After all these years, Bethesda Game Studios has finally released one of its signature first-person RPGs with functional ladders. Glorified teleporters no more: Starfield’s ladders have proper interactive climbing animations, and since Starfield makes an attempt at somewhat realistic spacecraft designs, its ships naturally contain lots of them.
Also naturally, because it’s just a law of the universe that players will defy game developers in every possible way they can, one person has dedicated their Starfield ship building efforts to avoiding ladders.
I fixed it! The superiority of StroudEklunds side mounted bay. Truly ZERO ladders, 9k cargo, 68 mobility, and 130 speed, no mods. from r/Starfield
“The superiority of StroudEklunds side mounted bay. Truly ZERO ladders, 9k cargo, 68 mobility, and 130 speed, no mods,” said amateur spaceship engineer Amirax in a Reddit post describing their build. It was swiftly followed by requests for a tutorial, other ladder-hating players hungry to strike cursed and hateful rungs from their ships. Amirax made just that, a guide to a no-ladder Starfield ship.
“You’ll need lvl 58 for the reactor and 60 for the engines. You can pick up cockpit on titan, engines on mars, then piece all the structural stuff together on a personal habitat platform,” says Amirax, “You’ll also need Starship Design rank 3 for the cargo modules, and rank 4 for the reactor, engines, grav drive and fuel canisters.”
This was Amirax’s second attempt at a ladderless ship. The first didn’t require ladders to get around, but did contain one. While I’d argue that Amirax’s first attempt has an overall superior indoor flow due to the doorway from the bridge, it just wasn’t enough for ladder haters. Amirax is far from the only person to attempt this, of course. I’m a big fan of this huge, extremely expensive endgame build called “The Arkbird” that takes the form of a giant wedge.
Honestly, though, my favorite response to the whole thing? It’s by fractal_magnets in the comments of the guide: “I think I’ve climbed my ships ladder once. Boost packed ever since.” Why walk when you can fly?
The addition of ladders, a staple feature of our reality but very new to Bethesda’s, has clearly utterly broken the minds of the studio’s most devoted fans. I submit as a second piece of evidence the opposite to this ship: one with a megaladder cooked up as a tribute to Metal Gear Solid 3’s super long ladder scene.
