All the time you spent mining resources manually, or via elaborate automated mining outposts, along with any ships you painstakingly built, are now just gone. This begs the question why anyone would want to put too much time into mining resources, researching, modding of weapons, or building outposts and ships. It seems to me, if you are looking for max replay value, you instead breeze through the main questlines, focus mainly on artifact collecting, go to Unity as soon as you can, then repeat that process until you get the final level of Starborn armor and ship, which is the 10th New Game +. THEN you go through the Unity portal, make the choice at the lodge to reset all quests (which is merely telling them you're Starborn now), and then and only then, do a playthrough in earnest, playing all the quests, and building and modding to your heart's content.

Anything other than waiting for the final Starborn armor/ship you're looking to achieve to play a fully fleshed out campaign is just going to feel like more very repetitively wasted time. It also makes players like me, whom opt to just sell lower stat weapons as they go, collect vs build/mod ships, and forego outpost building, made the right decision to avoid all that, at least in the first playthrough anyway. In fact, as I implied above, if you're looking for a fleshed out campaign experience on the hardest difficulty with the best gear you can get, it seems better to skip those options for at least NINE playthroughs! Otherwise, one could easily start feeling like a grind masochist.

Revelation

Spoiler

There are some key things about this quest that were strange to me. The first is this location is marked on the star map as level 75. Thus I assumed I would have to be somewhere close to that in player level, otherwise I feared it would be too hard, especially any dog fighting that might occur. After all, I was only at player level 43 when starting it. You also can't leap frog from system to system to get to it like you can pretty much any other place you don't have a far enough reaching grav drive to get to in one jump. You can get to a system very close to it, but when you try to make the final short jump to it, you'll get an error onscreen saying you need a bigger grav drive.

So the game is literally forcing you to either use it's finicky as hell with KB/M ship builder to seriously upgrade your grav drive, or take a prebuilt ship that may not be as capable in battle. This caused me to take the ship I was rewarded in a questline I did for Constellation working as a consultant for Stroud-Ecklund, a starship manufacturer. I was trying my best to steer that quest in a way that my consultation lead them to a battle capable ship, but it started looking like compromises had to be made, as each person on the design team had very contrasting ideas. This lead to a ship that could supposedly handle any situation. In fact, I now realize had I insisted on the bounty hunter type ship the team leader was suggesting, it might not have had a sufficient grav drive. The result was a HUMONGOUS 30 light year grav drive, on a ship that was overly large, hard to get through due to multiple ladders and stacked cargo bays, and horrible maneuverability. It also had only two slow firing weapons, with no missile launcher.

Naturally I thought this ship would be no match for a dog fight against starborn, especially if they were level 75! As it turned out, there were only 3 starborn ships, and only one had to be destroyed. In fact it seemed like the two main starborn characters you are said to be fighting fled to the planet after doing a certain amount of damage to their ships. They were also nowhere NEAR level 75. All the starborn I fought in air and on ground were no more than my player level, in fact most were only level 30. This kind of took the mystique out of this quest for me. I can only hope it gives me more challenge as I play on harder modes, but to do that, I'll have to hope to acquire a more battle capable long travel ship, or deal with the ship builder, all because the travel restrictions to this ONE place make no sense whatsoever.

There's also something about this quest that makes it feel strange, as if it wasn't well thought out, or it was rushed due to a possible bug with Vlad not offering more temple locations to search for artifacts. It's description says you are to collect the FINAL artifact, yet it actually gives you SEVERAL artifacts. This combined with some chat I've read about some people getting more temple locations from Vlad, and some not, makes me think they rushed development of this KEY part of the game. I feel like it's either a bug, or they came up with a change of plan mid development deciding to make more temple locations available with each New Game +. That would've been fine had they also reworded the Revelation quest description to say you are collecting the final artifactS plural, not just artifact!

If you read the spoilers, you probably guessed that I won't be posting the final quest One Giant Leap. However I will likely come back and post some more as I progress through New Game +.

 

[neogunhero]

I was having a very hard time with the ship builder at first but have recently gotten a lot more comfortable using it. My main issue is that I’m just not good at designing ships. If you look at my media on my profile you can see a few screenshots of my ships I’ve built and they aren’t very aesthetically pleasing but are very useful for my purposes. I have not gotten into outpost building at all, I feel I may out that off until new game+, but I am still taking my sweet time going through the game. I use my ship as my main base as it has nearly everything I need besides resource mining equipment. I just run and buy the resources if I am crafting and I run out, but other than that I have amassed a huge amount of resources just by scavenging and exploring. I read a bit of your spoiler for the Crimson Fleet missions and now I’m excited to do them.

 

[Frag Maniac]

I was having a very hard time with the ship builder at first but have recently gotten a lot more comfortable using it. My main issue is that I’m just not good at designing ships. If you look at my media on my profile you can see a few screenshots of my ships I’ve built and they aren’t very aesthetically pleasing but are very useful for my purposes. I have not gotten into outpost building at all, I feel I may out that off until new game+, but I am still taking my sweet time going through the game. I use my ship as my main base as it has nearly everything I need besides resource mining equipment. I just run and buy the resources if I am crafting and I run out, but other than that I have amassed a huge amount of resources just by scavenging and exploring. I read a bit of your spoiler for the Crimson Fleet missions and now I’m excited to do them.

Honestly, if you're spending a lot of time resource mining and ship building, or even weapon modding, you may want to read the spoilers I just added if you plan on any NG+ playthroughs.

 

[neogunhero]

Honestly, if you're spending a lot of time resource mining and ship building, or even weapon modding, you may want to read the spoilers I just added if you plan on any NG+ playthroughs.

*Slight spoilers about NG+ mechanics if you haven’t read @Frag Maniac ’s spoilers above already*

Okay I just read the part I think you’re referring to and… I’m totally okay with that. I didn’t know that’s what happens exactly, but had a feeling since it is NG+ you will have some things taken. I’ve been reading and thinking about Starfields NG+ system a little bit and I’be come to the conclusion that I really want to max out my enjoyment from one single playthrough. I want to do all quests, crafting and outpost management without going into NG+. I would hate to have to rebuild all those relationships you make with different NPCs, it would suck to do some incredible quest then get into NG+ and no one remember it, and now I know what else to expect if I cross over. I will keep playing this one single save file until I’m sick of the game, or until I change my mind and go into NG+. While the concept seems cool and I understand why those things happen, I have always been a fan of how reactive these games can be, so I would rather not have to reset all of them. Plus, since my playstyle is very slow and methodic, I can easily find more stuff to do in another 100+ hours of this game. To compensate this, I do use an XP booster mod to help me level a bit faster. Currently just hit 48 hours on my save file and I’m only level 29, so the XP booster is seriously needed if I want to stay with this playthrough. I’m happy with my starting perks and background, so I think I’m set to play the entire game without doing NG+.

 

[Frag Maniac]

*Slight spoilers about NG+ mechanics if you haven’t read @Frag Maniac ’s spoilers above already*

Okay I just read the part I think you’re referring to and… I’m totally okay with that. I didn’t know that’s what happens exactly, but had a feeling since it is NG+ you will have some things taken. I’ve been reading and thinking about Starfields NG+ system a little bit and I’be come to the conclusion that I really want to max out my enjoyment from one single playthrough. I want to do all quests, crafting and outpost management without going into NG+. I would hate to have to rebuild all those relationships you make with different NPCs, it would suck to do some incredible quest then get into NG+ and no one remember it, and now I know what else to expect if I cross over. I will keep playing this one single save file until I’m sick of the game, or until I change my mind and go into NG+. While the concept seems cool and I understand why those things happen, I have always been a fan of how reactive these games can be, so I would rather not have to reset all of them. Plus, since my playstyle is very slow and methodic, I can easily find more stuff to do in another 100+ hours of this game. To compensate this, I do use an XP booster mod to help me level a bit faster. Currently just hit 48 hours on my save file and I’m only level 29, so the XP booster is seriously needed if I want to stay with this playthrough. I’m happy with my starting perks and background, so I think I’m set to play the entire game without doing NG+.

Yeah I think I was at about 115 hrs just after finishing the Revelation quest, which is the last real mission, only a very short conversation mission follows it. That said, while 115 hrs just to get to level 45 isn't great XP speed, I didn't do any outpost or ship building, and no weapon modding. I'm told setting up a simple automated resource outpost to collect just iron and aluminum yields tons of XP. So I'm not convinced one needs an XP booster mod. Though I could see it if your cargo platforms stop functioning, which is a bug I don't know has been fixed or not.

BTW, the Powers From Beyond quest, the one where Vlad tells you locations of temples to find powers at, finally reappeared shortly after completing Revelation. I don't know what triggered it, but it was not showing until I switched ships then traveled to some temples, which requires removing the armillary from the ship first, which is a sort of gyroscope looking thing made from artifacts. I was hoping that quest would last until I collected all 24 powers, but unfortunately it is now in the completed quests list after collecting 23. So the last one and the subsequent ones of those I've already collected (to upgrade them), have to be collected in NG+.

I was having a very hard time with the ship builder at first but have recently gotten a lot more comfortable using it.

I'm actually progressing very slowly toward being able to do more ship building. The main thing holding me back was not having enough points in the Starship Design skill. I'm at level 3 out of 4 now, but the problem is, I never kept track of what modules I bought to get there, I just know they were the cheapest ones New Atlantis had. So since it stipulates adding 30 more unique modules required to unlock level 4, I have to either save and painstakingly apply them one at a time, save the build, then check to see if it increased my leveling progress, or buy only the next more expensive tier of parts, or go to another shipyard that sells a brand of parts they don't carry.

The funny thing is, I was only doing it because I needed a farther reaching grav drive to get to Unity, but in the end I just used my Kepler 2 ship I was rewarded on the consulting quest I did for Stroud-Eckland, which has a 30LY grav drive.

I'm also getting better at ship building simply because now I'm seeing an Attach option, where as before I was clicking on the Add tab, then selecting a part in the tree that pops up, then trying to line it up with the available attachment point shown with my mouse, which was a LOT harder. I found it's TON easier just to go into the ship builder, click on a part that will accept cheap structural parts, then go to the structural category, pick a cheap part, and attach it in a way that allows other parts to be attached as well. It's pretty easy because if there's more than one attachment point, the one you click will be where its installed.

If you don't see an Attach option, you're clicking on a part you don't yet have the skill required to add to, and if a part you add or stock part of the ship takes you immediately to the weapons category where there's only expensive parts, either you clicked on the wrong part type of the ship, or attached a structural part that is only for mounting weapons on.

I still feel like I have a wee, feeble brain at ship building, but I can see now if I spend enough time on it I can eventually manage to build a whole ship. I just don't know if it's really necessary yet. Only when I try the hardest mode on NG+ 10 will I probably find out.

 

[Frag Maniac]

-----MODERATE SPOILERS!!!-----

I'm at player level 49 now, and have found all the artifacts and temples Vlad directs you to. So the One Small Step and Powers From Beyond quests show as completed now. One Small Step in NG+ replaces the Among The Stars quest in the main game, meaning Vlad now gives you ALL the artifact locations he has without having to report back to him to get another one. For some reason they didn't do the same with the Powers quest. However I have all the Powers now, and at least half of them are at level 2 now.

So my predicament now is I have about 300,000 credits, and am faced with either doing Revelation to get the remaining artifacts with my new Starborn ship, or the Razorleaf ship I got again from the Secret Outpost quest. The problem is I switched to Hard mode ever since beginning NG+. I've managed the terrestrial fights OK, but the space fight against the 3 Starborn ships in Revelation I've failed several times to destroy just one ship to get the cutscene needed to land on the planet. I once made it to a cutscene where I was target locked onto one of the ships, but the other two destroyed me every time. The Starborn ship has a fairly good shield, and it's fast and even cloaks when you boost, but it only has two weapons and the fast firing one does very little damage to Starborn ships, and the other has a VERY slow fire rate. It also can't be upgraded at all.

I need about 65,000 more credits to buy a Narwhal, which is a pretty good Taiyo Astroneering ship, but I'm thinking of doing the Crimson Fleet questline again to get the 250,000 credit reward and buy the best ship I can. Meanwhile I plan to slog through installing 30 more unique modules in the shipbuilder to unlock Starship Design level 4, in case only a custom built ship will do when I finally get to NG+ 10 on Very Hard mode. Currently I'm in the middle of the Freestar Rangers questline to see if that and scavenging/selling along the way can net me 65,000 credits. I feel like just dropping back down to Normal difficulty would be selling out at this point, and maybe even get me too used to easy battles (even the terrestrial fights are MUCH harder now), but it IS an option if I grow tired of the repetition.

I'm not sure this game represents the multiverse theory well though (not that I've ever believed in it), because in NG+ you supposedly enter a new version of the universe you started the game in, but the only thing that really changes is none of the characters remember who you are. Other than that they are pretty much exactly the same. From what I've seen via some NG+ review vids I saw, every once in a while when you get back to the lodge, a hostile version of Sarah or Andreja may be there with gun in hand with others armed as well, intending to take you out if you don't comply with their demands. That seems more like an anomaly than an entirely different version of the universe though.

 

[Frag Maniac]

-----SPOILER WARNING!!!-----

OMG!!! I'm at player level 50 now. I got to about 378,000 credits and tried the Revelation mission with both the Shieldbreaker and Narwhal ships, neither of which got me through the tough dog fight against the Hunter, Emissary, and their Guardian on Hard mode. However I didn't have any Ship Parts to repair hull damage with, AND I was using rear view vs cockpit view, which isn't as responsive, especially in the bigger ships.

After MUCH frustration and a very late session last night that went to 4 AM, I FINALLY got the hang of the ship builder to the point where I could upgrade the shield and weapons on the Razorleaf. It's the bounty hunter ship you can get free fairly early in the game, so this way is fairly affordable, 120,000 - 130,000 credits. That's vs 201,000-365,000 for the Shieldbreaker or Narwhal ships, and those prices are with the Commerce skill maxed.

However I also had to upgrade the grav drive and Helium 3 capacity just to get to the spot you fight the Starborn at on that penultimate battle. This all meant having to as well upgrade the reactor, as all those parts required more power. The one caveat of using the Razorleaf for tough battles is it's a smaller ship that isn't very tall, so the reactor required to use the more powerful Class C shield would not fit well on it.

Despite this upgraded Razorleaf being quite a bit more capable, and acquiring 4 Ship Parts while leap frogging to the battle, AND using the more responsive cockpit view this time, I still had to lower the difficulty back down to Normal for the dog fight. One plus of a small ship though is it's not hard to get the Mobility stat to 100, and the Speed stat to 150, which is pretty good. I DID however raise it back up to Hard when I got on the planet, and even chose the attack option at the temple, vs negotiating a peaceful ending.

The choice to attack results in a MUCH tougher and longer battle than I'd anticipated, especially if you chose earlier to not side with the Hunter or Emissary. It was so bad that with all the effects I at times had severe lag, and a crash as well at one point. I managed to capture most of it, but there are some parts missing toward the end. I may just side with the Hunter or Emissary next NG+ to even the odds.

 

[Frag Maniac]

-----SOME MODERATE SPOILERS HERE-----

Here's another video, this time from the tail end of my first NG+ playthrough. This time on Normal mode in space, and Hard mode on the planet. I also use a much faster, more effective method of handling the part just before reaching the buried temple, using Void Form (cloak).

The main difference however is this time I chose the Attack vs Persuade option. I chose attack for two reasons, I wanted to see what the resulting battle was like, and I wanted to get the legendary rated weapons the Hunter and Emissary use. The latter of which I mistakenly sold.

The battle is quite long and difficult, and takes a LOT of ammo to get through, as mentioned above. In the chaos I ended up forgetting to save the instant replay at one spot where I stopped and quicksaved (and normally wait for the capture to write), but it was just a short, easy segment with no Starborn.

Currently I'm level 58, so I will soon at level 60 be able to buy the best reactor and engines if I want. However I've already upgraded my Star Eagle I got from the Freestar Collective questline to be quite effective. Next NG+ I will fund the upgrades via the Crimson Fleet quest reward though, which should be quicker.

My Star Eagle's W0/W1 weapon groups do well over 550 DPS each, and about 250 DPS on W2 auto turrets. You can't fire the auto turret weapons from 3000m like you can the others, in fact, you can't manually fire them at all. They do come in very handy for fending off ships that try to do flybys at angles you can't manually aim at though, and add a finisher to an attack.

I also have the best shield available, which is rated 1600, but ends up being 2560 with the skills I have. I have a reactor with 38 power too, (40 is max), so I can power up shields to max 100, engine at near max, groups W0 and W1 to 50, and group W2 to 25.

I also have the Engine skill maxed, which adds 20% to speed, makes boost last longer and charge quicker, and enemies are unable to acquire you while boosting. Max shields also occasionally resist ALL damage.

In my little testing so far, this ship with these stats was able to very quickly get to the Legacy treasure ship, with no damage at all from the heavy EM fields, and make quick work of the Crimson Fleet ships in the first phase of the End of Legacy quest.

In fact I'm now thinking this ship will easily level the difficulty between space and planet battles, and maybe pull ahead on Very Hard mode. I plan to post a short video of the space battle part of that mission on both Hard and Very Hard.

I DO have a bit of an ace in the hole for planet battles I've yet to use though. I've not yet even tried using the many health aids I've collected that buff your damage resistance, etc. In retrospect, I think I'll side with Hunter on all but the last NG+, as I've read the Va'Ruun rifle Emissary uses is a bit better, and Hunter is also harder to kill. On the final one I'll side with Emissary to get the good guy ending, IF I can manage it that way on Very Hard.

 

[Frag Maniac]

----SOME MODERATE SPOILERS HERE-----

Here's that Legacy's End space battle clip I promised. As mentioned I'm at level 58. The enemy ship levels are the same on both Hard and Very Hard, and the highest rated one I saw was level 54. I was surprised at how easy it was to just stay in pursuit, without boosting away to evade or recover. I never had to repair while in combat, didn't repair at all on Hard, and only used 2 Ship Parts to repair on Very Hard after one of the battles was over. I counted 28 Ship Parts still on the ship after the Very Hard battle.

These battles were done with the Particle Weapon skill only at level 3. You can see onscreen at the 2:23 mark by the blue bar graph that pops up on the left that I had leveled it enough to unlock level 4, which adds an increased chance of critical damage. It's deceiving whether you're close enough to do Particle damage, as the red square missile target lock indicator, shows at 4000m even if you don't have any. This caused me to waste a lot of Particle shots until I got into their 3000m range.

Had I bought level 4 Par Weap, and boosted to within 3000m before firing, I may not have needed to repair at all on Very Hard. Next I will try the takeover of The Key space station on Very Hard, just to see how prepared I am for on foot battles. I'm also going to attempt it with no stat boosting aids. However I'm open to using Powers, as they regen. I've yet to even try the Moon Form or Reactive Shield powers that buff armor and create a shield than can reflect projectiles.

 

[Frag Maniac]

-----SOME MODERATE SPOILERS HERE-----

And here's that clip I mentioned I was working on, the takeover of the Key on Very Hard. It wasn't much of a problem to use just powers and no pharmaceuticals to buff stats. I mainly used Void Form and Sunless Space to cloak myself or freeze the enemy. I'm using Barret as a companion this time after realizing the one power I was missing part II of was gotten via a side quest you do with him. That power is called Parallel Self, because you can summons another version of yourself from a parallel universe to fight with you. Barret ends up getting this power too though, so you get TWO fighting companions in one when fights break out! Potentially you can have 4 instead of 3 if you both use the power.

I actually went back to the lodge at New Atlantis before proceeding to work on doing some weapon upgrade research. I did some mods to the Va'Ruun Inflictor rifle, adding a Long Barrel, Focal Lens, and Recon Scope to boost range and accuracy. This is a particle beam rifle that also does ballistic damage simultaneously.

I also swapped my Magshear for a Revenant which is used in the 2nd half of the battle. It has about 50% more damage, with twice as large a magazine. Currently I'm doing some UC mission board stuff. The first one was a dogfight to kill a pirate escorted by two gunships. I was still on Very Hard, and it seemed too hard at first. Then I realized you really need to focus on carefully balancing your ship system levels. Now I run max power on shields, just enough on Engine to get roughly 100 top speed, which allowed me to put a little more into W0 and W1. What's annoying though is the ship will not always retain these settings, so you have to sometimes adjust on the fly while being shot at.

The UC Mission board mission I'm on now requires 100% surveying a planet called Eridani II. It has quite a lot of contraband in certain locations, including an Abandoned Fuel Depot you can land at. After doing a lot of surveying, I ended up landing there with a Crimson Ghost ship I found at a remote landing site, which could be easily stolen as there were only two Crimson guards outside wandering about. The interesting thing was, I landed there with the Ghost because wouldn't you know it, that is one pirate ship that DOES NOT have a shielded cargo bay! So I went to stash the contraband in a container in a small room just off the landing pad at the Fuel Depot, but when I looked in it, the contraband had respawned! So now I suddenly had about 400,000 worth of contraband that sold for nearly 70,000 at the Trade Authority, but suddenly I realized I'd probably been ripped off several times doing such a thing there before.

What I did not know, or see rather because I did it too fast before to spot it, is since the TA vendors only keep 11,000 of credits on hand at any given time, there is a warning that you may not get the full amount of anything you sell after that 11,000 is gone. The warning is not at all in your face like when you're selling legit items, there's just a subtle yellow highlighted line of text, vs a very different looking text window that pops up. So this time I watched carefully for that warning, and backed off the number of each item I sold until it disappeared. It took a while, due to having to sit there for 24 hrs in game time a few times, but it was worth it.

Next I may go through the Ryujin Industries questline again, because I'm at level 60, which means at the end of that questline, as long as I make a diplomatic choice, it should unlock the best ship engines in the game.

 

[Frag Maniac]

-----SOME SLIGHT SPOILERS HERE-----

I am now at player level 66, and a good ways into my 2nd NG+ on Very Hard, and this time I chose to do the main quest again. My main reason for it was to do the All That Money Can Buy quest again, as it unlocks the best engine in the game. Quite frankly though, I'm not sure that engine will even be necessary, as it was only a slight bit of mobility that was lacking on my last Star Eagle build, not speed. This time I'm going to try adding some thrusters to the build to see if that helps.

I have just 3 videos here, one is a non combat stealth quest, the other two involve some dog fights and ground combat. The dog fights are done with a modestly upgraded version of the Razorleaf, the ship you can get free early in the game by following info on a slate you find. I first did the Grunt Work quest for UC Vanguard, which is the first of the Terramorphs quests, as it unlocks the Vanguard Obliterator Autoprojector. I replaced the two laser guns with 5 VOAs, after swapping the Stroud cowling for a Nova, which had 3 weapon mounts on it. I kept the same single missile launcher up front, and two rear particle guns. With an upgrade on those, I may try the Crimson Fleet quest with this ship

Power wise I used the best class A reactor the New Atlantis Technician had, rated at 29 power, and used his 2nd best class A shield, rated at 760. He had a class A 810 rated shield, but it was big and ugly, and blocked one of my guns. The entire upgrade cost just a bit over 80,000 credits, and I was able to keep the mobility and speed at the max 100/150. The Hull after the upgrades is a healthy 842, stock it was only 469. Now it's not an indestructible ship by any means, but with my Shield and Engine skills maxed, and Andreja and Barrett onboard, it is well protected for these parts of the game, plenty fast enough, and the damage output is ample for everything I've faced so far.

Hand carry weapon wise, I took more time to upgrade my Weapon Engineering skill, which is now maxed. This allowed me to complete the Research on Level 3 Internal Weapon Mods. As a result my Magshear is now rated at 48 damage, which is about 45% more powerful than it was. The only slight tradeoff is it's a bit clumsier when using ADS, so it can be hard to track enemies moving fast laterally quickly enough.

-----SOME MAJOR SPOILERS HERE-----

Sabotage

Spoiler

This the last quest in the Ryujin Industries questline, where you have to sneak into Infinity HQ to take the Neuroamp Prototype as evidence, a mind control implant design that Infinity made based on info stolen from Ryujin. This quest was WAY harder even on Very Easy mode with no Stealth skills. Even if you stay crouched and use the Void Form cloak power as much as possible, it is almost impossible to avoid alerting guards. With Stealth skills now maxed, and Void Form II, it was very easy by comparison, and I didn't have to use the Neuroamp as much to manipulate guards.

Groundpounder

Spoiler

This is just a side mission, but one of the better ones in the game. It involves a distress call from a research outpost that Spacers are attacking. What's unique about it is there are both UC and FC troops there whom are working together to fight them. You are asked for help both on ground and in space. Everything went reasonably well, except for a few badly tossed grenades at the end. In retrospect I probably should have used the Gravity Well power as soon as the ship doors opened, then tossed the grenades. I found the dialog at the end between the two faction leaders to be a bit hilarious. They started out complementing one another on their toughness, then proceeded to try and one up each other after the "I hope I don't have to face you on the battlefield" line came out. I was wishing there was a "Just STOP TALKING you two" dialog option.

First to Fight, First to Die

Spoiler

This IMO is one of the best quests in the game, and since it's part of the questline that gets you the best free ship in the game, the Star Eagle, it is well worth doing. It involves tracking down the leader of The First, which is a mercenary group formerly part of the Freestar Militia which was disbanded after the colony war. You take them on in space and in a shut down mech factory they're holed up at on Arcturus II. The Mech Factory is a very well constructed place to do battle in. The space battle involves a few waves of fairly capable ships and pilots, 2 in each wave, 6 total. I managed it first try with only 1 ship repair, but deleted that clip when I decided to go to a previous save and work on leveling up my hand weapons. It seemed harder when I came back, and got my ship blown up a few times. Then I got my tactics nailed and managed it with no repairs, and no target view. It came down mostly to just getting right on them as soon as they spawn in. There's a funny bit at the end of the clip while exiting the factory where I happen on a First soldier whom was still alive.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Just a heads up on my progress. I am currently at the start of my 7th playthrough, with all powers at level VI.

This is the ship I've settled on for my new method of getting through non Starborn alliance NG+ runs, which is the only way you can keep leveling up all powers. It's not only a very capable ship, but cheap to build. So much so that you need only do the first part of the UC Vanguard questline, Grunt Work (which unlocks the power efficient Vanguard Obliterator Autoprojector). As long as you diligently scavenge during the artifact collecting, and the Mantis quest to get the Razorleaf, you will not have to do high paying quests, such as the lengthy Crimson Fleet one.

This ship uses only two weapon groups, six of the aforementioned Class A VOA, and 4 of the Class B PBO-175 Auto Helion Beam. A major strategy change as well is I no longer take Andreja and Barrett for their level 3 particle weapon skills, but instead take Omari Hassan and Vasco for their level 3 and 2 Shield Skills. This combined with using the 1125 rated Class B Warden SG-400 Shield Generator, which uses 2 less power than the 1450 rated shield, means I can run my guns at full power and still have enough for full (100) Shield power, and 100 Engine power.

I use the Class B 104DS Mag Inertial Reactor, which is rated at 39 power output, but with my Piloting skill maxed, it puts out 40. You CAN however reach over 50 power output if you max your Aneutronic Fusion skill, but I find it's not necessary. Even the non allied Starborn fight is pretty easy with 40 power, even on Very Hard mode. The cost of building this ship is 216,666 credits, and why I nicknamed it Razorbeast. With Particle Weapon Systems skill maxed these guns output a combined 1222 DPS! Swapping Stroud cowling for Nova means no weapon plates needed.

 

[Brian Boru]

my 7th playthrough

Ya what

You've completed it 6 times already?

 

[Frag Maniac]

Ya what

You've completed it 6 times already?

I see I need to clarify. In Starfield, when you do NG+, you have the option at the start of hiding the fact that you are Starborn, and replaying the main (Constellation) questline, or claiming yourself as Starborn and skipping it. The first option also means it's much slower going just getting all the artifacts as well, as some are tied to quests.

With the 2nd option, you not only don't have to do any quests, the very first time you speak to Vladimir, he gives you ALL the artifact locations right up front, save for those you get on the penultimate mission where you fight the Starborn for them, though it can end with persuasion afterward.

Either way, both options are much quicker than a first playthrough because you keep all your skills and any unspent skill points, but the 2nd option where you just go for the powers and artifacts is MUCH quicker. The powers however require talking to Vlad again to get the location of most of them.

I should also note however that as I said above in my latest update to my progress, if you plan on leveling up every power, you need to avoid siding with either the Hunter or Emissary, as that's the only way to keep leveling them. Therefore if you want to upgrade powers I recommend at the very least doing the Grunt Work quest to unlock the VOA ship gun and the Mantis quest to get the Razorleaf, because the fight against the Hunter, Emissary, and their Guardian is much harder than just siding with one of the first two and it being evenly matched.

I only did one of my NG+ runs with the first option, mainly because despite unlocking the most powerful engine in the game on first playthrough via finishing the All That Money Can Buy quest with a diplomatic ending, it did not stay unlocked in NG+. I had forgotten how many quests you need to do just to get all the artifacts though, and I am realizing that engine isn't needed.