Like many modern games, Starfield utilizes a “tiered” loot system that determines the quality of the various items you receive. While some of the best gear in the game can be acquired by visiting certain vendors, completing certain quests, or just taking them from a specific spot, most of the Legendary loot in Starfield will be acquired randomly.
Well…mostly randomly. See, if you really want to get as much Legendary loot as possible, there are actually various things that you can do in Starfield to greatly increase your odds of receiving Legendary gear at any stage of the game. Since that gear can otherwise be hard to come by, here are some of the things you should probably know about Legendary farming.
Starfield Legendary Farming: Save Scumming Cheats Explained
Simply put, the best way to farm Legendary items in Starfield is to take advantage of the game’s various save scumming tricks.
Starfield’s loot is surprisingly dependent on a number of randomized variables. Not only are many of the items you find on enemies and in the world randomized, but the quality and design of those items are further subject to additional randomized variables. So, you may loot an enemy and get a basic pistol. However, another player could loot the same enemy and get a Legendary melee weapon. Yet another player could get that same Legendary melee weapon but receive a different version of it with different modifiers, abilities, and stats.
While that system is clearly intended to make the looting process a bit more exciting (great loot can be found anywhere), it ultimately proves to be fairly frustrating. After all, some of the best items in the game are not only randomly acquired but are subject to other variables that can make them significantly less effective than they would otherwise be.
This is where save scumming comes into play. Here are some of the best ways to farm loot in Starfield using save scumming:
- Create a Quick Save Before Looting a Known Legendary Item – If there is a Legendary item that has a set place in the world (such as Legendary Armor found behind a display case), create a quick save before looting it. If the item doesn’t have the modifiers you want, load that save and loot the item again. Repeat this process until you get the ideal version of that item.
- Quick Save Before Killing an Elite Enemy – Elite and “Boss” enemies in Starfield have a much higher chance of dropping better Legendary gear. They also have much larger health bars. So, right before you are about to kill one of these enemies, create a quick save. Finish them off, and simply reload the save if you didn’t get a Legendary item. Because loot pools are randomized upon an enemy’s death, you will receive different items from defeating that enemy each time you kill them. Repeat this process until you get the Legendary gear you desire.
- Quick Save Before Starting a Loot Run – Though Starfield doesn’t technically have “dungeons,” it does have many dungeon-like areas filled with powerful enemies. Create a quick save before running through these areas and then proceed through them as normal. Didn’t get any Legendary items? Load your save and run through the area again.
You can use these tactics throughout Starfield in various ways I’ll expand upon below. However, there is yet another way of increasing your odds of getting the best Legendary items…
Starfield Legendary Farming: Difficulty Scumming Cheats Explained
Starfield actually increases your odds of receiving better Legendary items (and more of them) if you’re playing on a higher difficulty level. That’s a common feature in most loot-based games. However, Starfield has a rather unique way of processing those difficulty differences that you can easily exploit.
In order to use Starfield’s “difficulty scumming” trick, simply set the game to the highest difficulty level (“Very Hard”) via the Options menu before you enter a planet, ship, outpost, or any other area with enemies and loot that is buffered by a loading screen. Once you have loaded that area, set the difficulty level to the easiest setting. The enemies in that area will have all of the loot associated with the higher difficulty setting, but their A.I. will be tuned to the lowest difficulty setting. This allows you to farm the best possible loot easier and quicker than ever before.
As noted above, though, this trick only works if you perform it before loading into an area. If you load into an area on the lowest difficulty setting, switch it to the highest level, and then swap it back to easy, then the loot table will still be associated with the easier difficulty setting. If, however, you are naturally playing at a higher difficulty level, then you can always swap the game to an easier setting temporarily in order to get through tough fights and still get the best possible loot.
Starfield: Best Legendary Loot Farming Spots
The best Legendary loot farming spots in Starfield are the “Kill” missions found on the various Mission Boards spread throughout the game.
Mission Boards are found in nearly every major city in Starfield. You can even find them on some ships and construct some for your outposts. Each board will offer a variety of randomized missions (chosen from a pool of mission types) when you interact with it. These missions offer a consistent, constantly refreshed source of activities that you can complete in order to earn some extra credits, XP, and, for our purposes, loot.
If you are farming Legendary loot, then be sure to focus on any Mission Board assignments with the word “Kill” in the objective. Those missions will take you to a small dungeon-like area filled with enemies that always include a Boss enemy at the end (your target for the mission). Not only can you complete these objectives fairly quickly (5-15 minutes depending on your power level), but this is one of the best ways to ensure you spawn a boss enemy that offers a better overall loot table.
Once you accept that mission, you have a few options. If you want, you can run this area like normal and pick up whatever loot you may be lucky to receive. However, you can also use the save scumming and difficulty swap tricks noted above to increase your odds of receiving better loot. If you really want a high-value Legendary item, you’ll create a quick save right before killing the boss and reload it until they drop Legendary gear. Whether you feel like taking advantage of those tricks (and how much you choose to do so) is entirely up to you.
If a “Kill” mission is not available on the Mission Board (or you just feel like mixing things up a bit), you can use a version of this trick at pretty much any enemy outpost in the game. From what I’ve seen, there is no one spot in the game that offers significantly better loot via this method. Most of them feature relatively similar layouts, relatively similar enemy density, and typically include Elite and Boss enemies that you can use the aforementioned farming trick on. Find a spot that you like and farm it using whatever combination of exploits you wish. Before long, you will be swimming in more Legendary gear than you’ll know what to do with.