How to find Starfield planet traits

Being able to identify Starfield planet traits is a significant part of your planetary surveying process, alongside scanning the flora and fauna abundant in all of the biomes. Plenty of planets and moons you encounter will have unusual qualities and features, and these appear as specific points of interest on the surface that must be scanned in Starfield before you survey can be considered complete.

However, this is easier said than done in some cases as tracking down these planet trait locations can be difficult, especially when you land on a desolate rocky planet with no clear features to pick out on the horizon. To help you track down those key trait locations for surveys, I've explained how to find planet traits in Starfield below.

How to find planet traits in Starfield for survey data

To find planet traits in Starfield and complete a full survey, players need to do the following:

Fly into orbit around the planet and scan it with LB/L1.
This will give you a list of how many traits the planet has - usually between zero and three, by our experience.
Land on the planet anywhere that's not one of the Starfield cities and equip your scanner outside, again using LB/L1.
There'll be icons marked Unknown around you. Move the scanner over them and press A/Cross to analyse what they are, turning them into landmarks or key qualities.
You need to then head to these landmarks, specifically the ones that represent the natural occurrences. Not bandit camps or anything like that, but natural geographical events or elements that are harder to classify.
Head there and run your scanner over the area looking for anything strange, and scan it to get the planet trait registered.

More Starfield guides

Starfield star systems
Starfield resources
Starfield Planets
Starfield Biomes
Where to sell items in Starfield

There's a wide range of planet traits - 20 in total from our study, ranging from coral ponds to gravitational anomalies and more besides - so what you're looking for will vary significantly. You can also expedite the process by getting the Astrophysics skill, ranks of which can reveal planet traits simply through the initial planetary scan in step one (and the chance of which increases the more ranks you take in it).

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Once you have all the traits registered, you can bundle them together with all the rest of the Starfield survey data and sell it as per usual. Keep in mind that it's not enough to have just traits - you need everything there is to know about the planet, including fauna, flora, and minerals alike, before you can drop it off with Vlad at the Eye or another vendor.

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Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and Very Tired Man with a BA from Brunel University, a Masters from Sussex University and a decade working in games journalism, often focused on guides coverage but also in reviews, features and news. His love of games is strongest when it comes to groundbreaking narratives like Disco Elysium, UnderTale and Baldur's Gate 3, as well as innovative or refined gameplay experiences like XCOM, Sifu, Arkham Asylum or Slay the Spire. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at Eurogamer, Gfinity, USgamer, SFX Magazine, RPS, Dicebreaker, VG247, and more.