Starfield Player Spends 180 Hours Surveying Every Planet
07.10.2023 - 11:55
/ thegamer.com
Starfield has a vast galaxy to explore, but most of it is empty. Only a handful of planets and systems are handcrafted like past Bethesda games, the others use procedural generation and often serve as spots for resource gathering and base building, rather than questing. But that hasn't stopped DoomZero from fully surveying over 1,000 planets, meaning that they found and scanned every landmark, creature, and resource on each.
This took them around 180 hours (or 72 watches of 2001: A Space Odyssey), which in turn brought them up to a staggering level 130. And while Bethesda touted that the game would have 1,000 planets, DoomZero surveyed 1,694. Fully surveying the galaxy didn't require landing on each and every planet, but they still planted their boots on the ground of an impressive 1,441.
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Those are ridiculously high numbers that were evidently time-consuming, but funnily enough, there are two more planets to survey that are bugged right now.
"One has an ocean biome creature that doesn't spawn and another has a swamp creature that has a bugged spawn because of there not being enough water," DoomZero said. "Masada 3 is the planet that has the ocean biome that doesn't spawn. Beta Marae 1 is the planet where there is fauna in the wetlands that can't spawn. Charybdis 2 has a flying fauna that spawns into the world invisible, but if you go into an area they are supposed to be, quicksave and then load - they become visible and scannable."
The majority of XP earned in this playthrough was from surveying, which means that if you want to reach high levels before tackling the story, exploration is the way to go. It just takes a long, long time. Understandably, DoomZero isn't ready to throw it all away, so they're swearing off NG+. Otherwise, it means doing it all over again... all 1,600 planets, all 180 hours.
In that time, while surveying the entirety of Starfield, they scanned 807 flora and 794 fauna, while docking at space stations 86 times. It's a lengthy feat, but DoomZero says it was made faster by going straight for the surveying skills the second they levelled up. I can't imagine how long it would take without them.
If might sound boring, a sentiment shared by some commenters, but DoomZero claims it was a chill experience and that they spent most of it "rewatching some Dimension 20". That's a Dungeons & Dragons show held by game master Brennan Lee Mulligan. Perfect podcast material, then.
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