Selling contraband in Starfield is hindered by the scan of your ship by security forces. This guide explains how to evade this scan and where you can sell contraband.
Here’s the deal: In Starfield space, your ship is sometimes scanned for contraband. That’s bad, because illegal goods are among the most valuable commodities in the entire alternate universe. So what can you do to avoid having your ship scanned by security forces? Is it even possible to hide contraband?
- Also important: How to earn lots of credits fast in Starfield
Our guide shows you where the difficulties lie in transporting and selling contraband, and it explains how to overcome all obstacles.
How to Evade the Scanning of Your Ship in Starfield
Just as opportunity makes thieves, contraband in Starfield tempts you to trade it. How does it do that? It’s simple: contraband goods are worth an insane amount; for example, a small case of xeno warfare tech will get you over 16,000 credits. Well, interested? Yeah, that’s what we thought.
But the problem with contraband is that it can only be sold in a populated system. And in the space of a populated system, there are always patrol ships of the respective security forces that will scan your ship for illegal stuff.
Now, of course, you could come up with the very clever idea of simply using fast travel after finding and bagging contraband. Theoretically, this should even work, because in general you can actually travel from point A to B immediately in Starfield. Anyway, that changes as soon as you have some not-so-kosher goods in your backpack or ship’s inventory. You may want to take a look at the screenshots below.
In the case shown, we tried to travel directly to the spaceport of New Atlantis from the place where the contraband was found. However, we couldn’t do that because all the landing pads on the planet were suddenly blocked or grayed out. So we had no choice but to jump with our ship into the space of the Alpha Centauri system – straight in front of the ship scanners of UC Security.
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Starfield: In Smuggling, Preliminary Work is Everything
You can stand on your head and shout I-ah: There’s no way to prevent your ship from being scanned for illegal goods in the populated systems. But you can take countermeasures to change the scan result in your favor.
Option 1: Strengthen Your Ship’s Shields
To influence the scan through security, you can use the ship’s shields. At the beginning of Starfield – on board the Frontier – you can assign a maximum of three energy points to them. But this is too little to let the scan of the security turn out negative.
Therefore, you must first increase the shield capacity and then hire a specialist, a fusion technician, for your crew, who will make sure that more energy is available on board your space glider.
To do this, go to the spaceport of New Atlantis, on the planet Jemison in Alpha Centauri. Walk north up the path and then turn left. There, “The Viewpoint” is written in large illuminated letters on a building facade.
Enter the location (see picture above) and you will find there changing crew candidates, specialists – also a fusion technician with the skills you are looking for should be there directly. Usually the person in question will also tell you that he/she can provide more energy reserves on your ship.
When you have assigned your new crew member to his post on the Frontier or another ship, you still have to ask a ship dealer (for example Lon Anderssen on Porrima III in the Porrima system) to increase the shield capacity (see picture below). Of course, this will cost you: For each additional shield unit you should have about 3500 credits ready.
After that, the transport of contraband can begin. The only thing you have to remember before the security scan is to assign the new maximum energy to your shields. This way, as mentioned, you will get a negative scan result and the security fatzken will let you land on the system’s planets with peace of mind.
Option 2: Build a Shielded Cargo Container
Until you have your own first outpost, you should keep your hands off this option, because you will need a landing platform to customize your spaceship. The construction costs are:
- Iron: 30
- Weightless wire: 2
- Beryllium: 2
- Adaptive frame: 18
Once the platform is built, you can upgrade your ship with new parts here. In order to hide your contraband from scanners, you will need to add a “Shielded Cargo” container. Move the contraband from your inventory to this new storage space in your ship, it goes like this:
- Enter your ship and go to the crew area.
- Open your inventory and select the cargo room with the corresponding key (on PC it’s “Q”).
- Press “Q” again and your inventory will open.
- From here you can move the contraband to the shielded cargo hold of your spaceship.
If you have done this correctly, your contraband is now automatically hidden and the security forces can no longer detect it with their scanners.
Where to Sell Contraband in Starfield
The question remains, where you can sell precious contraband. As a role-playing game expert and Bethesda fan, one would probably assume that some kind of fence would do this job, but that’s not the case. No, the smuggled goods can be easily sold at a vending machine of the Trade Authority; in New Atlantis as well as in other cities you can find such a thing near your landing place (see picture below).
And there’s a good reason for that, because as you probably already know, security scans are not only to be expected in space, but also on the ground. Namely, when you enter the city from the spaceport. The vending machines of the Trade Authority are therefore always to be found outside the city core.
Starfield: Fence in New Atlantis
If you prefer to sell your illegal goods to a human, you can also go to one of the very few fences (or rather specialized dealers) mentioned above. One of the best places to sell contraband in Starfield is the already known New Atlantis in the Alpha Centauri system. Here you can come across a contraband merchant in the spaceport.
- From the spaceport, go to the “Demison Mercantile” merchant and pass it on the right.
- At the end of the corridor you will find an elevator on your left.
- Take the elevator to the lower decks and walk straight from here to the second left turn.
- On your left you will find the “Trade Authority” and inside it Zoe Kaminski, whom you will meet in the quest “Alternating Currents”.
- You can now sell your contraband to Zoe.
Fence in the Wolf system (“The Den”)
It’s easier to sell your contraband on the space station “Der Bau” (original: The Den) in the Wolf system. Here you don’t have to hide your contraband, because scanners simply don’t exist there. However, you will receive less credits for the sale of your goods.
Besides contraband, there are of course plenty of other items that you can sell in Starfield. These include normal items, weapons and resources that you didn’t just steal from the impoverished farmer family’s shed. Below are the best places to sell all the other stuff in Starfield.
Merchants in New Atlantis
For selling regular items, New Atlantis is once again a good place to go. Visit the MAST district and look for the merchant “Outland” there, which accepts everything that is neither stolen nor contraband. Here you can sell your loot from the space trade for a profit.
Akila City
In Akila City, you can’t miss the merchants. When you enter the city from the landing field, all the merchants are on the main street. Just like in a classic western town. Right at the entrance of the town you will find the general dealer, in between you will find weapons and at the very end of the town you will find the commodity dealer.
System Wolf: The Den
You’ll find the same option to sell regular items on Wolf’s Den. Here you can sell anything you wouldn’t consider contraband to the merchant on the space station.
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