Where to Find Structural Materials in Starfield & What They’re Used For

Starfield has a seemingly infinite variety of items you can find during your exploration across the stars, and many are suited for different purposes, particularly when it comes to all types of crafting and research. One of the more odd but crucial resources you can acquire is known as Structural Material, and it’s not entirely clear to some how to get your hands on it or how to use it. If you fall in that category, here is our handy guide for where to find Structural Materials in Starfield and what they’re used for.

How to Get Structural Materials in Starfield

Structural Materials are a somewhat unique crafting ingredient that you will definitely need plenty of down the line, and it can either be harvested from plants and creatures (or “flora” and “fauna” respectively, as the game calls them), found randomly in storage containers at enemy locales, or it can be bought from store vendors who carry it as a product for sale.

How to Get Structural Material From Wildlife

It’s important to stay well on top of surveying a planet’s wildlife and other inorganic materials via your scanner. Particularly because it’s a great way to efficiently check for what exactly you should harvest for Structural Materials, in lieu of just wandering around shooting and gathering everything in your path.

A very easy, early-game example of a creature that carries the material is the Parrothawk and Apex Parrothawk (seen above), which is found in abundance right at home on Jemison. They’re a standard Level 1 creature, so you’re not facing any real difficulty in bringing at least a few of them down. Their bones serve as a Structural Material, as with any gatherable item in the game notated with the word ‘Structural’ beside the name of the item.

How to Get Structural Material From Vendors

While shooting a bunch of Parrothawks out on the Jemison landscape seems like an easy way to get your Structural Materials, if you need them in relative bulk it can be a little time consuming going that route. Thankfully, the easy alternative is to buy them directly from shops that carry the item, and there are two main vendors in New Atlantis that do.

• Jemison Mercantile – A general store that is located directly cross from the Viewpoint Bar. Carries a wide variety of items.
• UC Distribution Center – Another general store on the edge of the Commercial District that sells a decent assortment of items, though they primarily specialize in resources.

What Structural Materials Are Used For in Starfield

While it’s something you don’t necessarily need right off the bat compared to other resources like common metals and ingredients for healing items, Structural Materials are actually a crucially important item when it comes to researching and constructing your array of Outposts across the star systems. The buildings you can create for your Outposts will often require them as you unlock higher ranks in your “Outpost Engineering” Science Skill.

Remember that to keep track of your materials acquired for an incomplete research project, when at a Research Lab workbench you can simply select ‘Track Project’ at the bottom of your screen by pressing ‘R’ on the keyboard, or ‘X’ on the controller. This way, as you obtain the materials needed the game will notify you once you’ve fulfilled the amount required.

That concludes our guide for where to find Structural Materials in Starfield and what they’re used for. We hope you found this helpful in your crafting endeavors, and let us know how you’re enjoying the game so far.

Be sure to check out all of our other guides for Starfield, as well as our official review of the game.