Starfield Playthrough Discussion

[Zed Clampet]

I'm torn between hurrying through New Atlantis or doing all the sidequests, I need to get to the ship/base building part of the game. That's really my thing. The main problem, as I see it, is that I need to do these quests to get money. I picked up all that crap during the first mission, and it sold for squat. When you pick up stuff, a little box pops up and tells you how much it weighs and its value. But when you go to sell something, you get a tiny fraction of the stated value. As far as money goes, I might as well not have picked up anything that didn't actually have a use.

 

[Pifanjr]

As far as money goes, I might as well not have picked up anything that didn't actually have a use.

That's how Bethesda games typically work. You have to learn what kind of stuff is actually worth picking up, because most of what you find is useless and worthless. It's nice for immersion that you can pick up pretty much any item you can find, but since almost every other game only lets you pick up useful objects it can be hard to ignore the impulse to grab everything you can.

 

[Zed Clampet]

That's how Bethesda games typically work. You have to learn what kind of stuff is actually worth picking up, because most of what you find is useless and worthless. It's nice for immersion that you can pick up pretty much any item you can find, but since almost every other game only lets you pick up useful objects it can be hard to ignore the impulse to grab everything you can.

I'm more or less familiar with that from Fallout games, but what tricked me here was that I would find something called a "gene extractor"--for example--and it would tell me it was worth $600, and then I go to sell it and get $20.

Also, in the most recent Fallout, Fallout 76, everything you picked up could be broken down into its basic components (a glass ashtray would yield the resource "glass", for example, or a manila folder would give you "paper"), but that doesn't seem to be a thing in Starfield. Junk is just junk.

 

[Brian Boru]

it would tell me it was worth $600, and then I go to sell it and get $20

Is it possibly Supply & Demand at work, ie that merchant already had buckets of whatever you were selling? Try a diff merchant just for kicks.

 

[Pifanjr]

I'm more or less familiar with that from Fallout games, but what tricked me here was that I would find something called a "gene extractor"--for example--and it would tell me it was worth $600, and then I go to sell it and get $20.

Also, in the most recent Fallout, Fallout 76, everything you picked up could be broken down into its basic components (a glass ashtray would yield the resource "glass", for example, or a manila folder would give you "paper"), but that doesn't seem to be a thing in Starfield. Junk is just junk.

The sell price of an item is 1/8th of the base price, which is what you see in your inventory. You can boost that by 25%, or 1/32nd of the base price, by getting 4 ranks of commerce.

And yes, Fallout 76 and 4 let you break stuff down into components, but from my limited experience you'd end up with a ton of certain common components, making the items that give those components just as worthless.

 

[Zed Clampet]

The sell price of an item is 1/8th of the base price, which is what you see in your inventory. You can boost that by 25%, or 1/32nd of the base price, by getting 4 ranks of commerce.

And yes, Fallout 76 and 4 let you break stuff down into components, but from my limited experience you'd end up with a ton of certain common components, making the items that give those components just as worthless.

I was exaggerating substantially when I said I picked everything up. I'm not as big a moron as you take me for. There was a vast amount of stuff left behind. The farther I went, the higher my value threshold became.

And, yes, in Fallout 76 after awhile I was mostly after ammo components.

Didn't know about the 1/8 of base price, but I'm not planning on picking things up anymore unless they can be used, like the lockpicks, ammo, weapons, clothes, meds. I'll leave all the rest of it.

 

[Kborom]

This is going as I expected. Get involved in one series of missions then get distracted by a butterfly, squirrel, lunch or another quest and guess what, I'm at the opposite end of the galaxy killing another pirate. MQ what MQ?

60 hours in and finally (bothered to) work out the crafting, part is linked to the skill challenges which I think is a nice touch, and now need a ton of Tungsten. Off I go into the great beyond.

This comes with all the usual Bethesda gripes but also one of it's biggest benefits, the massive open world living and breathing around you.

Think I'm in love with Sarah as well, that is mutual.

 

[neogunhero]

At first I struggled with getting credits but now I have a good system in place. In my experience I find really only Weapons and Spacesuits to be worth selling, Boost Packs are often not worth it very much. I have 2 levels in Commerce and I’ve picked up a magazine that adds 2% to selling price and I can buy stuff at 2% cheaper. If you want to grind for credits, which is still a fun way to get some action in and explore some outposts on planets, you have to pick up contracts at Mission Boards to kill enemies. Make sure they are on a planet, not in orbit, as I find space combat a little hard (need to upgrade weapons perhaps). Go to the outpost, clear out all enemies, then loot every body for weapons and gear that are worth at least 3000 credits to begin with. As I gain more and more money I raise my minimum credit limit to 5 or 6 thousand. You obviously sell for way less than what it says even with the skills and boosts but it all adds up eventually. Not to mention these outposts usually have lots of credits lying around or in containers, so use your scanner to help you loot cluttered areas a lot easier. Plus you typically get 3000 credits from completing these bounties so it all adds up. I travel to Neon Core to sell all my gear and if I run out of merchants I will go to Akila City since it’s all a lot more condensed than New Atlantis.

Another tip I saw online which I haven’t done yet is to drop all the gear you want to sell inside of your ship, just on the floor. It all stays there even when traveling, but you will have to constantly travel back to your ship to grab items and travel to different systems so merchants actually have money. This helps if you use your ship as a base like I do and keep all resources in your ship cargo. My ship has nearly maxed out its 2000 cargo capacity with 90% of that being crafting resources I collected over my travels. I REALLY need to build an outpost but I have not paid too much attention to finding a decent planet to build upon.

I have nearly maxed out my weapon crafting skills and I have a new favorite weapon: my modified Magshot. I love this gun so much I started to put points into Pistols so it will be more powerful. It feels so good to use, it feels so weighty and sounds so “THUNK”-y when I pull the trigger.

The gymnastics skill is pretty lame. Contender for worst ever combat slide in a video game. You slide like 1 inch… and it doesn’t matter if you’re on an incline or anything, you will only ever slide that 1 inch. Pretty disappointed I wasted a skill point on it.

Right now I’m trying to join the Crimson Fleet but bounty hunting keeps calling my name.

 

[neogunhero]

Need to marry someone so I can start getting the 15% XP boosts. Who should I choose to romance? I’ve been traveling with Sam and have been throwing out a couple occasional flirts and his responses are usually funny and lighthearted. Not sure if he likes me like that or not. Haven’t tried Barrett yet but I think I’d enjoy his lighthearted comedic relief more than Sam’s sappy emotional moments.

 

[Brian Boru]

Who should I choose to romance?

In related news, there has been a marked increase in eligible NPCs applying for long contracts in very distant systems.

 

[neogunhero]

Decided to build a new ship. I modified the Wanderwell, the ship your dad gives you from winning a poker game if you choose the Kids Stuff perk. It has some pretty decent stats, and currently I can still only pilot Class A ships, so I went about modifying it. And, uh, 80,000 credits later, I really solidified the phrase “utility over aesthetic” in my design choices.

I edited the photo on my phone a bit to brighten it. All one floor, no ladders (besides loading bay), and nearly 4000 units of cargo spaces. That’s over double the amount of cargo my Frontier Plus had. I was pushing my max cargo limit, so that was part of the inspiration for this ship. I’ve come to really dislike multi-level ships when I really just want to use it for cargo, crafting and sleep, so keeping it all along one floor makes me able to run between rooms a lot faster.

In Akila City, their ship services tech had HopeTech ship parts which I haven’t come across yet until now. I modified my ship with primarily these parts and so far I think it has the nicest aesthetic and room flow than other manufacturer’s parts I’ve used. It looks a bit more lived in, a bit more warm and inviting, like a place you’d like to kick back and relax in. I’m really happy with how it turned out, even though it took a big chunk of credits out of my wallet and a whole hour to build.



I am a little scumbag and that makes Sam mad at me sometimes. I never do anything without a reward, even if the person has nothing to give me, I won’t help without asking for something at least once. I think it’s funny to see how people react to me not wanting to help just because of the goodness in my heart, but because I’m driven by money and materialistic rewards. Ever since traveling with Sam, he has shown a distaste of how greedy I can be, but then I will do something that he loves, such as use my Freestar Ranger privileges to intimidate and persuade people to do things for me. I’m the worst Ranger Akila City has ever seen because I prefer to only help someone in need if they can provide me with something in return instead of just doing what is right, and Sam is conflicted between being disgusted at my actions and loving my dedication to his home town. Needless to say I’m having a bit of trouble getting to romance him.

Akila City wasn’t a place I spent much time at when I first came through there, other than to do Freestar Ranger missions. Coming back now there is a lot more to do and see than I first noticed. I’ve been knocking out some great side quests there, and have met some great characters. Davis Wilson, head of security in Akila, has an amazing voice actor and some genuinely funny moments. I will have to post a video of something he said that made me actually LOL, I just forgot to upload it.

 

[Colif]

 

[Zimbaly]

@ZedClampet best way to make money is doing missions, killing enemies and selling their weapons, but I will say collecting small items like the extractor you mentioned isn't a bad way to make money either.

Upgrade the sale skill. It makes a difference. I basically broke the system down to what's the price to weight and honestly in missions where there were lots of items in places or empty facilities, I'd make a few thousand with the right items. It may not seem like much, but it can net ya a decent amount over your play through.

It helped a ton with buying ammo.

Also somehow it says I have 300 hours...... meh

 

[Colif]

I need to buy a 4tb ssd before I can get this game. I will... just not today.

 

[neogunhero]

Getting burnt out by Starfield. I boot it up now, look at my quest log, and just go… ehhhh…. maybe another time. My biggest problem is just how much back and forth there is. So much fast travel. It is a good game generally, just with some major issues that ruin the experience for me. I’m going to give it a while before delving back in. 55 hours is enough to justify the $70 I spent so I’m not mad about that. If the performance was a lot smoother then maybe it will be more enjoyable, but 30fps in cities is immersion breaking.

 

[neogunhero]

Haven’t touched Starfield in a week. I want to play it more but I’m waiting for updates. At this point Bethesda would really do good to release a massive patch that fixes a huge amount of bugs, adds some new features, and fixes performance. The tiny tiny tiny little updates every 2-3 weeks is NOT the way to go, so part of me is thinking if they are preparing a major patch in the coming weeks. I hope so, but knowing Bethesda, they may just do more tiny little patches over time. So many other games get huge patches shortly after launch, Starfield has been out for 1.5months and all they did was fix a couple game breaking bugs and add an FOV slider. A company that huge with that much Microsoft money should be doing a service to their players buy fixing things ASAP, not these incremental updates.

 

[Brian Boru]

Looks like a nice performance boost for some PC players in latest patch:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTd4yl2M6p8

 

[neogunhero]

I’m trying to play Starfield again. I posted a bit in the general games discussion this month, but I thought I’d bring it back over to this thread.

The things with Starfield is that it starts off pretty strong. The intro sequence is one of Bethesdas least annoying and fairly quickest, but let’s see if my mind changes after my 5th new character like their other games. You immediately get into a gunfight after 15ish minutes which I think is a great choice to grip players in. The first few hours have all the familiar feelings of Bethesda games, specifically looting every single thing you see. There’s so much loot in Starfield so if that’s your thing then you will be happy with that aspect of this game.

So for the first few hours you’re thinking to yourself “ahh this isn’t so bad, I like Bethesda’s other games and this feels right at home” but eventually that starts to fade away. Of course all of the biggest gripes you’ve heard about this game are still here. Massive but mostly lifeless planets, tons of fast traveling and loading, poor optimization, fairly mediocre space combat. It’s all here and presents itself to you the more you play. Upgrading my CPU since the last time I’ve played this game has made a huge improvement on performance but it’s still not where it should be.

The biggest thing I dislike the most is all the fast travel and load screens. Most of the time this game does not encourage you to walk around and enjoy the environments as you make your way to the objective. Instead I’m constantly fast traveling everywhere as much as I can and when I’m on foot I’m sprinting and using my boostpack as much as possible to get places faster. Something about the inherent design of the game does not make me want to just soak in the scenery apart from the starry skies on some planets. In Skyrim, I loved taking strolls down mountain trails and trying not to fast travel so much. Same thing in the Fallout games, I loved walking and taking my time exploring because you never knew what you may come across. Here in Starfield, I just want to get to the place I need to go as fast as humanly possible, so let me figure out what’s the quickest way I can do that.

Here’s the thing. I haven’t beat the main quest, but the story is not the problem. The characters aren’t either. The gunplay is fun and feels good taking down groups of enemies. Ship customization, weapon modifications, research and crafting are all done well. Besides these few points, everything else is an issue. The game is just not fun nor does it immersive you into its world. Having only a couple of planets with the main points of interest like large cities, but having a thousand other empty planets is not fun. Having to fast travel between multiple planets just to talk to a few people is not fun. Exploring a massive empty planet is not fun. Finding a random unknown point of interest on these planets just to find out it’s a cave with literally nothing inside of it is not fun. Copy and pasting the same few enemy outposts across all of these planets is not fun.

I’ve tried so hard to like this game but it’s just not doing it for me. I want to like it, it’s got a great foundation, but I have no idea how they can fix the biggest issues without doing a massive revamp of the entire game. Maybe get rid of all the proc-gen planets and put more handcrafted locations. But that’s not something that be easily fixed with a patch, it will require an entire rework of the game.

Anyways, Shattered Space looks really cool…

 

[Hveðrungr]

I really like Starfield, but the exploration is ironically the weakest bit. As you say, it's too empty.

Did you hear Todd say that Shattered Space will instead be a single, focussed area like Far Harbor?

 

[neogunhero]

Did you hear Todd say that Shattered Space will instead be a single, focussed area like Far Harbor?

That’s why my hopes are high for that DLC. A single, focused area would make the game a lot more fun imo. Instead of aimlessly exploring huge empty planets with 3 people standing around on it, give us locations that give you a good reason to want to spend time and explore there. The story in Starfield is really good too so I’m excited to see where the DLC goes with it. Apparently they are going to explore the more “weird” aspects of the story.

 

[Pifanjr]

I'm now hooked on Starfield, and it's all thanks to its recent game-changing upgrade

If, like me, you'd checked out of Starfield, it's time to think again

www.pcgamer.com

Has anyone here played Starfield since Creations were available? If so, any thoughts on how it affects the game?

 

[neogunhero]

I'm now hooked on Starfield, and it's all thanks to its recent game-changing upgrade

If, like me, you'd checked out of Starfield, it's time to think again

www.pcgamer.com

Has anyone here played Starfield since Creations were available? If so, any thoughts on how it affects the game?

I’ve looked through it a little when it was first launched but lost interest in Starfield again quickly. I did see that article and it is helpful, basically just makes modding super simple like Fallout 4 and Skyrim’s built in mod managers. However Starfield did it a bit weird since they muddled paid and free mods all under the same menus.

 

[Hveðrungr]

I'm now hooked on Starfield, and it's all thanks to its recent game-changing upgrade

If, like me, you'd checked out of Starfield, it's time to think again

www.pcgamer.com

Has anyone here played Starfield since Creations were available? If so, any thoughts on how it affects the game?

I have, but I have a lifetime premium membership of Nexus Mods so it hasn't really affected me much. Afaik nearly all the mods which that article attributes to the Creations update were already available on Nexus Mods well before the Creations update. It's just that this update has given groupthinking journalists permission to like the game at last. It's called a preference cascade.

 

[neogunhero]

Reviving this thread because I've put 10 hours into Starfield in the past 5 days.

Starfield is complicated to say the least. I have a love/hate relationship with it. It has all the basic trappings of your classic Bethesda RPG experience, but its also done in a way that makes me want to rip my hair out. I dogged on the game a lot last week and that grew into a desire to play it again. This time, I'm using mods to make the game less annoying.

A couple of mods I'm using that I'm deeming as essential (besides actually essential mods like the Script Extender):

StarUI and StarUI HUD- customizable UI mod. Gives more info when looting containers and poking through your inventory.
Baka Achievement Enabler - Self explanatory, Bethesda games disable achievements when using mods, this mod bypasses that.
Undelayed Menus - Menus tend to fade in and fade out, adding a bit extra time when opening them. This mod makes them super fast and snappy. Useful when you forget to add weapons to your Favorites while in the middle of a firefight.
Responsive Grabbing - Bethesda for some odd reason insists on adding a delay to everything you do. This makes picking up objects much quicker, without having to wait the half second before actually grabbing it. Useful for chucking gas canisters at enemies during fights and doing it smoothly.
Enhanced Players Healthbar - Makes your healthbar much easier to see especially while in combat.
Ship Skip - Instant Station Docking - Again, there is a delay when docking/undocking from ships and stations, forcing you to watch a 3 second animation each time. This completely skips it, you're instantly docked and undocked.
Ultra-Anim - Speeds up many animations like sitting, opening airlocks, opening workbenches.

This has made the game much more enjoyable for me. I seriously do not understand what the hell Bethesda were thinking when playtesting the game. The animations look nice, but after only the 5th time it gets real old real quick. They force you into all of these delays, making you watch animations over and over, taking forever to open doors, each time you need to sit in your pilot seat the animation for sitting is seriously closer to 5 seconds than 0. These really start to add up over your playtime.

It's like the game was designed by geriatrics with very slow reaction speeds. Everything needs to be done slowly and meticulously. Were the playtesters all 85 years old?? There are no QOL improvements to make the players time with the game as least frustrating as possible. They make the game frustrating to just play. I don't get it.

Maybe it's to add to the "immersion" of being a space ranger, but the end result is just annoyance. I'm annoyed every time I have to open an airlock door, sit in the pilots seat of a ship, climb up a ladder, docking a ship, all of that. Starfield gets a lot of flak for it's many loading screens which is a completely valid complaint, but it's much more tolerable when everything else isn't also taking up so much time.

The fast travel loading screens, I don't think there is anything that can be done about them. There are mods that let you skip the launch/landing animations of your ship, but I've yet to try them out. That might be the next mod I download. I'm focusing on making the game much less annoying and much more enjoyable to play.