Ahead of the launch of Starfield, Bethesda chief Todd Howard said there were over 1,000 planets to explore in the science fiction role-playing game. “From barren but resource-heavy ice balls, to Goldilocks planets with life,” Howard said during the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase in June. “And not just this system, but over 100 systems — over 1,000 planets, all open for you to explore.”
It was a number that would go on to dominate pre-release discussion around Starfield. How could any game have so many planets for the player to fully explore? How could such a thing be fun? Bethesda’s answer came in the form of procedural generation. Not all 1,000 planets would be hand-crafted by developers at Bethesda. A small portion would be. In fact, Howard would go on to reveal only 10% of Starfield’s planets would have life on them.
Still, over 1,000 planets. It was one hell of a number, a number that sounds fantastic in an advert. Starfield is a game so vast that exploring all those planets would take any right-thinking player an age to do. Now, a month after Starfield came out, one player has done it.
Josh, or as they are known on Reddit, DoomZero, is that Starfield player. Last week, DoomZero took to the Starfield subreddit to stake their claim: “A True Scientific Explorer,” the thread title reads. “Fully Surveyed Every Planet Possible.” And there’s a screenshot showing the details of this monumental effort:
- Systems visited: 120
- Planets scanned: 1695
- Planets fully surveyed: 1694
- Planets landed on: 1441
- Flora fully scanned: 807
- Fauna fully scanned: 794
- Stations docked with: 86
- Ships docked with: 22
It’s that ‘planets fully surveyed’ figure we’re most interested in here. Howard, in hindsight, undersold Starfield with that over 1,000 planets to explore line. DoomZero was able to fully survey an eye-watering 1,694 planets. A few planets are apparently bugged (more on that later). But to give you an idea of just what was required to fully survey each planet possible, we need to talk about what surveying planets in Starfield involves.
There are a few different types of planets when it comes to fully surveying in Starfield, each of varying difficulty. There are gas giants you can fully survey from orbit. Most moons only have a couple of resources to scan for completion. And then there are planets that can have resources, points of interests to visit, and many fauna and flora to scan for completion. There are no shortcuts, really.
To fully survey all the planets in the galaxy, you have to at least visit each planet from orbit. In order to fully survey some planets, you’ll need to find their special planet traits, which are usually geographical or environmental features that need to be discovered as you explore. The term ‘planet trait’ is a bit vague, but essentially refers to a number of anomalies or features that become points of interest you can discover while exploring a planet on foot. Any planet you explore usually has anywhere from zero to three undiscovered traits. In order to fully survey a planet, you must find and catalogue enough traits in addition to scanning its flora, fauna, and resources.
How did DoomZero go about completing this unique in-game challenge? Why do it in the first place? What did they find along the way? IGN asked the burning questions, and in the answers found the beating heart of Starfield unveiled.
“Once I started playing and learned about the surveying and fully surveying planets the idea just kind of got stuck in my head,” DoomZero says when asked what motivated them to survey each planet, although they admit they’re not really sure. “I am a bit of a completionist and thought that it would just be a cool personal accomplishment.”
To visit all the planets, DoomZero worked their way across the galaxy map from left to right, top to bottom, trying not to miss any systems along the way. They faced a number of challenges, not least the natural learning curve figuring out the best ways to go about fully surveying a planet in the first place.
“Learning all the different types of fauna I was looking for was probably the biggest one,” DoomZero says. “There can be flying creatures and small beetles that you need to find. The most difficult one was learning that there are actually aquatic creatures to be scanned in the ocean biomes and those can only be accessed by landing in an area that has the (coast) descriptor attached to it. Another thing I realised early on was how important all of the scanning skills were going to be.”
When asked for any tips they have for fellow would-be Starfield explorers, it’s the skills that come on top. DoomZero suggests five main skills that help reduce the time and effort it takes to fully survey: Astrophysics, Zoology, Scanning, Botany, and Surveying “all help tremendously” they say. Meanwhile, Boost Pack Training with a skip boost pack along with Fitness to improve oxygen use are “must haves” for cutting down on time travelling to scan points of interest.
It’s hard not to talk to DoomZero about their space adventure without asking how long it took. DoomZero has played Starfield for around 200 hours so far, and probably 180 of those were spent surveying. Given Starfield was just a month old when DoomZero posted their accomplishment on Reddit, that is, on average, over six-and-a-half hours every day, seven days a week, for 30 days straight.
“I did a couple of the main quests to get the game started and a few side activities along the way as well but it was mostly surveying,” DoomZero explains. “When I completed surveying the galaxy I was level 130.”
While DoomZero has fully surveyed all the planets possible in Starfield, there are some planets they found impossible to survey because of apparent bugs. DoomZero ran into three planets with problems. Two of these planets are currently impossible to fully survey, while one is doable with a bit of nifty quick saving and reloading.
“I was able to find a few different threads of people talking about these planets online which helped me figure out they were bugged,” they said. “Masada III has an ocean biome fauna that doesn’t seem to spawn. Beta Marae I has a fauna in the wetlands that can’t spawn.” Charybdis II is bugged on first glance, but DoomZero found a workaround: “Charybdis II has a flying fauna that spawns into the world invisible but if you go to an area they are supposed to be, quicksave and then load that quicksave, they become visible and scannable.” Hopefully Bethesda patches a fix for these planets sooner rather than later, not least so DoomZero can rest.
What I’m most curious to know from DoomZero is what they think of Starfield now they’ve essentially completed the exploration part of the game. I can’t think of a player more qualified to have an opinion on that most crucial selling point: exploring an entire galaxy. And how does the procedural generation hold up out in the wild? Did DoomZero find so much they’d seen so many times before? Or does Bethesda’s development wizardry keep the sense of wonder going right till the bitter end?
“There is quite a bit of variety when it comes to planets, biomes, and life,” DoomZero says. “The points of interest (POI) are definitely something that could be improved. I ran into a lot of the same POIs going from planet to planet but I was also not playing the game in a typical fashion. I think that the average player shouldn’t really have a problem running into the same types of things too often.”
Similarly, do 10% of Starfield’s planets have life on them, as Todd Howard said before launch? “I think that is probably a pretty accurate statement,” DoomZero says. “It is mostly gas giants and moons that have resources on them. I feel like there are plenty of planets with flora and fauna on them and the game does a pretty good job of pointing you in those directions as you are playing through it.”
In an interview with The New York Times published alongside the release of Starfield, Ashley Cheng, Bethesda’s managing director, said the developers made sure there was enough to do in the game without jam-packing all 1,000 planets with content. Not every location, he said, “is supposed to be Disney World.”
“The point of the vastness of space is you should feel small. It should feel overwhelming,” Cheng said. “Everyone’s concerned that empty planets are going to be boring. But when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren’t bored.” Todd Howard also chimed in: “We could have made a game where there are four cities and four planets. But that would not have the same feeling of being this explorer.” Some planets really are empty so players “get some periods of loneliness”, Howard added.
Is that how Starfield felt for DoomZero? Did they have “periods of loneliness”? Did they “feel small”? Did they feel “overwhelmed”? And if so, was that a cool experience?
“For me personally the sentiments behind these statements definitely rang true,” DoomZero says. “When you get out into the galaxy and start exploring everything does feel vast and overwhelming. Some of my favourite places that I surveyed were moons that may have only had a couple of resources on them but they were extremely close in proximity to large planets and the entire landscape is just a visual of that planet on the horizon.”
Throughout it all, there was one planet — DoomZero forgets the name — that stuck out. It was a planet that had a biome filled with lush trees that looked like cherry blossoms. It’s funny, isn’t it? In a video game about exploring the vastness of space, what we remember is that which is closest to home.
Given they’ve played Starfield for 200 hours, you’d think there would be little left for DoomZero to do in the game. But let’s remember they spent 180 of that simply surveying planets. There’s the main quest and side quests and all the other handcrafted content Bethesda built still left to do. So much of Starfield remains unseen in DoomZero’s playthrough; so many of its quirks, annoyances, brilliance, and frustration left to discover. Will DoomZero stick with Starfield, I wonder?
“Even after spending all that time surveying planets I know there is definitely still plenty of stuff for me to do in the game,” DoomZero says. “So now I guess I can go experience Starfield in a little bit more typical fashion.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.