Starbound: Tenants Explained

Starbound’s tenant and colony system is a pretty complex beast. Providing some element of an end-game to Starbound, Tenants can also be incredibly helpful for boosting your pixel funds, finding quests, and expanding your crew. Let us talk you through them.

First, let’s cover the basics. Tenants are NPCs that are spawned by using Colony Deeds. These deeds can be purchased from the Outpost from Frogg Furnishing for 750 Pixels.  To use a deed to spawn a tenant, you must first build a house. The type of tenant spawned depends on the objects you place inside the vacant house. Some tenants will like particular objects. This means you’ll have to be using your Feng Shui skills to decorate a house perfectly tailored to the type of tenant you want to move in. You can check the different types of tenants here.

Once a tenant has successfully moved into a house, they can pay rent which is indicated by a little gold present on the deed’s ‘mode’. Sometimes, tenants will provide quests for you to go and complete, which, if you choose to accept, can help boost your favor with them and eventually lead to them becoming a member of your ship’s crew.

Other tenants offer or leave unique items when they move in. Some of these will be available to buy off the tenant, while some will simply place new objects in the home you built for them. These items given to you or left by a former NPC are sometimes required to attract another kind of tenant, which in turn may offer you a better weapon.

In essence, tenants are demanding NPCs who want their houses decorated in particular ways. Meet their requirements and they’ll reward you with unique items, quests, rent, or simply another crew member.

In a blog post for the game, developer Chucklefish Games stated that the team is looking at further expanding on the tenant system. Enemies will attack colonies, NPCs will talk and interact with one another, and the system will generally get that bit more in-depth. Until then, there are plenty of unique items to acquire, and rent to be collected.