Starfield is full of missions that will let you gather morally dubious goods. Avoiding governments with your ship full of stolen artwork is hard work, but there’s one government that doesn’t care what your ship is full of: The Den. This long space station is a great one to keep in mind whenever you see that scary contraband tag. So, let’s talk about where it is so you can get some of those legendary benefits.
How to Get to the Den
The Den is a space station that is located within the Wolf System of Starfield. Wolf is a solar system located northeast of Alpha Centauri, southeast of Sol, and southeast of Barnard’s Star. When in this system, look to the planet of Chthonia to see a small, radio-like symbol orbiting it. That’s your mark.
The Wolf System is relatively low-level and close to Alpha Centauri, so it’s not much of a chore to get to. You’ll need to at least get your own ship and get through all of the tutorials, but you can basically get to the system right away. It’s within one jump from Alpha Centauri and is close to several high-ranking, low-level star systems — including Sol, where you can visit Earth.
The Den itself is not restrictive, either. You can dock your ship on it right away, no matter the level or path down the main mission. Well, given that the game is letting you fly around on your lonesome.
However, like a lot of space-borne machines, docking at the Den isn’t exactly child’s play. Get nice and close, but slow down when you get around 500 meters away. At that point, the prompt should appear — R by default on keyboard, or X on Xbox controllers.
From there, you can simply get off of your ship and enter one of the coolest places in the galaxy. Don’t worry about combat, either, since this whole place is basically a very small, very mobile capital city.
Why You Should Go to the Den
As you fly into the Den, a big thing you might have noticed is that they don’t scan your ship. The Den doesn’t scan you, allowing you to freely bring contraband and other illegal goods onto the space station.
The denizens of the space station are very flexible. Once you land there, gather your contraband from your ship storage and head further into the station. The Trade Authority is near the back of the area. A man named Matthew runs the joint and will buy and sell goods.
Technically, contraband here is as easily sold as anywhere else. However, you don’t have to play any silly games or purchase shielded cargo bays in order to access the Den with your stolen (or simply marked) items. You can just walk right on in, which makes it heavenly for early Starfield where ship customization is too expensive.
There is more to do on the Den than just sell your contraband at the trade authority. There’s a kiosk here from the Trade Authority proper and a ship technician that’ll let you customize your ships.
The fact that there’s two Trade Authority hubs is fantastic, since it lets you have a pretty deep well of credits to sell to every day. The Den is also a lot smaller than most cities, making these two deep-pocketed individuals a good place to sell a lot of stuff quickly. You’ll get an average of 20,000 credits out of them every time you visit, which is good for your contraband and anything else you’ve been lugging around.
Expert Tip
There are two quests that start in the Den that you might want to consider. “Re-Re-Application” is began by talking to the goatee-wearing Bastien Graff and is a good injection of experience and a normal number of credits. Winning Hearts and Minds starts at the bartender Orval Romack and gives even more experience but the same number of credits. Both of these quests involve going back to New Atlantis, making them safe missions to grab and forget about until you naturally come back to the big city.
