After finishing your first playthrough of Starfield, you can choose to leave your previous life behind and start anew in its New Game Plus mode. Unlike other versions of the mode, here you start with nothing but your ship at your wits. No credits, no weapons, aid items, nothing. That makes the first few things you do in NG+ even more important, as they will set the tone for the rest of your new playthrough.
Visit the Lodge and Join Constellation
The first thing you need to do in New Game Plus is go to the Lodge on New Atlantis and meet with Constellation. Not only will you get some humorous dialog from the security and ship services NPCs, but you can also visit Sarah Morgan and the crew and give them the lowdown about everything you accomplished together in your first playthrough.
You can also choose to either repeat the main story quest or skip it, and we’d recommend skipping it. Sure, you won’t see any other endings or get some of the endgame NPC gear, but you won’t be burdened by the need to follow any particular path. In other words, skipping the main quest lets you play Starfield like any other Bethesda game: go where you want, do what you want, whenever you want, progression be damned.
Get a New Ship
Another important thing to do at the start of Starfield NG+ is to get a better ship. The one you start NG+ with is serviceable and looks really cool, but it won’t hold up in a fight against higher-level enemy craft. It also doesn’t have the ability to smuggle contraband, has a small cargo hold, and lacks any in-ship amenities. How you go about getting a new ship in New Game Plus is up to you, but I recommend either:
- Picking a fight with pirates in lower-level systems and taking one of their ships. The NG+ starting ship cannot be upgraded or sold, and while you could invest some credits into improving the Frontier, almost anything you find out in the world is just better for almost no cost.
- Taking a ship from a landing zone on a planet’s surface. You’d be surprised how many high-quality ships just land on a random planet’s surface, ripe for the taking. Sometimes, you’ll receive a bounty for stealing the ship or otherwise be docked for doing so, but other times, you can fly away in a significant upgrade without hardly lifting a finger.
Once you have a ship, you’ll want to register it to access the shipbuilder and prepare it for sale at a later date, should you choose to make additional upgrades down the line.
Start the UC SysDef vs. Crimson Fleet Questline
It’s possible to start the UC SysDef vs. Crimson Fleet questline very quickly in New Game Plus, and after earning and paying off a couple of bounties and being caught with contraband, I was thrust back in. Just as well, too, because getting started on the pirate life was one of my goals, and it should be one of yours as well. If you aren’t doing the main quest again, you’re free to pillage the stars of every credit you can.
One piece of advice for this go around, however: don’t complete the questline. Instead, get in with the Crimson Fleet and forget about finishing the conflict between them and UC SysDef. There’s no penalty for doing so, and you keep access to both the UC and the Fleet’s resources. Plus, you won’t have to have an awkward conversation with your companions in Constellation about giving a band of murderous psychopaths infinite money.
Go to the Higher Level Systems
Once you have a solid ship and some serviceable weapons, it’s time to start exploring. With your upgraded equipment, use them to take on the higher-level star systems to hunt for better loot in New Game Plus, with the promise of more experience, and even better ships. Beware that enemies tend to come in greater numbers, especially in space, and if you’re at all unprepared (like I was), be ready to become space dust in short order.
Try Everything You Haven’t Yet
There’s no limit on the number of times you can go into NG+ in Starfield, but each new cycle still robs you of everything from the previous playthrough. That’s why I’d recommend you take your time and experiment with any mechanics you didn’t try your first time through the game. Outpost building, crafting, quests — if you haven’t done it before, now’s the time.
There are story differences for your new game as well. Your character will remember everything they did the previous cycle, opening up new dialog options and choices for you to make. None of these are truly game-changing, but they do add some extra spice to the moment-to-moment experience.
