Starfield has many RPG features but on Sept. 17, a fan pointed out the smuggling feature is pointless. Smuggling should make you rich because it’s illegal but in Starfield you can give up on that.
In Starfield, you can find contraband items, marked with a yellow icon. Those items are illegal and will get you in trouble when scanned by authorities. But you can sell the items to a select few vendors for a quick cash grab.
The economy in the game doesn’t favor smuggling though. You can simply sell all the contraband at The Den and get the same amount of money. “You should have fences in the major cities that would buy contraband for a significant increase in price for you smuggling it into the city,” the original poster suggested.
The same goes for Aurora, an illegal hallucinogen and the biggest contraband in the game. The OP suggested that Aurora should be more expensive outside of the system it was manufactured in. Then smuggling it to other systems would be sensible and profitable.
Starfield fans quickly jumped in with suggestions to fix the issue. One of the top ideas is to create a form of a Smuggler’s Guild, a faction focused solely on contraband. The Guild could have players run requests using the ship stealth mechanic to make money.
Ship stealth is a mechanic introduced in the early mission where you have to turn off all the power on the ship and float to avoid detection. A fan highlighted that the ship stealth is never used after that mission and that is a huge missed opportunity to improve smuggling.
Those ideas combined with a tweak to the game’s economy would make for an excellent update in Starfield. All the mechanics are already in the game, Bethesda just has to put them to use.
Published: Sep 18, 2023 04:50 am