Yes, I bought this game after the announcement of Starfield. I had no idea a game like this even existed. How sad. I started a few times so far and got totally lost after I left the beginner planet… First time I was killed in like 20 seconds after landing, next time I wound up so far from any planet I had no idea what direction to go… I’m just really confused, aren’t there any kind of markers or tutorials for newbies like me? The game looks awesome, but man… Frustrating to start. Any help would be greatly appreciated…

What was the most stupid way you’ve died in Permadeath?

I jumped in my ship in a peaceful planet next to my base (PVP set to off). Realised I had to run into the house (office is in the garage) to do something quick and got distracted so ended up taking 20 mins.

Came back to the home screen. Checked the save file and nada. Worst thing is I’ll never know how it happened.

Luckily it was only a 20hr save.

As much as I like cruising around the galaxy with my fully kitted-out main character, I really like the beginning stages of the game. I guess it was partly because of doing the achievements and expeditions, but I got addicted to the first few days of game time when your resources and abilities are limited, and I tend to start new characters and level them until I got bored and delete them.

But lately I’ve been setting challenges for myself. It started simple; get to an S-class multitool, ship, and freigter. Okay, that was fun. Full explorer run, maxing out the Explorer’s Guild rep? Cool.

So then I started getting a little more elaborate.

Neural Assembly
You are a stranded alien life form who’s managed to weld themselves to a robotic body, and you’re desperate to re-connect to your people. Put the Ares head on an Autophage body and get to the living ship as fast as possible.

Octopus’ Garden
You are a grumpy octopoid being who just wants to be left alone to make things and get wealthy. Build a base that includes a fully functional production line making fusion ignitors and stasis cores, deep underwater. Wear the Iteration: Gemini head. Use the bubble trail.

My next one’s going to be fun.

Rebel Scum
You are a robot, and that makes you mad. Full-on Autophage run. Get a sentinel S-class ship, an S-class autophage staff or sentinel weapon, and a pirate frigate. Make a seriously badass autophage getup. Max out pirate reputation.

Does anyone else do these little self-created kind-of story-like expeditions? Any other suggestions?

After using primarily fighters for hundreds upon hundreds of hours of my main save, I had finally found an Explorer that I knew had to be my new main. Helped that a natural S-Class just kinda fell into my lap. Transferred all my tech and cargo over, but decided to ditch the positron and phase beam in favour of just a dual-weapon loadout with infraknife and rockets (my fav combo anyway).

After optimizing the layouts with the given SC slots, I was resigned to the overall damage potential being 20% that of my fighter, and the infraknife achieving only 50% of the DPS. I thought I’d give it a try anyway.

Holy shit.

In the next pirate freighter encounter, I finished off the freighter in half the time. I was still skeptical, so I took on a host of combat missions, including solo pirate missions from the Nexus, sentinel freighter battles, and various random encounters. The results were all the same – the Explorer eviscerated enemies with a terrifying efficiency and brutality that my maxed-out S-class fighters could only dream of.

I had read similar stories of such performances, but hadn’t experienced it first hand. But now I know and I can hardly go back to my fighters.

Now if they can only fix that bug so both of my outboard engines are lit up.