To unlock mysterious Starfield powers and abilities, you need to track down temples that are scattered across the various planets and moons. This effort is entirely worthwhile as the powers you can earn will make life in Starfield much easier for you, whether that's through combat, stealth, exploration, or other improvements.
You can generate a personal oxygen supply, clone enemies and make them fight each other, levitate, and even bring the dead back to life, meaning you'll give yourself a significant advantage if you start gathering these powers. To help you find as many as possible, I've explained how to unlock powers in Starfield and gain new super-abilities for yourself below.
How to get Starfield powers
Powers and abilities in Starfield are unlocked during the main Starfield Constellation questline. Here's the full process:
- Keep playing the main quests for Constellation, pursuing the Artifacts as the missions dictate.
- You should reach a mission called Into the Unknown, potentially as early as 3-6 hours into the game, if you don't get distracted with other things.
- Follow the steps of this mission as laid out to meet the character Andreja.
- Afterwards, you'll be directed to a new world and told to follow Distortions on your scanner.
- Look for erratic movement in your scanner (LB/L1), where the outer ring crackles when you point it in a certain direction. For more info, check out our guide on Starfield scanner distortions.
- Follow that distortion to a nearby temple made of black rock. There'll be a door on the building's side marked by your mission objective indicator.
- Once inside, you'll have to solve a little puzzle/reflexes test to trigger the central ring, where you have to float into orbs of light before they disappear (for more details, visit our page on the Starfield temple puzzle).
- After that's done, float into the now-stable ring and you'll be teleported outside with a new power!
Each temple you visit bestows you with a single new power, one that can be equipped from the main pause menu, and triggered with LB+RB/L1+R1 for a power cost - yes, your powers are all supplied by a small purple bar that will now have appeared next to your health bar. This bar regenerates (somewhat slowly) and all your powers have varying costs, with bigger powers draining it more than others. You can also equip your powers to the Favourites menu, meaning you can access them more efficiently in the heat of battle.
How to find Temples in Starfield
To get new powers in Starfield, you'll need to find fresh Temples. To locate them you need to visit Vladimir Sall, who is found on The Eye - the Satellite that orbits Jemison and New Atlantis in the Alpha Centauri system. If there are new Temples (or gravitational anomalies) to be found, he can point you towards them, but there's a catch: You need to find Artifacts to unlock new temples.
Each Artifact you find in the main campaign of Starfield corresponds to a specific temple (such as "Artifact Beta" opening "Temple Beta"), so having found six Artifacts means you'll be able to discover six Temples, and get six powers.
Once you run out of Artifacts, Vladimir Sall won't be able to locate any new Temples until you find new Artifacts. The gravitational anomalies he's detecting only appear once you have claimed the Artifact itself, so if he can't find any, go away and do some Artifact work for Constellation for a while, then come back when you've uncovered some new treasure.
All Starfield powers
Below we've listed every power in Starfield, what they do, and what Artifact/Temple you need to unlock them:
- Alien Reanimation (Phi): Resurrect a dead alien as an ally temporarily
- Anti-Gravity Field (Eta): Lift up enemies into the air and temporarily stop them attacking
- Create Vacuum (Gamma): Prevent enemies in an area from breathing temporarily
- Creator's Peace (Nu): De-aggros all nearby enemies and causes them to drop their weapons
- Earthbound (Epsilon): Set all gravity around you to standard Earth level
- Elemental Pull (Psi): Instantly mine metals and minerals
- Eternal Harvest (Lamba): Regrow harvested plants around you
- Gravity Wave (Beta): Knock down enemies with a telekinetic shove
- Gravity Well (Delta): Create an area of high gravity that pulls in and crushes enemies
- Grav Dash (Zeta): Dash/dodge move that propels you forward with increased damage
- Inner Demon (Upsilon): Create a duplicate of an enemy and cause them to attack each other
- Life Forced (Pi): Damage an enemy and heal yourself
- Moon Form (Rho): Become unmovable and take massively reduced damage
- Parallel Self (Sigma): Summon a perfect copy of yourself that fights as an ally
- Personal Atmosphere (Alpha): Refills your oxygen
- Phased Time (Buried Temple/Mu): Slow time on everything but you
- Precognition (Iota): See what NPCs are going to do before they do it
- Reactive Shield (Tau): A protective shield that reflects attacks and reduces damage
- Sense Star Stuff (Chi): See all NPCs through walls
- Solar Flare (Theta): Project a fireball that hurts and ignites enemies
- Sunless Space (Kappa): Project a ball of ice that hurts and freezes enemies
- Supernova (Xi): Do massive damage in an explosion around you
- Void Form (Omicron): Become invisible temporarily
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