Starfield ‘Top of the List’ quest, how to survey a habitable planet

The survey of a habitable worldYou can also find out more about the following: StarfieldFor the best, Top of the list quest is one of the space game’s more confusing side quests.

Missable instructions and scant tutorials for planet scanning mean it’s easy to overlook things like “can people breathe on this planet” or “will the water kill me” – y’know, the kind of minor details a prospective settler might want to know.

You can also find out more about this by clicking here. The Top of the List Top of the List (or L.I.S.T.)How to scan for planets and find one that’s habitable.

Getting started with the “Top of the List” quest

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon

L.I.S.T. in your travels, but there’s only one potential settler you can try to recruit for this quest. The quest marker will lead you to the man who is not very enthusiastic at the Broken Spear.Recruit him. If your conversation is going well, Phil may want to sell you pamphlets so that you can continue.

If you fail the persuasion check, you can still convince the man to go along with your scheme, so there’s no need to reload and try again.

Ask Phil for your next mission: surveying an habitable planet.

How to find a habitable world in Starfield

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon

Phil skims over the criteria for what makes a habitable planet, and the quest notes don’t actually mention it. Quest markers and scan paths appeared on planets which were clearly uninhabitable. You can also check out our other blog posts.You might just want to ignore the quest markers at this stage.

What’s needed for a habitable world

• Strong oxygen levels in the atmosphere
• Flora moderate
• Moderate fauna
• Water that is natural, safe, or biological
• Temperate temperatures
• At least “moderate” magnetosphere

Arcturus II, Leviathan IV and other planets can be used to earn XP. Leviathan IV is also an achievement.

However,The easiest thing to do is Eridani 2 in the Eridani System. It’s sunny, with science outposts and even a few quests to tackle, so you can use this as a base for experimenting with outpost building if you wanted to.

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon

If you’re early in the game, the Eridani System is at the bottom left of your star map, beyond Alpha Centauri. Eridani II has a pretty common spread of resources and biological life – seven mineral resources and eight each for flora and fauna.

It is important to survey the entire planet, which means scanning multiple types of each flora and fauna sample – five Leafhunters, for example, and five Pinecone Scavengers. When you are done, all the resources that can be scanned will show as green.

Eridani has several biomes like the majority of habitable planets. Starfield, and you’ll need to visit them to scan every resource. Open the planet map, select a spot on the planet to see what biome it’s in, and then land and use your scanner to see what resources are nearby.

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon

You may be prompted to construct an outpost scanner in order to increase your scanning range. This did not seem to have any effect on the ship scanner or my hand scanner. You’re probably free to ignore this if you aren’t ready to build an outpost just yet.

After you have sorted out all of your scans, Open the map of planets again and run a final scan. It’ll show up as a complete survey, and you can send Philip the results. Get a few hundred credits.

Philip did not ask me to help the company ever again despite L.I.S.T. activities still carrying on around me throughout the game, though it’s possible he may give you another quest if you find him on some other planet later in your journey.