How & Where to Upgrade Ships - Starfield

You spend a lot of time in Starfield getting from point A to point B in your ship. Often, this gets interrupted by pirates, bounty hunters, or pesky Starborn — so having a ship that can fight, grav jump, and move cargo effectively can make your life a whole lot easier. In this guide, we’ll explain where you need to go to upgrade your ship, and how to do it once you get there.

Where to Upgrade Your Ship

You can upgrade your ship anywhere there’s a Ship Services Technician NPC — most major cities have one. The easiest place to find Ship Services early on in the game is New Atlantis, as its right by the landing pad (Image 1). Sometimes instead of being by a sign outdoors, the Ship Services Tech will be in a building. For example, on Neon, the Ship Services Tech is in a building near the landing pad (Image 2). Occasionally, there will be other NPCs who can help you upgrade your ship, such as the salesperson at the Stroud-Ekland Shipyard in the Narion system.

ship services new atlantis starfield how to upgrade ships — Image 1 – New Atlantis

ship services neon starfield how to upgrade ships — Image 1 – New Atlantis

Alternatively, you can also upgrade your ship at one of your outposts, once you’ve built a “Landing pad with Shipbuilder”.

Note that the various cities and shipyards will often have different parts on offer, so it can be worth looking at the upgrade menu whenever you’re in a new city. Another thing to keep in mind is that your Piloting and Starship Design skills will affect the quality of parts you can choose — the higher your skill, the better the parts available to you.

How to Upgrade Your Ship

Once you’ve found a Ship Services Technician or similar NPC, talk to them and then select “I’d like to view and modify my ships.” This will take you to the Ships screen.

First, make sure you’ve got the ship you want to upgrade selected — you can use the the bumpers or computer key q t / computer key t t to switch what ship you have selected.

Once you have the correct ship selected, you can select a specific ship system you want to upgrade with the left stick or computer key a t / computer key d t — look at the upper left corner to see the systems and which one you have selected.

Next, press computer key e t / button xbox a v2 / to see the available parts for that system. Hover parts to see what stats they have, then choose a part with //, or press computer key tab t / button xbox b v2 / to cancel — this will let you switch between systems again.

comparing parts starfield how to upgrade ships — You can look at the left side of the screen while hovering a part to see how it compares to your current part — blue numbers means a higher value, red means lower, and white means its the same as your current part

Each part you choose will be added to your total credits cost, which you can see at the top of the screen. Make sure you have enough credits for the parts you want!

When you’ve selected all the new parts you want, press computer key tab t / button xbox b v2 / , and you’ll be asked to confirm the modifications. Press the accept button to install the new parts, cancel to undo all your changes, or the back button to return to the upgrade screen, but with your changes intact.

That’s all there is to it! If you’re wondering which parts you should be choosing, you check out our guide on the Best Ship Parts. If upgrading isn’t cutting it and you want to start from the landing pad up, our How to Build a Ship guide may be more your speed.