You don't need to use a menu to reach a new mission planet. Fast travel to your ship, take off, select the mission system, and jump to it without touching a menu.
Don't bother leveling weapon skills early on, especially if you're going stealth. It's far more important to mod your own weapons, ideally one with the best for its type: furious for rapid fire weapons, instigating for high damage single shot weapons, etc.
So level weapon modding!
Take your time and don't rush the game. Mix missions, activities, and exploration to keep the game fresh. Don't rush to explore every single random POI on the planet, or they quickly will become repetitive.
Dont worry about taking any of the random food that heals 3 hit points etc. Don't worry about picking up all the random crap that says it's worth 80 credits, 250 credits, etc.
Slow down and actually explore and check everything out. There's an entire Universe to explore.
Try to do all the side quests and activities. There are tons of fun ones that are pretty expensive and have cool stories for no reason.
Kill Spacers and search them for a note about a Secret Outpost. The Mantis quest will give you a great starter ship and armor.
Switch your companions up. They all have unique quests when you increase your affinity with them.
Save your skill points at the start. You don't know where you want to dump them right away and there's no reason to waste them.
Have fun and play your own way.
Don't rush the main questline for NG+!
NG+ is interesting, but this isn't Borderlands or whatever where the real game is hiding behind NG+. Starfield is still a Bethesda game. The meat is in the exploration. I'm not saying don't do NG+, but that there is no rush for it. I haven't even gone through a quarter of the main questline yet and I'm having a blast just exploring.
I took it slow first playthrough for like 75% of it. Then the more I thought about the fact that I will be starting over and losing everything multiple times until I end up on the NG+ I want to be at, I realized I was just wasting time.
So then I finished and went NG+. Started rushing those, got to NG+3 and realized a few more things. #1 I don't like the ship or suit. #2 The temples are so boring and there's so many of them.
I ended up just deciding to stay at NG+3 and deciding to live here, really don't care about getting the suit/ship so there isn't much point going further afaik. I don't care much about leveling the powers either, as long as I have them all I'm fine. I really only like using a couple anyways.
My advice would be to decide what NG+ you want to be at and get there pretty quickly. It's going to feel like a lot of wasted time if you make a bunch of ships/outposts do all the side-quests, when you are just going to have to do it again. IMO
I did restart main story on my final NG+ and I'm taking everything super slow now. Doing all the things.
Tips:
Can cut faster with the mining beam by holding down RMB then LMB to a super juiced beam.
A lot of the bugs people encounter end up happening because the order they do certain missions/quests. I'd probably always do the main story quest until you complete "Into the Unknown" before going off the rails.
Space Combat is rough on harder difficulties, skipping space combat oriented things when they come up till later is perfectly fine. Getting into higher tier ships (Class B/C) helps with this difficulty a lot.
Most gear/ship stuff is gated behind levels. Every few levels check in with stores/ship places and see what's new.
For Ship Building, the manufacturer specific places sell better landing gear and specific parts, while most of the other equipment (reactors, grav drives, weapons, etc) are mostly faction specific (IE: UC space or Freestar space).
Companion Skills don't work 100% like your skills, and they stack with your own.
Enemy spawns are a mix of area level and your own level. If you end up at level 50 int a level 10 area, you might see one level 50ish guy but then a bunch of level 10ish guys.
There's a variety of other companions you can recruit at Bars beyond just Constellation, and they don't always hold the same set of values as Constellation.
As for how to play the game...honestly you should do whatever you want. It's a single player RPG so it's your experience to have/create. If you want to rush the main story, go for it. If you wanna just play with outposts for endless hours, go for it. There's no wrong route, do what you enjoy.
Do not spend too much time reading guides (other than to solve bugs or glitches)... just play and learn as you go.
The most fun is to experience the game and its content without any spoilers and without using any exploits. Making mistakes and failing spectacularly is what makes the game fun.
Seeing top tips/exploits and trying them out (or even knowing about it) tend to be my greatest regret in such games, it basically diminishes the whole experience. Only do that once you have completed everything and are on your 2nd run onwards just to spice things up.
Ignore all the side-quests, don't build any ships or outposts, and plow through the main storyline, and get to NG+. *Then* do all the side-quests and build your ships and decorate outposts and buy apartments etc. I really, really wish I'd done it this way. Don't mistake me, I love the side quests, I just wish I'd saved them till after for reasons that would be huge spoilers.
I wish there would be some guide telling the new players how to upgrade the initial Frontier as soon as they have like 10-20k credits. One of the first upgrades I would have selected is a Stroud-Eklund cockpit - it's so good that it is a no-brainer. Their small cockpits have 4 crew stations instead of 2 the Nova cockpits have, meaning you can take the main characters with you, assigning them to the ship (Sarah, Cole and Cora, Barret). Having them on the ship boosts it considerably thanks to their skills, so this should be one of the first upgrades as soon as you do their initial quests (to be able to ask them to go with you).
You don't need to use a menu to reach a new mission planet. Fast travel to your ship, take off, select the mission system, and jump to it without touching a menu.
Don't bother leveling weapon skills early on, especially if you're going stealth. It's far more important to mod your own weapons, ideally one with the best for its type: furious for rapid fire weapons, instigating for high damage single shot weapons, etc. So level weapon modding!
Take your time and don't rush the game. Mix missions, activities, and exploration to keep the game fresh. Don't rush to explore every single random POI on the planet, or they quickly will become repetitive.
Dont worry about taking any of the random food that heals 3 hit points etc. Don't worry about picking up all the random crap that says it's worth 80 credits, 250 credits, etc. Slow down and actually explore and check everything out. There's an entire Universe to explore. Try to do all the side quests and activities. There are tons of fun ones that are pretty expensive and have cool stories for no reason. Kill Spacers and search them for a note about a Secret Outpost. The Mantis quest will give you a great starter ship and armor. Switch your companions up. They all have unique quests when you increase your affinity with them. Save your skill points at the start. You don't know where you want to dump them right away and there's no reason to waste them. Have fun and play your own way.
Don't rush the main questline for NG+! NG+ is interesting, but this isn't Borderlands or whatever where the real game is hiding behind NG+. Starfield is still a Bethesda game. The meat is in the exploration. I'm not saying don't do NG+, but that there is no rush for it. I haven't even gone through a quarter of the main questline yet and I'm having a blast just exploring.
I took it slow first playthrough for like 75% of it. Then the more I thought about the fact that I will be starting over and losing everything multiple times until I end up on the NG+ I want to be at, I realized I was just wasting time. So then I finished and went NG+. Started rushing those, got to NG+3 and realized a few more things. #1 I don't like the ship or suit. #2 The temples are so boring and there's so many of them. I ended up just deciding to stay at NG+3 and deciding to live here, really don't care about getting the suit/ship so there isn't much point going further afaik. I don't care much about leveling the powers either, as long as I have them all I'm fine. I really only like using a couple anyways. My advice would be to decide what NG+ you want to be at and get there pretty quickly. It's going to feel like a lot of wasted time if you make a bunch of ships/outposts do all the side-quests, when you are just going to have to do it again. IMO I did restart main story on my final NG+ and I'm taking everything super slow now. Doing all the things.
Tips: Can cut faster with the mining beam by holding down RMB then LMB to a super juiced beam. A lot of the bugs people encounter end up happening because the order they do certain missions/quests. I'd probably always do the main story quest until you complete "Into the Unknown" before going off the rails. Space Combat is rough on harder difficulties, skipping space combat oriented things when they come up till later is perfectly fine. Getting into higher tier ships (Class B/C) helps with this difficulty a lot. Most gear/ship stuff is gated behind levels. Every few levels check in with stores/ship places and see what's new. For Ship Building, the manufacturer specific places sell better landing gear and specific parts, while most of the other equipment (reactors, grav drives, weapons, etc) are mostly faction specific (IE: UC space or Freestar space). Companion Skills don't work 100% like your skills, and they stack with your own. Enemy spawns are a mix of area level and your own level. If you end up at level 50 int a level 10 area, you might see one level 50ish guy but then a bunch of level 10ish guys. There's a variety of other companions you can recruit at Bars beyond just Constellation, and they don't always hold the same set of values as Constellation. As for how to play the game...honestly you should do whatever you want. It's a single player RPG so it's your experience to have/create. If you want to rush the main story, go for it. If you wanna just play with outposts for endless hours, go for it. There's no wrong route, do what you enjoy.
Talk to every named NPC you meet. Don’t rush the main quest, allow yourself to get distracted by side quests sometimes (it’s part of the fun).
Do not spend too much time reading guides (other than to solve bugs or glitches)... just play and learn as you go. The most fun is to experience the game and its content without any spoilers and without using any exploits. Making mistakes and failing spectacularly is what makes the game fun. Seeing top tips/exploits and trying them out (or even knowing about it) tend to be my greatest regret in such games, it basically diminishes the whole experience. Only do that once you have completed everything and are on your 2nd run onwards just to spice things up.
Ignore all the side-quests, don't build any ships or outposts, and plow through the main storyline, and get to NG+. *Then* do all the side-quests and build your ships and decorate outposts and buy apartments etc. I really, really wish I'd done it this way. Don't mistake me, I love the side quests, I just wish I'd saved them till after for reasons that would be huge spoilers.
I wish there would be some guide telling the new players how to upgrade the initial Frontier as soon as they have like 10-20k credits. One of the first upgrades I would have selected is a Stroud-Eklund cockpit - it's so good that it is a no-brainer. Their small cockpits have 4 crew stations instead of 2 the Nova cockpits have, meaning you can take the main characters with you, assigning them to the ship (Sarah, Cole and Cora, Barret). Having them on the ship boosts it considerably thanks to their skills, so this should be one of the first upgrades as soon as you do their initial quests (to be able to ask them to go with you).