(Image: Bethesda / Nathan Hart)
I'm a stand-up comic by night and write for HGG by day. Most of my gaming happens at an improvised desk at the Days Inn right outside whatever small town I'm in for the night.
Reviewed by Benjamin Barr
Crafting weapons in Starfield relies on modding existing guns rather than creating brand-new ones. With this in mind, you’ll notice there is a wide array of possible configurations for your favorite guns, especially by the end of the game when you’ve unlocked the ability to craft whatever you want. I’m gonna break down the crafting system a little bit before I start my second NG+ since some of the spacers and terrormorphs I fought toward the end of the last one gave me some real trouble.
Crafting Basics
The first step to crafting the best gun you can in Starfield will be to unlock the “Weapon Engineering” skill from the skill tree, requiring you to pump some points into unrelated science skills to unlock it. Advancing this skill will be necessary to unlock the best mods in the game. To complete the challenges requiring you to craft a certain number of mods to advance, you can pick up modded weapons from dead enemies and simply remove the mods yourself. This will count as crafting a mod while taking significantly fewer rare resources, however, you won’t get to keep the removed mods.
Next, you’ll need to complete the corresponding research projects to unlock the various weapon mods, requiring you to gather diverse elemental resources from across the galaxy. Sometimes components can be bought, other times you’ll need to scavenge or mine for them. Some resources can be extracted from the outposts you establish on various wild worlds. Lastly, bring the gun you want to work on over to a weapon workbench.
Mod Types
Most mods are craftable, however some adjectives to keep an eye out for are “Calibrated”, “Refined”, and “Advanced”, as these provide flat increases across the board for any weapon they’re attached to and can’t be crafted. Every item can only hold one item in each slot, so typically 6 mods are the most you can attach to any given weapon.
Grips and Stocks
These mods tend to affect the stability of your guns, typically helping with accuracy and your aim down-sight speed. They can also help you with the recoil from your guns, allowing you to line up more shots more quickly than you would otherwise.
Best in Category: Stabilizing Stock
The stabilizing stock works for the popular AA-99, Negotiator, and Orion guns, and vastly increases the accuracy of your favorite guns. While you’re standing still it will reduce your aim-down-sight speed slightly, but this is negligible.
Muzzles
These mods are attached to the muzzle end of the gun, affecting things like the spread of projectiles from your firearm as well as the amount of noise that a projectile-based weapon will make when it fires. There are varieties of silencers that fit into the muzzle category.
Best in Category: Shock Charge Band
This mod is specifically for magnetic weapons like the Magshear, Magshot, Magpulse, and Magsniper. It adds an electrical charge to any shots fired through these already powerful weapons, doing some damage over time after you’ve already struck an enemy with a shot.
Magazines and Batteries
This is one of the most fun adjustments you can make to your guns, with some of the strangest and most diverse sets of changes being possible. The category mostly refers to both the ammo containers for your guns as well as the ammo within them.
Best in Category: Hornet Nest, Penetrator Rounds
Both of these high-level unlocks make it easier to wipe out hordes of smaller enemies. Penetrator rounds go through targets to hit anything right behind them, and the hornet nest rains explosions down on your enemies. This pick is split because there are so many good options at the higher levels for magazines, but each type of gun tends to have its own bullet mods instead of being shared between many models.
Optic
Optics are necessary for long-range combat, and you’ll want to make sure you have at least one rifle with a good scope on it to start fights on your terms. Like most games, scopes just let you zoom in on your target so you can see things a little better, but occasionally they have additional effects.
Best in Category: Recon Sight
The Recon Sight will allow you to mark your targets from a distance for easy tracking. It doesn’t let you hit from quite as far as some other scopes but makes up for that by letting you plan your attacks more carefully.
Internal
Internal adjustments to your guns largely focus on improving their damage output, whether it’s from a flat damage increase or through other methods like an improvement to the gun’s fire rate. They’re one of the best things to prioritize for a new gun since you always want to be able to do more damage.
Best in Category: Overclocked / High Powered
Both of these mods are essentially the same but aimed at different kinds of guns. Overclocked is for laser and energy weapons while high powered is for projectile guns. Almost every gun in the game can have one of these two mods added to it, and as soon as you unlock Internal Mods 3 you should add this to every gun you get your hands on.
Receiver
The receiver mods alter the fire rate of your guns, allowing you to upgrade from a semi-automatic gun into a fully automatic gun, or add burst fire to weapons you wish to use more accurately from a distance.
Best in Category: Fully Automatic
This upgrade allows you to turn a bunch of different guns from Starfield into fully automatic bullet hoses. It can even be applied to many kinds of shotguns, giving you a ship-clearing death machine right in your pocket.
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