How to use the ship builder in Starfield

Starfield is a game that features a whole host of features for you to get lost in as you journey your way through the galaxy. One of these features is the many mechanics revolving around ships in Starfield. You get one early on in Starfield, but you can also find new ones across the universe by docking onto someone else’s or even just finding them on planets when others land them. You don’t have to find a new ship to be able to get something that feels brand new though, as you can actually build your own ship in Starfield. Here’s our guide on how to use the ship builder in Starfield.

How to use the ship builder in Starfield

Using the ship builder is something you can do in Starfield immediately after getting your ship, the only thing you need to do is find someone who deals in Ship Services. Luckily, this should be pretty easy, as you can find Ship Services signs near where you land your ship in most of the big locations. For example, I have found a Ship Services kiosk in both New Atlantis and Akila City right next to the landing pad.

Screenshot by PC Invasion

Once you locate a Ship Services kiosk or building, you’re going to want to talk to the Ship Services Technician who’s around that location. When you talk to them, you have a couple of options here such as repairing your ship, but the one you want to use to get into the ship builder is the “I’d like to view and modify my ships” option. When you get into the next screen, you will need to keep an eye on the buttons at the bottom of the screen, as one of those should be labeled ship builder, and you then need to press the corresponding button to enter the ship builder. On Xbox, this button is the X button on the controller by default, for example. After this, you’ll be inside the ship builder and able to build your own ships in Starfield.

Finding your way around the ship builder

The ship builder in Starfield is actually incredibly detailed, but here’s a quick rundown of all the things you’ll need to know to get started in the ship builder. For reference, we will be using Xbox controls here, but if you have trouble seeing any of the buttons, they’re all listed at the bottom right of the screen above the stats of the ship.

Here’s the main interface of the Ship Builder in Starfield. Screenshot by PC Invasion

First things first, if you want to add a piece to your ship, hover over an empty area and press the A button, and this will allow you to select a piece to place into the builder. From here, you’ll have a lot of options to pick from, so make sure you know what you’re buying before you put it into your ship.

One tip here: I personally wanted a way to upgrade my weapons and such on my ship as my first purchase, and to do that, I had to head over to ‘Habs’ and then select the room I wanted using left and right on the D-pad, as the bars under the names are the different types of room you can get with those items. So make sure you’re getting the right room before you purchase, or you might have to rebuild your entire ship when you realize you have bought the wrong room, which is what I had to do.

Other tips

If you make a mistake in the ship builder, you can also undo your actions, as well as redo them. This is handy for seeing if you prefer one design or another, or to simply fix a mistake.

Outside of that, the only piece of advice I’d want to look out for is the ‘Flight Check’ system. This system inside of the ship builder is the way you can check that your ship is flight capable in Starfield. This can tell you a few issues with your ship, such as being too heavy to move quickly, or that you’ve forgotten to attach modules to your ship, or that your grav engine isn’t powerful enough for this ship configuration. Make sure to keep an eye on it, and it’s pretty good at telling you how to fix these problems if you get any.

Starfield is available for purchase on Steam.