Starfield outpost
The best Starfield outpost can make a great player home, and generate a ton of resources and credits with the right setup, location, and crew.
If you want a steady stream of Starfield resources, or you just want to make an expansive factory or base, you’ll want to build a Starfield outpost. Your outpost provides you with a bubble of safety, and can house all the crafting facilities and storage you need for weapon mods, armor mods, and even ship customization.
Every Starfield outpost module and object
We’ve compiled a full list of every outpost module and piece of furniture in the game. You can use our filters to select a category of object such as furniture, hab units, or robots and see what resources you’ll need to build them.
There is an initial limit of eight outposts that you can build, but you can expand this number to 24 by ranking up the Planetary Habitation skill, which also lets you build outposts on planets with extreme environments.
Getting started with your very own outpost can be quite the labor and resource-instensive task, so we’ve put together everything you need to know to make outpost building manageable, and fun.
What is the point of an outpost in Starfield?
Outposts primarily create resources through extractors, which can in turn be processed into a range of other resources via fabricators. The resources you farm are used extensively in making weapon mods, armor mods, and fulfilling specific Mission board requests, which can earn you a tidy sum of Credits.
You can also use your outpost as a base of operations and inventory management system. Otherwise, you can focus on creating a unique player home, which you can decorate extensively with the revamped outpost building system that Starfield introduces over Bethesda’s previous Fallout settlement building system.
Best Starfield outpost locations
Before you get started with creating your very first Starfield outpost, there are a few things you need to bear in mind:
- You cannot build an outpost on planets with extreme conditions
- You will need a considerable number of resources to get started
You can bypass these issues by ranking up the Planetary Habitation Starfield skill, and stockpiling Starfield resources respectively. We recommend going to a resource vendor such as Midtown Minerals or the Mining League and buy their entire stock before you start looking for outpost build spots.
Next, find a Starfield planet that has Aluminum, Iron and at least two or all of these resources:
Fortunately, our fully updated planets database has a full and filterable list of resources, making it easy to find the best resource-laden planets like Bessel III-b, Charybdis II, Fermi VII-a, and Zeta Ophiuchi I.
Once you’ve selected a planet without an extreme environment, scan the planet from orbit and locate an area where numerous resource patches intersect. Finding a location where three biomes meet is often the best location to aim for (this can be nearly pixel-specific, so take your time with searching) as these areas have a high chance to spawn their respective resources in close proximity.
Aim for an area within all of that and land your ship. It’s time to build your first outpost.
Starfield outpost base building tips and tricks
The basic steps to creating an outpost are:
- Place down an outpost beacon
- Build resource miners
- Build power generators
- Establish cargo links
To build an outpost in Starfield you need to open up your scanner and place down an Outpost Beacon. This will place a beacon wherever you’re aiming, and will act as the main interaction point for your outpost.
The most important thing is that you wait before you place down your beacon. By remaining in the scanner mode and moving your outpost beacon around, you’ll be able to see what resources are available within the outpost beacon’s build range.
Take your time and move the beacon around the nearby area until you see all of the resources you’re looking for in the “Available Resources” box in the top-left of your screen. Once you have every resource listed, place down your beacon. If you aren’t happy with your placement, just delete your outpost beacon and place a new one down; there’s no resource cost to doing so.
From there, you can place down Starfield outpost objects provided you have enough resources.
The first thing you should do is put down a resource extractor such as the Extractor – Aluminum and Extractor – Iron. You’ll need power to operate these items, so build a Solar Array or Wind Turbine as is appropriate for your planet.
Create a storage box, and use the outpost build mode to draw “Output Links” between the extractors and box. With this, you’re well on your way to building a massive facility, just make sure to build an Industrial Workbench so you can create manufactured resources out of the raw materials you’re generating from your extractors.
Starfield outpost cargo links
Once you’ve got your first outpost setup, you can think about setting up other outposts on distant planets and linking them back to your main base.
This way, you can transport resources from one outpost to another without flying there in your ship and collecting it manually. With just a few feeder bases using the setup outlined above, you can bring every resource in Starfield to a single base using the Starfield cargo links system by building the Cargo Link and Cargo Link – Inter-System modules.
Once you’ve got your outpost operational, make sure you employ Starfield crew to boost your resource production rates further, and to keep your Starfield cargo links running.