Starfield Fastest XP Farming & Leveling Method

In Starfield you will need to reach Level 100 to obtain the Reach for the Stars Achievement. To reach Level 100 it takes 479,326 XP. Luckily, there are some fast tactics to speed up the XP Farming and Leveling process. Note that New Game+ gives no XP Bonus, everything has the same level and gives the same XP in NG+. Hence you might as well start XP farming on the first playthrough, it doesn’t make a difference.

By the time you are done with all other achievements you will likely be around Level 40. It takes 410,570 XP from Level 40 to Level 100. With this you can calculate from your XP gain per minute how long it will take to reach Level 100.

You can also use Command Console Cheats (PC only) to instantly reach any level but this disables achievements. It allows you to become level 1000 in a few seconds with the click of a button. Refer to Starfield Cheats.

Fastest XP Farming Method (1500+ XP every 1 Minute) – Level 100 in under 5 Hours

For this method you will need to build an outpost on a planet where 1 hour local time slept results in a high multiple of universal hours slept. Build lots of extractors and link them to storage containers, also build a workbench and bed in your outpost. Sleep in the bed to advance time in 24 hour increments. When you wake up all storage containers will be filled, use those materials to craft stuff at the workbench. Craft them in stacks of 99, each item gives 1XP so a stack of 99 gives 99XP. The more storage containers you build the more materials you have to craft more items in one go before sleeping again. The only downside is that it requires a bunch of preparation work to buy the right skills, do some research projects, and you must bring enough materials to get the outpost started.

Requirement:

• Science Skill “Outpost Engineering”
• Research Project: Resource Extraction 1 – see Research Lab Location
• Research Project: Power Generation 1
• If you need any Resources for the Outpost, they can be bought at Jemison Mercantile vendor in System: Alpha Centauri > Planet: Jemison > Landing Site: New Atlantis (enter shop left of train station). Can sleep in 24h increments to refresh the vendor’s inventory and buy more resources, transfer them to ship & teammate when your inventory gets full.

A good planet for this is Venus (Solar System: Sol > Planet: Venus). 1 local hour slept results in 100 Universal Hours Slept. So 24 Hours sleep = 2400 Universal Hours. This will give insane amounts of materials every time you sleep. That’s because the resource output is entirely based on universal time passed, it doesn’t require active gameplay time. Sleeping is the trick here.

Land on Venus at a point where Cobalt and Nickel are overlapping on the map (you can see this after scanning the planet and clicking “show resources”). Venus has an extreme environment so to build an outpost here you first need the Science Skill “Planetary Habitation” at Rank 3.

Build as many Resource Extractors as possible over a Nickel and Cobalt deposit in the same outpost (you’ll need to walk around until it shows both resources in the top left corner before placing the outpost beacon). Link them all to a storage container, then link that storage container to other storage containers to create a loop that keeps filling up more containers if one is full. Build as many storage containers as you possibly can to speed up how many items you can craft per sleep cycle. Don’t forget to build enough power sources (wind turbines) to power the extractors.

Now build a bed and an Industrial Workbench. Craft stacks of 99 Isocentered Magnets from the Nickel + Cobalt your outpost extracts. This gives 99 XP each time (+15% XP bonus if you married one of the companions by having reached maximum relationship status). Craft as many as you can until you run out of Nickel/Cobalt, sleep, repeat.

Alternatively, if you don’t have Planetary Habitation Rank 3 skill, you can go to System: Narion > Moon: Andraphon (moon of Sumati, two stars to the top right of Alpha Centauri). Land where Aluminium + Iron overlap, build extractors for them, use the same method described above with the only difference being that you must craft Adaptive Frames instead of Isocentered Magnets (as you will have Aluminium and Iron as a resource which are the ingredients for Adaptive Frame). On Andraphon every hour slept only passes 5h 52min so it’s not as efficient as Venus but is easier to set up an outpost initially. On Andraphon it will take around 5 hours to reach Level 100, whereas on Venus you can reach Level 100 in 1-2 hours once you have enough extractors and storage containers set up. You can also research Manufacturing 3 & Resource Extraction 2, to make even better storage containers and extractors.

Alternative Farming Method (1200+ XP every 4 Minutes) – Level 100 in 25 Hours

Another decently fast method is to attack friendly spaceships, keep only one alive and destroy its engine, board it and kill all crew, fast travel to The Lodge and fast travel back to make the spaceships respawn, repeat. Each spaceship you destroy gives a lot of XP and defeating the crew on board gives a lot more. With this method you get around 1200 XP per run (4 minutes).

Warning: This method is intended for grinding to Level 100 when you have nothing else left in your playthrough. Doing this will rack up a high bounty. If you return to New Atlantis the bounty will bankrupt you, and you will be put in jail which causes a higher XP penalty than what you gained from this method. The only way around this is to start New Game+ after using this method, it will wipe your bounty. So only do this when you reached the end of the game! Make a Manual Save before trying this.

Step 1: Set the game to ‘Very Easy’ under Settings > Gameplay > Difficulty. This will speed up the process.

Step 2: Fast travel to System: Alpha Centauri > Landing Location: The Eye (next to Planet: Jemison).

Step 3: There are usually 1-2 high level UC Vanguard spaceships here, a Level 30 Chimera and Level 32 Phalanx (slightly varies).

Step 4: Destroy all but one ship. For the last ship destroy the Engine (attack until its shield is gone, then lock on and press Xbox: X / PC: R to enter targeting mode and select “ENG” at bottom of screen. Keep shooting the Engine until all bars are grayed out).

Step 5: Once the Engine is destroyed, fly close to the ship, board it by aiming at it with the scanner and press Xbox: LB > hold X / PC: F > hold R. You must be within a few hundred meters for the ‘board’ prompt to appear. It won’t appear if other ships are still alive or if the Engine hasn’t been destroyed.

Step 6: Defeat all enemies on the ship as fast as possible. A good weapon is the Equinox, it defeats enemies quickly and doesn’t use much ammo. These ships have high level crew, there are about 15 enemies. Most of them are armored ones that 63 XP per kill, a few are unarmored that give 23 XP per kill.

Step 7: After all enemies are defeated, fast travel to “The Lodge” on Jemison. Immediately fast travel back to “The Eye” and the spaceships will have respawned. Repeat the process again and again.

Defeating all crew should give around 1000 XP. If 2 spaceships spawned, destroying one gives up to 276XP. Combined that should give around 1200XP per run. It slightly varies, sometimes there are more crewmembers on board and you can get 1600XP per run, other times there are fewer and you might only get 1000XP. But it should average out to 1200XP or more over time. As you get used to the process you will get faster at it and may be able to pull it off in 3 minutes.

By the time you are done with all other achievements you will likely be around Level 40. It takes 410,570 XP from Level 40 to Level 100. If you can average 1200 XP every 4 minutes it will take 23 hours. This is an alternative in case the faster outpost method gets patched.

Other Tips:

Some food increases the XP gain for a limited time. For example, you can use the cooking station in the basement of the lodge to make “Alien Tea” (available from the start) to get +2% XP for 15min. Some food vendors in cities also sell food with XP effects. The downside is that it takes time to gather the ingredients and it’s not a big XP boost (and once you have a big bounty you can’t free roam in some cities). Just in case you have XP foods available, use them.

If this method gets too boring, you can try jumping from one populated planet to the next (where the main cities are) and destroy all the spaceships flying around. Destroying ships gives good XP (usually in the range of 100-276XP depending on their level) and you can jump from one planet to the next without boarding the ships. However, boarding ships still has a higher XP yield because there are so many enemies close together. Invest in the tech skills for more ship damage, and combat skills for more damage. Buy or steal a ship with good stats. You get a good one from completing the Freestar Rangers Faction questline.

Best Early Game XP Leveling Method

You gain XP for practically everything you do in the game. If you want to gain some fast level-ups early on, visit all star systems and fly to all planets. Scan all Gas Planets, since they have nothing else to explore they immediately give a completion bonus in one scan. You usually get 20XP for visiting planets/moons and a 50XP completion bonus for scanning a gas planet. Visiting star systems for the first time also gives extra XP. There are 111 star systems and over 1000 planets/moons.

Other than that most XP come from defeating enemies. Faction Quests and Miscellaneous Quests give very little XP rewards (mostly just money). Scanning flora and fauna also gives very little and is too slow.

Infinite XP Cheat Exploit

Using cheats will disable achievements!

If you want to be level 100 (or higher) instantly, you can use the Command Console. This only works on PC because Xbox doesn’t have access to the command console.

On US-English keyboard press the “~” button to open Command Console. On other keyboards the button will be different so just try all buttons or switch keyboard layout to US English in Windows language settings.

Enter the following command: player.setlevel 100

Change the value “100” to whatever level you want. For example Level 500 would be player.setlevel 500

For more Starfield guides check out Starfield Wiki & Strategy Guide.