While playing Starfield, you may notice the gigantic allotment of resources available to you; and how each designated itself as a crafting material. Thankfully, like most recent Bethesda titles, this crafting system becomes very simple once it’s fully understood, and can become essential. If you want to make the most of this crafting system you’ll need to break your work into two parts! The preparation and the crafting. Both of these steps will help you make the most of your interstellar adventure, and keep a firm stack of credits in your pocket.
Crafting can be an archaic system for those who aren’t used to standard RPGs, however by understanding them we can make the most of them. For starters, by adding a crafting system to Starfield, they’ve created a way for players to avoid the markets entirely. This, though taking some hard work can pay off as you can either isolate or sell to said markets in order to make a profit on the goods you create.
Fundamentally you will have to play a game of inventory management, resource gathering, and research projects. At times these prospects might seem boring at worst, and simple at best but this should prove as a mini-game rather than a main event. Use the crafting system to enrich your gameplay when you get tired of the stand-alone shoot-outs and interstellar dog fights. So when using these systems as a side adventure, we can both have a pallet cleaner and a means of preparing for the next boss fight.
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Fundamentals Of Crafting
When starting out, the crafting system may seem strange and unfamiliar to you in Starfield. This can be compounded by the fact that unlike most Bethesda titles there’s a complex method of unlocking more recipes. Given this, you’ll have to keep three things in mind if you want to expand your crafting potential- skill points, resources, and research. Each can be upgraded through playing the game and exploring these systems.
Research will be the first step in your journey to having a nice set of starting recipes. From here you’ll have to grow your potential by taking on certain perks. During both research and crafting you will need to have the required ingredients. Ingredients can be acquired through looting enemies, mining planets, and buying from merchants. Keep in mind that if you purchase these ingredients from merchants it is often cheaper than buying the base item in the shop.
Crafting and research are broken down into major categories; pharmacology, food and drink, outpost development, equipment, and weaponry. Each category will require its own subsequent perk in order to make the most out of that particular skill tree. Most can be found early on, however, others will require some time in order to get into such as starships and outposts. These categories all share the same crafting resources which can make it tricky to complete them all.
Research Categories
Resources
Resources will be one of the major aspects of crafting as you can’t make a chair out of nothing! In this case, by storing as many resources as possible in your cargo hold, or in your house you can easily acquire everything you need. It’s recommended that if you want to make the most of resources, spend about 20-30k worth of credits early game in purely resources. Following this up with another 10-15k in food ingredients you can easily climb the skill trees. It’s important to note that each recipe you complete and every crafting item you make grants a small amount of experience.
If you need a resource or want to collect it specifically, you can click the R key on your PC to highlight that ingredient with a blue magnifying glass. This will help you specify what items you’re looking for, so you can stock up on them. The best part about this system is that you can do it for any item, allowing you to remember what you need when buying or mining something. This can come in handy when you don’t have a good memory or want to take a break and go questing.
Once you’ve acquired enough resources, keeping them in your cargo hold, or in storage cases is the best-case scenario. Resources can be quite heavy when they build up in your inventory, so make sure to make frequent trips to your house. This form of inventory management can be difficult early on, but with the right ship or companions, it can be made easier. Finally, keep in mind that resources can be restocked in shops every 48 hours, so like any Bethesda game you can wait two days and restock.
Pharmacology Research
Research
Research stations will be the first step on your journey to filling out your crafting menus. These stations unlock a large amount of what you’ll need but require ingredients and crafting resources. Research is broken down into the main categories with subcategories based on what you’d be getting for recipes. For instance, mixology will give the player a variety of drinks and alcoholic mixes that can sell for a high value. At first, you will have the basic crafting recipes available for research and can be found notably at the Lodge.
When finished with these basic crafting recipes, there are some good outliers. Xeno alcohol and Xeno sandwiches have good bonuses and sell for a fair price. You can find a good variety of perks that will help you unlock more tiers of complex recipes! Each category of research has an associated perk that can be upgraded through crafting what you learn. In this sense, you can easily master these perks by collecting a large amount of materials early on.
The research system will be instrumental for you to make any sizable profit from Starfield as they unlock recipes that turn simple ingredients into profit. One example of this early on is Alien jerky which grants the player some health but sells for eighty-ninety a piece. Additionally, when mixed with the right perks like commerce and weightlifting. you can easily max these perks out through crafting. In general, the research allows the player to expand their activities, and their arsenal by exploring the economy or planet’s resources.
Pharmaceutical Lab
Crafting
Once you’ve researched a recipe, you’ll need to find a station associated with that recipe in order to make it. These can easily be found in the Lodge on New Atlantis where they have everything you need to get started. It’s a great idea to build these stations in any outpost or home you get into as it makes traveling far easier later game. Each recipe will require resources similar to research that keeps you needing to explore or stay in the economy. Luckily, when you have an arsenal of resources in your collection this becomes easier.
After you’ve collected enough resources and feel comfortable crafting your materials you’ll notice that there are stats and effects associated with each. Every item has a value, a cost, and a series of effects that can make each worthwhile. Luckily when crafting in Starfield you can either choose to make a single item, or craft in bulk. This makes everything a lot easier on the player as you can speed through the process of making items. Obviously, some items will be worth more than others, thus keeping in mind which ones are worth more will make you rich quickly.
Some of the best recipes to get into when starting out are aid items like food and alcohol. These items are worth a lot of money, particularly the alien liquor which can run for a small fortune of 112 credits per unit. The important thing to keep in mind is that this crafting system can also optimize your equipment by adding modifications to your weapons and armor. For this reason, it’s a good thing to get into even if you are playing a minimalist build. Finally, by crafting items you get a small amount of exp which when done in bulk can easily level you up over time!
Food and Drink Research
Crafting Categories
The before-mentioned crafting categories split the system up into their major parts, each requiring a perk to make it better. In theory, if you want to craft something, you should check what aspect of the item it is, if it’s for aid, you want pharmacology. Because of this, you have the simplicity of focusing on items you want to craft and forgetting about the ones you don’t care about.
Pharmacology
Requiring the chemistry perk, pharmacology can be a great method to reduce your medical supply purchases. In essence, you can make drugs, stimulants, and medical items through pharmacology. This proves to be an extremely profitable crafting tree to go down however the materials for it can be incredibly pricy. While med packs won’t be immediately available to you, you can make things like amp early on which can be sold for a lot of credits. Remember that each medical item can be a great low-weight item to sell, and can be costly to stock up on.
Items crafted through the pharmacology crafting tree can be made at pharmaceutical labs, which can be found at the Lodge. Additionally, these labs can be crafted in your homes and outposts which grants you the ability to make the items. Early on, the best item you can make this way is Antibiotic Paste which sells for four hundred thirty credits. These are a great way to multiply your profits as both heal paste and antibiotics are basic recipes as well.
Cooking Station
You’ll notice that the items you create with the pharmacology crafting tree are particularly important in making new stronger materials. This means that by collecting a lot of low-level healing items, you can turn them into a more expensive payoff. Besides this, having a nice supply of medical materials is a great way to not get caught off guard by the many status effects of Starfield.
Pharmacology Subsections (Beginner)
| Performance Enhancement 1 | Argon (2), Tetraflourides (2), Metabolic Agent (3) |
No Required Skill |
| Medical Treatment 1 | Antimicrobial (3), Amino Acids (2), Aluminum (2) |
No Required Skill |
Best Starting Pharmacology Recipes
| Pick-Me-Up | Enhancer | Metabolic Agent, Aqueous Hematite(2), Membrane | Base Recipe | .10 Mass | 450 Credit Value |
| Antibiotic Paste | Medical | Cataboxylic Acids(2), Heal Paste, Antibiotics | Medical Treatment 1 | .10 Mass | 430 Credit Value |
| Infused Bandages | Medical | Bandages, Healpaste, Sedative (2) | Medical Treatment 1 | .10 Mass | 330 Credit Value |
| Penicilin X | Medical | Antimicrobial (2), Metabolic agent, Membrane | Base Recipe | .10 Mass | 145 Credit Value |
| Snake Oil | Medical | Metabolic Agent (2), Chlorine, Sedative | Base Recipe | .10 Mass | 125 Credit value |
Great for upgrading your houses and outposts
Food and Drink
The food and drink research tree can be expanded by acquiring the gastronomy perk in the skill tree when leveling up. This is a great way to make a profit off of the many food recipes that exist throughout Starfield‘s many systems. Like the pharmacology research tree, these recipes can be a great way to turn low-profit items into expensive payoffs. Unlike other skill trees, the food and drink crafting recipes will require a bunch of food items that are mixed with resources. This creates a logical deviation from other crafting recipes in the world you explore.
Food and drink are also low mass, and focusing on items like alcohol can be a great method of succeeding in high wealth. On the alternative end, food items can be a great way to regain health in a pinch and conserve your medical items. Either way, these can be a great way to fill up your inventory and turn them over for credits. Additionally, food items can end up being cheaper to acquire over something like resources, and far lighter. Like other crafting trees, food and drink can grant a small amount of experience every time you craft something.
Food items can be made in kitchens and ship galleys, being one of the few things that can be crafted early on in a ship. It’s for this reason that food items can be one of the easiest means of making a profit, especially early on. Food and drink, alcohol especially can be worth a couple hundred, and with the commerce perk can only cost a few credits to produce. Finally, these items will make you hungry, so hopefully in the future we’ll see a Starfield cookbook similar to what we got for Fallout and Skyrim.
Spacesuit Workbench
Food and Drink Subsections (Beginners)
| Old Earth Cuisine 1 | Bread (3), Red Meat (2), Cheese (2 |
No Required Skill |
| Beverage Development 1 | Spice (2), Fiber (3), Water (3) | No Required Skill |
| Mixology 1 | Aromatic (2), Alkanes (2), Spice (3) | No Required Skill |
Best Starting Food and Drink Recipes
| The Deep | Food | Celery, Spice, Red Meat, Potato, Carrot | Base Recipe | .50 mass | 1055 Credit Value |
| Panache | Food | Spice, Butter (2), Beans, Meal Pack – Tofu | Base Recipe | .50 Mass | 855 Credit Value |
| Meatloaf | Food | Dairy, Egg, Red Meat | Old World Earth Cuisine 1 | .50 Mass | 185 Credit Value |
| Alien Scramble | Food | Egg, Nutrient | Base Recipe | .50 Mass | 185 Credit Value |
| Alien Liquor | Alcohol | Nutrient, Alkanes | Mixology 1 | .30 Mass | 165 Credit Value |
Spacesuit Design Perk
Outpost Development
When starting off with outpost development, you’ll have access to three basic aspects in order to start off your construction. In order to build more you’ll have to research multiple perks including outpost engineering, botany, and zoology. This can be a lot to get into, but allows you to create an outpost that is truly your own! These developments will allow your character to produce houses and outposts that are a lot more personalized than you ordinarily would. Later down the line, you’ll have access to automated defenses, robots, and even animal and flora centers.
While outpost development might be a fun crafting system to work on, it hardly grants anything that has immediate financial gain. Instead, these outposts will serve as a great place to put all of your items, and can be perfect for any build style! There really isn’t much in the form of better recipes, instead, some are just more useful than others. In this case, storage containers, crafting units, and weapon racks can be some of the more useful items to craft. If you’ve played something like Fallout 4 you should be familiar with many of these aspects.
You can build the items you’ve researched in Outpost Development by visiting a house or outpost and clicking your scanning button. After doing this a prompt should come up to decorate your home where you can spend materials to build your property up. Early on it’s preferable to build as many storage chests as you can so you can build up your resource supply as soon as possible. Finally, building robots will provide you with essential companions and services that can better play in your favor than some companions.
-source: Dj Dragon
Outpost Development Subsections (Beginner)
| Manufacturing 1 | Zero Wire (2), Adaptive Frame (3), Iron (3), Sealant (3) | No Required Skill |
| Decoration 1 | Structural (3), Fiber (3), Ornamental (2) | No Required Skill |
| Robots 1 | Zero Wire (2), Aluminum (3), Beryllium (3) | No Required Skill |
Equipment Research
Starting out, equipment research is one of the more difficult crafting trees to get into. Because of those you’ll only start out with the ability to get basic helmet modifications which can help with health and O2. Instead, most of your basic modifications can be unlocked with Spacesuit Design 1 in your perk tree. When acquired, you’ll have far more design access for your equipment than you otherwise would have, so the work is worth it. These modifications may seem small early on, but by upgrading basic equipment you find before selling it you stand to make a profit.
Equipment is hard to get into early on unless you build your character specifically for it, which can be rewarding and taxing at the same time. That being said, absolutely anything you can modify on your equipment is a bonus compared to not being able to do so. Perhaps in the future, there will be more that can be done to space suits as they seem relatively underdeveloped as far as research is concerned. For this reason, it wasn’t something that I particularly spent a lot of time on, though it can certainly be rewarding once done.
Equipment Research
Once you’ve acquired the ability to craft spacesuit modifications you can do so at any spacesuit workbench. These allow you to change the upgrades and modifications of your items, as each one has four possible upgrades. The higher levels you put into the spacesuit design perk will allow you to put more upgrades on to these items, creating potentially legendary gear. These upgrades can mean the difference between cheap equipment and incredibly powerful gear. Like the outpost development, there aren’t really any better upgrades than others, rather being potent no matter what.
Equipment Research Subsections (Beginner)
| Helmet Mods 1 | Tungsten (3), Cosmetic (2), Polymer (3) | No Required Skill |
Weaponry Research
Weaponry upgrades will require the weapons engineering perk in order to get any real use out of it. Like the Fallout franchise, these modifications can make simple weapons a lot more effective, especially early on. It’s astounding how much a simple laser sight or sight module can do in order to improve the usefulness of a weapon. Adding extended barrels or a suppressor to make it less situational, or adding legendary perks to make the weapon longer lasting. In this sense, Starfield is a wonderland of experimentation with its many weapons and craftable modifications.
Weapon Research is great for acquiring new weapon modifications
Unlike medical items or food, weaponry should always be crafted with extra modifications whenever available. They can give your character the edge you need in order to outpace the challenge level of the game. Along with this, weapons engineering will give you access to potent weapon upgrades for your ship which can’t be undermined. Luckily, weapon engineering can be taken early enough that by level ten your character could be a walking powerhouse. Just remember that weapon modifications can be expensive, and sell for a huge profit.
Weapon upgrades can be crafted at a weapon workbench and operate very similarly to spacesuit workbenches. These modifications work a lot like Fallout 4 where various sections of the weapon can be swapped out for other parts. This can make some truly unique options that can outshine even some of the more powerful legendary weapons. Weapon workbenches can be found in the Lodge or can be built in any house or outpost. They can be quite the boon for any new player as you get upgraded firepower, and experience for upgrading them.
Weaponry Research Subsections (Beginner)
| Barrel Mods 1 | Iron (3), Nickel (3), Sealant (2) | No Required Skill |
| Grip and Stock Mods 1 | Aluminum (3), Nickel (3), Sealant (3) | No Required Skill |
| Optic and Laser Mods 1 | Aluminum (3), Chlorosilanes (2), Sealant (3) | No Required Skills |
Weapons Workbench
Industrial Workbench
One of the better parts of Starfield is the ability to synthesize parts you may need by using an industrial workbench. These beautiful pieces of crafting can turn raw resources into more expensive and hard-to-find resources without any perks or requirements. Workbenches can make your job filling out the crafting recipes far easier, however, they are relatively straightforward. Put items in, and get a rarer item out of it for crafting. Like everything else, they can be built in your homes, outposts, or found in the basement of the Lodge. Use workbenches when you want to save some credits and need a particularly expensive piece of crafting material.
Industrial Work Bench
