Starfield - Fallout fallout that isn't ES6

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Big Phoenix

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Void said:
Welcome to another episode of Void's in-depth analysis of something most people won't care about, this time how to manipulate one of the events that happens in the MSQ. Specifically High Price to Pay, where you have to choose to defend the Lodge or The Eye. For those that haven't already experienced it, it is a pretty significant spoiler, so fair warning if you read what happens and how to guide it, both legitimately and with console commands.

As most of you probably know already, in this event one of your companions dies. Most people think it is story driven and always the same two, as they don't really compare notes with others, but it is actually always one of your top two highest relationship companions. For me that was either Andreja or Sarah. Since Andreja is my bae, it had to be Sarah, but then after it happened I realized Neil Degrasse Tyson Barrett was still alive and annoying the fuck out of me, so I decided that couldn't stand and he had to die instead. Here is how to determine who might die, and how to change it.

The quest prior to this one has you retrieving two more artifact pieces, and you MUST MUST MUST set the companion levels before you touch the artifact in the Lodge after retrieving them and trigger the next quest, which is where you go to The Eye and do simple maintenance tasks. Even though significant events happen after that point, from replaying it way too many times and having nothing matter, I can fairly confidently say that at the point you touch it and Vladimir asks you to help on the station is when everyone's fate is determined. So follow the instructions below prior to touching it. You can stay at that point in the quest and go off and do all kinds of other stuff to try to raise someone else's level, so just don't touch it until you are ready.

There are non-console command ways to know who are the two at risk, but you won't see it until AFTER you touch the artifact, so make sure you save if you aren't going to use commands. The person that goes to The Eye and has their simple repair task fail and offers to stay behind and fix it is your HIGHEST companion. For me that was Andreja, since we're Klingon-married. The person that accompanies you to steal the next artifact piece from The Scow is SECOND highest.

The highest companion will die on The Eye if you stay and defend the Lodge. The second highest companion will die in the Lodge if you instead immediately go to The Eye.

Now, if you are already too far along to effectively manipulate relationship levels you can use console commands.

In order to check the levels, you can use the following (remember to target the proper NPC first):

GetAV COM_AffinityLevel
GetAV COM_Affinity
(capitalization does not matter)

For later use, to CHANGE those levels you just use
SetAV COM_AffinityLevel
SetAV COM_Affinity

AffinityLevel will return a number from 1 to 3 from what I've seen. 3 is only for the companion that you are banging. 2 is any companion you are ally with, which I believe means you have completed their quest line entirely but are just friends.

Affinity is (from what I can tell) simply a number indicating how many likes/dislikes have accumulated for that companion. There is also one for Anger but from what I can tell that doesn't matter unless their Affinity is zero, so Anger is sort of just like a negative number. Outside of murdering people in the face and not fixing it, I honestly don't know much about Anger so I'm just going to assume everyone has some Affinity and go from there. If you have a bunch of Anger you probably don't care who dies anyway.

AffinityLevel trumps all. Remember that. For me, Andreja had less Affinity than Sarah (because Andreja be crazy and dislikes random shit I do) but her Level was 3 while Sarah's was 2. So Andreja died on The Eye (highest character), and Sarah died in the Lodge (second highest) as predicted.

There are two simple ways to change these levels to pick who dies. If you have a level 3 companion, then bump the person you want to die up to second place. Since (as far as I can tell) you can only have one level 3, everyone else will be 2 or lower, so after you have run around and checked everyone's stats you just use the SetAV commands to bump (or keep, it might already be that) their AffinityLevel to 2 and Affinity to something higher than everyone else. Make sure you actually click on the npc and their name shows up in the console window, as opening and closing the window doesn't change the target, so if you just checked someone else it will still have them on target instead of the person you are looking at and trying to change.

For this option now all you have to do is go to The Eye and save your highest companion, and when you come back the one you just changed to second will be dead in the Lodge.

If you don't have a level 3 companion and everyone is 2 or lower, it is much simpler to just raise the one you want dead to the highest using the same commands, but instead stay and defend the Lodge. Now when you go to The Eye later, the highest companion will be dead like you wanted.

There, now you can kill Barrett like I did. Or one of the girls if you are gay. Or Sam if you are a fucking monster and want Cora running around without a dad anymore!
Click to expand...
Know how i know im a pro gamer?

Going into this with zero knowledge of this quest or how it plays out gay black science man ended up dying.
 
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Tuco

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Void said:
Welcome to another episode of Void's in-depth analysis of something most people won't care about, this time how to manipulate one of the events that happens in the MSQ. Specifically High Price to Pay, where you have to choose to defend the Lodge or The Eye. For those that haven't already experienced it, it is a pretty significant spoiler, so fair warning if you read what happens and how to guide it, both legitimately and with console commands.

As most of you probably know already, in this event one of your companions dies. Most people think it is story driven and always the same two, as they don't really compare notes with others, but it is actually always one of your top two highest relationship companions. For me that was either Andreja or Sarah. Since Andreja is my bae, it had to be Sarah, but then after it happened I realized Neil Degrasse Tyson Barrett was still alive and annoying the fuck out of me, so I decided that couldn't stand and he had to die instead. Here is how to determine who might die, and how to change it.

The quest prior to this one has you retrieving two more artifact pieces, and you MUST MUST MUST set the companion levels before you touch the artifact in the Lodge after retrieving them and trigger the next quest, which is where you go to The Eye and do simple maintenance tasks. Even though significant events happen after that point, from replaying it way too many times and having nothing matter, I can fairly confidently say that at the point you touch it and Vladimir asks you to help on the station is when everyone's fate is determined. So follow the instructions below prior to touching it. You can stay at that point in the quest and go off and do all kinds of other stuff to try to raise someone else's level, so just don't touch it until you are ready.

There are non-console command ways to know who are the two at risk, but you won't see it until AFTER you touch the artifact, so make sure you save if you aren't going to use commands. The person that goes to The Eye and has their simple repair task fail and offers to stay behind and fix it is your HIGHEST companion. For me that was Andreja, since we're Klingon-married. The person that accompanies you to steal the next artifact piece from The Scow is SECOND highest.

The highest companion will die on The Eye if you stay and defend the Lodge. The second highest companion will die in the Lodge if you instead immediately go to The Eye.

Now, if you are already too far along to effectively manipulate relationship levels you can use console commands.

In order to check the levels, you can use the following (remember to target the proper NPC first):

GetAV COM_AffinityLevel
GetAV COM_Affinity
(capitalization does not matter)

For later use, to CHANGE those levels you just use
SetAV COM_AffinityLevel
SetAV COM_Affinity

AffinityLevel will return a number from 1 to 3 from what I've seen. 3 is only for the companion that you are banging. 2 is any companion you are ally with, which I believe means you have completed their quest line entirely but are just friends.

Affinity is (from what I can tell) simply a number indicating how many likes/dislikes have accumulated for that companion. There is also one for Anger but from what I can tell that doesn't matter unless their Affinity is zero, so Anger is sort of just like a negative number. Outside of murdering people in the face and not fixing it, I honestly don't know much about Anger so I'm just going to assume everyone has some Affinity and go from there. If you have a bunch of Anger you probably don't care who dies anyway.

AffinityLevel trumps all. Remember that. For me, Andreja had less Affinity than Sarah (because Andreja be crazy and dislikes random shit I do) but her Level was 3 while Sarah's was 2. So Andreja died on The Eye (highest character), and Sarah died in the Lodge (second highest) as predicted.

There are two simple ways to change these levels to pick who dies. If you have a level 3 companion, then bump the person you want to die up to second place. Since (as far as I can tell) you can only have one level 3, everyone else will be 2 or lower, so after you have run around and checked everyone's stats you just use the SetAV commands to bump (or keep, it might already be that) their AffinityLevel to 2 and Affinity to something higher than everyone else. Make sure you actually click on the npc and their name shows up in the console window, as opening and closing the window doesn't change the target, so if you just checked someone else it will still have them on target instead of the person you are looking at and trying to change.

For this option now all you have to do is go to The Eye and save your highest companion, and when you come back the one you just changed to second will be dead in the Lodge.

If you don't have a level 3 companion and everyone is 2 or lower, it is much simpler to just raise the one you want dead to the highest using the same commands, but instead stay and defend the Lodge. Now when you go to The Eye later, the highest companion will be dead like you wanted.

There, now you can kill Barrett like I did. Or one of the girls if you are gay. Or Sam if you are a fucking monster and want Cora running around without a dad anymore!
Click to expand...
This choice was easy to make because our damn base with all our artifacts and Walter Moneybags Stroud was under attack, so of course I'm going to save that instead of taking the four hour flight up to the Eye, which is basically just another shithole space station we could replace
 
Cybsled

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Question about that

can you still romance/marry another companion after this event happens? I had maxed and married Sarah before I found Adreja, but I like Adreja more and apparently the game only lets you marry one character. So if I let Sarah die on the Eye, does that count as a divorce and allow you to max out and marry Adreja?
 
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Void

Void

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Cybsled said:
Question about that

can you still romance/marry another companion after this event happens? I had maxed and married Sarah before I found Adreja, but I like Adreja more and apparently the game only lets you marry one character. So if I let Sarah die on the Eye, does that count as a divorce and allow you to max out and marry Adreja?
Click to expand...
I honestly don't know the answer to that. I would say that you probably could if you have not progressed to the final stage with the new person prior to this point, but if you've finished the companion quest line in its entirety, I'm not sure if you can revisit that final conversation and change your feelings. That's an interesting question and I might be able to answer it with an old save later tonight. It would be a LOT easier if I could fucking name my saves, wouldn't it???
 
Cybsled

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I haven’t gotten to the friendzone or marry affinity level yet, so in theory the option would be on the table assuming that scenario works out a certain way and the game doesn’t hard lock you
 
Dr.Retarded

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Goddamit, now I want to know what this is about, but I don't think I'm remotely close to finishing the MSQ. Is it about avoiding a bug, guess that's my big concern. I religiously say so I'm sure once I start seeing a point of no return and site I'll have a safe file ready.
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

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No, it’s not a bug being discussed. It’s a normal event in the game related to MSQ
 
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Zefah

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Blitz said:
Exactly my biggest complaint(s) about the game. As stated, the cities and environments just seem very lackluster. Neon City Night City* as a comparison is, while 3 years behind in release, 10 years ahead of what Bethesda put out. New Atlantis feels like it got built 15 years ago, and there's 15,000 people max living there. We went from the overpopulated shithole on a dying Earth, to these cities? I don't think so.

That's a good point someone made about the timeline. This game taking place at the beginning of colonization would've been ten times better - there's also some neat colonization elements you could run parallel with outpost building. As for the anachronism, I was thinking about it myself and really wonder if they could ever really separate themselves from that when building a game - hence their other franchises.

All in all, I'll come back and finish it and probably enjoy it in the same way I do an Assassin's Creed game: Fun, repetitive, somewhat empty gameplay loops.
Click to expand...

There's simply no coherence or internal consistency in Starfield's universe. Their story and setting feels like it was generated by an AI trained on posts from r/Space, r/Science and corporate DEI webpages.
 
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Void

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Dr.Retarded said:
Goddamit, now I want to know what this is about, but I don't think I'm remotely close to finishing the MSQ. Is it about avoiding a bug, guess that's my big concern. I religiously say so I'm sure once I start seeing a point of no return and site I'll have a safe file ready.
Click to expand...
If you get to the MSQ called "Further Into the Unknown" where you have to find two artifact pieces on different planets (Hypnos and Piazzi VI-c) that is when you need to start paying attention. The culmination of that quest is to put the two pieces of the artifact in with the others in the Lodge. Save the game before you touch the artifact holder. That is where my spoiler/manipulation begins, so if you need to go back and redo something, that is the save you will want. You will not know the results of those events right away, but none of it is really that difficult to redo. You will know without me telling you when the event happens that I am concerned about changing the result of, as nothing else on the main quest line really matters much until this event. Trust me, you will know.
 
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Dr.Retarded

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Void said:
If you get to the MSQ called "Further Into the Unknown" where you have to find two artifact pieces on different planets (Hypnos and Piazzi VI-c) that is when you need to start paying attention. The culmination of that quest is to put the two pieces of the artifact in with the others in the Lodge. Save the game before you touch the artifact holder. That is where my spoiler/manipulation begins, so if you need to go back and redo something, that is the save you will want. You will not know the results of those events right away, but none of it is really that difficult to redo. You will know without me telling you when the event happens that I am concerned about changing the result of, as nothing else on the main quest line really matters much until this event. Trust me, you will know.
Click to expand...
Yeah, looks like that's where I'm at right now. Guessing it probably randomly changes the destinations. Played some last night and landed on Luna to the Apollo sight, here a space ship coming in and one of those starborn ships landed. Ran up, but couldn't enter, and didn't see anybody. I guess they're watching me. I did get attacked by some guy at a temple. Assuming that's all part of the story.

IMG_20230926_164144739_HDR.jpg
 
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Cybsled

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After you first encounter the starborne, they will randomly land on planets sometimes when exploring. You can’t enter their ships, though. They also activate cloaking when you get close
 
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Void

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Cybsled said:
Question about that

can you still romance/marry another companion after this event happens? I had maxed and married Sarah before I found Adreja, but I like Adreja more and apparently the game only lets you marry one character. So if I let Sarah die on the Eye, does that count as a divorce and allow you to max out and marry Adreja?
Click to expand...
To answer your question, yes it does work. Even if you previously got to max with the second person and friendzoned them.

To go a bit more in-depth, I had married Andreja, and then taken Sarah's all the way to where I could have committed to her as well, but if I did obviously Andreja got pissed so I chose friendship with Sarah. I just loaded one of my saves before I manipulated it to have NDT die, and let Andreja die instead. I was then able to talk to Sarah, ask her about our relationship, then ask her what she would say if I told her I wanted more, she said cool, so then I continued by choosing Flirt again and told her she was the love of my life or whatever, blah blah, then the Commitment choice appeared and I asked her to marry me. She said yes, but let her plan it for a bit.

So yes, if you are a widow(er) it lets you rekindle with an old flame even if you had previously finished their quest line. The things I do for science!
 
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rhinohelix

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Void said:
To answer your question, yes it does work. Even if you previously got to max with the second person and friendzoned them.

To go a bit more in-depth, I had married Andreja, and then taken Sarah's all the way to where I could have committed to her as well, but if I did obviously Andreja got pissed so I chose friendship with Sarah. I just loaded one of my saves before I manipulated it to have NDT die, and let Andreja die instead. I was then able to talk to Sarah, ask her about our relationship, then ask her what she would say if I told her I wanted more, she said cool, so then I continued by choosing Flirt again and told her she was the love of my life or whatever, blah blah, then the Commitment choice appeared and I asked her to marry me. She said yes, but let her plan it for a bit.

So yes, if you are a widow(er) it lets you rekindle with an old flame even if you had previously finished their quest line. The things I do for science!
Click to expand...
I switched out Barnett for Sarah, who I have had with me almost exclusively since Andreja went bitch mode on after killing some robots, just for the above reasons. I actually don't mind him nearly as much as I thought I would, an am going to regret letting him letting him die later. I mean, not as much as I would one of the girls but sorry, Space DeGrasse Tyson, at least you weren't judgmental when I was looting dead bodies! I will get him justice for his dead husband at least before continuing the MSQ beyond that point.
 
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V

velk

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Void said:
Welcome to another episode of Void's in-depth analysis of something most people won't care about, this time how to manipulate one of the events that happens in the MSQ. Specifically High Price to Pay, where you have to choose to defend the Lodge or The Eye. For those that haven't already experienced it, it is a pretty significant spoiler, so fair warning if you read what happens and how to guide it, both legitimately and with console commands.

As most of you probably know already, in this event one of your companions dies. Most people think it is story driven and always the same two, as they don't really compare notes with others, but it is actually always one of your top two highest relationship companions. For me that was either Andreja or Sarah. Since Andreja is my bae, it had to be Sarah, but then after it happened I realized Neil Degrasse Tyson Barrett was still alive and annoying the fuck out of me, so I decided that couldn't stand and he had to die instead. Here is how to determine who might die, and how to change it.
Click to expand...
Weird, for me it was Sarah, despite the fact that she hated my guts so much she demanded to be released as a companion and continually threatened to walk out.
( She needs to suck up her self righteous bullshit, property rights are just a thing invented by The Man to keep you down, and those so called 'innocent civilians' were probably part of some globalist conspiracy ;p )
 
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velk

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RobXIII said:
I love everything about this game except:

1) Underwhelming loot after wasting time lockpicking (tempted to snag the lockpicking mod)
2) Whatever intern designed New Freeport in EQ seemed to move to Bethesda and is responsible for the copy/paste ruins with floaty lights you need to snag. What an awful, uninspired game loop.
Click to expand...

Number 2 is suuuuuuuch bullshit, especially given they seem to think you are going to want to do that 24 times every NG+ playthrough. I got a mod that activates the gate with one light pickup, but even that was insufferable, I ended up just giving myself the upgrades via console for ng6-10.

It's not even the time taken, it's just everything about that from Vlad only giving you one at a time and forcing you to go back to him and sit through the inane UC scan demand to the BOOOOMLOOUUUUUD music out of nowhere, to the unskippable cutscene that drags on forever and you can't AFK for because you attacked as soon as it ends, through the running to pointless locations and jetpacking around them to get to the entrance. It's sort of cool once but it would take some kind of ludicrously insane dedication to do it 250 times.

NG+ temples gets a 0/10 from me.
 
Tuco

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www.gamesradar.com

Todd Howard says exploring planets in Starfield was much more punishing before Bethesda "nerfed the hell out of it"

Starfield's planets originally had a "complicated system"
www.gamesradar.com www.gamesradar.com

Discussing how the system had to be altered and "tuned" by the developers at Bethesda, Howard reveals that "it was a complicated system for players to understand," and so "we just nerfed the hell out of it." Instead of punishing players too much, the afflictions they could get from planets' atmospheres were instead "more in flavor," Howard says. "it was 'let's just dial it down' because if we dial it way back, it becomes more flavor on the screen than it does a gameplay system," he continues.
Click to expand...
 
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Void

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velk said:
Weird, for me it was Sarah, despite the fact that she hated my guts so much she demanded to be released as a companion and continually threatened to walk out.
( She needs to suck up her self righteous bullshit, property rights are just a thing invented by The Man to keep you down, and those so called 'innocent civilians' were probably part of some globalist conspiracy ;p )
Click to expand...
It could have easily just been a matter of you progressing her story a lot further than the others and getting her to AffinityLevel 2 or even 3. Like I said, Level trumps all, so even if she hated you, if she's one of the top 2 in Level, she's going to be one of the options.

And to expand upon my research into whether or not you can "remarry" after one dies, apparently you can just do that at any time in the game no matter what, doesn't have to be a death. The only difference, of course, is that if you do that your current spouse will get pissed. If they are dead, obviously they can't get pissed. So it isn't some special mechanic they put in for the death scenario, it is just always available once you max a companion to ally. You can always change them from friend to love interest with a little dialogue.
 
Tuco

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So much about the Starfield setting doesn't make much sense.

Starfield's setting is like, "Yeah a huge exodus happened, then a couple of wars, but it's pretty quiet now and nothing is really going on I guess??? Anyway, every planet has a bunch of human ruins or whatever.

I'd have rather had a setting where:

* Grav drive research progresses, and when it's commercially feasible a massive increase of sloppy ass Grav Drives create some massive event similar to the Black Mesa Incident Black Mesa Incident occurs which effectively spawns an infinite number of universes all connected to that event. It also kills Earth. This is now the only entry point to the Starborn. This event also does *something* to unlock Grav Drive's full potential, taking it from a research project requiring a super computer on the moon to something you can put on a space ship.
* A massive Earth exodus happens along with a land rush where billions of people are basically fleeing earth and going to other stars for literally the first time, finding out that many inhabitable planets exist.
* The player can assist a handful of different factions in their land rush goals. Each of these large quests cause some randomly generated outposts to appear in areas aligned to the quest. These faction quest lines are the primary driver of exploration and expansion of the nearby stars, and effectively progress the timeline.
* Instead of there being a bunch of unrealistic human ruins scattered across the star systems, there are instead ruins of intelligent species of different types and semi-intelligent lifeforms that form colonies you explore. A whole new technology erupts that deals with xeno biology and xenotech integration into space ships, arms, suits, buildings etc.
* The main quest is still basically the same, you find and explore specific alien ruins and find the same magic artifacts that give you super powers. Collect all the artifacts in this timeline either by exploring these ruins or killing Starborn for them and you can portal back to a new universe at the time of the originating event.
 
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