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A massive part of Starfield is exploring the various star systems throughout the galaxy. With more than 1,000 planets to explore, you also have the opportunity to scan and survey every single one of them. Unfortunately, Bethesda does a pretty bad job of explaining how to scan the various flora and fauna on planets to 100% in Starfield.
How to Scan Flora and Fauna on Planets in Starfield
Scanning in Starfield is fairly simple and easy to do. While you’re on a planet, press the LB button on your controller or whatever you have it set to on PC to pull up your scanner. While you have it up, press A or the corresponding button on PC to scan the target you’re looking at.
Note your scanner has an initial range of only 10 meters, which you can upgrade, so you have to be rather close to scan an object. Unfortunately, scanning an object once does not 100% complete it. You have to scan multiples versions of a plant or creature to survey it fully. The only exception to this rule involve resources like Aluminum and Gold, which only require you to find and scan them once.
In general, this means you have to find eight different examples of a plant or creature to 100% scan it. Since you can only scan each object once, it can mean you’ll have to traverse the planet for a bit to stumble upon another one of the object to scan.
Fortunately, it is quite easy to tell from far away if you’ve 100% scanned an object before or not. Fully scanned plants and creatures will have a green hue from far away, while still in-progress objects will be blue.
While it normally takes eight separate scans to 100% an object, you can upgrade the flora and fauna’s respective skills as you level up to reduce the required number of scans.
You can also set up an outpost on a planet with scanners to help with all of this. Scanners and crew members dedicated to that outpost can remove some of the frustration with having to wander the entire planet to look for that eighth and final creature you can’t seem to find, which will inevitably happen to you; it happened to me on the first planet I visited.
Starfield is available for the Xbox Series X and PC.
