Best Starfield Powers, and how to unlock them all

What are the best Powers in Starfield? Bethesda's latest open-world RPG might be set in space, but there's always room for a little magic. Magical abilities are present in Starfield, and they're called Powers. And let me tell you, some of them really live up to their name.

Below we've listed all 24 Starfield Powers that you can unlock and use over the course of your playthrough. We'll also go over how to unlock Powers in the first place, and our picks for the best Starfield Powers you can bring to bear against your enemies.

Starfield Powers list

Here's the full list of all 24 Powers available in Starfield, and their effects and Power costs:

If you want to see which Power is which in the Starfield Powers menu, you can tap the button in the bottom-right corner to show the names of all the Powers on-screen.

How to unlock all Starfield Powers

You unlock Powers in Starfield by collecting Artifacts. Each time you bring an Artifact back to the Lodge, it unlocks a mission to visit a corresponding Temple for that Artifact. Head to the Temple and complete the minigame inside to unlock a new Power.

How to unlock your first Starfield Power

To unlock your first Power in Starfield, you must complete the main mission "Into The Unknown". This mission is the third mission you receive from Constellation, so it won't take you long to reach this point in your playthrough.

During the "Into The Unknown" mission, you'll be tasked with finding a so-called "Scanner Anomaly". This anomaly turns out to be a temple called Temple Eta. Enter the temple and you'll be transported to a strange star-filled area where you must float through the patches of light that appear.

Touch all the patches of light and you'll unlock the portal in the centre of the room. Float through the portal to exit the temple with the Anti-Gravity Field Power - the first Power you'll obtain in Starfield.

How to unlock more Powers

To unlock more Powers in Starfield, you have to seek out and enter other Temples across the Settled Systems. Once you complete the "Into The Unknown" quest, Vladimir will use the readings from the other four Artifacts that Constellation has previously collected to find the locations of more temples.

After that, new Artifacts will be found at certain moments in the main story of Starfield, and each one you find will unlock the ability to visit another corresponding Temple and gain a new Power.

Here's how to unlock every power in Starfield in order:

What are the best Starfield Powers?

In our opinion, the best Starfield Powers are:

Reactive Shield

Reactive Shield is an incredibly useful Power which significantly reduces your damage and automatically reflects projectiles back at your enemies. It's both offence and defence rolled into one easy to use, moderately cheap and spammable ability.

Grav Dash

Mobility is a large part of combat in Starfield, particularly at the higher difficulty levels. Grav Dash is an indispensable Power which allows you to dash towards a particular point in space, making it useful for evasion, escape, aggressive plays, or simple traversal.

Phased Time

Phased Time slows down the world around you, giving you a lot of extra breathing space. Suddenly you have time to turn even the most gruesome battle in your favour by healing up, reloading, repositioning, and lining up a few key headshots.

Precognition

Precognition's true strength is in seeing the consequences of particular dialogue options, which is very useful during speech challenges that involve persuading or intimidating NPCs to do what you like. Using this Power also highlights enemies' patrol routes, which is very useful for sneaking through an area.

Supernova

For massive crowd control and area of effect damage, nothing beats Supernova. Just stand in the middle of a room and activate Supernova to reduce the standing population of that room to one. It's satisfying and super effective.

That wraps up this guide on all the best Powers in Starfield and how they work. For more help customising your character, check out our myriad guides on the best Starfield backgrounds, Starfield traits and Starfield skills to try out for your first playthrough. To make the most of your hardware, we've also got guides on enabling cheats, the best PC settings for performance and the best mods.