Starfield has plenty of ways to make money. You can complete quests and be rewarded for your efforts. You can trade valuable items you find, or rare minerals that you mine. You can even sneak into places and, when nobody is looking, steal an expensive ornament.
However, why bother doing any of that when you can just stroll up Akila City's high street and, out of a muddy puddle in the ground, loot the entire inventory of one of the city's biggest vendors without any skill or repercussions? Oh, and if that wasn't good enough, you can then simply wait 24 hours and do it all again.
It sounds too good to be true, but as the video I've made right here shows, it is true and the quickest path to ludicrous, game-breaking profit currently available in Starfield.
This latest Starfield whoopsie from Bethesda was spotted by eagle-eyed gamer Jamie Moran, who then posted his findings to Twitter.
To exploit the bug, gamers need to head to Akila City on the planet Akila in the Cheyenne system. From there, head in through the main gates from the starport and, on the left, you'll see the merchant Shepherd's.
Head towards Shepherd's and then look for a series of puddles just in front of the store in the middle of the road. When standing in front of Shepherd's, with your back to the store entrance, the puddles are north-west.
Next, move over to the puddles while crouched and in a third-person view and, standing before the puddles while looking back at Shepherd's, slowly move your cursor around the puddles until, suddenly, an inventory menu will pop-up on screen.
This is the inventory of Shepherd's, the nearby store, and as soon as the inventory menu is shown you can just crouch right there, in the middle of the street, and take every last item in it without any consequences.
From that point you can then sell everything you've taken, even back to the oblivious owner of Shepherd's himself, making bank. Wait 24 hours and you can repeat the trick, too, and then again and again ad infinitum. Do this just a few times and you'll be swimming in cash in Starfield.
As to how this is all possible, after talking to fellow PC Gamer staffer Harvey Randall, he postulated that it was probably because the store's inventory was being held in some sort of storage container, as if you try to pick-pocket the store owner he has none of his store's inventory on him.
A quick bit of no-clip sleuthing on my part confirmed that Harvey's theory was indeed fact, with Bethesda having placed a supposed-to-be-invisible storage container for Shepherd's inventory underneath Akila City's main road. Unfortunately, the big B placed the storage container too close to the surface of the road, and now it can be accessed directly through this muddy puddle.
One thing I've found when proving this exploit works and is replicable, is that it seems to only work if, one, your character is crouched and, two, you are in third-person mode. I'm guessing there is something to do with the player's invisible sphere of influence being slightly bigger while in third-person perspective compared to first-person, expanding it just enough to access the storage container through the floor.
What this indicates to me is that Bethesda may have pulled this trick for other stores in Starfield, too. Potentially there are hidden storage chests behind walls and under floors all over The Settled Systems, with more accessible just like this one if you crouch in just the right spot. But, for now, confirming that is going to have to wait for another story.
As with the Mark 1 Spacesuit bug I wrote about previously, this is another unintended Bethesda glitch that you'll likely want to exploit pretty darn quickly, as I can't see it surviving long once the big B starts releasing patches. So yeah, if you want to get rich quick, then do it now.
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