Should you build the Starfield Armillary on your ship or at an outpost? Wherever it goes, you've got to defend all your Artifacts from attackers. At this point in the main story of Starfield, the space s*** will be hitting the fan, with enemy forces moving to attack Constellation and steal the Armillary, but you can defend it all on your own terms either in your ship or at an outpost. There are pros and cons to both options, though I reckon keeping those artifacts stored next to the captain's locker is the best option. I've explained the whole choice below, including the positives and negatives of building the Armillary in Starfield either on your ship, or on your outpost - as well as where to find rare Neodymium if you choose the latter.
Where to build the Armillary in Starfield
The Starfield Armillary is simply a container/display unit for all the Artifacts you've found up until that point, but what's important is that wherever it's built is more likely to get attacked in random encounters. This even applies to simply holding Artifacts on you, but here are my thoughts on why it's better to build the Armillary in your ship:
- Escape options. When attacked, the outpost can't escape anywhere - whereas a player can just trigger the Grav Jump on their own ship and fly off.
- You're always close to hand. Your outpost might get attacked while you're half a galaxy away, but players are always close to their ships. Placing it on your craft saves on a long commute.
- It's cheaper and easier. Building the Armillary on your ship is free, done by interacting with a panel next to the Cargo Hold interface, but it costs resources to make it at an outpost.
- Ship defenses are easier to set up. Starfield ship customization makes it easier to set up new guns and weapons on your ship than it is to set up outpost defenses, scrounging materials and setting up power systems - whereas if you have the credits and reactor power, you can set up any weapon on your ship.
Still, if you've already set up an outpost with defenses already or find yourself doing a lot of base-building generally, that might influence your choice in the opposite direction. Much of my reasoning here is based on the idea that an outpost has yet to be set up, but if you already have one to hand with a lot of turrets or plan to do it anyway, that makes it a far more viable option.
How to build the Armillary
The Starfield Armillary can be built in different ways, depending on whether you want to put it on your ship or in an outpost.
- Ship Armillary: Simply go to the console in the cockpit for your cargo hold inventory, and to the left of that is a new screen that you can interact with. Activating that creates the Armillary for free in your ship's hold… somewhere, and the screen becomes your point of access for it.
- Outpost Armillary: At an existing outpost, open the build menu and scroll to a tab called "Quest". There'll be an Armillary structure you can build that costs 3 Neodymium and 5 Titanium, and once constructed you can place it where you want.
Neodymium and Titanium locations
If you want to build your Armillary at an outpost, you'll need Neodymium and Titanium. The latter isn't too hard to get, but the former isn't easy. Nonetheless, we've laid them both out below:
- Neodymium (Nd): This one is hard to find, but we can tell you that it's located for certain in the Kryx system, on the moon Candore, orbiting Suvorov. You might recognise Kryx if you've been looking up our guide on how to join the Crimson Fleet Pirates in Starfield, but they're not on Candore, so don't worry. Land anywhere here and use your scanner to check all the little rock nodes around you - a few of them will be Neodymium.
- Titanium (Ti): A much more common material, for an easy place to start looking, head to the Cheyenne System and land on Heilo, a moon of the planet Montara. Like before, there'll be some nodes you can find with your scanner - some of them will be salvageable Titanium.
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