While there are many ways to get a boat in Starfield, if you know how to take advantage of the opportunity, you can get your hands on a great one early on.

Starships are among the most expensive assets in Starfield. One streamer has figured out a surprisingly simple way to command a mighty ship worth over 150,000 credits. Of course, building a ship from scratch is also a rewarding experience. But there’s nothing wrong with taking the occasional shortcut, especially if the parts earned from said shortcut go into building the player’s next starship.

Unlike previous Bethesda titles, ship development is just as important as weapon and armour development in Starfield.

Streamer Blue Thunder shared a simple way for players to acquire a powerful battleship early on, at no personal cost. To do so, they must make a gravity jump to the Cheyenne system, where the Freestar Collective’s capital, Akila, is located. Although the Freestar Collective is an exciting faction in Starfield for any aspiring outlaw or space rogue, the target, in this case, is Wellish, one of Montara’s moons. Landing near its abandoned bionics laboratory, Starfield players can trigger an event in which a ship leaves the surface flying overhead before a second pirate ship lands in the same direction nearby.

Players need to keep an eye on this pirate ship, as the key to success is approaching it without being spotted by the pirates. If you quit stealth before boarding the ship, the ship will leave the surface, and players will eventually come up empty-handed.

Once the entire crew has been liquidated, Starfield players can move into the pilot’s seat, pay a small fee to register the ship in their name, and enjoy the benefits of a fully equipped armoury atop a powerful new ship.

An important caveat of this method is that it relies on a random event. While this does mean that players do not necessarily have to rely on a location to acquire a starship, it is also a random event. But there is also no guarantee that the ship will spawn in Wellish. Fortunately, the business of surveying planets in Starfield gives plenty of reasons to explore Settled Systems, and players will surely encounter the event sooner or later.

Smarter AI? Get modding!

A recently released Starfield mod promises to significantly overhaul the game’s artificial intelligence significantly, making it smarter in combat and more realistic in stealth.

This mod is called Experimental Combat and Stealth AI Overhauls. It was created by Nexus Mods user NickMillion, a veteran modder best known as the author of several famous Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord mods, which together boast over 300,000 downloads.

The developer’s latest project introduces dozens of modifications to Starfield AI to make enemies smarter in combat, allowing them to use cover and group tactics to take advantage of the player and their peers’ numerical advantage.

The changes also apply to friendly characters. This will make them more useful in combat and minimise the likelihood of Starfield NPC rescue attempts having tragicomic outcomes. NickMillion’s mod, currently at version 1.4, also makes the game’s AI more realistic during stealth stages. Most notably by giving enemies actual object permanence. This prevents them from calling off a player’s search within seconds of consuming a non-lethal bullet. As well as preventing them from even noticing their friends dropping dead around them.

A final category of modifications included in the mod significantly increases weapon damage while reducing the HP bonus the protagonist and all other characters receive from levelling up.

These changes will consequently make the fight more ruthless and realistic. They also prevent the game from turning the enemy and the protagonist into a bullet sponge at higher levels. Starfield only recalculates the protagonist’s life stock as you level up. The HP modifications for the protagonist only take effect when the player advances to the next level by installing the mod. Similarly, the mod must be removed and re-levelled to restore saved changes.

As with the majority of the game’s existing mod selection, using this modification will stop achievement progression. However, this is pretty easy to fix. The online community has already released several mods that reactivate Starfield achievements.

Source: YouTube, NickMillion / NexusMods