One Starfield player has effectively become the galaxy's ultimate Good Samaritan by breaking down how to build an outpost network collecting every single resource with perfect efficiency - or, at least, nearly perfect efficiency.
As the admirably named Admirable-Name-5495 explains on Reddit, there are 77 Starfield resources, and you can farm 73 of them through outposts. Many planets offer multiple resources, but 15 resources are unique to specific locations. That means if you want to build a maximally efficient network of Starfield outposts to farm resources, you've got to do a whole lot of cross-referencing to make sure you've got everything covered.
24 Outposts, Every Farmable Resource! (You're Welcome) from r/Starfield
Based on the work of a community-made Google sheet, which in turn pulls from published guides by outlets like Hardcore Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun, Admirable-Name-5495 has put together a guide to the 24 outposts you need to build in order to farm every resource in the game. In some cases, there are a number of different options to grab certain sets of resources, so you do have a bit of freedom in where you build.
While 24 outposts is the current minimum, the work in all those guides remains incomplete, and Admirable-Name-5495 is doing additional research to see if different planet combos can reduce the total number of outposts needed to farm everything. For now, 24 outposts might sound like a lot, but it's still better than mining resources willy-nilly over the whole galaxy.
Todd Howard says expectations for Starfield changed because everything is an RPG now: "I can't look at a game that doesn't have XP and leveling."
