Don’t Use Starfield Fast Travel to Teleport Between Planets

Fast travel is a convenient feature in many open world games that allows players to quickly teleport between previously discovered locations. However don’t use Starfield fast travel to teleport between planets, overusing fast travel can cause players to miss out on much of the environmental storytelling and random encounters that make exploration memorable as describe by a Redditor. This is especially true in expansive science fiction settings like Starfield. Here are some tips on avoiding overreliance on fast travel in Starfield to get the most out of discovering each new planet.

Take Off and Land Using Your Ship

When you’re ready to leave a planet, don’t just open your map and fast travel to your next destination. Instead, physically walk to your ship, get in the cockpit and manually take off. This triggers an immersive cinematic takeoff sequence. Likewise, when traveling to a new planet, select it from your star map while still in space. This will initialize a hyperspace jump and atmospheric entry cinematic before landing at your selected destination.

Taking off and landing manually may only add a minute or two to your travel time. But it greatly improves the sense that you’re an explorer crossing the vast distances between celestial bodies. You’ll also appreciate each planet’s unique atmosphere and terrain during descent. The cinematics that play out make travel feel more epic and rewarding.

Explore Space Between Planets

Space is far from empty in Starfield. Various random encounters can occur while piloting your ship between locations. You may detect a distress signal from a damaged vessel, offering opportunities to engage in ship-to-ship combat or conduct a rescue. Stumbling across smugglers transporting illegal cargo could also lead to confrontation or negotiation. Anomalies like spatial rifts, comets and deteriorating satellites also beg for closer inspection.

By manually piloting between planets, you leave the door open for surprising encounters that make the universe feel dynamic. The encounters encourage you to explore, and the rewards for helping others or investigating oddities are often substantial. Fast traveling means you’ll miss out on many of these opportunities entirely.

Appreciate the Scale of Space Travel

Zooming between planets with a single button press diminishes Starfield’s sense of scale. It reduces cosmic distances to meaningless abstractions. The act of manually piloting through space imparts a visceral feeling for how far apart celestial bodies really are. Watching them shrink into the distance as you cruise away at sublight speed helps you appreciate the vastness of space.

The wait time also builds anticipation for exploring new worlds once you achieve orbit. Choosing destinations from the star map en route makes the universe feel tethered together in a coherent way. You gain perspective on the immense voids between stars and planets that explorers must cross. Fast travel ruins this effect by condensing the timeline and sense of distance.

Take in Sights Along the Way

While in transit, there are plenty of sights to see if you’re not fast-traveling. Star clusters, nebulae, black holes and other stellar phenomena make for mesmerizing eye candy. The visual distraction can make the minutes spent in cruise seem to fly by. Some celestial events also have associated research opportunities and stories behind them. Locking onto different targets that grab your interest presents possibilities you’d otherwise miss out on.

It’s enjoyable to bask in the ambience of space and feel dwarfed by the scale of cosmic features you encounter. Letting autopilot handle the mundane cruising leaves your attention free to appreciate the view. Fast travel means treating the scenery between destinations as irrelevant, which diminishes the sense of actually journeying through space.

Don’t Miss Planetary Approaches

When initiating travel to a planet from its orbit, you’re treated to a dramatic approach sequence. This involves breaking through the atmosphere while buffeted by intense forces and flames. It’s an exciting event, even after you’ve experienced it multiple times across different planets. The graphics and sound design make each atmospheric entry feel intense and dangerous.

By fast traveling directly to a planet’s surface, you deprive yourself of this experience. And along with skipping the thrill of the approach, you miss out on appreciating each planet’s unique atmospheric composition and entry dynamics. It’s a key part of what distinguishes different planets from each other. So letting the full approach play out makes the beginning of each new planetary expedition more impactful and memorable.

Take a Break and Enjoy the Ride

In today’s impatient gaming climate, it’s tempting to circumvent any perceived inconvenience in service of optimizing progression. But in expansive games like Starfield, sometimes it pays to slow down and enjoy the journey. Time spent traveling between planets can function as a relaxing cooldown period between missions. It’s a chance to take in the scenery and let anticipation build for the next stop.

The longer transit periods imposed by manually piloting also mesh well with taking breaks in extended play sessions. Jumping up to grab a drink or snack while your ship cruises through space eases the urge to rush. You’ll return re-energized for the next planetfall without missing much along the way. Looking at travel time as downtime instead of a hassle makes avoiding fast travel a more pleasant choice.

Overusing fast travel flattens down the scale and sense of space that makes Starfield’s universe compelling to explore. Prioritizing immersion by manually piloting between planets opens up more gameplay opportunities and enhances your appreciation for the breadth of the cosmos. Travel ends up feeling more meaningful when you experience the full journey first-hand every step of the way. Slow down once in awhile and enjoy the ride across the stars instead of teleporting past all the discovery and grandeur.