What is the best Starfield XP farm? Gaining Starfield XP to get those all-important levels up can be a pretty arduous task, but what if we told you there was a Starfield XP farm to do the heavy lifting? There are a variety of strategies and things to consider that will help you generally increase your XP as you play, but we’ve found one tactic in particular that can really elevate your level at an exponential rate.
XP farming involves finding some form of loophole or extremely fast way to gain lots of experience with as much ease as possible. Because you earn a precious skill point to invest in the best Starfield skills every time you level up, finding a reliable way to farm XP has huge benefits. Well, we’re happy to report that there are a couple of ways to farm XP in Starfield, both for those just starting out and for those more experienced players that are already well on their way to triggering Starfield New Game Plus.
How to farm XP in Starfield
To farm XP in Starfield and increase how much you earn, you should:
- Sleep to get the Well Rested buff
- Stock up on short side quests in cities
- Locate a planet with lots of fauna and kill aliens
The most effective way to quickly farm XP in Starfield is to combine a few of the game’s mechanics to work in your favor. Firstly, ensure you regularly get some sleep in before going on a voyage as this will provide 10% increased XP thanks to being “Well Rested”. The Well Rested buff doesn’t last forever, so we recommend every 20-30 minutes finding a bed where you can take a nap.
In Starfield, you gain surefire XP from completing missions, visiting new planets, and defeating enemies, so combine all of these together while Well Rested and you’ve already got an easy Starfield XP farm going.
To dive into this deeper, we suggest trying to stock up on as many missions as you possibly can. This means roaming around New Atlantis and any other built up city to overhear conversations and bump into side characters. This will enable you to pick up a bunch of these side quests that could take you to either the same planets or the same systems. If you manage to do this, you’ll get some serious XP quickly.
Another method is to find a planet with lots of fauna that you can repeatedly and quickly kill for XP. You can do this with human enemies too, but they have guns and shoot back – Starfield’s aliens are much easier to gun down.
To check if there are lots of species of fauna on a planet, travel to its orbit, open up your galaxy map, hover your cursor over it, then press LB/ L1 to perform a scan of the planet. This will not only show you what resources are on the planet (which will be available for another XP farm method we’ll tell you about in a minute) but will also reveal how many fauna and flora species there are.
Best Starfield XP Farm
Now, while there are different ways to farm XP in Starfield, there is a definitive best Starfield XP farm in our eyes. This one focuses directly on building Starfield Outposts and, more specifically, the use of them in conjunction with resource mining and crafting. Combined, these make for some serious XP gains, propelling your level astronomically in a short space of time.
To get started with the Starfield XP farm, which was first revealed by YouTuber ‘Maka91Productions’, you’ll first need to actually unlock the ability to create Outposts. This is extremely early on in the game so the likelihood is that this is already unlocked for you.
After unlocking the chance to create Outposts, you’ll need a suitable planet to put one down on. For this Starfield XP farm, we’d recommend a moon called Andraphon in the Narion system as it has all the perfect mix of resources for this method: Iron and Aluminium. There should be more planetary options but these will likely be much further out in the galaxy, and if you’re still early on in the game, your ship may not be able to grav jump that far out.
Before you get started, you need some initial resources to get things going. Luckily, you can simply buy what’s required from a vendor in New Atlantis as long as you have a few thousand credits.
This vendor is situated within the Commercial District UC Distribution Center and is behind the desk so you can’t miss her. The resources you need to purchase are:
- Adaptive Frames (18)
- Aluminum (124)
- 2Beryllium (24)
- Copper (30)
- Fiber (2)
- Iron (99)
- Tungsten (24)
If you don’t see any or enough of these resources when first viewing her inventory, wait 24 hours on a nearby chair and look again.
Buy as many of the materials that you can carry here. Using the 24 hour wait trick will enable restocks so do that to load up your inventory. Obviously having increased carry weight here via the Weight Lifting skill is useful so keep that in mind.
Now you’ve got everything to get your Starfield XP farm going. Head to your Iron and Aluminum rich planet and find an area where these two resources overlap. Here, you can place your Outpost down. If you’re having trouble locating an Iron and Aluminum overlap, check the top left of your screen when placing your Outpost beacon and you’ll see what resources are available.
Now, you’ll need to place both Iron and Aluminum Extractors in this region. If you have the resources to build five or six of each, then that’ll work really well. Then, to power these, put enough Solar Arrays down to cover the need.
With the Extractors ready and powered, it’s time to create chests to store the resources in. Create two banks of chests, one for Iron and one for Aluminium. Craft as many as you can here as these are the key for increasing the speed of the Starfield XP farm. Once they’re placed, you’ll need to point the Extractors to one chest, preferably in the bottom corner, and then link the chests together so that the resources fill up the whole bank automatically.
Now everything is in place, the final piece of the puzzle is to make a Crafting Station. Then, all you need to do is craft a lot of Adaptive Frames using all your harvested Iron and Aluminium. Make 99 at a time, and spam the craft button over and over, giving you a bunch of XP each time. You’ll soon see the levels coming in thick and fast, potentially a level every 10 to 20 seconds.
So, whether you take our more general advice about being Well Rested and farming missions or aliens, or go all-in on this complicated but much more effective Starfield XP farm, get ready to fly through the levels and unlock lots of excellent skill points. Because there is no Starfield respec feature, getting lots of skill points to max out every skill is doubly important. With these XP farms, no space pirate is able to outmatch you.
Still looking for more? While a good Starfield wiki can be a handy source of information, our new Starfield Database goes further, offering you daily news, searchable databanks, and even interactive tools like a New Atlantis map for exploration.