#spoilers #videoGames #starfield

I sort of remember hearing about Starfield many years ago. Somehow it became memory-holed and I pretty much forgot about it until the big reveal video from the developers a few months ago. In a previous post I described being pretty excited for this game and at the time I was trying my hand at some speedrunning. The dream of going fast in a video game have since been mostly squashed due lack of focus and poor hand health, but I am still enjoying games at their average speed!

I will may continue updating this post as sort of a journal of my play through, but we’ll see if I actually do that!

WARNING: The rest of this post contains spoilers for Starfield!

I am about 50 hours in at this point. I have been mostly focusing on the main story and obtaining all of the powers. I’m not sure how many powers there are in total. I haven’t looked up any outside information about the game so everything I know is from playing. There seem to be spots for 24. I currently have 13 unlocked and the powers screen says “3 undiscovered temples”. I’m not sure if that means there are only 16 powers in total or what. I am assuming there are more powers to be unlocked after choosing to enter the Unity and becoming a Starborn, but all guesses now.

I am pretty sure I’m on the last part of the main quest, “Revelation”, where I am to go to the Buried Temple on Masada III. I have been holding off on going straight there so I can collect the powers of which I seem to have all I can get right now, and to finish the UCSysDef/Crimson Fleet mission.

If you aren’t aware, at some point (I’m not sure exactly what triggers it), you will be captured by UCSysDef and forced to infiltrate the Crimson Fleet, or thrown in jail and become an enemy of UCSysDef. I made a save split here which I will probably never go back to, but I wanted the option without a whole new game.

In my current timeline, I chose to infiltrate the pirates. I went through some of the mission up until you are meant to board The Key and actually join the pirates. After getting to that portion of the “Rook Meets King”, I went ahead and collected the remaining Artifacts. One interesting thing happened, part of why I am writing this.

I did not realize it, but at this point I was considered friendly with the Crimson Fleet. This means that they don’t attack me on sight. Without realizing this, I went through one of the areas filled with Crimson Fleet to get the second to last artifacts and I killed all of them! I did notice that they weren’t attacking me and I thought it was a bug to be honest. I am also prone to sneaking around and using stealth attacks, so I never accumulated a bounty. Until one point where there were a few more pirates than I could quietly eliminate, and I racked up a 30k credit bounty 😭!

So, had I realized I was already friendly with the Fleet, I could have literally walked through that area full of pirates that I was murdering! Once I realized this I was many hours later into my play through and 30k credits was a lot but affordable.

Here is where I think there might be an actual bug, or at least a strange design choice:

I went to The Key with the bounty on my head while still in the middle of “Rook Meets King”. When you enter The Key with a bounty, a pirate runs up to you forcing you to pay or starting a battle if you refuse. Just to see what happened, I refused the first time and all of the pirates were invincible! I should have tried it again, I still have a save before I payed/declined so I may do some more experimenting, but as far as I can tell, being inside of the “Rook Meets King” mission makes it impossible to attack the pirates when they ask for your bounty.

Those are two little things I learned that I wish I had knew before. Next, I’m going to finish the mission to infiltrate the Fleet. My intention is to betray UCSysDef when the time comes if that is possible, we’ll see I guess! After that, depending on my level, I will likely go for finishing the main quest. Depending on what happens after that, I want to continue building out my outpost and make some new ones. I’d also like to do a bunch of the sidequests!

While there are a few criticisms I have of the game, I am having a blast and really enjoying it overall. I may continue editing this post in the future so check back in awhile for more!