Do enemies in Starfield scale with your level?

Space may be vast and mostly empty, but in Starfield, there are still plenty of bad dudes to find and shoot. You fight enemies using all manner of weapons, from long-range rifles to lasers and shotguns. Some fights are tougher than others, and that may lead you to wonder if enemies in Starfield scale along with your own level.

It’s a natural thing to question since developer Bethesda went this route before. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim included enemy scaling. No matter where your Dragonborn landed on the power scale, some club-wielding filth mongerer in a cave could still take a beating.

It was a point of frustration for me. I figured my character, decked out in pure ebony armor and weapons, should probably be a sentient blender to these people. And revisiting an old smugglers’ cave dozens of hours after you cleared it sometimes had you run into people wearing full glass. If that’s the kind of scratch smuggling can make, then I was in the wrong business.

Will enemies scale with your level in Starfield?

Thankfully, the system isn’t the same in Starfield. Enemies won’t scale with your level, but that doesn’t mean fights will stay a cakewalk all throughout your story. You can travel to faraway star systems in Starfield. At the top-left corner of the star map, you can see a section with the word “Level” and a number below. That number is the level of the highlighted system, which should give you a good idea of how well you’ll fare.

The color of the level box correlates to how much danger you could be in. It starts with green, then moves to blue, yellow, and finally red. Obviously, the latter means the danger is near the peak. You will have to be far along in your story before you can tackle these areas.