*S*T*A*R*F*I*E*L*D* / Starfield

No. The artifacts are what progress the story.

The Ryujin questline in Neon is well worth doing for one of the rewards if you enjoy persuasion.
I piled max points into that and wore an outfit that increased persuasion most of the time, which kind of trivialises it. You can just pick the red option most of the time and rarely fail.

Kind of annoyed that lockpicking skills don't have skills that make it similarly quick to get through them. I just stopped opening locks towards the end, as the rewards are often rubbish for the time needed to get through the higher tier locks.

Yeah locks do become a bit laborious and it's annoying how quite often the stuff behind a master lock is no better than a weaker one. Why is everyone in Starfield so broke that they keep a few hundred credits in a master locked safe?

One of my more idiotic moments was during a mission involving a prison and I wasted about 10 lock picks and way too much time unlocking cell doors for a range of very minor rewards. Was obsession more than enjoyment, a fear of missing something great which means I must check everything. I then carried on to the next section and found a master control switch that could have just opened all of them in one go.

Lost quite a bit of enthusiasm for the lock picking mini game in that moment...

After not starting the UC Vanguard missions for fear of them being too bland the very first mission was one of the best I'd done.

Clearly an homage to [spoilers]Aliens[/spoilers].
It actually managed to generate some atmosphere. It's still not as good as it could have been with all the cookie cutter environments/buildings, but a lot better than other missions in any case.

Also, guess this is a given, but the difficulty scales along with your rank I assume? Otherwise that mission would have been properly terrifying.

I quite like the lockpicking. I find that using the autopick to show the first key usually speeds things up enough to make it a lot less laborious. At master level you can spend a pick to remove all the unused keys, but as I never have enough picks I can't say I've used that option much.

I don't think I'm even halfway through the main story by my estimation of what other people have said, but I'm hoping that dark turn is "Blood sacrifice of Matteo"

I've circled back around to the UC guy I met ages ago and decided to join the corps, to become a citizen :-P

I'm only level 22 or 3 but I reckon if I'd taken that mission back then it would've been a slightly different feeling. As it stands I have a legendaey extended exploding Grendel that torches everything with a high chance of exploding rounds being fired and a massive mag size. Any tense moments were swiftly dismissed with searing hot lead.

That aside, politics in the future seem a bit easily swayed into decisions by Joe public.

I don't think I'm far of getting inside Andreja's business, she's just confessed a big secret to me. Do you get follower specific perks like in FO?

Similar here. I haven't played it for a week. Desire to do so almost instantly evaporated after my last session. Think I had just collected two artifacts from different mines, which were identical to all the other mines. Time to move on for me I think. Life is too short.

Playing Starfield for a couple of hours gives me the urge to go play Skyrim instead

I felt like that around level 20 but now I'm level 40 I've realised the skill tree is so boring I don't care about levelling up anymore.

The fastest way to level up is find a high level planet with abundant wildlife and let rip.

I really wish I could into survival mode, but for me it just sucks all the fun out of it. Of course, it does mean you can become a god at level 1 and then switch it off though, so it's not all bad.

I quite liked the hardcore mode in New Vegas. As you say it meant all those inventory items actually mattered and having to drink and sleep aided the immersion a bit.

I’m sprinting to the end of the main quest, having decided to mop up all the other stuff I haven’t done in NG+, rather than finish every faction and side quest now. Someone said earlier that there’s a point where you have a ton of grinding to do, and I can totally see how that could happen. Fortunately, I’d already put points where they were needed, so I’m not blocked at all, just need to add a few ship mods.

Basically it feels like this first playthrough has been a dry-run and I’ll be starting my proper one soon, better prepared
That, or I’ll get bored doing the starting stuff again, put it down, and only come back once console mods are available.