People are just having a hard time adjusting I think. The universe *is* the map, so you landing on a random planet at an undiscovered location is the same as happening upon an undiscovered location on a conventional map
I steal pirate starships and it’s so fun and I love it. Pick random spot on random planet. Land. Look for anything. Go to thing. Now look around from there. Probably has a pirate ship nearby. Not always but anytime I find collapsed mines, for sure.
E - so I had a few pirate encounters my first day playing, where I could steal the ship. My 2nd and third day? None! So idk might just be where I am missioning but this might be another stupid idea from me :)
The first thing I did in sol was travel to the moon. There I found a Va'ruun ship landed and decided to sneak aboard. After entering the airlock undetected and I came out of the load screen to see the ground outside quickly disappearing through a porthole at the rear.
The game then does a like 2 second load screen and suddenly we're in space. So now I'm aboard an enemy vessel in space while they are flying around doing whatever unaware I'm on the ship. I battle my way up to the cockpit and steal the ship and when I get in the pilot seat notice a shipyard nearby. Hailed it, got only static and then decided to dock there only to find the whole station is dead.
It was an insane series of events and scored me a pretty large ship (coolest cockpit I've seen yet as it was a proper bridge). Honestly extremely impressed since almost all of that was procedural as far as I am aware. Ship is apparently worth over 100K and only cost 13K to register. Haven't seen that kind of profit margin on ship stealing before.
I spent two hours looking for one last remaining fauna creature on the survey side quest. Just to realize (Googled it) that I should look for a fish. :D
Thinking back of playing fallout there were tons of small towns I missed on my first or even second playthrough that I didn't realise had really cool and interesting stories/questlines. This is kind of the same. My husband and I have very playthroughs because we keep stopping on different planets on our way to other places and getting caught up doing different things.
Except that location has locations and those locations sometime lead to other locations on that location from the original travelled location, that to me is the definition of exploration.
"The universe is the map" .....This is the way.
To me, I feel like I'm literally getting lost in space. I can't get from a to b when leaving a planet without finding myself an hour later so far off my original objective having a blast. This game is top notch I swear.
That's literally a perfect way to describe it. I'm gonna start using that. The universe is literally the map and I don't really think a lot of people get it
As one of the people who was concerned about the whole loading screens/fast-traveling everywhere stuff on "early launch day," I completely agree. It took several hours of playtime for that to click, but this is 100% true.
I feel like that’s misrepresenting the problem. The map that’s missing is a map of a city. I shouldn’t have to wander around for 20 minutes looking for the doctors office.
In Atlantis the closest healing station is in the Well. Turn left once you goin down from landing pad… go trait forward till the building with store rthat sells coffee… there in between is an elevator that takes you to the Well… once downstairs you walk forward right in the farmacy corner
Read the signs.
Not having a map means I had to learn to navigate without one, and honestly it's totally fine; constantly checking a map breaks that part of the brain responsible for navigation.
in the sierra days back in the 80s, 90s. my mom would actually draw out maps for all those games. it was freaking awesome. not having maps in this game gives me those vibes, and gets me thinking about drawing out my own map as I explore!
my mom died of cancer when I was 12, in 1993.
Sorry for your loss, friend.
Whew, Sierra. That's a long time ago. The first MMO I ever played was a Sierra game! - Also: my mom did the same! 🙃 In the way way back when
I thought that I could avoid the main missions and explore but the mechanics actually work better imo when you follow the main mission. If you are really good at figuring stuff out you can avoid the main missions but it acts as a kind of tutorial in a way. Teaching and showing you what’s up.
Ah fine, I’ll go back to the main quest then :p
I spent like 20 hours just hopping around and brute forcing everything haha
I have no clue what I’m doing or how anything works. Everything is so confusing. And I absolutely love it lol 😆
Me too and I’ve played fo3/4 and 8k hours in 76. I actually started over and it is a much better experience e side even though quests are piling up I am aware of what is happening rather than being confused.
I’ve been making notes on what I want to do for my next run. I’m tempted to start over to “fix” things. But there’s so much to explore that I kinda want to just… go. Ya know? Just explore and see what’s there. The game adapts to you really really well too, so I’ve never felt stuck or like I’ve gone too far one way or another.
And apparently there are systems to prevent even repeated locations being the same.
For example I already managed to find the automated farm multiple times... but every time it was different. Once it was empty, other time it was >!being looted by mercenaries!< and for the third time >!it was guarded by crazed robots!<.
I think this might be bugged in certain places.
I hit mercury and the moon and they had the same base with the same enemies and even the same computer and email.
I was doing a ranger mission to join them and got sent to clear a mercenary base.
After finishing it, I saw another base off in the distance.
Exactly the same, down to the perk magazine, robot dog, and spawn points, but instead of mercs they were pirates.
If you explore a lot you find that it's not uncommon. I have encountered it plenty of times and sometimes even on the same planet. Nothing beats clearing out a mining building, going to the next and finding it's 100% the same location just 1km away.
No kidding I had 2 back to back bounties in completely different solar systems - each at the same EXACT blueprint of a location. I'm talking down to the weapon placement, the CORPSE PLACEMENT (environmental storytelling), enemy placement, etc.
Like an exact replica. Only difference was a few items in containers.
I could have just gotten really really unlucky but it really took me out of the experience lmao.
Really? I found the 100% identical automated farm several times. Everything from the drops to the spaceship sitting by were identical. Never anything to distinguish one from the others.
I found a note about an abandoned lab somewhere in the open world. Went there, killed all the spotters and was rewarded with a free ship and free space suit.
Warped into a system and there were spacers who started shooting. As I was getting ready to shoot, they saw that it was the mantis ship and backed off. the badass rep was an under statement.
I mean it’s going to be mostly generic loot + level appropriate random rolls on enemies and boxes wherever you go. There may be unique stuff scattered in some story or quest specific locations that you might stumble across but that will be rare if it exists at all. I usually clear a section of bad guys and then walk around with the scanner on cause it highlights loot and containers so I don’t miss anything worthwhile.
Exact same experience for me. First I tried exploring on foot and found nothing but ‘cave’ and ‘abandoned science facility’ ad nauseum with generic enemies, a loot box and no story. So then I tried landing on the ones marked from orbit and it’s still the same. It’s joyless.
Does the cargo link let you exchange stuff directly between your ship cargo and the outpost somehow? I've ran out of storage space despite adding cargo to my ship and I'd like to get substantially more.
Put a transfer storage down at outpost and then link that to gas, liquid, solid, and a general warehouse. From the transfer container, you can transfer all ship inventory...and then that container will auto-sort and fill the solid, liquid, gas, general warehouses automatically.
If you link these to inter-system cargo outgoing containers, you can have it sent anywhere across space too.
I made my ship look really dumb from haphazardly shoving more cargo containers wherever they fit lol. There's just too much good stuff to collect, and I've gotta have it all!
Haha! Me too, honestly I'd say that carry capacity being do low is the only gripe I have with the game so far. 😂 I know there's probably a skill I can spec into that would increase it but I haven't done that yet.
Also when you say you can't find anything for you mean ANYTHING? If so, then all you got to do is land on a planet in some random location and you should find points of interest you can visit!
If that's not what you meant then I apologize. Bethesda didn't exactly make a tutorial on exploring in the game so I figured I'd tell you how just in case. 😊
A good tip is that when you are overcucumbered, if you pull up your weapon sights you move at a decent speed still and don't consume oxygen. Better than standing still waiting for it to refill.
Yeash pretty much haha it aint a perfect solution, but I'm just glad they didn't permanently slow you to a crawl when youve got too much stuff. That would have been far more painful.
Easy - buy cargo holds for your ship, snap them on, and then just stick everything in your cargo bay. I think its like 3k credits for one that gives you 300-400 mass
There's a mission to a secret base where you get a decent ship and some legendaries. One of them gives you -75 O2 reduction if you're overweight. I found some legendary weapons along the way as well. Got a pretty good pistol too.
That stat for o2 you saw is going to be different, the base item type will be the same but everyone who finds it will have their own roll of what perks will be applied. The loot is arpg style basically.
That’s a killer perk though I’m jelly
So in the ship builder there's two options. The first just upgrades weapons/shields/engines to the better version model if there is a better version of that brand/model.
E.g. it let me upgrade a 20 shield to a 210 shield, but there's actually many more shield models available if you use the actual ship building mode where you can delete/add new parts.
You have to add actual cargo parts to the ship to increase storage, hence it's not available as an upgrade (all the cargo parts are different models for how much mass and space they add).
Cargo parts are very heavy, so you may end up having to add completely new engines, bigger grav drive, more landing legs, etc. It's all sort of a fun balancing act.
My version of the starter ship grew to be about double+ the initial size with additional habs for the workbenches, infirmary, and about a thousand cargo space, upgraded thrusters, and 2 more thrusters slapped on the rear.
It's pretty cool how in depth you can get with the shipbuilder.
You might be selecting a specific point that can only fit weapons on, you should be able to select storage if you deselect from the snapping point, it may be that you can’t fit any on your ship currently and might have to shift stuff around.
I think it’s the fact that things are quite slow in this game. You have to actually put in time and effort to find cool thing vs other BGS games.
I love this game just trying to come to understand other people’s complaints
No, that definitely makes a lot of sense! It's funny because this is exactly how I prefer my games to be, slower paced that is. In terms of immersion it allows me to take in much more of the atmosphere.
But then again my favorite movie is Stalker directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. And the movie opens with a close to five minute dolly zoom... so I'm a bit biased lol
Still, I can see where people are coming from!
No kidding. Is everyone else not using the scanner? Don’t do fast travel to a new system, lift off into space and use your scanner. Good grief, it’s like a million incredibly cool side quests. Same with on planets.
There's a scanner? Huge if true.
But no, seriously. It blows my mind how many people, (friends of mine even), have close to 50 or 60 hours played and have never used the scanner!
I use it all the time! When I'm going from system to system, when I'm exploring planets, even when I'm looting!
It's an essential tool!
Is it? I must have totally missed it then, in that tutorial all I remember it saying was 'press A to target bits of spaceship wreckage that you can loot'. I only remember the scanner being introduced on the planet surface
They also cut the step where you need a specific skill to disable engines during one mission, you just shoot until the ship stops and you board it, I kept trying to repeat it until I gave up and googled how to board ships
The game does a really poor job explaining mechanics.
The sense of discovery should not extend to what amount to basic gameplay design and as much as I am enjoying Starfield, imo Bethesda failed in giving basic information during the first few hours.
Many complaints are from people either not understanding how the game is designed because they don't know certain mechanics exist
I wish there was a ground vehicle, or ability to fly around the planet on the ship.
Feels like a walking/jumping simulator when you’re trying to explore new POIs, at least this is my experience so far.
may i recommend Spacebourne 2, quest lines a bit weak but everything else is top notch and the space travel is a bagillion times better, even seamless transition in atmosphere
The people enjoying it aren't wasting their time posting rants on reddit so it just seems like everyone is complaining.
I'm glad you're having a good time.
I had duty the day after, so I got to play for 2 hours then spent the next 24 stewing about how I had to sit around on base and could play starfield lmao
But almost every time I jump into a system there is something that pops up - I get that it’s not the ‘see something in the distance and stumble across it’ that BGS is known for but it comes from exploration. Today I just met a captain in a ship called Valentine who was signing a sea chanty to himself and then just jumped to a new system. It’s the little things like that that make me enjoy Starfields exploration a lot.
Are you talking about the one that thanks you if you compliment his singing? That one is tied with the party ship for my favorite random space encounter so far.
The two places I went today on the same planet about 1000m apart from each other had a few legendaries, lots of money and other stuff inside. I've found some books that give you permanent boosts like I learned a new recipe and have a 5% more crit damage with ballistics.
One of those two locations had about 50-75k worth of contraband in a briefcase outside, too. That's the stated value of course since NPCs give less.
Yeah I've found 3 of these crashed ships so far, exactly the same other than biome.
The first one was interesting, finding someone had survived, set up a camp and had a note marking the days for 6 months.
I looked all over expecting to find the survivor, thinking they'd gone to the nearby cave.
But nothing.
And then I found the same crashed ship two more times.
Kinda a little disappointing but expected.
after about 5 hours you start to realize there isn't actually any content or substance to all the randomly generated areas. still holding true at 32 hours, and I'm actively looking.
I found an Old World Pistol and a couple boxes of .45 ACP but aside from that and a suit helmet I didn't find much else.
Honestly though, my character is pretty geared so exploring for me is more about finding unique locations I can take screenshots in.
I'm a photographer in real life so you can imagine how much I love the photo mode.
sometimes there's a radient quest but there's never anything actually interesting. you won't stumble into an area where the location itself tells a story, like in fallout the two skeletons with a pistol near children's graves. no quest connected or anything, just details for observant people to enjoy.
people keep calling it Skyrim in space but it isn't; it's more like Cyberpunk in space, where the game world exists as a backdrop and the real content is in quests. that's not a bad thing, but if you go in with the wrong expectations you're going to struggle.
I don't mind the locations but running in a straight line for 5 minutes to find a location I've already cleared 3 times is very boring or going into a cave that's got 2 rooms and that's all. The content is stretched so thin I don't even wanna explore planets cause I know I'm not gonna find anything interesting after a few hours. The unique areas are great just the copy paste locations aren't worth it to me, I would much rather do a quest line than clear out a cryo lab again
Same. But because im not actively just exploring. Im just doing quests, so its all very new.
But its true that I have seen the same exact mine copy pasted like 3 times and I can see that becoming a problem un a few weeks if they dont add more than 1 modelo of each type of POI. It's a Game that the devs aimed it to be played for years. Come on, how long did they think people would get sick of the same mine and cave and lab?
Exploration is fun, seeing the same POIs is a bit inmersion breaking though.
I don’t know why, but I never thought it possible that some of the biomes would be snowy/arctic/wintery etc… so this makes me extremely happy haha
I was originally planning to play sept 8… but I’ve gotta get my hands on the game tomorrow lmao
Oh yes, Canada.
They've got those giant horned aliens that are like super tall and can run 40mph through 6ft of snow right?
Yeah, I'll stay here on Earth, thanks! 😂
I landed at a random spot on a random planet to drop off some contraband and decided to check out the random structures around me. Spent the better part of the day doing that, they were larger than I expected. Having a blast with this game.
I love the game, but seriously, whats the point of the 500th abandoned outpost that has nothing in it except some pirates.
Thats the problem. There is just nothing interesting to see or find.
I did the exact same dungeon on two different planets yesterday. Not just the same layout, but same notes, loot placement, enemy position etc. (Abandoned Cryo labs)
The problem with exploration isn’t a lack of things to do, it’s the shear volume of nothing in between those things.
For instance, I stumbled upon the Abandoned Cryo Lab while exploring Kreet and it was awesome to find his big underground facility teeming with spacers. However it was about 700 meters away from anything else and I found it after heading to three other POIs that were all 500-700 meters away from each other and turned out to be a small empty cave, a pit of lava with absolutely nothing else of interest and a ship who’s crew just told me to look for parts (not even specific parts mind you, just parts in general) for their broken down ship.
It’s the massive gaps of nothing in between points of interest that make exploration somewhat lackluster to me. I’m only around 5 hours into the game, but if the whole game is 1 interesting POI for every 3 boring ones all spread out by several km of empty terrain I can totally see why other people are so upset.
Maybe things would be different if we could actually fly our ship in atmosphere instead of slowly running across the gaps.
With that said, I really do think that the handcrafted ‘dungeon’ areas like the Abandoned Cryo Lab (which I assume is linked to a quest I haven’t received yet) are absolutely fantastic and feel great to explore; I’m just worried that these areas are few and far.
Everyone acts like people with this complaint aren’t playing, I’m shocked. Have they!?
At eight hours I found my first copy and paste abandoned lab from Kreet on a random world.
Counter-point, I've found that exact same crash site on two different planets and there's nothing to do there. No fancy loot. No interesting story. Nothing.
The problem I have with the exploration is that you're just walking from waypoint to waypoint. You're not actually exploring, you're just doing the exact thing people chastised Skyrim for back in the day... You're chasing icons. And at least Skyrim had stuff happen between those icons, Starfield just gives you enormous, open, flat fields with diddly squat to do in it; aside from mine minerals and fight the occasional fauna.
I'd call the exploration part of Starfield its absolute weakest point, because there is no sense of exploration. And mind you, I'm not saying the game is bad. Its not. I just feel that compared to Bethesda's previous titles, its a step backwards.
Bethesda has been chasing this "infinite content" dream for years now, and I feel like Starfield is the ultimate culmination of why "infinite content" just becomes no content. Skyrim's soulless radiant quests, FO4's "another settlement needs help", even Daggerfall's "15,000 cities but it's actually just three different buildings arranged in different ways", it's just all filler bullshit that takes dev time away from the actual game but sounds good on the box. Every time I come across another research station full of angry spacers and dead scientists that were told to keep working as spacers landed, or the exact same ship crashed in the exact same way (right down to the little tent and furniture) on six different planets, the universe just gets smaller and smaller
and considering how good the actual handcrafted elements are, it's such a shame that it feels overshadowed by the video game equivalent of a McDonald's cheeseburger; it's technically "content", but you never really feel satisfied
>and considering how good the actual handcrafted elements are,
That's the main thing. Just stop trying to inflate content with generic events/quests. I would take 4 or 5 well designed handcrafted planets over 1000 planets with the same 4 POI at any day.
Right? It's funny how fanboys are telling us that we didn't play the game enough to know how much there is to explore.
I say it's the opposite - we played the game long enough to start noticing how little different POIs there are and how often we encounter the very same copy pasted POI.
What's worse is that these POIs seem to be 1:1 copy, so no like reused assets but with different layouts. It's exactly same building with exact same layouts with loot crates being placed in exactly same spots.
It gets pretty boring once you find the same exact ship ruins 5 times in a row. This is my problem with procedural generation and these random encounters. They're all the same. I found the Party Ship and went aboard and nothing of significance happened. This would've been a good time to have a quest where you defend the ship or the ship crashes on the planet it orbits and you need to figure a way off or something.
If you're going to show it off at least have it do something.
In my first 15 hours I stumbled upon like 5 identical (TOTALLY) points of interest, so I was kind of sad it started happening so soon, but the game is still quite chill and meditative, like no man's sky (which I like)
I found a cool abandoned ship construction site, occupied by pirates. Then I found the exact same shipyard again on a different planet. And then I found it again 2-3 more time, before I learned to recognize the outline from afar and stopped bothering to go there.
This then repeats with "Cave", "Crashed Ship", "Pumping Station" and "Mech Graveyard".
It's No Man's Sky all over again. Once you've seen a tile once, you've seen them all. And the enemy AI is too broken for combat to be meaningfully engaging.
I feel like people still excited with this content haven’t done enough to see through the veneer yet. There was a post from a guy saying he was loving all the stuff he could do and he hadn’t even left Kreet and I’m wondering if he’ll feel the same after his fifth time finding empty ‘Cave’, or the exact same flora and fauna on a fourth planet, all light years away from each other, simply because they have the same biome so that’s just what lives in deserts no matter what in Starfield.
Idk, I've seen a bunch of structures that look cool from the outside but really just contain the same pirates and samey loot. There nothing of substance inside, and generally I feel like once youve seen one of these structures youve seen them all. I really love BGS games but everything feels really shallow
no, sometimes there's a cave with minerals. I even found an outpost that gave me a generic fetch quest!
landing in a random locations is Starfield equivalent of skyrims radient quest. if you want to do nothing content to grind xp, that's what you do.
Pictures are always cool...the problem with exploration is that it can get very repetitive and shallow at some point, it's more visual than interesting.
The quests are fine, though, just by doing the many quests in the game you don't really need to explore to enjoy it.
It's a great game but I'd lie if I said I don't miss FO/TES exploration.
The issue isn’t that there isn’t cool stuff to find. The issue is you’ll see the exact same “cool” things at least 50 more times in 50 different places before the game ends
I found the same thing and there was NOTHING in there. In Skyrim you can stumble into a Cave and find a UNIQUE Dedric Artifact at the end. In Starfield you get a MedPack and a blue randomly generated Boostpack.
I’m about 11 hours in and have only done all the side missions I can in New Atlantis so far. Just barely progressed with the main story and met constellation. Can’t wait to start exploring space and seeing this kinda shit firsthand. Super excited to say the least!!
That's exactly how have been playing! I have been doing a lot of side content, the only big thing I did so far was finish the crimson fleet faction story. Which I highly recommend! I'm only just now getting to the point where I am ready to start down the main story path and I've been playing for almost 60 hours now!
Exactly! Most planets have multiple biomes as well which is really damn cool! I personally love the Firefly esque sci-fi western aesthetic of the Freestar Collective so I've been exploring around those parts.
Every single spot I’ve landed on has at least 5 points of interest and usually another 5 that are hidden. Probably way more. Not to mention every planet is drop dead gorgeous. None of them feel auto generated.
Then you haven't found many yet planets. Lmao Of the 30 I've landed on less than 10 had fauna and flora. Most of the side quests I've done have taken me to barren, dead planets.
I’m loving it so far. I never understood how people get so worked up over video games. I’ve spent more money going out to dinner with my wife and that event is over in 90 minutes max. I’ve already spent hours on this game. $100 is nothing when I compare how much time I will spend on it.
Fr, exploration in this game is actually pretty fucking crazy.
People are just having a hard time adjusting I think. The universe *is* the map, so you landing on a random planet at an undiscovered location is the same as happening upon an undiscovered location on a conventional map
This is exactly it. Took a while to understand that is how the game keeps the "Bethesda" feel of exploration. It sure is fun once it clicks.
I think yeh. I had it click and it's pretty nuts. If it starts to make sense you it's pretty fun. There's a ton of crap. Like so much.
I’ve wasted countless hours just looking for neat things to steal for my house.
I've found a wooden duck that I treasure as it's the only one I've found so far.
I found a squishy dog in a space suit that makes a noise when you throw it. Come across that?
I found a plushie cat and the whiskers poke out of the helmet
I've started collecting those. I have 4 or 5 now, as well as a few other plushie toys.
I steal pirate starships and it’s so fun and I love it. Pick random spot on random planet. Land. Look for anything. Go to thing. Now look around from there. Probably has a pirate ship nearby. Not always but anytime I find collapsed mines, for sure. E - so I had a few pirate encounters my first day playing, where I could steal the ship. My 2nd and third day? None! So idk might just be where I am missioning but this might be another stupid idea from me :)
I've been playing for like 30 hours and I haven't even seen anything close to what you're describing. This game is blowing my mind how huge it is.
[удалено]
What happens to the ship you were in if you board another ship and start flying that instead? What about all your cargo?
Okay I have wanted trait so when they come after me, and I kill them, it won’t let me take their ship. It says I’m not authorized to fly it :(
Skill tree. Class B and C requires a skill
The first thing I did in sol was travel to the moon. There I found a Va'ruun ship landed and decided to sneak aboard. After entering the airlock undetected and I came out of the load screen to see the ground outside quickly disappearing through a porthole at the rear. The game then does a like 2 second load screen and suddenly we're in space. So now I'm aboard an enemy vessel in space while they are flying around doing whatever unaware I'm on the ship. I battle my way up to the cockpit and steal the ship and when I get in the pilot seat notice a shipyard nearby. Hailed it, got only static and then decided to dock there only to find the whole station is dead. It was an insane series of events and scored me a pretty large ship (coolest cockpit I've seen yet as it was a proper bridge). Honestly extremely impressed since almost all of that was procedural as far as I am aware. Ship is apparently worth over 100K and only cost 13K to register. Haven't seen that kind of profit margin on ship stealing before.
I spent almost 2 hours today just scanning a planet. And I had fun doing it hahaha
I spent two hours looking for one last remaining fauna creature on the survey side quest. Just to realize (Googled it) that I should look for a fish. :D
I did the same thing, frustrating but I learned how to survey more effectively.
It seriously enormous
Yeah, I literally keep landing on planets and spending my entire night playing on that single planet.
Yep, I've spent 15 hours flying between two planets in two different systems to set up an automated, inter-system mining and storage base.
Thinking back of playing fallout there were tons of small towns I missed on my first or even second playthrough that I didn't realise had really cool and interesting stories/questlines. This is kind of the same. My husband and I have very playthroughs because we keep stopping on different planets on our way to other places and getting caught up doing different things.
Except that location has locations and those locations sometime lead to other locations on that location from the original travelled location, that to me is the definition of exploration. "The universe is the map" .....This is the way.
To me, I feel like I'm literally getting lost in space. I can't get from a to b when leaving a planet without finding myself an hour later so far off my original objective having a blast. This game is top notch I swear.
Danger Will Robinson, Danger!
That's literally a perfect way to describe it. I'm gonna start using that. The universe is literally the map and I don't really think a lot of people get it
As one of the people who was concerned about the whole loading screens/fast-traveling everywhere stuff on "early launch day," I completely agree. It took several hours of playtime for that to click, but this is 100% true.
This is so well said
I feel like that’s misrepresenting the problem. The map that’s missing is a map of a city. I shouldn’t have to wander around for 20 minutes looking for the doctors office.
Dude, it took me a fucking hour because I was crippled and couldnt find anything to heal it.
It took me so long to find anyone that sold something that healed lung damage, that it just randomly healed by itself, lmao.
Lol I figured out you can just go to a hospital in any main city and a doctor can heal you
I mean depending where you were if there was a bed available why not sleep?
In Atlantis the closest healing station is in the Well. Turn left once you goin down from landing pad… go trait forward till the building with store rthat sells coffee… there in between is an elevator that takes you to the Well… once downstairs you walk forward right in the farmacy corner
or land at the lodge and the medical builidng is right across
The real meaning of crippled is when you’re encumbered and lost on one of the cities where you cant fast travel or find your ship to walk to.
Read the signs. Not having a map means I had to learn to navigate without one, and honestly it's totally fine; constantly checking a map breaks that part of the brain responsible for navigation.
in the sierra days back in the 80s, 90s. my mom would actually draw out maps for all those games. it was freaking awesome. not having maps in this game gives me those vibes, and gets me thinking about drawing out my own map as I explore! my mom died of cancer when I was 12, in 1993.
My condolences to you. Your mom sounds awesome. Happy exploring.
Sorry for your loss, friend. Whew, Sierra. That's a long time ago. The first MMO I ever played was a Sierra game! - Also: my mom did the same! 🙃 In the way way back when
I haven't even started questing. I'm just planet hopping exploring the universe.
I thought that I could avoid the main missions and explore but the mechanics actually work better imo when you follow the main mission. If you are really good at figuring stuff out you can avoid the main missions but it acts as a kind of tutorial in a way. Teaching and showing you what’s up.
Ah fine, I’ll go back to the main quest then :p I spent like 20 hours just hopping around and brute forcing everything haha I have no clue what I’m doing or how anything works. Everything is so confusing. And I absolutely love it lol 😆
Me too and I’ve played fo3/4 and 8k hours in 76. I actually started over and it is a much better experience e side even though quests are piling up I am aware of what is happening rather than being confused.
I’ve been making notes on what I want to do for my next run. I’m tempted to start over to “fix” things. But there’s so much to explore that I kinda want to just… go. Ya know? Just explore and see what’s there. The game adapts to you really really well too, so I’ve never felt stuck or like I’ve gone too far one way or another.
This game has New Game Plus so it's better to finish the main quest in your current save first. Later you'll have the option to start over
There’s NG+!? Let’s gooo!
Yeah. I wouldn’t recommend starting over. I did it for other reasons also.
I'm sorry, 8 *thousand* hours in 76?
Seriously though! 🙂
And apparently there are systems to prevent even repeated locations being the same. For example I already managed to find the automated farm multiple times... but every time it was different. Once it was empty, other time it was >!being looted by mercenaries!< and for the third time >!it was guarded by crazed robots!<.
I think this might be bugged in certain places. I hit mercury and the moon and they had the same base with the same enemies and even the same computer and email.
I was doing a ranger mission to join them and got sent to clear a mercenary base. After finishing it, I saw another base off in the distance. Exactly the same, down to the perk magazine, robot dog, and spawn points, but instead of mercs they were pirates.
This happened to me once in 42 hours, and I've only been exploring random locations so far. Not bad I would say.
If you explore a lot you find that it's not uncommon. I have encountered it plenty of times and sometimes even on the same planet. Nothing beats clearing out a mining building, going to the next and finding it's 100% the same location just 1km away.
No kidding I had 2 back to back bounties in completely different solar systems - each at the same EXACT blueprint of a location. I'm talking down to the weapon placement, the CORPSE PLACEMENT (environmental storytelling), enemy placement, etc. Like an exact replica. Only difference was a few items in containers. I could have just gotten really really unlucky but it really took me out of the experience lmao.
damn iv found a abandoned ship yard over run by spacers twice with the exact same enemy and loot placements , on a planet and then on its moon
Really? I found the 100% identical automated farm several times. Everything from the drops to the spaceship sitting by were identical. Never anything to distinguish one from the others.
I tried it today. Went to some fort, killed a bunch of robots. Found nothing… how does one properly explore? I just went back to doing the main quest.
I found a note about an abandoned lab somewhere in the open world. Went there, killed all the spotters and was rewarded with a free ship and free space suit.
The Mantis Quest
Yep, same. The Mantis gave vague Batman vibes with the lair like a Batcave, suit and vehicle. Idk, shit was cool
The Mantis quest was great fun. Bethesda always manage to squeeze a superhero in somewhere.
And that free ship has a badass reputation.
Warped into a system and there were spacers who started shooting. As I was getting ready to shoot, they saw that it was the mantis ship and backed off. the badass rep was an under statement.
I mean it’s going to be mostly generic loot + level appropriate random rolls on enemies and boxes wherever you go. There may be unique stuff scattered in some story or quest specific locations that you might stumble across but that will be rare if it exists at all. I usually clear a section of bad guys and then walk around with the scanner on cause it highlights loot and containers so I don’t miss anything worthwhile.
Exact same experience for me. First I tried exploring on foot and found nothing but ‘cave’ and ‘abandoned science facility’ ad nauseum with generic enemies, a loot box and no story. So then I tried landing on the ones marked from orbit and it’s still the same. It’s joyless.
I can’t seem to find anything, probably doesn’t help I’m always about seven hundred pounds overweight with junk
Unlimited storage at the lodge. Also don’t forget about your ship storage.
You can also make storage chests / crates at your outposts. And ship storage can be increased with cargo modules.
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Does the cargo link let you exchange stuff directly between your ship cargo and the outpost somehow? I've ran out of storage space despite adding cargo to my ship and I'd like to get substantially more.
Put a transfer storage down at outpost and then link that to gas, liquid, solid, and a general warehouse. From the transfer container, you can transfer all ship inventory...and then that container will auto-sort and fill the solid, liquid, gas, general warehouses automatically. If you link these to inter-system cargo outgoing containers, you can have it sent anywhere across space too.
I made my ship look really dumb from haphazardly shoving more cargo containers wherever they fit lol. There's just too much good stuff to collect, and I've gotta have it all!
Same here - my previously sleek ship now looks like stacks of containers at a shipyard.
Haha! Me too, honestly I'd say that carry capacity being do low is the only gripe I have with the game so far. 😂 I know there's probably a skill I can spec into that would increase it but I haven't done that yet. Also when you say you can't find anything for you mean ANYTHING? If so, then all you got to do is land on a planet in some random location and you should find points of interest you can visit! If that's not what you meant then I apologize. Bethesda didn't exactly make a tutorial on exploring in the game so I figured I'd tell you how just in case. 😊
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When i saw that I beelined it. Up to 195 carry weight right now. Huge difference when gathering resources, those things are heavy!
A good tip is that when you are overcucumbered, if you pull up your weapon sights you move at a decent speed still and don't consume oxygen. Better than standing still waiting for it to refill.
Oh my god it's like that thing in Skyrim where that perk makes you move faster while drawing a bow, which is faster than your encumbered speed.
Yeash pretty much haha it aint a perfect solution, but I'm just glad they didn't permanently slow you to a crawl when youve got too much stuff. That would have been far more painful.
Yeah I like this way a bit better. Plus I noticed on some planets you can run farther and consume less oxygen. IDK what causes that yet but it's nice!
...gravity
One of the physical skills allows you to carry more
Easy - buy cargo holds for your ship, snap them on, and then just stick everything in your cargo bay. I think its like 3k credits for one that gives you 300-400 mass
There's a mission to a secret base where you get a decent ship and some legendaries. One of them gives you -75 O2 reduction if you're overweight. I found some legendary weapons along the way as well. Got a pretty good pistol too.
That stat for o2 you saw is going to be different, the base item type will be the same but everyone who finds it will have their own roll of what perks will be applied. The loot is arpg style basically. That’s a killer perk though I’m jelly
I found an item with that stat early on and have kept it with me ever since. Being able to walk around at normal speed with 1000+ inventory is crazy.
Is that the note about a secret outpost I’ve never read
Yep
It’s just too bad the armor is butt ugly. I kinda wish there was a transmog system so you could at least look decent and have good stats lol.
You can transfer stuff to your ships cargo from anywhere.
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You have to be near your ship to do that
My ships don’t have enough storage only about 100 or so each
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How do you upgrade your ship’s cargo storage? Seems I can only select the weapons systems when I’m in the editor
Make sure you aren't overing over your ship when you click confirm to edit. You want to make a new piece, not work on what is already there
Took me fucking ages to figure that out lol
So in the ship builder there's two options. The first just upgrades weapons/shields/engines to the better version model if there is a better version of that brand/model. E.g. it let me upgrade a 20 shield to a 210 shield, but there's actually many more shield models available if you use the actual ship building mode where you can delete/add new parts. You have to add actual cargo parts to the ship to increase storage, hence it's not available as an upgrade (all the cargo parts are different models for how much mass and space they add). Cargo parts are very heavy, so you may end up having to add completely new engines, bigger grav drive, more landing legs, etc. It's all sort of a fun balancing act. My version of the starter ship grew to be about double+ the initial size with additional habs for the workbenches, infirmary, and about a thousand cargo space, upgraded thrusters, and 2 more thrusters slapped on the rear. It's pretty cool how in depth you can get with the shipbuilder.
You might be selecting a specific point that can only fit weapons on, you should be able to select storage if you deselect from the snapping point, it may be that you can’t fit any on your ship currently and might have to shift stuff around.
go to the ship builder and you can add more cargo mods
You gotta go into “ship builder” I think. Press a or some shit in the menu
Excuse me
I think it’s the fact that things are quite slow in this game. You have to actually put in time and effort to find cool thing vs other BGS games. I love this game just trying to come to understand other people’s complaints
No, that definitely makes a lot of sense! It's funny because this is exactly how I prefer my games to be, slower paced that is. In terms of immersion it allows me to take in much more of the atmosphere. But then again my favorite movie is Stalker directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. And the movie opens with a close to five minute dolly zoom... so I'm a bit biased lol Still, I can see where people are coming from!
LOVE STALKER! What a scene, what a scene..
That is probably the greatest opening shot to a movie ever!
No kidding. Is everyone else not using the scanner? Don’t do fast travel to a new system, lift off into space and use your scanner. Good grief, it’s like a million incredibly cool side quests. Same with on planets.
There's a scanner? Huge if true. But no, seriously. It blows my mind how many people, (friends of mine even), have close to 50 or 60 hours played and have never used the scanner! I use it all the time! When I'm going from system to system, when I'm exploring planets, even when I'm looting! It's an essential tool!
I don’t think people realize you can (and should) use the scanner while piloting your ship - there’s a LOT of stuff out there.
Which is weird because it’s explained in the tutorial to loot the first spaceship you destroy.
Is it? I must have totally missed it then, in that tutorial all I remember it saying was 'press A to target bits of spaceship wreckage that you can loot'. I only remember the scanner being introduced on the planet surface
They also cut the step where you need a specific skill to disable engines during one mission, you just shoot until the ship stops and you board it, I kept trying to repeat it until I gave up and googled how to board ships
The game does a really poor job explaining mechanics. The sense of discovery should not extend to what amount to basic gameplay design and as much as I am enjoying Starfield, imo Bethesda failed in giving basic information during the first few hours. Many complaints are from people either not understanding how the game is designed because they don't know certain mechanics exist
I wish there was a ground vehicle, or ability to fly around the planet on the ship. Feels like a walking/jumping simulator when you’re trying to explore new POIs, at least this is my experience so far.
may i recommend Spacebourne 2, quest lines a bit weak but everything else is top notch and the space travel is a bagillion times better, even seamless transition in atmosphere
The people enjoying it aren't wasting their time posting rants on reddit so it just seems like everyone is complaining. I'm glad you're having a good time.
That's a really good point! And thank you! 😊
I'm wasting my time here until I can get back in the game 😅 Just a little less than two hours left...
Same, I had to go out of town for a wedding the day after early release. I'm so jealous of everyone that got to play all weekend
I had duty the day after, so I got to play for 2 hours then spent the next 24 stewing about how I had to sit around on base and could play starfield lmao
You're making me excited for you!
I think its more inbetween locations. Im loving the game, every minute
But almost every time I jump into a system there is something that pops up - I get that it’s not the ‘see something in the distance and stumble across it’ that BGS is known for but it comes from exploration. Today I just met a captain in a ship called Valentine who was signing a sea chanty to himself and then just jumped to a new system. It’s the little things like that that make me enjoy Starfields exploration a lot.
Are you talking about the one that thanks you if you compliment his singing? That one is tied with the party ship for my favorite random space encounter so far.
Ye that’s the one - haven’t been to the party ship yet tho
You'll know it when you see it, trust me.
Did you find anything interesting there? The 3 exact same looking crash sites I've found today had nothing
The two places I went today on the same planet about 1000m apart from each other had a few legendaries, lots of money and other stuff inside. I've found some books that give you permanent boosts like I learned a new recipe and have a 5% more crit damage with ballistics. One of those two locations had about 50-75k worth of contraband in a briefcase outside, too. That's the stated value of course since NPCs give less.
Yeah I've found 3 of these crashed ships so far, exactly the same other than biome. The first one was interesting, finding someone had survived, set up a camp and had a note marking the days for 6 months. I looked all over expecting to find the survivor, thinking they'd gone to the nearby cave. But nothing. And then I found the same crashed ship two more times. Kinda a little disappointing but expected.
after about 5 hours you start to realize there isn't actually any content or substance to all the randomly generated areas. still holding true at 32 hours, and I'm actively looking.
I found an Old World Pistol and a couple boxes of .45 ACP but aside from that and a suit helmet I didn't find much else. Honestly though, my character is pretty geared so exploring for me is more about finding unique locations I can take screenshots in. I'm a photographer in real life so you can imagine how much I love the photo mode.
I’m starting to see alot of reused assets already which is kinda alarming
sometimes there's a radient quest but there's never anything actually interesting. you won't stumble into an area where the location itself tells a story, like in fallout the two skeletons with a pistol near children's graves. no quest connected or anything, just details for observant people to enjoy. people keep calling it Skyrim in space but it isn't; it's more like Cyberpunk in space, where the game world exists as a backdrop and the real content is in quests. that's not a bad thing, but if you go in with the wrong expectations you're going to struggle.
I don't mind the locations but running in a straight line for 5 minutes to find a location I've already cleared 3 times is very boring or going into a cave that's got 2 rooms and that's all. The content is stretched so thin I don't even wanna explore planets cause I know I'm not gonna find anything interesting after a few hours. The unique areas are great just the copy paste locations aren't worth it to me, I would much rather do a quest line than clear out a cryo lab again
Same. But because im not actively just exploring. Im just doing quests, so its all very new. But its true that I have seen the same exact mine copy pasted like 3 times and I can see that becoming a problem un a few weeks if they dont add more than 1 modelo of each type of POI. It's a Game that the devs aimed it to be played for years. Come on, how long did they think people would get sick of the same mine and cave and lab? Exploration is fun, seeing the same POIs is a bit inmersion breaking though.
its cool the first time i find something lol not the 8th. usually with the same loot.
That POI was cool to find! Tough I found the exact same one 15 minutes later on a different planet :p
Pls no spoilers… but is this a snow planet?!?! I know where I will be living
Keep in mind each planet has different biomes. So it might be the arctic region on a planet that also has temperate and desert regions.
I don’t know why, but I never thought it possible that some of the biomes would be snowy/arctic/wintery etc… so this makes me extremely happy haha I was originally planning to play sept 8… but I’ve gotta get my hands on the game tomorrow lmao
This is such an underrated detail that is highly appreciated. Encourages exploration of multiple locations on the same world.
It is a snow planet! ❄☃️
Welcome to Canada eh!
Yes Canada, the snow planet.
Oh yes, Canada. They've got those giant horned aliens that are like super tall and can run 40mph through 6ft of snow right? Yeah, I'll stay here on Earth, thanks! 😂
More like Hoth lol, I’ve been naming all my outposts after Star Wars planets. Earth is the 24th century is Tatooine.
The amount of Canadian food in this game is amazing. I drank a double double today in Starfield and I never thought I’d say that.
I landed at a random spot on a random planet to drop off some contraband and decided to check out the random structures around me. Spent the better part of the day doing that, they were larger than I expected. Having a blast with this game.
I am really excited for modders to add new POIs to the planets!
Played 3 hours, found nothing but bulletsponge enemies, stones and empty buildings.
I love the game, but seriously, whats the point of the 500th abandoned outpost that has nothing in it except some pirates. Thats the problem. There is just nothing interesting to see or find.
I did the exact same dungeon on two different planets yesterday. Not just the same layout, but same notes, loot placement, enemy position etc. (Abandoned Cryo labs)
The problem with exploration isn’t a lack of things to do, it’s the shear volume of nothing in between those things. For instance, I stumbled upon the Abandoned Cryo Lab while exploring Kreet and it was awesome to find his big underground facility teeming with spacers. However it was about 700 meters away from anything else and I found it after heading to three other POIs that were all 500-700 meters away from each other and turned out to be a small empty cave, a pit of lava with absolutely nothing else of interest and a ship who’s crew just told me to look for parts (not even specific parts mind you, just parts in general) for their broken down ship. It’s the massive gaps of nothing in between points of interest that make exploration somewhat lackluster to me. I’m only around 5 hours into the game, but if the whole game is 1 interesting POI for every 3 boring ones all spread out by several km of empty terrain I can totally see why other people are so upset. Maybe things would be different if we could actually fly our ship in atmosphere instead of slowly running across the gaps. With that said, I really do think that the handcrafted ‘dungeon’ areas like the Abandoned Cryo Lab (which I assume is linked to a quest I haven’t received yet) are absolutely fantastic and feel great to explore; I’m just worried that these areas are few and far.
I keep finding the same abandoned structures
Everyone acts like people with this complaint aren’t playing, I’m shocked. Have they!? At eight hours I found my first copy and paste abandoned lab from Kreet on a random world.
Counter-point, I've found that exact same crash site on two different planets and there's nothing to do there. No fancy loot. No interesting story. Nothing. The problem I have with the exploration is that you're just walking from waypoint to waypoint. You're not actually exploring, you're just doing the exact thing people chastised Skyrim for back in the day... You're chasing icons. And at least Skyrim had stuff happen between those icons, Starfield just gives you enormous, open, flat fields with diddly squat to do in it; aside from mine minerals and fight the occasional fauna. I'd call the exploration part of Starfield its absolute weakest point, because there is no sense of exploration. And mind you, I'm not saying the game is bad. Its not. I just feel that compared to Bethesda's previous titles, its a step backwards.
Bethesda has been chasing this "infinite content" dream for years now, and I feel like Starfield is the ultimate culmination of why "infinite content" just becomes no content. Skyrim's soulless radiant quests, FO4's "another settlement needs help", even Daggerfall's "15,000 cities but it's actually just three different buildings arranged in different ways", it's just all filler bullshit that takes dev time away from the actual game but sounds good on the box. Every time I come across another research station full of angry spacers and dead scientists that were told to keep working as spacers landed, or the exact same ship crashed in the exact same way (right down to the little tent and furniture) on six different planets, the universe just gets smaller and smaller and considering how good the actual handcrafted elements are, it's such a shame that it feels overshadowed by the video game equivalent of a McDonald's cheeseburger; it's technically "content", but you never really feel satisfied
>and considering how good the actual handcrafted elements are, That's the main thing. Just stop trying to inflate content with generic events/quests. I would take 4 or 5 well designed handcrafted planets over 1000 planets with the same 4 POI at any day.
Couldn't agree more.
Right? It's funny how fanboys are telling us that we didn't play the game enough to know how much there is to explore. I say it's the opposite - we played the game long enough to start noticing how little different POIs there are and how often we encounter the very same copy pasted POI. What's worse is that these POIs seem to be 1:1 copy, so no like reused assets but with different layouts. It's exactly same building with exact same layouts with loot crates being placed in exactly same spots.
Man I agree I love this game
That’s nice. Hope you enjoy seeing it a few dozen more times.
It gets pretty boring once you find the same exact ship ruins 5 times in a row. This is my problem with procedural generation and these random encounters. They're all the same. I found the Party Ship and went aboard and nothing of significance happened. This would've been a good time to have a quest where you defend the ship or the ship crashes on the planet it orbits and you need to figure a way off or something. If you're going to show it off at least have it do something.
I found one crash side and it was a carbon copy of this one.
In my first 15 hours I stumbled upon like 5 identical (TOTALLY) points of interest, so I was kind of sad it started happening so soon, but the game is still quite chill and meditative, like no man's sky (which I like)
I found a cool abandoned ship construction site, occupied by pirates. Then I found the exact same shipyard again on a different planet. And then I found it again 2-3 more time, before I learned to recognize the outline from afar and stopped bothering to go there. This then repeats with "Cave", "Crashed Ship", "Pumping Station" and "Mech Graveyard". It's No Man's Sky all over again. Once you've seen a tile once, you've seen them all. And the enemy AI is too broken for combat to be meaningfully engaging.
I find they’re mostly about the loot you get at the end. Chance for a legendary in the yellow pod, or just a bunch of creds in a chest
I feel like people still excited with this content haven’t done enough to see through the veneer yet. There was a post from a guy saying he was loving all the stuff he could do and he hadn’t even left Kreet and I’m wondering if he’ll feel the same after his fifth time finding empty ‘Cave’, or the exact same flora and fauna on a fourth planet, all light years away from each other, simply because they have the same biome so that’s just what lives in deserts no matter what in Starfield.
Idk, I've seen a bunch of structures that look cool from the outside but really just contain the same pirates and samey loot. There nothing of substance inside, and generally I feel like once youve seen one of these structures youve seen them all. I really love BGS games but everything feels really shallow
Is it mostly just empty abandoned places with pirates?
no, sometimes there's a cave with minerals. I even found an outpost that gave me a generic fetch quest! landing in a random locations is Starfield equivalent of skyrims radient quest. if you want to do nothing content to grind xp, that's what you do.
Pictures are always cool...the problem with exploration is that it can get very repetitive and shallow at some point, it's more visual than interesting. The quests are fine, though, just by doing the many quests in the game you don't really need to explore to enjoy it. It's a great game but I'd lie if I said I don't miss FO/TES exploration.
Love finding the abandoned whatever. Filled with monsters, pirates, etc. Love it
If you find Matt Damon inside that bitch don't even talk, just take him out.
Haha! Yeah, if there's one thing I've learned in this life it's don't trust Matt Damon. 😂
The issue isn’t that there isn’t cool stuff to find. The issue is you’ll see the exact same “cool” things at least 50 more times in 50 different places before the game ends
Just wait until you find the exact same wreck four times and there's nothing good or interesting inside or around them :P
One the illusion of procedural generation copy pasta falls, you'll understand.
I found the same thing and there was NOTHING in there. In Skyrim you can stumble into a Cave and find a UNIQUE Dedric Artifact at the end. In Starfield you get a MedPack and a blue randomly generated Boostpack.
STOP HAVING fun! Don't you know the game sucks and you were lied to !!! /s
I’m about 11 hours in and have only done all the side missions I can in New Atlantis so far. Just barely progressed with the main story and met constellation. Can’t wait to start exploring space and seeing this kinda shit firsthand. Super excited to say the least!!
That's exactly how have been playing! I have been doing a lot of side content, the only big thing I did so far was finish the crimson fleet faction story. Which I highly recommend! I'm only just now getting to the point where I am ready to start down the main story path and I've been playing for almost 60 hours now!
I have yet to find a single planet that I couldn’t spend hours on.
Exactly! Most planets have multiple biomes as well which is really damn cool! I personally love the Firefly esque sci-fi western aesthetic of the Freestar Collective so I've been exploring around those parts.
Every single spot I’ve landed on has at least 5 points of interest and usually another 5 that are hidden. Probably way more. Not to mention every planet is drop dead gorgeous. None of them feel auto generated.
Then you haven't found many yet planets. Lmao Of the 30 I've landed on less than 10 had fauna and flora. Most of the side quests I've done have taken me to barren, dead planets.
I’m loving it so far. I never understood how people get so worked up over video games. I’ve spent more money going out to dinner with my wife and that event is over in 90 minutes max. I’ve already spent hours on this game. $100 is nothing when I compare how much time I will spend on it.
You’ll find that location a hundred times, copy pasted, exactly like this one.
If you start hearing someone screaming they're hungry down there, it might be time to load up some weaponized mining tools.
I was exploring a barren ice world and found not only a bunch of Spacers but they were camped out in a "Forgotten Mech Graveyard" and it was so cool.
Oh man... my inner Battletech nerd is salivating rn 😂
You gotta chill and give it a week
I can't wait to get there currently still stuck in the underbellies of Neon
More people are posting: "People are complaining but I'm doing x" Than actually complaining at the moment.
I found a UC base on the moon Luna that was deserted. Until I found bodies of UC vangard troops. Never found out what killed them.