It’s kind of hard to keep track of all the different things you can loot in Starfield. Let’s talk about what to keep and what to throw away.
Even though Starfield is a big game generally, it has the most items in each room than any other Bethesda game. There are more than 50 lootable things in every room of this game. Players can see them when they open their Hand Scanners.
Most of these things aren’t worth the space they’d take up in your Carrying Capacity either. That’s even worse because players really want to search every room carefully to find the Magazines that give permanent boosts. Here are some of the best things in Starfield that players should keep an eye out for while they’re exploring the stars. We’ll also talk about some items that players should either not bother with or only pick up when they have a lot of extra space in their Cargo Hold.
Most Food Items
Let’s start with things that are edible. Food in Starfield might be worth eating or using if players build their whole character around skills that improve food, like Gastronomy. However, not many players actually try this. People usually pick up a lot of food without thinking about it, and they rarely (if ever) eat it. Instead, they sell it to the closest vendor for a few Credits.
While it’s great that Starfield has a lot of different food things, most of them aren’t worth the space they take up in your bag when you could have used that space for guns or packs instead.
Workshop Items
In some Bethesda games, like the Oblivion or Fallout series, players will find Junk items while they’re traveling. These can then be used in the crafting system to make things. In Fallout 4, for example, players can’t just find Adhesive while stealing. They have to use a Workshop to turn things like Duct Tape and Wonderglue into something else.
In Skyrim, players could do this in a lot of different ways, such as by making different kinds of Leather from the fur of many different animals. In Starfield, on the other hand, the random tools, rolls of duct tape, and plastic things are only used as junk, which is different from their other games.
Heavy Common & Rare Crafting Materials
When we talk about crafting, let’s talk about Starfield’s Crafting Materials as a whole. People can find a lot of different crafting materials in any abandoned outpost, Crimson Fleet base, or just about any building. These materials can be Industrial Components like Adaptive Frames or just cases of Toxin.
For the most part, though, players shouldn’t pick these up while wandering Starfield’s huge Star Map. This is because it’s easy to “make” them at an Industrial Workbench and even easier to buy them from Vendors. It’s important to keep in mind that some crafting materials, like drilling rigs and nuclear fuel rods, are very heavy compared to other things. This is especially true for players who can’t help but hoard everything they see. Also, players don’t have to tear apart every abandoned Science Lab to find Adhesive. Instead, they can just go down the Greenhouse path to get the lighter Organic Resources.
Apparel Duplicates
You can change it so that when you’re exploring worlds with oxygen, the game shows you in your clothes instead of your spacesuit, pack, and helmet. A player can also move Apparel to their Companion’s wardrobe and then “Equip” it to their companion to change what they’re wearing. Most people reading this have probably already seen a Starfield player use this function to dress their companion in the Neon Dancer Outfit.
People who play are always looking for new clothes to add to their ever-growing outfit because of this feature. While these things aren’t too heavy, they don’t have a high sale value, so players should only pick up one or two of them before ignoring any that they see. There’s no real reason for players to keep all the jail Garb they find when they’re exploring an empty jail, but most of them do it without meaning to.
Antiques & Exotic Items
Starfield’s “Value” number is actually quite misleading. The game might say that an item is worth 6,000 Coins, but when the player goes to sell it, they find that it’s only worth 300 Coins. At max rank, the Commerce Skill, there’s a big difference between what the game says an item is worth and what it really is.
Aside from that, players will find a lot of things that look old or strange, like antique ducks or pyramid figures, that they should pick up and sell later. Ninety percent of the time, they’re not worth the space they take up in the player’s collection. Some of these items are still worth getting (unless other players are busy taking from puddles), but this group of things is usually better left alone.
Most Wines & Beers
Alcohol was usually worth getting in previous Bethesda games to sell later, but it’s not as valuable in Starfield. Players who have played the Fallout games will need to break some habits to do well here. One reason for this is that Starfield seems to make players who like to carry a lot of stuff to either deal with always being too heavy or build their whole character to increase their Cargo Hold and Carrying Capacity.
Another reason is that most types of booze don’t make sense when you compare their mass to value. Sometimes, a shelf with 20 or more wine bottles might be worth getting just because there are so many of them, especially if there aren’t any other items nearby that are more valuable. But most of the time, players can just walk right by them.
Laboratory Equipment
Players will keep collecting science-related items that aren’t useful until they learn and can remember all the things they need for Research Projects and Crafting Recipes, like Solvents, Amino Acids, and Antimicrobials. Things like Test Tubes, Injectors, and so on might sound like they’d be used in Aid Recipes or Research Projects, but they’re not.
You can avoid this confusion by going to the Research Lab and Pharmaceutical Workbench and “Tracking” the resources of each recipe. This way, anything used in these Crafting areas will have a “Magnifying Glass” icon next to its name (as long as the UI stays the same, of course).
Books
Last but not least, books. A player might think that books are one of the few useful paper things that they keep seeing all over the room at first. What’s the point of all the folders, pencils, markers, pens, cups, desk fans, and other things? On the other hand, Books are worth a lot more in Spacebar Clicker. However, once more, the value of these things doesn’t match up with the amount of space they take up in the player’s inventory.
