First Contact Walkthrough - Starfield Guide - IGN (2024)

First Contact in Starfield is a side mission given by Jiro Sugiyama on Porrima II. He'll hail you once you enter the system regarding the mysterious ship floating outside the planet's orbit. Below is a full walkthrough of First Contact including the outcomes of its major choice.

Land at Paradiso and speak to Chief Sugiyama in the Paradiso Security Office; he'll fill you in on what's going on and who to talk to. He'll ask you to try contacting the mystery ship and report back to Oliver Campbell, the CEO of Paradiso, with any relevant information.

Take off from the spaceport and fly towards the strange ship. No matter what you try to say, you'll only receive garbled communications — talking clearly won't work. After a few tries, you get the option to try docking with the ship.

Once you do, you'll be faced with a group of the human crew of the Earth Colony Ship Constant and their captain Diana Brackenridge. She explains that the ship left Earth pre-Collapse and they've been flying through space with no outside contact for 200 years; apparently the ship doesn't have a single window, either.

The Constant and Paradiso are at odds without knowing it; the staff and guests of Paradiso have been on Porrima II for years, and they have full legal claim to the planet — certified with both the UC and the Freestar Collective. The Constant, however, claims that they have exclusive claim to the land, as they set up their contracts with the old Earth Government before they set off on their voyage. Diana does make a point of saying that it "could've been ignored or not taken seriously" and therefore lost to time.

Regardless, she'll ask you to head down to Paradiso and negotiate on their behalf since they neglected to pack any landing equipment. Get back on your ship, land on Paradiso, and take the elevator in the main lobby up to the Executive floor. Talk to the assistant, Keavy, and they will open the door to the boardroom for you.

Speak with Oliver Campbell and he'll give you three options to take care of the problem with the ship; resettle the Contact's crew on Paradiso (with the cost of resettlement being worked off in what basically amounts to indentured servitude), buy the Contact a grav drive so they can explore the stars and find a new planet to settle on much faster than they would have without the grav drive, or just blow the ECS Contact out of the sky and call it a day.

• Choice 1: Resettlement
• Choice 2: Grav Drive
• Choice 3: Blow It All Up

Choice 1: Resettlement

The Paradiso staff will allow the Contact's crew to settle within Paradiso after some minor complaining; they will, however, offload the costs onto you, claiming that they could not possibly eat the cost on top of their normal operations budget. Tell Campbell you're taking the resettlement deal and head back to the Constant.

Once you're back on board, talk to Diana and tell her Paradiso has agreed to the settlement deal. She'll mention that this is an agreeable offer and that the crew will need to get used to working for a living anyway. Once she's agreed, you'll be prompted to collect 40 fiber, 80 iron, 10 lithium, and 20 sealant for their new home on Porrima II. You can ask her for some help with resource collection here; choose "I’m not asking for a lot, just what little you can spare," and “Are you sure you don’t have anything to spare? I’m doing this for you," as a followup to pass this Persuasion check with ease. Once you succeed, she'll send you to Daisuke Levitz in the mess hall. He will give you 15 fiber, 50 iron, 6 lithium and 12 sealant. After that, pop down to the shops on Paradiso and Neon in the Volii system for the rest, or scan nearby planets for the relevant resources. The Sealant and Fiber will be easy to find in shops, but the Iron and Lithium will be harder to come across; you may have already collected some as well. If not, scan Porrima I and II within the system for the necessary Iron and Lithium. Once you've got the necessary resources, bring them back to Diana and tell her everything's all set. She'll take the resources off your hands and meet you on your ship after asking you to ferry her and some crewmembers down to the surface.

Once you're on the surface, follow her to the edge of the spaceport for your reward; 300 XP, a bunch of antique sports equipment to decorate your ship/apartment with or sell for lots of credits, a suppressed XM-2311 pistol with a red dot sight, and a handful of .45 caliber bullets for the aforementioned pistol.

Choice 2: Grav Drive

If you'd rather go a route that doesn't involve trapping people in indentured servitude for the rest of their lives, you can choose to buy the ECS Constant a new grav drive that's been custom retrofitted for their two-hundred-year-old systems. The Paradiso staff will also refuse to help with the cost of this project, though — that all comes down on you.

Oliver will send you to HopeTech on Narion, where you can speak to a Grav Drive engineer named Bennu St. James. It's a little far from Paradiso, though, so you might have to make a few grav jumps. Jump to Volii, Aranae, then finally Narion to get to the HopeTech HQ. Go upstairs and into Bennu's office to speak with him; he'll gladly help you with the grav drive issue. That is, for the cost of parts and labor, which amounts to about 40,000 credits.

If you don't have the scratch, you can try and convince him to lower the cost by saying "40000? Maybe we can find a way to lower that price a bit." Once you're in the ensuing Persuasion check, say "Surely the profit you'd make is outweighed by the freedom you'd be giving these people." Bennu will agree and drop the price to a far more reasonable 25000 credits.

Head back to the Constant's Engineering Bay and speak to Amin Kazemi, the ECS Constant's chief engineer. Give him the lowdown on what's going on, and he will let you finish before telling you that his crew and the Paradiso staff have already filled him in on the situation. He'll ask you for some help with these final steps of installation:

• reroute power from the port turbopump to the auxiliary cryogenic radiator
• turn the plasma runoff inhibitor to 5%
• decouple the magnetic flange pipe enclosures from the auxiliary module assembly

Basically, he just needs you to flip some switches, turn some dials and unplug some stuff. Go around the room to the three engineering computers and do the tasks required of you; make sure you're selecting the options that have been asked of you, as there will be other options there to trip you up.

If you have the Starship Engineering perk, the options will be highlighted for you with that perk's designation. Once you're finished, Amin will send you back to Diana to let her know everything's done.

Speak to Diana, and she will thank you for your help and give you what little she can to repay you; 300 XP, a bunch of antique sports equipment to decorate your ship/apartment with or sell for lots of credits, a suppressed XM-2311 pistol with a red dot sight, and a handful of .45 caliber bullets for the aforementioned pistol. Both of these first two choices come with the same rewards, so the choice here is ultimately a moral one.

Choice 3: Blow It All Up

The third (and most violent) option, which you will need Stealth and Security certifications for. Oliver will slyly suggest that if, say, for some reason, that ship in the sky were to just disappear, well, that would just be really simple and easy for the Paradiso staff. He also "off-handedly" remembers a conversation with an engineer he had about those old Earth Colony Ships and their reactors' pesky habit of exploding when pushed too far. Obviously, he would never suggest that someone do that, but hey, the information is out there now...

Once Oliver has thrown that suggestion out there, you'll get a new optional quest marker to overload the Constant's reactor. Head up to the Constant's Engineering bay, pickpocket Amin for his reactor terminal key, then head over to the main reactor computer on the side of the room. Once you open it, a message will pop up saying that a captain's approval is needed to push the reactor past its safety limits.

Make sure you have some digipicks and head to the command bay. Once Diana can't see you in front of her computer, hack into it and allow the reactor override to go through. Once you do this, alarms will go off in the ship and the entire crew will be hostile to you. Run back through the ship and try not to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people on the Constant while you try to make it back to your own ship. Undock once you're safe, and the Constant will explode seconds later.

Stay for the fireworks — or don't, I'm not your mom — and head back to Paradiso to speak with Oliver Campbell again. He'll loudly retain plausible deniability as far as what happened to the ship goes, then he will give you your reward; 300 XP, 6500 credits, and an unlimited pass to Paradiso. Just try not to remember how many people you condemned to their deaths for all those space Mai Tais.