One incredibly patient Starfield player has gone off the beaten path and done the seemingly impossible: they’ve managed to fully survey every possible planet in the game. We’ll let that sink in for a second.
In essence, this is a monumental task as fully surveying one planet to 100% completion typically takes around three or four hours to do. Not only does a player have to visit every biome on a planet to achieve that exhaustive process, but it’s also heavily reliant on RNG as well due to the randomly generated nature of planet exploration. Outside of gas giants, which take approximately five seconds to fully survey, netting a 100% survey completion can take a lot of time and patience.
Specifically, Reddit user DoomZero has fully surveyed 1,694 planets in Starfield, and according to their estimates, it’s taken them around 180 hours to do this challenge. With some quick math, that equals over a staggering nine planets per hour. How did they do it so fast? Well, we imagine that those aforementioned gas giants skewed the numbers in a big way as you can achieve a 100% scan of them almost instantly, as long as you’re in orbit around said planet.
In addition, another tip that was shared in the thread is the fact that killing lifeforms on a planet’s surface automatically surveys them, so you don’t need to use your hand scanner. In other words, your gun can serve as your hand scanner, which is pretty handy. Lastly, another useful tidbit lies in the skill trees. Essentially, unlocking ranks in Astrophysics, Scanning, Botany, and Surveying all help speed up the process of getting that elusive 100% survey completion.