Starfield player turns shotgun into a carpet-bombing artillery nightmare that should probably violate interstellar law

Starfield gun damage buff
(Image credit: Bethesda)

Starfield has a ton of weapon mods to muck about with—not the kind you need a script extender for, mind you. I'm talking about the vanilla crafting system: If you drop a few points into the Science skill tree, you'll be able to craft all kinds of mods that blow the doors wide open on the game's build variety.

One such combo is the Hornet Nest mod, slapped onto the Coachman shotgun. This thing makes your gun explosive, scattering rounds directly downwards from the point of impact—which can just be the sky, as they explode after a certain distance anyway. Here's a great example video from iSwearSheWas56 on the Starfield reddit.

My new favorite weapon, pretty sure it's banned by the Geneva convention from r/Starfield

I'm mostly just shocked at the range. It's one thing to turn a spacer into a fine mist point-blank, it's another to fire over a wall and spew molten metal at the poor sods on the other side. And mechs were considered too much for space warfare? I don't even think you need grenades with this thing. It looks like it renders them completely obsolete.

To do this yourself, you'll need to dump two points into Weapon Engineering and scrounge around for three Lead, three Adhesive, and three Tetrafluoride. Lead's pretty common, and you can buy Adhesive from most general stores—Tetrafluoride's a little more rare, but if you're in the Schrodinger III for this busted XP farm, it's just a quick jaunt over to Schrodinger VIII-b to get some. The system that keeps on giving. 

I'm not one for crafting systems in most games, but this has fully tempted me. Look at this thing. I just wish I didn't have to bust open a wiki to cobble something like this together. Plus, you have to spend the prerequisite points in stuff that isn't about melting my foes from above, since Weapon Engineering's on the second row of skills. 

Image

Starfield guide: Our hub of advice
Starfield traits: The full list, with our top picks
Starfield companions: All your recruitable crew
Starfield romance options: Space dating
Starfield console commands: Every cheat you need
Starfield mods: Space is your sandbox

Harvey Randall
Staff Writer

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.