Starfield Walkthrough 2026: Main Story, All Artifacts & Best Choices for New Players

I finished my first Starfield playthrough in about forty-five hours and I honestly wish someone had told me to just rush the main story because I spent the first twenty hours doing random side quests on desolate moons, picking up junk weapons, and wondering why the game felt slow. The problem wasn't the game. The problem was me ignoring the main quest, which is where all the interesting things actually happen. If you're starting Starfield in 2026, especially on PS5 where it just launched in April, here's the path I'd take if I could do it over.

Start With the Tutorial, Then Ignore Everything Else

The opening mission, "One Small Step," teaches you mining, combat, and flying in about thirty minutes, after which the game opens up and it's incredibly tempting to wander off into the black and explore whatever planet catches your eye. Don't do that. Follow the main quest to "The Old Neighborhood" which sends you to the Eye space station in Alpha Centauri, because completing this unlocks fast travel between all major systems and saves you potentially hours of manual grav jumping that you will absolutely come to hate if you do it enough. Trust me on that.

A lot of guides tell you to join factions early and I tried that, joining the UC Vanguard at level five only to get sent on a mission to Tau Ceti where my basic Eon pistol did basically nothing to the terramorphs. You want to be at least level fifteen before tackling faction content. Run the main story missions until you have some decent gear and levels first, because by the time you finish "Into the Unknown," the third or fourth main quest depending on your path, you'll have picked up a solid rifle and enough med packs to survive faction missions without reloading every five minutes.

The Artifact Hunt: All Twenty-Four Locations

The core loop of Starfield's main quest is finding twenty-four artifacts scattered across the Settled Systems, each one unlocking a new Starborn power and pushing the story toward the Unity with locations that are semi-randomized but the systems they appear in are fixed. You'll find them in Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, Eridani, Olympus, and several others. Bethesda designed it so no two playthroughs are exactly the same, which is honestly pretty clever.

The scanner is your friend here because when you enter a system with an artifact, your scanner UI distorts and a directional indicator appears, so you follow it to a planet, land at the anomaly site, and solve the temple puzzle that is always the same: float through the sparkly rings before the timer runs out. Sounds easy. Gets annoying after the tenth temple. Boost pack helps a lot here. Upgrade it early so you can reach the higher rings without failing constantly.

One thing I wish I'd known: temple locations are not fixed to specific systems on your first run, so if you save before entering a new system and don't like the power you get, reload and try again because some powers are significantly better than others. Personal Atmosphere is arguably the best. It refills your oxygen while sprinting, which means you can run forever with encumbrance. Phase Time is the other standout, slowing everything around you during combat. Gravity Wave sends enemies flying, which is just fun. The rest range from situational to forgettable, and you'll probably only use three or four of them regularly.

That One Mission Where You Lose a Companion

The mission "High Price to Pay" is around halfway through the main quest where you get a choice: go to the Eye or stay at the Lodge, and no matter what you pick, someone dies because if you go to the Eye, Sam Coe survives but someone at the Lodge dies, while if you stay at the Lodge, Sam dies and there's no way to save everyone. I've searched forums extensively and players have tried every possible workaround. It's scripted. Nothing you can do.

This isn't a small thing because the companion who dies is gone for the rest of that playthrough, including their personal questline and any romance you might have started, so save before starting this mission and think about which companion matters more to you. Barrett gives you a unique rifle if he survives. Sam's daughter Cora factors into his story in a way that makes losing him feel genuinely awful, showing up on your ship occasionally after he's gone, and it's heartbreaking. I lost Sam on my first run and immediately reloaded a save from three hours earlier. Worth it.

The Unity Decision

After collecting all twenty-four artifacts you reach the Unity, basically the center of the multiverse, where you choose whether to step through or return to your universe because stepping through starts New Game Plus where you keep your skills and powers but lose all your gear and ships and outposts, waking up in a new universe where things are slightly different. I won't spoil the variations, but they range from funny to unsettling, like one NG+ universe where an alternate version of Constellation greets you with weapons drawn and you have to talk your way out of a firefight, or another where the Lodge is already occupied by a different version of yourself who's further along the main quest than you are, or a third where Andreja has already killed everyone in Constellation and you walk into a crime scene. These variations are random so you might need multiple NG+ runs to see them all. Bethesda has confirmed there are unique dialogue options and quest variations across ten NG+ cycles. Kinda wild.

If you're the type who likes to one hundred percent things, finish all faction questlines and build your dream ship before stepping through the Unity because I didn't and I stepped through after about sixty hours, lost my beautiful custom ship with all the Stroud-Eklund hab modules I'd spent hours configuring, and immediately regretted it. The powers get slightly stronger with each NG+ cycle, but honestly the upgrades are incremental. Your Phase Time might last an extra two seconds at rank ten versus rank one. Not worth losing hundreds of hours of progress unless you're truly done with that universe.

PS5 Specific Tips

If you're on PlayStation, a few things work differently where the DualSense haptic feedback adds a lot to gunplay and ship combat because you feel the recoil of different weapons and the rumble of engines, making space flight more immersive than it was on Xbox. The loading times are noticeably faster than Xbox Series X in my testing, but the thirty FPS cap on quality mode is rough, so switch to performance mode in the settings where the game looks nearly identical and runs way smoother.

Also worth noting: mod support on PS5 is more limited than Xbox or PC because Sony restricts external assets, so you're mostly getting Bethesda's official Creations rather than the full Nexus Mods library PC players have enjoyed since twenty twenty-three. Don't expect the same modding experience.

How Long It Actually Takes

One last thing. The main story, if you focus on it and skip everything else, takes about twenty-five hours, then add another forty for the four major faction questlines, and another thirty for ship building and outposts, while exploration, side quests, and random encounters can easily add fifty more. It's a Bethesda game. It'll eat your life if you let it. Pace yourself, save often, and don't feel bad about using fast travel because nobody's judging you and the alternative is spending twenty minutes in loading screens and grav jump animations. You know how it goes.