Starfield ‘Top of the List’ mission, explained how to investigate a habitable planet

Research for a habitable planet in Star field for the Top of the list quest is one of the space game’s most confusing side missions.

Indispensable instructions and sparse planet scanning tutorials make it easy to overlook things like “can humans breathe on this planet” or “will the water kill me” – you know, the kind of little details that make a future settler might want to know.

This Guide Top of the List (or LIST). explains how to get everything you need in your planet scan and where to look for a habitable planet.

Getting started with the ‘Top of the List’ quest

You may have heard several people talk about LIST in your travels, but there is only one potential settler you can try to recruit into this quest. Follow the quest marker for the very unenthusiastic man at the back of the Broken Spearand try to recruit him. You may need to purchase pamphlets from Phil to continue, depending on how well your conversation is going.

If you fail the persuasion test, you can still convince the guy to go along with your plan, so you don’t have to reload and try again.

Talk to Phil for your next task: mapping a habitable planet.

How to research a habitable planet in Starfield

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon

Phil flips through the criteria for what makes a habitable planet, and the quest notes don’t really mention it. I also ran into a bizarre quirk where quest markers and scanner trails would appear on planets that definitely were not habitable and point me to the resources, so you may want to just ignore the quest markers for this step.

What you need for a habitable planet

• An atmosphere with strong levels of oxygen (O2).
• Moderate flora
• Moderate wildlife
• Natural, safe or organic water
• Moderate temperature
• At least a ‘moderate’ magnetosphere

A couple of planets fit the criteria, including Arcturus II and Leviathan IV, the latter of which is a good source of XP and even an achievement, as it takes a lot of gravity jumping and route mapping to reach.

However, is the easiest to deal with Eridani II in the Eridani system. It’s sunny, with scientific outposts and even a few missions to complete, so you can use this as a base to experiment with building outposts if you wish.

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon

If you’re early in the game, the Eridani system will be on the bottom left of your star chart, past Alpha Centauri. Eridani II has a fairly common distribution of resources and biological life: seven mineral resources and eight each for flora and fauna.

You must fully map the planet, which means that for each flora and fauna sample, multiple species must be scanned – five Leafhunters, for example, and five Pinecone Scavengers. Once you’ve had enough, the scannable resources will appear green on your scanner so you can ignore them and get on with the rest.

Eridani II has several biomes, like most habitable planets Star field, and you have to visit them to scan every resource. Open the planet map, select a spot on the planet to see what biome it’s in, then land and use your scanner to see what resources are nearby.

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon

A prompt may appear asking you to build an outpost scanner to improve your scanning range. I did, and it had no visible effect on my ship or handheld scanner. You can probably ignore this if you’re not ready to build an outpost just yet.

After you have sorted all your scans, open the planet map again and do one last planet scan. It appears as a full survey and you can send Philip the results. You get a few thousand credits in return.

Philip never tasked me with helping the company again, despite LIST activities still happening around me during the game, though it’s possible he’ll give you another quest if you find him on a different location later in your journey planet encountered.