Note: This guide discusses significant endgame spoilers for Starfield. Do not read on if you don’t want to know what happens.
At the end of any playthrough of Starfield, after collecting all the Artifacts and passing through the Unity, you enter New Game Plus. You leave the world you knew behind you, with every NPC you bonded with, every enemy you killed, and every storyline completed left behind as well. You do gain some items for going through with the transformation into Starborn and entering NG+, but what about all your hard-earned loot? The expensive ships? The hours and hours of hoarding quests and items you know you’ll never lose? Do they come with you? Find out here.
Related: Starfield Complete Guide – Quest, Lore, Story & Trailers
What You Keep in New Game Plus in Starfield
Put simply, when you step through the Unity at the end of Starfield’s campaign and enter New Game Plus, you sacrifice everything. Your weapons, armor, items, outposts, ships, quests (complete or not), companion relationships — anything you did in the previous universe is wiped clean. When you enter the new universe, all you will have to your name is the Starborn Guardian ship (which is awesome, by the way), a few items in the cargo hold, and a swanky set of Starborn armor.
Honestly, I highly recommend going into New Game Plus at least once. The Starborn armor is a helmet, suit, and pack combined into one, saving you space and weight. The Guardian ship is a ton of fun to pilot. You can even skip the story campaign, focusing entirely on collecting artifacts and doing quests.
There’s also nothing stopping you from bull-rushing your way into further NG+ cycles, though there’s no real benefit for doing so. While loot does improve in quality proportional to the level you entered the new cycle, enemy levels will still generally be around yours unless you’re in a system that far outpaces your current progress.
I’m not sure I buy the theory that you must enter New Game Plus to really get the story of Starfield going, but in my experience, doing so does enhance the game in some interesting ways. Plus, the armor and ship are just cool to look at, and I wanted the moment I saw them.
