The Starfield temple and spinning rings puzzle explained

Starfield Powers — (Image credit: Bethesda)

Completing the Starfield temple puzzle during the Into the Unknown quest can be a real challenge, as there's not much in the way of guidance to explain what you should actually be doing. However, you'll need to get a decent understanding of how they work, as these puzzle temples are a recurring mechanic that you'll encounter throughout your journey. With that knowledge secured, you'll save time and effort every time you discover these temples in Starfield, because helpfully the solution method is the same for each one.

Getting to temples also requires you to follow the whole Starfield scanner distortions puzzle, though there's actually no overlap between those mechanics and temple puzzles, so I don't blame anybody for being a bit confused. However, having gone through it myself, many, many times, here's how to solve the Starfield Temple Eta puzzle below, and what you need to do with all those spinning rings.

What to do in the Temple in Starfield during Into the Unknown

The Starfield temple puzzle you need to complete during Into the Unknown isn't explained, so here's the summary:

As you enter, you'll start floating in anti-gravity and a spinning set of rings will appear in the middle of the room.
You need to look around and find small flickering pockets of light that appear around the room. Only one will appear at a time, and they disappear after a few seconds and a new one appears somewhere else.
When you see one, quickly boost towards it as fast as you can with the sprint button. If you hit it, a musical noise will sound and the central rings will spin faster.
The time limit to hit these lights gets shorter each time you reach one, so you'll need to be fast. Still, you're not reset if you miss any of them.
After catching five lights, the rings in the middle will spin and form into a single, unmoving ring.
Fly into the ring itself to get your reward – one of the Starfield powers – before you're spat out of the Temple.

This is a process that's worth remembering, as there are many temples across Starfield and you'll have to repeat this procedure each time.

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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.