Starfield – All Powers And How To Unlock Them

You can acquire over 20 Force-like powers in Starfield. The mechanic itself is initially part of the main quest. Later, though, you might find a few via sandbox free-roaming. Our Starfield powers guide discusses how you can unlock these abilities by visiting temples on distant planets. Likewise, please be reminded that this article contains spoilers.

All unlockable powers in Starfield

The Starfield powers become available during a mission called Into the Unknown. At the start, you’ll look for additional artifact pieces. However, at the end of the quest, you’re told to head to Procyon III.

How to locate temples

Upon checking Procyon III on the map, you’ll see an anomaly site. Land, check your surroundings, and look for an ancient temple in the distance.

In most cases, the ruins should be visible from your ship. If not, open your scanner and pan the camera around. You’ll notice a special effect, as though the scanner is glitching. That denotes the general direction of the temple. Once you’ve reached it, look for a narrow pass between two high walls so you can enter.

How to activate the portal

To unlock your Starfield powers, you have to activate the portal inside the temple. This is done by floating around and collecting the sparks of light that appear. You’ll know you did it correctly if you hear a loud sound effect. Hint: imagine the THX logo appearing as you’re watching a movie in a cinema.

How to use your powers

Your character will then get teleported outside, and a new power will appear. The Powers screen/interface will also become available, and you can access that by pressing up on the menu.

With a power selected, you can press “Z” on your keyboard or LB+RB on your Xbox gamepad. Casting a power depletes your mana resource, which is represented by a thin bar below your HP. However, this also regenerates over time.

How to defeat Starborn

Back outside, you’ll realize that you’re not alone. That’s because an entity known as a Starborn will be there waiting for you. The Starfield Starborn enemies are usually around level 30, and they have the ability to remain stealthily cloaked. As such, you’ll want to look for ripples on your screen to determine their location.

The goal is to burst down a Starborn with your weapons until they’re defeated. Unlike most foes, they won’t leave a corpse behind–they’ll simply disappear. Note that we’d sometimes see a Starborn’s loot/inventory panel just before it disappears. Unfortunately, we can’t find any remains at all. We can’t tell if this is a bug or if it’s working as intended.

At the very least, each Starborn enemy you kill is guaranteed to drop Quantum Essence (the amount can be seen in the Powers screen). Using a Quantum Essence increases the regeneration speed of your power meter.

How to find more temples

Past this point, your Starfield power acquisition activities become part of a quest series called Power From Beyond. There are a couple of ways to locate the other temples in the game:

• If you fly to a new system, you might get notified that a temple is on a planet.
• Alternatively, you can talk to Vladimir Sall aboard The Eye. There are instances when he might know of a temple’s location, and it’ll appear in your quest log.

List of all unlockable powers

Below, we’ve listed the Starfield power unlocks that we’ve discovered so far:

• Particle Beam – Emit a powerful ray of cosmic energy.
• Personal Atmosphere – Restore a bit of oxygen.
• Phased Time – Slow everyone around you.
• Precognition – See the future (i.e. the path that someone may walk or the words they might say).
• Reactive Shield – Form a shield that weakens and reflects projectiles.
• Sense Star Stuff – Sense the life force of any human, alien, or Starborn.
• Solar Flare – Release an orb of searing hot plasma.
• Sunless Space – Freeze enemies.
• Supernova – Unleash cosmic energy that causes an explosion.
• Void Form – Turn invisible.
• Eternal Harvest – Allows you to harvest fauna nodes again.
• Grav Dash – Dash forward and increase your damage temporarily.
• Gravity Wave – Fus Ro Dah!
• Gravity Well – Create a singularity that pulls nearby foes.
• Life Forced – Drain a target’s HP and heal yourself.
• Parallel Self – Spawn another version of you to help during combat.
• Anti-gravity Field – Lift objects around you.
• Creators’ Peace – Cause hostiles to drop their weapons.
• Elemental Pull – Draw resources close to you.
• Alien Reanimation – Revive a dead alien beast/animal.

What happens in New Game Plus

We’re delving further into ultra-spoiler territory here, so be forewarned. We also discuss more details in our New Game Plus guide. As far as powers are concerned, here’s what you need to know:

• You can skip the main quest in New Game Plus. Instead of doing Into the Unknown once more, you can just talk to Vladimir or visit new star systems to spot other temples.
• It’s possible to acquire upgraded versions of these abilities–i.e. Gravity Wave II–which confer higher damage or stronger effects. We’re uncertain if upgraded variants are available during the main campaign, as we did not obtain those at the time.
• We’re unable to confirm if temple locations are randomized for each player or playthrough. We do know that artifact locations might be slightly different if you skip the main quest.

In any case, that’s all you need to know about how to unlock powers in Starfield. We’ll update this guide with more information and details if need be, so stay tuned.