Do you need more money in Starfield? Well, you have plenty of options. You could go out and complete quests, sell expensive items, or use the game’s impressive physics to steal a bucket full of credits without getting in trouble. But an even easier option exists: Just stick your digital hands into one specific mud puddle and pull out hundreds of items worth thousands of credits.
Starfield might be Bethesda’s latest and biggest adventure, featuring thousands of quests and planets and aliens, but it is also built upon decades of technology and design ideas. That’s why it plays and feels so similar to past titles, like Skyrim or Fallout 3. In these past Bethesda RPGs, the inventory for merchants was kept secretly locked away in hidden chests. But sometimes these chests could be accessed by crafty players. And yup, that’s the case in Starfield, too.
As spotted by Jamie Moran on Twitter, there is a special, magical puddle outside the general store known as Shepard’s located in Akila City, a large city located on the planet Akila in the Cheyenne system. This puddle might look boring and unassuming, but if you switch your perspective to third person and then crouch, you can look into the puddle and find a huge amount of items that can be freely taken without penalty. The items include multiple guns, medkits, resources, minerals, spacesuits, and more. All of these goodies can then be sold to any of the merchants in Akila City.
Some suggest that if you wait 24 in-game hours all the items in the chest will respawn; however, I waited double that and still didn’t see this happen. Maybe I’m encountering a bug, but in my experience merchants in Starfield don’t always quickly refresh their items. Still, even one trip to this mud puddle will fill your inventory with items and credits.
Starfield’s magic mud puddle, explained
So what’s going on here? Experienced Bethesda RPG players will already know what’s up—underneath this magic mud puddle is a hidden chest containing all the items that you can buy at Shepard’s, a local store that sells a bit of everything. Instead of the game storing all these items on the store owner, who can be pickpocketed, it places the goods in a chest that is normally out of bounds and inaccessible to the player.
This is how merchants functioned in Skyrim and while most vendor chests couldn’t be looted, there were some famous exceptions.
What likely happened in Starfield is someone either placed the chest too close to the surface and didn’t realize it, or the map changed at some point after it had already been placed, making it possible for players to access it. Whatever the case, it’s a useful way to stock up on some ammo, weapons, and credits…if you don’t mind cheating.
And for those worried that Bethesda might patch this out, well, it might in the future. But after the game’s latest update, released on September 13, this exploit still remains. So for now, feel free to head to Akila and rob Shepard’s blind.