Starfield money glitches, farming credits and how to get fast cash

Starfield money and credit farming methods will allow you to pile up cash with minimal effort so you can buy weapons, ships, and more. While there was a relatively easy money glitch that involved looting vendor crates, it has unfortunately been patched, so you'll have to earn money the hard way - or you can use console commands to add endless credits to your Starfield space coffers, though remember to make a back up save if you're doing anything that might affect the game. If you're just playing the game for mission rewards and selling all of the gear you pick up isn't enough (especially for the best Starfield ships) then there are a several options here that you can try out to farm money and credits in Starfield.

How to do the Starfield money glitch

The Starfield money glitch involves finding the hidden chests that contain vendor inventories and raiding them for their credits - a time honored tradition for Bethesda games. These usually involve clipping out of bounds to reach somewhere you shouldn't have access to, however new glitches have now been discovered that can be accessed from a standard location. To use these, head to the Freestar Collective's capital Akila City, on Akila in the Cheyenne System.

The first of these is just to your left as you enter the city from the landing pad, outside Shepherd's General Store. Crouch and approach the marked puddle in front of the store to reveal Emerson Shepherd's supplies chest, which contains 5,000 credits (select Transfer then find them under 'misc' if you don't want to scroll through the whole list) plus a wide selection of ammo, aid, resources, and more to swipe without any theft actually taking place.

Next, turn around and crouch in the marked area outside The Hitching Post Bar, just to the side of the green container on the floor. This will reveal Jaden Ross' bar chest, containing another 1,200 credits and various drink items. Once you've taken everything you want, enter the bar and sit in a chair then use the promt to wait in Starfield for 2 x 24 hours to pass. Speak to both vendors to refresh their inventories, then return to the hidden chests to raid them again.

Returning to the more time-consuming methods to reach these chests, the first one involves a convoluted series of jumps and boostpack flights to clip through scenery at the Commercial District on Jemison to reach the chests you can see above. This video shows the lengthy path you'll need to take in full, which I was able to reproduce with a basic boostpack and no additional pack skills. Once you reach the target you can access various vendor chests, including the Ship Services Vendor Storage which contains an impressive 72,000 credits. 

There's also another video for Neon City on Volii Alpha, which is much easier to access and can be repeated by waiting 48 hours and speaking to the vendors to refresh their inventories. As I mentioned above the benefit of using these Starfield money glitches is that the game considers the credits as legitimately earned as you're not technically trespassing. So you shouldn't face any repercussions for boosting your cash balance in this way.

Starfield console command money cheat

If you're playing on PC and want to use Starfield console commands, use the  ` or ~ key (region dependent), then enter the following:

• player.additem 0000000f 500000

That will immediately give you half a million credits. Or just swap out that last number in bold with however many credits you want! Just keep in mind that using console commands and cheats prevents you from earning Achievements on that save game - although there is a option among all the Starfield mods to counter that. You do also run the risk of breaking your game so use a backup save for this option.

How to farm money in Starfield

To farm money in Starfield fast, our favourite method is to loot randomly generated enemy camps that appear when you land on planets. Here's the best way we know of:

1. Empty your inventory so you have space to carry as much as possible.
2. Equip only the best combat items you have, a good gun, some armor, your Digipicks and healing items (and maybe any equipment that helps fend off the issue of Starfield encumbrance).
3. Take your ship to any planet's wilderness - you're not going to any of the Starfield cities here; you need to go somewhere far away from civilization.
4. Use your scanner to find Structures nearby. Swivel until you see the "Unknown" icon, then press A to check it.
5. Head to that structure. Ideally, it'll be occupied by Pirates, Ecliptics or Spacers. If it's anything else, move on and try another structure.
6. Kill everything. Empty house, scorched earth, no survivors.
7. Take everything that isn't nailed down. You want to prioritise credits and rare items, of course, but take whatever you can get. Loot the bodies and look for locked doors, safes or chests - anything that requires Starfield lockpicking mechanics will pay out nicely, and there'll usually be some sort of bandit boss and treasure chest with extra good loot.
8. Fly back to Jemison. Any city will work, but Jemison has numerous vendors close together to speed up step nine…
9. Sell everything! Vendors have limited credits on them, the stingy bastards, so when you're done move onto the next one. If you still have full inventory, sit on a bench and wait 24 hours for them to get their money back.
10. Repeat this process. Pirate bases are generated randomly each time you land in the wilderness - so just head back to the unknown and start hunting pirates again.

We used the Planet Gagarin in Alpha Centauri as a farming location, to stay close to Jemison, but most planets will work just as well. This process might not be as efficient as some people would hope, but it works better than any other legitimate method we know, and also serves as a good XP farm at the same time - not to mention that if you find any good weapons and armor you don't want to sell, you can just keep those.

Making money quickly in Starfield

If you don't want to farm money in Starfield with the method above, there are ways to make money faster than normal while you play.

• Get the Scavenging, Commerce and Negotiation skills, all of which increase money earned throughout the game. Negotiation might describe itself as the power to offer bribes, but we've seen it come up as the opposite too, such as the Starfield Ron Hope choice where you can use it to get an extra 30,000 credits when someone bribes you.
• Sell any excess ships and modules you have. It might be nice to fly about in a leisure palace, but it's certainly costly - sell all the non-essential components and structural pieces during Starfield ship customization to make some more money.
• Play story and faction missions! Doing the main campaign and the core missions for Constellation, the Crimson Fleet, Freestar and others all tends to pay really well (we mean their actual story missions, not the random mini-quests off their bounty boards). The Starfield Kryx legacy mission at the end of the Crimson Pirates' story offers a staggering quarter of a million credits.
• Don't carry resources if you don't need them. Resources tend to take up a lot of inventory space and are rarely worth much to vendors - if you don't need them for your outpost or crafting, feel free to abandon them.
• Keep using vendors. It's more efficient to sell-as-you-go rather than dump it all on vendors in one bunch, as you inevitably end up having to wait in chunks of 24 hours for them to get the money back. Dropping off the most recent sellable equipment in passing is generally more efficient on both your time and your wallet.
• Have some Shielded Cargo ready for contraband. Starfield contraband smuggling doesn't pay as well as you'd hope, but if you're going to find the stuff, you might as well sell it off. Shielded Cargo holds will help you fly it to a trade authority safely for dispersal.
• Manipulate the difficulty. Playing on harder difficulties gives better rewards. Our suggestion is to turn the difficulty to very hard, enter a new area, then drop it from the settings menu. The game loads in all the high-difficulty rewards, then you make all the enemies into pushovers - but leave the high-value loot.

© 12DOVE. Not to be reproduced without permission