How to make money in Starfield

You can make money in Starfield by completing missions, selling contraband, establishing resource outposts, and raiding ships for loot. Mission boards offer a consistent source of income from various tasks, while the black market for contraband and the spoils of ship raiding, especially the powerful loot from higher-level systems, can be highly profitable. For passive income, building outposts to mine and sell valuable resources like plutonium or dysprosium is an effective strategy.

This video demonstrates how to set up an outpost for passive income by mining and selling resources:

Missions and jobs

• Take on missions: Look for mission boards in major cities like New Atlantis or Neon to find quests.
• Complete various tasks: Accept a range of missions, including cargo transport, research missions, and bounties, especially those involving the Crimson Fleet.
• Utilize quest rewards: Some quests, like the Vanguard questline, can provide a large sum of credits upfront. 

This video explains how to make a lot of money fast by taking on different types of missions in Starfield:

Looting, raiding, and selling

• Raid ships: Attack and board enemy ships, and loot their cargo, the captain’s locker, and fallen enemies for credits, weapons, and other valuable items.
• Sell looted goods: Sell your findings to vendors. The Den space station is a good option for selling contraband without being scanned, but remember that vendors have a limited amount of credits and refresh them every 48 in-game hours.
• Use shielded cargo: If you are smuggling contraband, equip a shielded cargo hold to avoid scans when entering cities.
• Take advantage of vendors: After selling, you can wait for 24-48 hours to refresh a vendor’s inventory and credit balance.
• Steal and sell: Stealing can also be a source of income, but be sure to use methods like the “buy back” option at the Trade Authority to clean stolen goods before selling them to regular merchants. 

Outposts and resource extraction

• Establish mining outposts: Build outposts on planets with valuable resources like plutonium or dysprosium.
• Set up extraction systems: Place resource extractors and link them to storage containers to automatically collect materials.
• Power your outpost: Ensure you have enough solar arrays or other power sources to run your extractors.
• Farm resources: Use the “Wait” function at your outpost to wait for the storage to fill, then transfer the resources to your ship and sell them to vendors who have replenished their credits. 

Other methods

• Sell survey data: Sell the data from surveying gas giants or asteroids to Vladimir on The Eye for quick credits.
• Loot containers: Look for contraband chests, which may contain large amounts of loot.
• Use the “Commerce” skill: Invest in the “Commerce” skill to increase the value of items when selling them. 

You can watch this video to learn how to make money by selling ships in Starfield: