How to power up your grav drive and grav jump in Starfield

For essentially the most half, touring between star programs in Starfield is automated and you’ll do it by means of the menu(s) utilizing your grav drive to grav jump between programs. Sometimes, although, there’s one additional step.

Our Starfield grav drive information explains how to power up your grav drive for a grav jump, plus an evidence of what that pesky “grav drive pending” warning means, and a rundown of the grav drive’s limitations.

How to grav jump

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks through Polygon

Your first go to to a brand new star system means selecting the star from the menu, leaping to the star system, selecting a planet (or moon) to go to, and then touchdown on that planet at a touchdown goal. Once you’ve accomplished all that, you may quick journey to that touchdown goal once more with quite a bit much less work.

How to power up your grav drive

Performing a grav jump, although, requires you to have power obtainable for your grav drive. While piloting your ship, you’ll see your power distribution in the decrease left of your HUD. This is the way you’ll steadiness out power to your weapons, shields, and engines throughout fight (by utilizing the D-pad). It’s additionally the place you’ll assign power to the grav drive.

What ‘grav jump pending’ means

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks through Polygon

If your grav drive is totally powered down and there’s no additional power from the reactor obtainable, you’ll get a warning on your display that claims “grav jump pending.” This simply implies that you’ve picked out a vacation spot in the Starmap menu, however the grav drive doesn’t have power. As quickly as you free up power and assign at the very least one slot of juice to the grav drive, the countdown will begin and you’ll jump away.

The velocity of that countdown just isn’t measured in seconds, thoughts you. It’s truly a measure of how a lot power you may have assigned. If you solely have one notch allotted to the grav drive, it’ll tick down slowly. If you max it out, it’ll depend down rapidly — useful info if you happen to’re making an attempt to grav jump out of a firefight.

How far are you able to grav jump?

There are a number of limitations on how far your ship can grav jump. Mostly, you’ll see this as warning on the Starmap saying you may’t take the journey your plotting.

It’s by no means actually clear, although, how to resolve the difficulty(s). The limitations are all interconnected, and contain three issues: the route, the grav drive jump vary, and your gasoline.

Route

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If you hover over a distant star in the Starmap, you’ll discover that the route it plots for you isn’t a straight line — it bounces between stars in shorter (grav) jumps that finally finish up at your goal. But you may’t make any journey that jumps by means of a star system you haven’t visited earlier than and, if you happen to strive, you’ll see an “Unexplored route” warning.

This is represented visually by sure legs of your journey turning purple (components you’re ready to jump are in white). Trace that purple a part of the road again to the place it stops being white, and that’s the primary system you haven’t visited but.

Grav drive jump vary

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks through Polygon

The subsequent, barely extra intuitive limitation comes from your ship’s grav drive. How far your ship can jump — its jump vary — is the utmost distance between two stars (legs on that lengthy route) your ship can deal with. If you strive to make a jump that exceeds your jump vary, you’ll see a “Out of range” warning on the Starmap.

Your ship’s grav drive you may have determines the utmost that its vary will be, however the mass of your ship will scale back it. In order to improve your jump vary, you’ll have to improve to a greater grav drive with the Ship Builder.

Fuel

The final limitation is gasoline — and it’s a lot much less clear how this works. The route you are taking to get between programs is made up of smaller jumps by means of programs you’ve visited earlier than (see above). The most distance coated by every of these legs is decided by your grav drive’s jump vary (above). The quantity of legs that make up any given journey is restricted by your gasoline.

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks through Polygon

Each leg eats up a number of the gasoline, so your most gasoline limits the variety of jumps any given journey can contain. If you strive to plot a route that makes use of extra gasoline than your ship can carry, you’ll get a “Out of fuel range” warning.

You’ll want to improve your gasoline tank(s) in the Ship Builder to take these actually lengthy journeys.