Summary
Starfieldhas seen many changes in 2024, includingStarfield’s June update, which introduced a new quest line for players to enjoy. This madedrastic changes to the melee system, added Creations to consoles, and fleshed out one of its minor factions, the Trackers Alliance. However, players may not realize that joining this new faction is actually thekey to easily increasing their Persuasion skill.
Joining the Trackers Alliance has several benefits. Its introductory quest provides the player with a new ship and several unique pieces of equipment and even lets the player pick a callsign. One less obvious benefit is the new bounty scanning system, which lets the player find bounty targets in major settlements. These targets provide the player with credits, butless trigger-happy Spacefarers will receive another benefit.
Starfield: 10 Choices That Actually Matter
Starfield has many choices that one can make, but not all of them matter. Here are a few that actually impact the narrative and gameplay.
The Trackers Alliance Unlocks Bounty Scanning
A New Addition To The Starfield June Update
Previous versions ofStarfieldincluded bounty hunting with its Trackers Alliance, but the faction was incredibly basic. Most of its representatives did not even have names. That has changed with the June 2024 update, whichadded a short quest and an HQfor the organization. While the new friends and missions are nice, joining also comes with another benefit: bounty scanning.
Major settlements in the Settled Systems are often filled with generic NPCs who have titles like “Citizen.” The bounty upgrade to your scanner makes it so these NPCs serve a different role than set dressing. Most non-hostile characters will have a blue outline around them, but abounty target will instead appear red. Closer examination will reveal a name, list of crimes, reward, and whether the target is wanted dead, alive, or either.
Every Starfield Faction Questline, Ranked Worst To Best
Faction quests have historically been the coolest parts of Bethesda’s RPGs, and Starfield delivers the best yet. But some are better than others.
Improving Persuasion With Bounty Scanning
An Easy Tool To Level Persuasion
Once the player has identified the target, it is up to them how to proceed. Taking the NPC out with an electromagnetic weapon will allow for live capture, and killing the character will get the reward. However, there is another option available. The player can instead speak to the target, which provides several dialogue options. This includes a choice of starting combat, exiting the dialogue, or, most importantly,persuading the target to come quietly.
These Persuasion checks will satisfy the challenge requirements to increase the perk level. Because the dialogue is not tied to a particular questline, this method provides a low-stakes, repeatable way of improving the skill. Even if the player fails, they can still capture or kill the target, meaning the effort is not wasted. The targets can be hard to find, sosearching in highly-populated areas of cities is encouraged.
The Problem With Ranking Up Persuasion
Trackers Alliance Provides An Easy Avenue Outside Of Main Missions
To level up the Persuasion skill, the player needs to succeed at 3 checks for rank 2, 5 for rank 3, and 10 for the final rank. While a total of 18 successes does not seem like much, it is also for a skill thatpreviously had no way for players to grind. These opportunities cannot usually be found by clearing a pirate base or surveying a new world. Instead, they are usually tied to quests since the mechanic only appears during dialogue.
Further complicating things is that Persuasion checks do not appear in any Radiant missions since they do not typically have a story. This means a player looking to increase their Persuasion skill will need to complete the story-based missions like the faction questlines. Thispresents a problem for Spacefarerswho are delayingStarfield’s new game plusor just wanting to live in their current universe. Luckily, this is no longer an issue with the improvements to the Trackers Alliance.
The addition of bounty scanning allows the player to grind out their Persuasion skill, but it is still an organic way of improving the skill. Even better, it fits neatly into the core gameplay loop of adventuring, completing missions, and returning to settlements for sales and resupply inStarfield. If the player makes a habit of scanning the population every time they need to offload gear, the Persuasion skill checks will be racked up without significant extra effort. It also presents the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the Bounty Hunter background.
