Starfield player discovers game-changing spaceship feature after 400 hours

Jake Nichols
Starfield Solar Eclipse

A Starfield spaceship feature subtly introduced at the start of the game is seemingly so overlooked that players with more than 400 hours of gameplay are only just learning of its existence.

Upon release, Bethesda’s Starfield received mixed feedback from players and critics who praised the game’s exploration, beautiful locations, and shipbuilding while also critiquing the game’s clunky user interface, lack of immersion, broken quests, and more.

Fortunately, some of the criticisms can be resolved with the help of useful mods or simple tweaks. But it seems that the Starfield experience can be further improved by subtle gameplay features that many players may have missed.

One such example is the use of the game’s scanner, a crucial tool for surveying planets and asteroids and revealing important data such as natural resources and details. But its use from the ship, as opposed to going into the game’s menu, seems to have been overlooked.

“I just realized you can use the scanner in your ship,” one Starfield player with more than 400 hours of gameplay shared with the Starfield community on Reddit.

While it’s not a groundbreaking discovery by any means, considering that using the game’s scanner while piloting the ship is introduced at the very start of the game, it’s a feature that has seemingly eluded many players.

The post has been somewhat of a lightbulb moment for many players in the Starfield community, who have shared comments such as “I didn’t know this, thanks. 250 hrs” and “I only realized this a couple of days ago. I felt so stupid for wasting all that time in the menu.”

Using the scanner while piloting the ship allows for seamless space exploration, which was seen to be lacking in the game that relied on fast travel from menus and other features that impacted immersion.

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One player noted, “Using the scanner to fast travel instead of going through menus makes a surprisingly big difference to how the game feels.”

Furthermore, there’s added potential here, considering that players can also fast-travel to planets using the game’s scanner feature rather than using the menus.

The scanner can be accessed by pressing LB on Xbox or F on PC.

Stay tuned to Dexerto for more Starfield news and guides.

About The Author

Jake Nichols was formerly a Senior Writer on the Australian Dexerto team. A "washed-up" competitive gamer with an economics degree, he has a unique angle on industry trends. When not writing, he's snapping away in Marvel Snap and hunting purple sector times in sim racing games. You can contact Jake at jake.nichols@dexerto.com