How To Skip The Entire Main Quest In Starfield

The Starfield New Game Plus feature certainly has a lot of quirks. One of the coolest options also drastically changes how you approach the campaign. Our guide discusses if you how to–and whether you should–skip the main quest in Starfield during your New Game Plus run. Likewise, please be reminded that this article contains spoilers.

Should you skip the main quest in Starfield

If you want to skip the main quest in Starfield, then make sure you’re already in your New Game Plus playthrough. We’ve got all the details on how to reach that part in our NG+ guide, including the stuff that gets carried over, and the cool toys that you’ll get.

Repeat or skip the main quest

Head to the Lodge to see that everyone’s just as surprised as you are. They know you as the miner from Vectera, but that person already died; Vasco was the one who retrieved the artifact instead. You’re then given a choice when you talk to Sarah:

• Repeat main quest: I want to join Constellation. Unravel this mystery with you.
• Skip main quest: I’m not who you think. I’m Starborn. I know what the artifacts are.

There are, of course, pros and cons. For instance, if you decide to repeat the main quest, then that somehow defeats the purpose of an NG+ run, since you’ll redo every mission just like before.

However, if you skip the main quest, the campaign will be drastically altered (as explained below). Your character will blurt out every detail, including the companion death in A High Price to Pay (that certainly surprised Sarah since she died in our campaign). Perhaps the biggest downside is related to companion romance. All main quests offer dialogue opportunities that boost a companion’s affinity. Without those, you’ll have to make do with side quests, faction quests, and other interactions. Still, skipping does keep your playthrough refreshing.

One more issue of note is that a different storyline progression could affect certain side quests. For example, we did not receive the Overdesigned mission from Walter. That meant we were unable to acquire the free Class-C Kepler R ship.

Artifact and power acquisition

If you skip the main quest in Starfield, you’ll notice a different means of acquiring artifacts: Vladimir simply gives you all the locations. That’s it. You’ll see all of the planets that you need to go to in your quest log as part of a mission called Among the Stars.

As for unlockable powers, you keep those that you’ve already acquired in your initial campaign. However, Vladimir will sometimes tell you of temple locations (i.e. Power From Beyond quests), and you could still receive notifications when you visit new star systems. The difference here is that you might obtain upgraded versions, such as Parallel Self II or Elemental Pull II.

How to recruit companions if you skip the main quest

There’s also a clear difference in how you recruit companions if you skip the main quest in Starfield. Here’s a quick summary:

• Sarah and Vasco will be in The Lodge, as usual, so no problems there.
• Barrett will be in Vectera (you won’t need to rescue him anymore). Lin and Heller are also there. They bugged out in our main campaign (they just disappeared suddenly). In NG+, they had no dialogue at all and we couldn’t recruit them. We’re not sure if this was due to the aforementioned bug.
• Sam and Andreja weren’t available at the start. However, once we acquired all artifact’s from the quest log, they showed up in The Lodge. Sam was in the bar on the second floor, and Andreja was in her room.

Starborn interactions

Lastly, there are some key interactions with Starborn in NG+. Here are some examples:

• Since you can just grab artifacts by visiting the listed planets, the attack in The Lodge will no longer occur.
• After collecting all artifacts, you’ll meet your old Starborn rivals in orbit over Oborum III, as opposed to docking with the Emissary’s ship.
• In Oborum III, you also choose whether to side with the Hunter or Emissary. This replaces the interaction in Unearthed/NASA Landmark, since you’re no longer required to go there.
• The Revelation final mission remains the same, for the most part.
• We’ve also noticed that, upon clearing one NG+ run and skipping the main quest again, the list/tallies for the artifact locations remained the same. Perhaps there’s only one permutation for all NG+ attempts. However, we did receive a different Starborn Suit (Materia instead of Astra), and it had better stats and different mods.

In any case, that’s everything you need to know about whether or not you should skip the main quest in Starfield. It’s really up to you if you want to repeat the campaign once more, or if you want to try something different and refreshing. Lastly, now that you’re Starborn, you might end up meeting the Starborn Trader as you explore the stars.