How to Loot Ships in Starfield

The riches of the universe could be yours if you loot every ship you come across in Starfield. There are a couple of ways to get the various resources and credits from ships, but it depends on what approach you’d like to take.

Ways to loot ships in Starfield

The first way to loot a ship in Starfield is the easiest one, and that is to destroy it. If you defeat a ship in space battle, you’ll see a little gray and white marker appear on your reticle. These markers indicate where there is ship debris and cargo you can acquire.

Follow the marker to get close to the ship and you can pick up any remaining loot. Usually, you’ll only find some resources and credits this way. As such, you might want to opt for the other method, which is to leave the ship intact.

You can hail anyone who is peaceful when you target their ship. This gives you the chance to commit piracy and take what they have onboard, but you run the risk of creating a bounty on your head. Alternatively, you can disable a ship using either the Targeting Control System skill or electromagnetic weapons (EM).

You want to disable the engine of the ship so it can’t grav jump away or attack you. Then board that ship and take out the crew. This lets you loot the entire ship for every credit and item it has onboard in Starfield, which can be far more lucrative than destroying the ship.

Plus, you can even steal and keep the ship this way by sitting in the pilot cockpit. So long as you have the license to pilot that ship, you can then add it to your fleet and sell it for extra credits once you’ve registered it.

Starfield is available for the Xbox Series X and PC.