As many of you know, I’m a bit of a fan of Bethesda’s epic open world sci-fi rpg, “Starfield”. I am also a big fan of the modding community that has built up around this game, and use mods liberally in my particular playthroughs. Regardless of how you feel about the subject, this also includes paid mods, because I like fun and I’m not bothered by paying creators for their hard work.
Anyway, my favorite paid mod is by far “Darkstar Total Game Overhaul”. Yes, it is a paid mod, a rather expensive one at $10 (1000 Creation Credits) compared to other such mods, but well worth the price, in my opinion. It takes the already expansive and fun world of “Starfield”, and changes it in various ways to keep it interesting for hundreds and hundreds of levels, literally thousands of hours of gameplay.
What all can you do with DarkStar TGO? Here’s just a few options:
- Adjust the game’s difficulty beyond the base settings in the game. This adds a lot of additional nuance to the gameplay, and also tweaks the gear drops one can earn through higher difficulty settings.
- Modifies the NPC combat “AI”, so that enemies will act in ways that are more in line with real combatants. They will seek cover, use abilities (if they have any) against you, and so on.
- Updates the crafting system, by adding in a side-system for crafting weapons and armor. You can strip Legendary abilities from weapons and armor found in the game, to then use to build your own customized gear, on top of what you can already do in “Starfield” itself. Plus it adds in additional scaled tier levels, keeping the gear drops more powerful as you level to 100 and beyond.
- Updates and expands upon the Outpost system, giving you many ways to build fantastic bases for a great variety of uses, be they commercial or just for relaxation.
- Brings Shipbuilding into one unified location, through the custom landing pads it adds to the Outpost system. No more bouncing from system to system, gathering parts and updating your ship bit by bit. You can literally open a ship slot in your fleet, and build a whole ship from the ground up, if you have the credits.
- Level and system scaling, so that no matter how high you level, no matter how many times you pass through the Unity, and no matter where you go, the opponents you face will be a reasonable challenge.
- … and much more!
Anyway, what does all of this matter now? DarkStar isn’t exactly a new creation, not even the paid version. But what is different is that version 2.1 of the paid mod has finally dropped. It has been waiting in queue since June 1st, while Bethesda worked through their extensive stack of paid mods needing ran through QA testing before they could be released to the public, and since DS:TGO is a rather extensive mod, it has taken quite some time to clear QA.
So, how is it? Frankly, I don’t know yet. It dropped the other day, and I haven’t had time to play “Starfield” yet this week, but this morning I will likely update it and install all of the additional side-mods that will tie DS:TGO in with the two DLCs and various other mods I use, that have all had to wait until the main mod finally got released. Then I’ll give it a try this coming weekend on PC and Xbox Series X, likely on a fresh character so as to not mess up my current character.
I don’t expect any major issues to arise after all of the extensive testing this creation has been through, but if anything pops up, I’ll post an update on this page.