Starbound: How to Upgrade Your Ship

While exploring the worlds of Starbound, you’ll be relying on your ship to get you through the deadly darkness of space. This ship, like many other elements of the game, can be upgraded to provide amenities such as more space, containers, crafting stations, and even furniture (so you can put a personal touch on things).

When you start the game, your thrusters and FTL drive will be damaged. Before you can upgrade anything, you’ll need to repair these which you’ll be guided through at the beginning of Starbound. Once that’s done you’ll gain access to questlines that will unlock different upgrades. You can obtain these quests from the Outpost, an old structure accessed through Ancient Gateways.

Something that you should definitely note is that you won’t always find a quest that unlocks an upgrade there when you visit. This is because there are a lot of sidequests in Starbound and quite a few of them need to be completed in a specific order. That means that if you go to the Outpost and there are no quests that grant upgrades as a reward, just start taking the quests that are there. While it may seem like a bit of a chore at first, just remind yourself that you’re doing it to unlock the quests that will help you get one of those larger badass ships.

One other thing you should keep aware of is that you’ll have to meet certain requirements to both access the quests and utilize the upgrades. Here they are for each of the upgrade missions:

1. Racial Starter Quest – Quest Requires: nothing   Ship Requires: Interaction with SAIL
2. Tutorial VIII: Ups and Downs – Quest Requires: nothing  Ship Requires: 20 Core Fragment Ores
3. Erchius Mining Facility – Quest Requires: Steel Armor  Ship Requires: 20 Erchius Crystals
4. Psst (Sparrow Class) – Quest Requires: 2 Diamonds  Ship Requires: 2 Upgrade Modules
5. Psst (Kestrel Class) – Quest Requires: 4 Diamonds  Ship Requires: 4 Upgrade Modules
6. Psst (Falcon Class) – Quest Requires: 8 Diamonds  Ship Requires: 6 Upgrade Modules
7. Psst (Eagle Class) – Quest Requires: 16 Diamonds Requires: 8 Upgrade Modules
8. Psst (Condor Class) – Quest Requires: 32 Diamonds Requires: 10 Upgrade Modules

Just keep playing through the side content and you’ll find yourself sitting pretty in a ship that even Star Wars would envy.