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- Where To Find Planets To Survey
While marketing for Starfield, the existence of over 1,000 planets in the game was one of the main focuses. Players are allowed to land on and explore most of these planets to their heart’s content. While some of them might be empty, there are many planets with unique Flora and Fauna on them.
As you progress in the main story, you’ll meet Vladimir at The Eye and he’ll ask you to get him the Survey data of a planet to sell it for a decent price. If you have the heart of an explorer, this part of the game can easily have you sink many hours into it.
Where To Find Planets To Survey
To make some money off of the surveying business in Starfield, you’ll first have to locate a planet worth surveying. As you go through different solar systems, you’ll notice that most planets are empty apart from a few resources. Some planets don’t even have these resources on them.
For these planets, you can simply fast-travel into their atmosphere and survey them from the map itself. You don’t have to land on these planets and look around, but the survey data from them won’t get you as many Credits either. To get more money, you have to go around and find planets with some Flora and Fauna.
Some planets also have Unknown Traits present, which increases their survey data’s value.
To find these planets, you can simply click on them and check the information that appears on the left side of your screen. This area shows the number of Flora and Fauna species present on the planet along with all the resources. Sometimes, you might have to get inside a planet’s atmosphere to see these.
Once you’ve located a planet with any Flora or Fauna, it’s time to land on it and start surveying. Although, this process can take hours if you don’t survey it methodically.
How To Survey A Planet
As you click on the surface of a planet to land on it, you’ll see a box appear on the right side. This box has the button you need to press to land, and the biome you’ll land on is also mentioned just above it. Beside the biome name, you’ll find the exploration percentage of this biome, which lets you decide where to land.
Each planet has an overall exploration percentage and the percentage of each biome, which helps you reduce the search area.
If a biome’s exploration is less than 100 percent and it’s not the Ocean, you can land on it and start exploring. The best way to explore a planet is by having your scanner out at all times since this highlights all the explorable items in blue whenever they enter the giant circle in the middle.
When you have the scanner out, you’ll also be able to see the planet’s overall Flora, Fauna, and resources along with the amount you’ve fully scanned. If you’ve scanned all the Flora or Fauna in a certain biome, you’ll also see “Biome Complete” written beside these numbers here. resources are an exception to this.
You can find the resources randomly scattered across the planet, and they’re usually not found only in a specific biome. Finally, if you want to find the Unknown Traits of a planet, you have to keep a lookout for random icons appearing when you’re on the scanner screen. These icons will be displayed as Unknown at the start.
Take the middle circle on the scanner to these icons and then use it to reveal what the Unknown area is. It could be an Anomaly, Structure, Cave, or something else. Whenever you find one of these, it’s worth checking it out since it could be one of the Unknown Traits you’re looking for.
When you get to a location with an Unknown Trait, you’ll have to scan a few specific areas to complete it.