Starfield has a release date

[Rusty]

Don't forget to put your spacesuit on before stepping outside...

I didn't realise until a guard told me "You don't have to wear your spacesuit indoors, you know" that I looked through the options and there's a button to hide your suit when inside
It's tucked away on the inventory screen under spacesuit and helmet choices.

Makes sitting down cutscenes look better.

[Animalmother]

I'm trying to do a mission that requires you to board and repair a damaged ship floating in space. I can't board it no matter what I try, I have the lock on perk unlocked which is required for docking but no go. Looked it up online and other people have same problem. Hoping that with more people playing it this week that it gets fixed but it's Bethesda so doubtful.

[Animalmother]

Hopefully everyone will start playing this today. Some tips that might come in handy I learned. Basically if you've played Skyrim or Fallout some of this will seem obvious....

Don't go picking up random crap that you think you can sell at a trader later. I collected tons of objects early in the game because they had a high value of 300 credits or more. They take up a ton of inventory space and resell for next to nothing. Ignore the value figure, it means nothing.

Never bring the robot Vasco on any mission, he's utterly fucking useless except for carrying stuff. He'll run headlong in fights and get dropped immediately. He prevents you from sneaking and will stand in front of you and block your shots during a fight.

Don't forget to equip your spacesuit, helmet and backpack before exiting the ship. Try and get a suit with a good thermal rating, I near froze to death multiple times exploring.

Quicksave before picking a lock or starting a persuasion dialogue. Very easy to mess up both.

Your inventory space is tiny, be brutal and throw away those extra guns and spacesuits. Some crafting parts take up a ton of space and can't be used until you unlock that skill much later in game, ignore them.

Ignore contraband at start the of game, you'll always get caught.

[Sly Boots]

Went to play it on GamePass, game (which I preloaded a while ago) said it needed to update before it could play, then it tries to download the entire game again but the downloader bugs out almost immediately. Happens every time.

I would probably try re-downloading the whole thing from scratch, but seeing as I'm getting an SSD this weekend specifically to play it on, I'll might as well just wait for that

[Rusty]

Day one mod for me (well, actually a console command) ... increased carrying capacity - yes I know it's cheating but it takes away a massive ballache for me.
Also an ini tweak to increase the FOV to something usable.

[Wrathbone]

Your inventory space is tiny, be brutal and throw away those extra guns and spacesuits. Some crafting parts take up a ton of space and can't be used until you unlock that skill much later in game, ignore them.

To be honest, I do the exact opposite - I take all equipment I can get my hands on. When you go past your inventory limit, all it does is make your O2 (i.e. stamina) drain faster, which I haven’t found to be a huge deal when, say, clearing out a base, so you just need to pace yourself when heading back to your ship. Then you have an absolute haul to sell at merchants.

What’s also extremely useful is that if you place items in your cargo hold, you can sell to merchants directly from there so you don’t have to lug everything in person to each shop.

When it comes to resources I simply store them all in the Lodge basement where the workbenches are. Very handy for crafting and research.

[Animalmother]

Sorry to hear that Sly, my mate had exact problem and had to re-download the entire thing.

Actually being overburdened is required for some trait unlocks, good thinking!!

I was messing around with the ship editor and renamed it Titan Uranus , I'm so proud

[pappaduck]

What’s also extremely useful is that if you place items in your cargo hold, you can sell to merchants directly from there so you don’t have to lug everything in person to each shop.

Wait what? This is going to change the way I play.

Started playing this on Wednesday because I refused to pay the £20 pre release tax and I absolutely love it. So far it does feel like Oblivion in space with higher production values and less bugs, I've seen a lot of people being turned off by that but I love this type of game so I can see myself sinking many many hours into it.

Absolutely love the aesthetic, Nasa Punk sounds incredibly lame but it looks phenominal. The space flight sections remind me a lot of Freelancer which I loved and played to death and oh my god that game is 20 years old.

I think the only thing that bugs me is the frequency of the loading screens and the travel mechanics which do feel a little half baked.

[Wrathbone]

I’m over at the parents’ this weekend so I’ve been playing Starfield on my gaming laptop, and while it’s absolutely playable I’m surprised just how much of a performance hit there is compared to my desktop PC. On the desktop (i7 12700k, 4080) it rarely dips below 120fps with everything on max, whereas on the laptop (i7 11800H, 3070) it struggles to maintain 40fps in cities and fluctuates wildly in other areas, regardless of settings. Seriously, the difference between low and high is negligible, which made no sense to me until I discovered it was frequently hitting 100% CPU utilisation. Starfield hammers CPUs - the i7 11800H is no slouch but I think it’s right on the cusp of what the game will max out on most of the time.

After a lot of fiddling round with settings, I’ve found that disabling dynamic resolution and upscaling helps because they appear to be a strain on the CPU, whereas the GPU has room to spare. Crowd density should also be relevant but doesn’t seem to make a huge difference. I hope someone finds a way to balance the CPU / GPU load more efficiently, because I can imagine a lot of people on PC are going to have a tough time even on decent hardware. It would have been nice if Bethesda had emphasised that upgrading your GPU on a PC with a middling CPU is going to do nothing for performance.

[Animalmother]

I've had a few stutters on the console but nothing major. It seems to happen mostly when exploring the areas around settlements. I had the game freeze on a loading screen once but it fixed itself and was fine then.

Apparently there's already a community patch in the works to fix issues on PC.

[Sly Boots]

Lost an entire day to this today (two days, technically, if you include the nightmare we had yesterday trying to install my new SSD - lesson learned, always read the instructions first kids ).

Played the intro, first planet and pretty much spent the rest of the day in New Atlantis, doing some quests, getting a bunch more to do elsewhere, and exploring the city as much as possible - was level 7 with 25k-odd in the bank by the time I left, wearing a beastly space suit set you find in Constellation's basement, a rare armour-piercing pistol and an epic shotgun I found in a crate near the start of the game, so feeling pretty ready to face the galaxy now lol.

I haven't seen a way yet to do anything with ship-building (or buying) or base-building yet, but maybe that will get introduced as I start to follow the main story now (heading to Cydonia next)?

[Wrathbone]

Near the landing pad in cities (including New Atlantis) there will be a starship technician who hangs out near the yellow Trade Authority terminal. If you talk to him you can buy, sell and modify ships.

Be warned - if you modify a ship or change your home ship (i.e. your active one), ALL items from the ship you’re modifying (or the ship you’re changing from your home ship) will be dumped into the cargo hold. That includes anything you’ve placed in weapon crates as well as all the random junk. Can’t wait for a mod to sort that out.

Oh, and avoid placing things on weapon racks. Weapon crates are fine (or any storage box), but items will randomly appear or disappear on racks at the moment.

[pappaduck]

I'm really into it now, spent a good 7 hours or so playing yesterday in between attempting to make carnitas. It's a proper RPG, it almost always feels like there's a choice that fits your character, the ground combat is engaging if hampered by the encumbrance mechanic which I feel is a little too strict. It's hard to get your brain out of the "pick up everything that isn't tied down" and the looting mechanics are hampered by the controller friendly menus.

I chose the "Space Scoundrel" class which favours persuasion and pistols and there's been loads of opportunities to use both. The Freestar Collective having a strong space cowboy vibe means I've now got some awesome looking revolvers to blast away with when I inevitably fail a charisma check.

[Wrathbone]

I've done the Freestar Rangers questline and most of the Ryujin Industries faction too - both are great fun and very different. The Rangers missions effectively make you a wild west space sherriff, whereas Ryujin is the corporate espionage lifestyle that Cyberpunk never quite delivered on with the Corpo background. While the mechanics in missions are often fairly basic, the roleplaying and sense of engagement is excellent. Every time Ryujin asked me to edge just a little bit further over the line, I could feel my morals wavering in the face of greater rewards. Later missions have a nice degree of freedom in how you handle them too, and the game accommodated my choice (with narrative responses) to abandon a stealthy approach and go for the gun-toting maniac route instead. Lost my bonus though!

[Sly Boots]

Can't believe I missed the Star Scoundrel class! I went in trying to role-play as Han Solo (creating the most generic videogame white bloke in the character creator in the process ), and ended up choosing the Space Trucker class as the closest I thought I could get... which while technically correct feels a bit understated.

I have to say though, one thing I'm not a massive fan of is locking essential skills behind perk points, stuff like sneaking and lockpicking in particular... at level 7 and probably a dozen hours into the game I'm only now feeling comfortable playing with my traditional Beth playstyle, and I still haven't felt able to put anything into the combat tree Despite that, I did feel a bit of a badass taking down a level 10 terrormorph immediately after the tutorial 'dungeon' when I was still only level 2

I do prefer the normal ES system of being able to do everything at the start even if you're absolutely crap at it until you've been doing it a while.