Starfield Omnibus Thread

[RIPPA]

41 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

I haven't been arrested on this playthrough,  so I've not even started crimson fleet stuff yet. 

You don't have to be arrested to get it (at least I didn't)

I was given it after reaching a certain point in the Vanguard quest line

[Death From Above]

I can say this safely without posting any real spoilers: there's a quest that's part of main story fairly late on called Entangled which is probably the single best quest I've played in the game. Super creative and interesting design.

I'm not sure what I did to trigger the Crimson Fleet stuff. I don't actually think I committed a crime, although the game's script implied I had. Maybe it's an auto-trigger for Space Scoundrel at some point based on your past? Anyway that's a great questline too. Honestly, if Bethesda Quests are your jam you probably love this game, and if planetary exploration is your jam probably not so much. But I really have enjoyed this game thouroughly. The amount of hate it's gotten online is absolutely bonkers to me. I think my biggest gripe at this point is that outposts seem completely optional and don't really have any particular use that I can see. I'd bet anything one of the major DLC's will address that though.

[Shadow]

I just paid a high price.

Ugh.

[J.T.]

Well, shit.  Looks like I didn't talk to as many people as I should have last time I was in The Well.

There is a guy in Heinrik's shop, Apex Electronics, named Vincinte.  He will send you out to Porrima III to retrieve a package for him behind the dumpsters of Red Mile.  The Porrima star system is three jumps away from Alpha Centauri (AC->Olympia->Volii->Porrima).

It looks sketchy, but it's not contraband.   When you return to him and give him the package, he becomes an active merchant and will sell his inventory to you.  His selection of weapons is impressive if you are a lowbie and he also sells a unique blue Grendel with Corrosive Rounds, appropriately named Acid Rain.

I could've done double duty and just handled this when I went to buy my Shielded Cargo Holds for the Frontier if I'd have talked to this guy earlier on.  I never turn away XP and creds but at this point in my game, there is absolutely nothing in his inventory that I need to buy.

Edited September 29, 2023 by J.T.

[RIPPA]

Ha! That was like the first thing I did on my first visit to the Well

You must have entered a different way than I do since the shop is immediately on your right when you get off the main elevator 

[J.T.]

21 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

You must have entered a different way than I do since the shop is immediately on your right when you get off the main elevator 

Your deductive skills are impeccable. 

I always enter The Well from the MAST NAT Station elevator since that is the route I first took to get there to help Louisa with the brown-out problem.  I knew where Apex was and went in there to talk to Heinrik and grab the skill mag out of his shop, but I never bothered talking to Vincinte.  I thought he was just a random citizen. 

The braided hair shoulda clued me in that he was a mission NPC.

I probably coulda used Acid Rain like seven levels ago, but not now.

Edited September 29, 2023 by J.T.

[Raziel]

Oh, helpful info about shielded cargo holds.  Be careful about how much contraband you carry.  Once you start floating near 50% on your shielded hold being contraband, the effectiveness goes down.  

[J.T.]

30 minutes ago, Raziel said:

Oh, helpful info about shielded cargo holds.  Be careful about how much contraband you carry.  Once you start floating near 50% on your shielded hold being contraband, the effectiveness goes down.  

You can always add a scan jammer to your vessel to slightly improve your chance to fool a contraband scan, but it's not a practical addition for Class-A ships, IMO.  It just adds unnecessary mass to your ship.

Also, in order to gain access to more advanced scan jammers, you need to invest in Starship Design.  By the time you are investing in that skill, you probably already have a nicely modded Class-B or are working on a nicely modded Class-C.

For the purposes of effectiveness / efficiency / economy, I wouldn't bother with scan jammers unless I was adding one to a Class-B or Class C starship.  Just be mindful of your contraband / cargo space ratio for your Class-A and you should be mostly okay.

Edited September 29, 2023 by J.T.

[odessasteps]

I ended up, I think, in the Well by going through the corridors under the Lodge and going thru a locked door. As I didn’t know then what it is, I just turned around and went back to the lodge. 

[RIPPA]

Starting joining a faction last night that I didn't even know existed so yeah... my list keeps growing

[odessasteps]

Finished Sarah’s mission and now in a relationship I think.

wasted my last hypolita to convince Sona to come with us and then I didn’t need it.

[J.T.]

So you can get rid of the Wanted trait by talking to a Tracking Alliance Agent aka the vendors that offer bounty hunting missions.   They will smooth things over with the other trackers and mercs for a convenience fee.  The agent on Neon asked me for a payment of 3K creds which is a fairly small sum for me right now, but where is the fun in not being a blade on the run?

I am just curious if the fee will increase the longer I stay a fugitive?  I know that the sum being offered for my murder appears to be going up. 

There are trackers fighting other trackers to make sure the price goes higher so that they can try to collect when I have a Vash the Stampede sized price on my head.

If Annie Wilcox finds out, I'll be a permanent name on THE LIST~!

Edited September 29, 2023 by J.T.

[odessasteps]

I had a doctor offer to remove my Terra Firma trait for a few thousand dollars.

[Death From Above]

You can also go to (at least some) doctors to remove the empath trait if you want, though I don't know why you'd want to do this unless you were playing as a complete scumbag, since for the most part I've found empath to be basically free buffs when you do stuff your companion likes.

On shielded cargo holds: you really have to go all or nothing. I tried attaching one to my ship and it basically doesn't do anything because of all the unshielded holds, which seems weird to me but that's how it works.

[RIPPA]

Finally stumbled into the Space Frog quest

[Craig H]

22 hours ago, Death From Above said:

I can say this safely without posting any real spoilers: there's a quest that's part of main story fairly late on called Entangled which is probably the single best quest I've played in the game. Super creative and interesting design.

I'm not sure what I did to trigger the Crimson Fleet stuff. I don't actually think I committed a crime, although the game's script implied I had. Maybe it's an auto-trigger for Space Scoundrel at some point based on your past? Anyway that's a great questline too. Honestly, if Bethesda Quests are your jam you probably love this game, and if planetary exploration is your jam probably not so much. But I really have enjoyed this game thouroughly. The amount of hate it's gotten online is absolutely bonkers to me. I think my biggest gripe at this point is that outposts seem completely optional and don't really have any particular use that I can see. I'd bet anything one of the major DLC's will address that though.

I just did the Entangled stuff this week. I’ll second everything you said. It reminded me so much of…

Spoiler

Titanfall 2

So yeah. Highest possible praise. Looking forward to doing that one again, but making some different choices.

[odessasteps]

 

[Kevin Wilson]

I scrolled credits on Starfield tonight. There is more I can do post game but my backlog for recent games is stupid (Sea of Stars, Madden, MK1, and Lies of P are waiting for me) so I'm going to call it a day. I'll replay it in a couple years when its all patched up and maybe has some DLC, kinda like how I plan on replaying Cyberpunk within the next six months. I don't think my hours played is accurate as I dunno if it counted when I had it paused but I probably put 60 to 70 hours into it if I had to make up a number.

I did a lot, but I left a lot on the table. I did all the faction quests, every "real" side mission I came across (rescuing people and shit, not fetch quests or surveying). Ended the game at level 43 I think, never had any serious issues with combat. Had a couple cool guns. Found four snow globes (I suck at finding little things lying around), got most the powers. Had a good time.

I did not do anything with outposts, only completed one companion quest, didn't do any long fetch quests, never built a ship 'from scratch', scanned next to nothing, and didn't land on any planets unless someone told me to. A lot of that was intentional - I do plan on replaying it so I decided to make my character a certain way and focused on combat and persuasion, while knowingly leaving some meat on the bone for my next playthrough.

Overall it was fun. I have some quibbles - companions are dumb in combat, excessive time wasted with "inventory management," I didn't think they made the powers good enough to matter in relation to the hassle of getting them (I never used an "essence"), and I'm still kinda pissed off my home reset due to a bug and I lost a lot of shit. But I really enjoyed the combat, I thought all four factions were great sub storylines, and the main mission didn't feel like an afterthought. For playing it at release, a solid B+ effort by Bethesda, and probably an "A" once they fix up a few things. And I'll probably play it on PC next time so I can use some mods to improve the quality of life.

[odessasteps]

 

[Craig H]

The Shouts/Powers ultimately matter very little. I often forget to even use them. The main time I do is using the anti-grav one when I need to get alien samples without killing any aliens. I also use the Dash when trying to get powers. The other ones just don't seem to matter or I don't see a decent use case for them.

[J.T.]

12 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Finally stumbled into the Space Frog quest

SPACE FROGS FROM OUTER SPACE~!!

Holy shit, the Neon missions are fun AF.  It's good to be back home.  How did Bethesda out-CDPR CDPR and made Neon just as interesting and nihilistic as Night City in city with far ground to cover?

I did the Ebbside Strikers missions a couple of days ago, but now I have gotten in tight with the local merchants, possibly signed a man's death warrant by convincing him to go out solo drinking in Ebbside while on his bachelor party, gotten a Seokguh thug named Headlock to respect the blade and stop shaking down a local luxury goods establishment, and i still have to talk to DJ BorealUS, go visit some Aurora smuggling asshole in the local lockdown, and maybe solve a murder case.

The creds I will make during the side gigs will recover the investment I made in Shielded Cargo Bays for the Frontier.

I consider myself to be quite the badass and i don't think I'd fuck with Manaia Adams.  She obviously works as a pro cleaner and could probably kill me with her eyes closed, space magic or no.

I also decided to be brave and try to gain data on the local fauna aka chasmbass and whalesharks so I jumped into the ocean and started swimming.  Discovered that your character can only swim on the surface.  No diving underwater so no fear of drowning.  Fish are docile so far but I am still scared shitless of getting eaten while trying to scan whalesharks.

Edited September 30, 2023 by J.T.

[J.T.]

6 hours ago, Craig H said:

The Shouts/Powers ultimately matter very little. I often forget to even use them. The main time I do is using the anti-grav one when I need to get alien samples without killing any aliens. I also use the Dash when trying to get powers. The other ones just don't seem to matter or I don't see a decent use case for them.

I rarely use the anti-grav unless it is for the example you gave, or I am fighting some aggressive alien critter like an Ashta and want to get some free shots in before it recovers. 

Same as in Skyrim when you would Fus-Ro-Dah some asshole giant that aggros on you, stab the fucker with a weapon covered in Paralysis poison while he's on the ground, and then dog pile on his ass.  No matter how high level I get, mean beasties like Ashta still put some wear and tear on my ass so I can't sleep on them.

Void Form (invisibility) and Grav-Dash have turned my wakizashi wielding Ronin into a fucking space ninja, so I use those powers quite often. 

Precognition and Personal Atmosphere are also extremely helpful in most situations.

Edited September 30, 2023 by J.T.

[odessasteps]

I haven’t gotten to powers yet. Now that I’ve upgraded my ship so more, ready to continue the Barrett storyline by beating the pirates in the Altair system.

tried meeting Briggs but it’s still bugged.

[Death From Above]

8 hours ago, Kevin Wilson said:

I scrolled credits on Starfield tonight. There is more I can do post game but my backlog for recent games is stupid (Sea of Stars, Madden, MK1, and Lies of P are waiting for me) so I'm going to call it a day. I'll replay it in a couple years when its all patched up and maybe has some DLC, kinda like how I plan on replaying Cyberpunk within the next six months. I don't think my hours played is accurate as I dunno if it counted when I had it paused but I probably put 60 to 70 hours into it if I had to make up a number.

I did a lot, but I left a lot on the table. I did all the faction quests, every "real" side mission I came across (rescuing people and shit, not fetch quests or surveying). Ended the game at level 43 I think, never had any serious issues with combat. Had a couple cool guns. Found four snow globes (I suck at finding little things lying around), got most the powers. Had a good time.

I did not do anything with outposts, only completed one companion quest, didn't do any long fetch quests, never built a ship 'from scratch', scanned next to nothing, and didn't land on any planets unless someone told me to. A lot of that was intentional - I do plan on replaying it so I decided to make my character a certain way and focused on combat and persuasion, while knowingly leaving some meat on the bone for my next playthrough.

Overall it was fun. I have some quibbles - companions are dumb in combat, excessive time wasted with "inventory management," I didn't think they made the powers good enough to matter in relation to the hassle of getting them (I never used an "essence"), and I'm still kinda pissed off my home reset due to a bug and I lost a lot of shit. But I really enjoyed the combat, I thought all four factions were great sub storylines, and the main mission didn't feel like an afterthought. For playing it at release, a solid B+ effort by Bethesda, and probably an "A" once they fix up a few things. And I'll probably play it on PC next time so I can use some mods to improve the quality of life.

Rolled credits myself tonight and I think most of this is fair.

Honestly my feelings haven't changed much as I went through it. The quest design is good, and I'd say the best quests in this game are as good as anything quest wise Bethesda has ever done. Ship design is good if a little fiddly. Outpost management is bad and useless. A lot of the exploration feels uneccessary and not worth it. I think the game does a great job of giving us the best of Bethesda tour even if it honestly has 0 real innovation. I really enjoy what the game has to offer (and I now have a real itch to dive into the Bethesda fallouts which I've never actually played), but it won't win game of the year in the same year Baldur's Gate came out because people really, really love bad d20 systems that require save scumming to advance certain skills. What can you do. As much as I loved Skyrim, the fact there are so many quests you can pass with talking and speechcraft skills is a mssive step back in the right direction for what Bethesda does best.

Very curious what they do with the DLC. There are a lot of options with potential fleet or outpost management, digging deeper into the alien side of things like a big game alien hunter thing, maybe a chapter that delves more into House Va'Ruun, or more piracy would be very welcome. Mods are going to be batshit crazy for this game in time.

I've had shockingly few serious bug issues for a Bethesda title (one quest jammed and I fixed it through console, one other quest jammed and fixed with save reloads, one follower of minimal importance that just, uh, vanished), or a 2020's AAA title in general for that matter. I actually feel pretty safe saying this is the cleanest release Bethesda have done on that front which is at least promising that Elder Scrolls 6 might not be a pile of code held together by string. The game did commit a couple of gaming cardinal sins: escort sections with escorts that walk at like a third of your walking speed, and also a whole planet built around gambling where you can't gamble. Modders are going to fix that, but come on. I ended my run with almost 500K credits and nothing to do with them really. I do think the game lacks for "evil" options and in a lot of places played it very safe and sterile, but the writing in general is good enough to keep the engagement with the world.

I also have a ton of other games to play so I might put this down more or less until DLC launches, but I look forward to it. I'd give the game a solid 8/10 personally. I don't regret pre ordering it, I enjoyed the 75 hours or so I've put into it, and I look forward to exploring it again when the time's right.

[RIPPA]

I got a little panicked today thinking Sam's "loyalty" mission was bugged.

Spoiler

So I finish up the last battle and go to talk to Lillian - which includes Sam being part of the conversation. But for reason that are known only to Bethesda's code - Sam got teleported to the ship. So Lillian and I are having a conversation with no one - hearing no dialogue.

Fortunately - after just going through the choices - the quest step updated and when I went back to the ship, I was able to talk to Sam and progress the quest further