Filthy Starfield get-rich-quick trick lets you steal mountains of supplies and credits that Bethesda tried to hide in plain sight

Starfield Pirates
(Image credit: Bethesda)

Cashing in a Starfield money glitch has never been easier: devious players have uncovered two unintentionally lootable vendor inventories located right next to each other, and you can plunder everything they've got just by crouching. We've checked this get-rich-quick trick for ourselves, and it's real – and disgustingly simple to pull off. 

Reddit user Heretic0 recently flagged an oddly generous puddle found right outside Shepherd's General Store in Akila City on Akila, the capital of the Freestar Collective faction out in the Cheyenne System. Simply by crouching down and peering into the ground at just the right angle – without any out-of-bounds or jetpack trickery whatsoever, unlike another newly discovered money exploit – you can loot the general store's entire inventory without any charge or penalty. 

Not only that, a smaller but functionally identical chest was also found right across the street. YouTube user io2red shared a short clip showing how to access Jaden Ross' inventory. Once again, all you have to do to access what is essentially a hidden chest is crouch down. 

Starfield vendor inventory

(Image credit: Bethesda)

Collectively, these two inventories contain 6,200 credits in raw cash, but that's peanuts compared to the mountain of supplies on offer. Ship parts, med packs, ammo, consumables – we're talking about a merchant's entire lineup here, so of course they're absolutely stacked. You could sell off a fraction of the goods for tens of thousands of credits, or stash it all away for a rainy day. Like other vendors, these inventories will also reset if you rest to pass the time (there's a chair in the bar you can use) and talk to the NPCs again, letting you loot them over and over for effectively infinite money and supplies. 

The reason this type of exploit works is simple: Bethesda has to physically install a vendor's inventory somewhere in the world in order for the attached NPC's trade system to function. An identical exploit was found back in Skyrim, hence all the Reddit replies calling this "the Dawnstar Caravan chest of Starfield." 

Looting all of this stuff is objectively game-breaking, so there's a non-zero chance Bethesda eventually patches it out, perhaps by simply pushing the vendor chests deeper underground so they're inaccessible without mod-grade skullduggery. (But at that point, just dupe infinite credits for yourself and why not throw in God mode while you're at it.) But as of today, September 14, you can walk right up to Akila and plunder a fortune if the economy is no concern of yours. 

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Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.