All Starfield Powers and How to Unlock - Starfield Guide - IGN (2024)

Starfield's Powers are basically magical spells you can cast, collected from artifacts and thier associated temples. Once you’ve completed the first part of the main Quest called Into the Unknown, and unlocked your very first power, Anti-Gravity Field, you’ll learn there are many more artifacts, temples, and powers waiting to be discovered. To assist you on your journey, below you’ll find details of each Starfield power available to unlock, and the artifact that corresponds to it.

We’ve flagged any late story spoilers, but please note that this page does also contain general spoilers, so proceed with caution!

You’ll want to know how to get Powers as soon as possible in Starfield, as Powers add abilities that damage or disable powerful enemies (Gravity Wave, Parallel Self), add greatly to your defense (Reactive Shield), help collect resources instantly (Elemental Pull), make getting around easier (Personal Atmosphere), and much more.

Click the links below to jump to:

• How to Get Powers
• How to Get Artifacts
• All Starfield Powers
• How to Get All Powers

How to Use Powers

You can equip one Power at any time from the Powers menu at the top of the pause screen selection wheel once you’ve unlocked the first Power (Anti-Gravity Field). Powers consume a recharging meter called Power in the lower right of the screen. On an Xbox controller, you can activate a Power by tapping LB + RB (the left and right bumpers) at the same time. On PC, activate your Power by pressing [Z].

Once you've claimed powers, you select one by clicking the top of the menu screen. Note that you can also bind a Power to select from your favorites just as you can weapons or aid items!

How to Get Starfield Powers

To unlock Powers, you’ll need to unlock the first Power as part of the Main Quest Line. You’ll need to play until you get to Into the Unknown. The quest order is:

• One Small Step
• The Old Neighborhood
• Into the Unknown - this is where you unlock Powers.

It will take a few hours of gameplay to get to Into the Unknown. You can follow our walkthrough for more on that specific quest, but in short, it will lead you to add the artifacts you've gathered so far to the collection, direct you to a scanner anomaly on a planet, then to a temple, and inside the temple a large rotating glowing structure is the key to your first Power.

How To Complete the Glowing Ring Puzzle

After arriving at a planet with an a Scanner Anomaly, you will follow the irregular readings from your scanner to locate a temple.

Follow the distortion until you arrive at a temple with two entrances. Activate the door after the light clears from it to enter the temple.

You enter a large, black room with glowing, floating rings in the middle and zero gravity. The rings will rise up out of the ground and begin to spin; you need to fly into several glowing orbs of light to charge up the spinning rings.

These sparkly spacetime distortions appear at random locations in the room. They disappear after a short time, reappearing somewhere else. When you fly into them on time, you'll hear a loud musical cue. You'll need to hit around 4-6 of them to activate the temple - you can't lose progress, but since it's easy to just barely miss them, you may need to keep trying for a while!

Control your character in zero G by holding A or Y/Space or Left Shift to rise and fall. The Left Stick/Space Bar allows you to boost if you have a Boost Pack.

After you activate enough distortions around the rotating rings, they will become one ring. Float through the ring to gain the Power of the Temple.

How to Unlock More Powers

To unlock more powers, you'll need to find and activate more artifacts. Each artifact you return to the Lodge Tap to Reveal unlocks the ability to visit its corresponding temple, where you can obtain the power linked to that specific artifact.

Once the artifact has been activated, Vladimir will work on obtaining the location of the associated temple. However, if you enter a star system with an activated temple, you'll be able to see and land at the Sensor Anomaly, even if Vladimir hasn't pointed you there yet.

Temples are not linked to specific planets. When you return an artifact to the Lodge, the game will create a link from the artifact to a temple on one of several different possible planets. Sometimes your Powers page may display "X Undiscovered Temples" but the number of temples you can actually discover may not be correct.

How to Get Artifacts

The information below contains story spoilers!

There are 24 Powers that all correlate to 24 Artifacts that have 24 associated Temples. Once you progress the main questline to Into the Unknown, Vladimir will use the readings from Artifact Eta -- the first artifact you found on Vectera -- to locate Temple Eta (one of the few temples always located on the same planet). After this point, Vladimir will begin locating more temples based on the artifacts found so far:

• Artifact Alpha - the first artifact Constellation found.
• Artifact Beta - gained during The Old Neighborhood mission in Sol.
• Artifact Iota - gained after meeting Andreja and exploring the Deep Cave.
• Artifact Zeta - found in the random point of interest also explored during Into the Unknown.

After this, you can obtain Artifact Chi from the Main Quest The Empty Nest. This can be completed before Into the Unknown, as it is one of several quests that unlocks after completing The Old Neighborhood. The other quest, Back to Vectera, does not have an associated artifact.

Artifact Nu can be obtained during the Main Quest All that Money Can Buy.

After completing the next Main Quest, Starborn, the following Main Quest, Further into the Unknown, will repeat the process of sending you to two randomized points of interest on two random planets:

• Artifact Theta can be found on one of the random planets.
• Artifact Tau can be found on the other random planet.

Note that you'll need to fight a Tap to Reveal after picking up each artifact from now on, and also when acquiring the power at a temple.

Following the random points of interest, the next Main Quest, No Sudden Moves, will have you collect Artifact Phi. A lot will happen in the story after this as the Eye becomes temporarily unavailable during repairs.

Though it was technically in Constellation's possession from the start, it won't be until after the Main Quest In Their Footsteps that you can get a quest from Barrett to track down a temple using the data from Artifact Sigma.

There will be several new Main Quest missions to undertake after this point, and each will reward you with artifacts:

• Artifact Omicron can be found during Final Glimpses, the last quest to point you to a random planet.
• Artifact Lambda can be found by completing Entangled at Nishina Research Station on the planet Freya III.
• Artifact Psi is located in ruins below the Earth's surface during the Unearthed quest.

This will culminate in the final showdown mission Revelation, in the Buried Temple on Masada I that houses both Artifact Mu along with the temple in the same spot.

Before you continue with the ending quest, you may not realize that you'll also be given the remaining artifacts by the two main Starborn - by force or given freely, depending on who you side with:

• Artifact Delta, Artifact Epsilon, Artifact Gamma, Artifact Kappa, and Artifact Upsilon from The Hunter.
• Artifact Omega, Artifact Rho, Artifact Pi, and Artifact Xi from The Emissary.

If you plan to start New Game Plus, be sure to track down the remaining temples from the artifacts you get at the end, as they will carry over into your next playthrough!

How Many Starfield Powers Are There?

There are 24 Starfield powers available to unlock in total. Each power enables you to manipulate the forces that surround you in unique ways, aiding you in combat, exploration, and more.

All Starfield Powers

Below is a full list of all the powers you can obtain in Starfield, listed in the order you can begin to find them after completing certain Main Quest Missions and finding their associated Artifact. As a reminder - the location of the Temple is most often random, but finding the artifact will most often allow Vladimir to mark the temple location -- or you can trigger it to appear by visiting a star system.

Anti-Gravity Field

Anti-Gravity Field can be used to lift enemies off the ground, causing them not to shoot temporarily.

This is always the first power you unlock, and the temple is always located on Procyon III.

Personal Atmosphere

This useful Power refills your Oxygen meter letting you run freely or move while encumbered. Spam it to get around much faster.

Gravity Wave

Gravity Wave knocks down enemies allowing you to target their heads or other parts easily.

Sense Star Stuff

Sense Star Stuff allows you to see enemies or NPCs of any kind really as glowing silhouettes

Precognition

Grav Dash

Grav Dash is a simple dash move that doesn't consume much Power.

The above five powers are always next to be unlocked, but can be unlocked in any order after completing The Empty Nest and Power from Beyond.

Creators' Peace

Enemies drop weapons that you can pick up. You can also attack them while they are not attacking. You can also make NPCs that aren't enemies, like villagers, stop attacking you if you've triggered them.

Solar Flare

Solar Flare is a simple magic attack. It sends a fireball at an enemy.

Reactive Shield

The amazing Reactive Shield power can protect you from most projectile attacks and is great for walking into a room of flying bullets. Or lasers.

The above two powers can be obtained after picking up the two artifacts during Further into the Unknown.

Alien Reanimation

Use Alien Reanimation to get an alien as an ally.

Void Form

Void Form is a simple invisibility spell.

Parallel Self

Perhaps the best offensive Power, Parallel Self allows a duplicate of you using whatever weapon you have equipped to attack. Stay in cover and equip a super weapon, even one you don't have ammo for, and your double will take out enemies.

Moon Form

Supernova

Elemental Pull

An incredibly useful Power to have early, Elemental Pull simply mines minerals and metals on a planet surface instantly. No more mining laser!

Sunless Space

Life Forced

Earthbound

Inner Demon

Gravity Well

Create Vacuum

Phased Time

Eternal Harvest

Can You Unlock All Starfield Powers In One Playthrough?

While it might not seem possible at first, it is indeed possible to get all Powers before completing the game, though the bulk of them can only gained after the last major battle.

Most of the Artifacts you gain will be over the course of the main story missions you undertake, including the missions to visit random structures on random planets in Into the Unknown, Further Into the Unknown, and Final Glimpses.

9 additional Artifacts are gained from both of the Starborn you encounter at the end - The Hunter and The Emissary, though you may have to fight one or both depending on your choices. You'll need to find the associated temples by exploring or talking to Vladimir before doing the final One Giant Leap Mission.

Finally, there is one unique power - Parallel Self - that can only be unlocked from a mission given by Barrett once you have worked your friendship up and talk to him any time after completing In Their Footsteps. However, due to the events of the High Price to Pay mission, you must ensure Tap to Reveal

How to Get All Powers

If you simply must try out every power available in the game - and who would blame you - you have a couple of options.

For PC players, it’s also possible to unlock all Starfield powers using cheats.

Please be warned: using certain commands will disable achievements.

To do so, access the command console by pressing the Tilde (~) or Grave (‘) key in-game or while in the menu, depending on your keyboard layout. The command console will appear at the bottom of the screen. Enter the following code:

• psb

to instantly unlock all 24 powers.