Starfield bored me until I started cheating — here’s how you can too

Starfield had a contentious launch similar to Death Stranding, where some people thought it was boring and others thought it was brilliant. I am a die-hard fan of Death Stranding, so I figured that I might enjoy Starfield. Unfortunately, I landed in the middle.

There’s a big, beautiful universe at your fingertips in Starfield — it’s overwhelming. But to reign in these huge RPGs, the first thing I do is get a handle of the mechanics and my style of play. However, I was quickly stunted by the awful leveling system.

There are 82 skills across 5 skill trees and each skill can be leveled up four times. In other words, you need to reach level 326 to max out all the skills (including background skills). You may say, “but you’re supposed to pick the skills for your play style.” That’s a great point, but tell me why the most basic, fundamental skills are trapped behind a leveling system that is not designed to be completed through an entire playthrough?

Skills give you access to critical gameplay elements like the jetpack, higher-class ships, the targeting system, and pick-pocketing. Even the research and development system as well as the exploration system are trapped behind skills. If you’ve spent any amount of time exploring a planet, you know that it’s a pain in the ass to scan 10+ flora or fauna just to get that completion.

The leveling system is just the tip of the iceberg. You also have to complete challenges for each skill in order to level it up. Some of these challenges are not very convenient to complete. In fact, they’re incredibly tedious if you’re not doing it naturally, like lock pick 5 times. Do you know how many high-level locks I’ve missed because I haven’t found basic locks to pick in order to level my lock-picking skill? I want to scream.

I primarily play Starfield on Xbox, and I tried to grind out some basic skills for quite a while before I just lost interest in the game entirely. There are so many essential tools trapped behind XP and challenges. Avoid the hair-pulling grind of Starfield by cheating — it’s the best way to play. Here’s how.

How to cheat in Starfield for Xbox and PC

On PC, you can access the console command, which allows you to input key phrases to achieve anything you could possibly want that is available in the game. However, that’s not available on Xbox, so how did I get access to it?

It’s quite simple. Through Xbox services, Starfield is a Play Anywhere title. That means you can play on Xbox and pick up right where you left off on PC. I simply hopped on my PC, downloaded the game, and started where I left off. That gave me access to the console. Here’s what to do when you get to your PC (you can also access Starfield via Xbox Cloud on your phone, tablet, or laptop).

Step 1: First things first — Save! Make yourself a backup before you break your game (which is possible depending on what you’re doing).

Step 2: Press the [~] button on the top left of your keyboard. This’ll give you access to the console itself.

Step 3: Type the keywords to accomplish what you’d like. Our sister site posted a lovely list of console commands to use. I used player.setlevel [#] which bumped me up to the desired level, so I could actually put points into the skills I needed and start working on the various challenges that were required. I did it this way so that I’d still have to work to achieve those levels as opposed to grinding myself to dust.

Step 4: This is just a preference, but I also did player.additem f [#] which provided me with the desired number of credits. Listen, this game is out to get you — any ship you steal is worth pennies at a ship tech and anyone you pick pocket (including store owners) never has more than 100 credits on them. It’s bullshit and you know it. So don’t mind me as I stuff my pockets with a quick mil.

I wanted to love Starfield as it is, but it acts more like a satire of capitalism (Outer Worlds, is that you?) in terms of mechanics than it does a natural skill-building explorer. The leveling system probably should have been done away with entirely and instead have the player focus on increasing each skill by committing to those challenges. That’s the way I’m playing it, and quite frankly, you should, too, especially if you’re not having fun.