Starfield: 10 Things You Shouldn’t Do Right Away

Starfield is here, and it's awesome! The thing about this particular game, though, is that it is almost unbelievably massive, with bespoke gameplay features that could easily pull you in for tens of hours of additional gameplay if you allow them to do that. It's quite overwhelming, especially with all the usual open-world RPG gameplay features. Add shipbuilding, space exploration, outposts, and all the unique disparate game-sized questlines into the mix, and you've got a phenomenally overbearing early-game experience.

That's where this feature comes into the picture, though! Our goal for today is to set you up with all the information you need to come to grips with Starfield quickly, easily, and without getting a massive headache. Because, really, even though the game does stagger all these features a tad bit, it's so easy to get off the main questline and just go off exploring that you're bound to feel overburdened early on.

Note, too, that we don't mean this in a negative way: Bethesda Game Studio veterans will likely find Starfield's early progression similar to that of Oblivion in the best way possible. Make no mistake: this is bound to be the next 10-year project for Bethesda and the modding community, and it's a hoot.

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10 Things You Do Not Want to Do in Starfield Early

We're not going to overcomplicate things here: what follows is a list of activities you probably should avoid doing in Starfield until you fully come to grips with the game's disparate features and systems. There is a huge amount of goodies that the game absolutely will throw at you. To that end, staying focused for the first 10ish hours will make your gaming experience much better and more satisfying! So, let's get to it.

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#10: Spend Hours in the Character Creator

Unlike most any previous mainline Bethesda Game Studios RPG, Starfield includes a post-start character customization feature in every major city! Meaning that you don't really need to spend hours fine-tuning your character's nostrils this time around. If you discover that they are, in fact, too big, just head on over to New Atlantis or Neon and get an all-new nose! Neat stuff, really.

#9: Customize Your Ship

The starting ship - the Frontier - is fine. It's reasonably adequate for the first 20ish levels of your character progression, and it'll also carry a solid load. However, we do not recommend you take the bloody thing apart trying to customize it. Starfield's ship-building system is impressively complex and free-form, but the issue with that approach is that it's so easy to mess something up while fiddling around with it. Instead of ruining your one good ship, either farm some Credits to purchase a new one at the shipwright or acquire one instead, and experiment on your secondary vessel when the time is right!

#8: Hoard Weapons & Armor

There is so much gear in Starfield. So, so, so much. And virtually everything is customizable, too: from the guns over to the armor, we promise you can tweak and modify just about every item in the game. What this means, then, is that you don't really need to hoard everything you find. If a rare or even legendary item drops - yes, do keep that. The rest, though, is mostly interchangeable, and it'll overburden your inventory in a jiffy, if you pick it all up.

#7: Accept All The Quests

There are very many quests in Starfield. If you think there's a lot - think bigger. There's just that many of them. And hey, we're not even talking about infinite proc-gen faction missions here, but bespoke questlines with massive narrative beats and exciting developments: there's a lot of those. So, we suggest you don't go out to accept every single quest under the sun. Instead, identify something you're fond of, and stick with it. That'll help you acclimatize to the experience in the best way possible.

#6: Antagonize Major Factions

Going to war with major in-game factions is a big no-no early in Starfield. Not only will you be woefully underequipped early on, but trying to gun down anyone you come across well also quickly lock you out of some crucial questlines. Unless, of course, you can afford to pay off all your bounties. Which you won't be able to do early on. So - mind your targets!

#5: Overuse Fast-Travel

Fast travel is great in Starfield! Really nice, easy to use, and effective. So, take some time to ignore it, too. We're not kidding here: some of Starfield's best quests and mini-events only reveal themselves while you're travelling on the planets or through open space, so just make sure you're not always using fast-travel. Instead, enjoy the vibes and the incredible expanses in front of you!

#4: Create an Outpost

If shipbuilding is complex in Starfield, outpost building is too! Especially if you haven't had previous experience with Fallout 4. Outposts are, certainly, a crucial aspect of the game, and you absolutely will be interacting with them sooner or later, but there's really no immediate need for you to start wasting resources on base building. On top of that, building an effective and efficient outpost is very time-intensive, too, so just let this option be for the first couple of hours.

#3: Forget About the Constellation HQ

The Constellation HQ is one of the most important locations on New Atlantis, and it is ridiculously easy to underestimate its utility. Not only is the basement filled to the brim with awesome gear and items you could take right away, but the storage facility has infinite storage crates, which you'll find literally nowhere else in the game from what we've seen. This is one of the most useful items in the game, and it's available from the first hour of gameplay! So, make use of it!

#2: Ignore Your Ship

Your ship is your lifeblood in Starfield. It's important! And, as it turns out, way more handy than you'd think right away. Not only does your ship house all your crewmates, resources, and gear, but you've also got a lovely little cargo hold to throw stuff into, as well as a safe spot to hide behind if the going gets tough. Your spaceship is a mobile HQ, in more ways than one, so you're going to want to familiarize yourself with it and rely on it as much as possible!

#1: Overexplore

Finally, we understand: Starfield's whole schtick is exploration. Of course you'd want to go off and explore and have fun with the game's infinite proc-gen systems and planet nodes. However, as we said before, large and important parts of the game are locked behind progression in the main quest, so we'd really recommend you stick with the main narrative for a while. You'll know when you're ready to take on Starfield as an open-ended sandbox, but in the interim, Starfield also works just as well as a stellar action RPG!

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