Erlkönig: Starfield: Nude Unity Extreme

Nude Unity: Extreme

If you are the one who defeats any adversary with just the power of your mind, a band-aid, a strong cola, and a tableknife, then you are ready for the Nude Unity experience!

If you also happen to despise how capitalism rips you off, above any interest in credits, except in their sole role to satisfy your love of starships ‡, then you are ready for the Extreme upgrade!

• Naked *
• No healing kits; no guns; no vendors *

The Context

Restrictions for you (followers aren't restricted):

• No using healing kits (med/emergency/trauma) on yourself
• No vendoring, except
  • Your Large Landing Pads ‡
  • Selling survey results to Vlad
  • When explicitly, specifically required for quests (when the quest says "go buy …")
  • (if using Watchtower) Watchtower research rewards from Gren and Lane, and only the unlocked rewards (cyberamps, skydrops and flares), not normal inventory (weapons, ammmo, aid, resources, misc), and no trade with B.A.B.S.
• No firing of any personal physical weapon that consumes rounds of ammo, i.e. guns, rifles, etc
• No clothing / cover for your naughty bits (pelvis, torso), although you may wear
  • Neural implants (the Ryujin reward) - you must not buy them
  • Cosmetic { hats / glasses / gloves / shoes / masks }, etc
  • Cosmetic tattoos
  • (The above are assumed to be harmonious with the idea of "naked" in this context)
  • The helmet and suit at game start in Vectera, to be removed before Lyn opens the first airlock to the outside
  • You may don-AND-doff anything inside Inventory, but must emerge from Inventory "naked"
    • Needed for a questline on Neon
• No armor, i.e. no helmet, no suit, no pack, no boostpack, after the airlock detailed above
  • Literally nothing with a defensive buff of any kind

So basically you have your fists, blades, cutter, powers, mines, grenades, naked skin, and lots of chems.

Mods

• No mods for ANY looting, recycling, organ harvesting, etc
• No mods to ease medical care, especially not to have a doctor, doctoring, in your employ
• No mods that trivialize or markedly ease the challenge, except
  • Sit to Add Ship to Fleet ‡
  • Gravity Affects Weight (this both compensates a bit for the lack of +carry gear and is great for immersion)
  • Any mod that lets you stay in you pilot seat at every landing (I didn't use one, but should have)
  • Any mod that improves Outpost "push" model usage, without trivializing the resource challenge
    • Magnus the Magnate Outpost Production Shenanigans, e.g., (allows resources to be filtered, with some of each kept and some vendored away in a balanced, i.e. low-profit, fashion)
    • (Outposts implement a "pull" system, where you're supposed to connect links only when you need a specific resource)
  • Mods that affect the UI, but change nothing about the game world, are fine, examples:
    • Star UI Inventory
    • Unarmed Weapon (allows a hotkey for unarmed, but occupies a quickslot)
  • Mods that correct skills rather than rework or buff them, examples:
    • Starfield Community Patch
    • Skill Fixes
  • (these are generally to deal with game misdesign issues)
• Mods that improve immersion for the "nude" aspect
  • Starqueen, Better Vanilla Nude, etc
  • (I was unable to find a perfect solution - all of them paint shadows, often harsh, onto the skin instead of relying on the lighting engine like they should)
• Mods by Kinggath Creations: Watchtower OS\FC and McClarence Outfitters
  • Both of these will cause vastly more grief than benefit for this run
  • Disable them if you're about to start, otherwise:
    • OS\FC 1.0.2 has an initial encounter that will hunt you constantly and break orbital encounters
    • If you give your Fleet non-EM, capturing becomes very difficult
    • Fleet ships can get stuck in various states, don't use quest ships in the fleet unless you're fine with possibly losing them
    • If you change ambush frequency in Settings, the "73%" changes
    • Many OS\FC bases are on moons, and have hard vacuum inside too
    • OS\FC's impact on a game is both excessive, and rather monotonal
    • It's easy to get stuck on "The Stars Have Eyes", doomed to Torin forever exhorting you to deal a listening post that ends up on some airless moon (like Altair III-c), see Coping, below
    • With McClarence, you collect perked gear for him to little benefit, once you have a Legendary Schimaz or similar (I found a nice one in the Oracle)
  • Coping with Watchtower on a Nude Unity run
    • Take batteries with you from, say, Vectera, to Listening posts
    • If you have Essences to burn, outposts in vacuum are viable.
      • For me, my (1st?) Echo needed a battery to open the side hanger for its tunnel, and I burned an Essence inside
      • For me, Charlie was on Maal V, with a skin-friendly atmosphere
    • If is still seemse to hard, try one of:
      • Glitch your Outpost onto the Watchtower Listening Post
        • This actually leads to interesting gameplay
      • Use an enclosed Rover and a mod to give it some environmental resistance

Mods (Optional) that affect the Rover

These mods ease the experience slightly, so some players may not want them, but they do make solid game world sense.

• Summon Rover
  • There's no Rover bay, so it must be following your ship anyway, why not follow you?
  • Basically removes the incomprehensible constraint of allowing Fast Travel on foot, but not in a vehicle. With this, just Fast Travel on foot, then summon the Rover, and POOF, you've Fast Travelled "with" your Rover
  • Practically speaking, this lets you be a lootgoblin more easily for FT, even though compulsively looting everything is a lot less useful with the vendor ban
• Vehicle Hazard Protection
  • I love this mod, but only with a fully enclosed vehicle like the Deimog
  • I didn't use it, mostly because it makes long-haul runs across moons (e.g.) seem to easy
    • (realistically, landing on Venus should instantly crush your ship's habs, and you, of course, long before the question of the Rover comes up)
  • I like that it provides only a resistance buff +10a/+10c/+20r/+30t, not total safety
  • Practically speaking, this lets you build fewer temporary Outposts to FT to later to cross long-haul runs in harsh environments

Game settings

• XP+73% - since the mining hab doesn't count as an "Outpost" for recovery purposes
  • In Settings / Gameplay Options
    • Set Environmental Damage Restoration to RESTING
    • Set all other core game options to maximum XP gain
    • Ignoring mods, your Total XP boost should show 73%

Cluons

Things about the game you may have missed, but need to know.

• You can recover health without healing kits
  • Levelling up heals you
  • Abusing malnourished and rest
    • Allow yourself to become malnourished
    • Rest or sleep (sometimes twice)
    • Voilà! You now have some 40% of your health!
    • CAVEATs in Vectera this will tend to only clear your yellow damage bar, rather than also heal you. This is probably a side effect of all the things the tutorial does to the player that are undone later
  • Rejuvenation
• Even when the surface map is unavailable, going through the starmap UI to, first, the POI you're in, then moving the pointer to your ship marker (it'll turn orange), will generally allow you to FT to your ship. Great in caves
• To register a ship, always use your own Fleet UI (not the vendor UI). Cheaper (at least for vendors other than your landing pads)
• When you FT to your ship, your Rover will generally follow you back if you rest, but there are exceptions
  • When your Rover is inside one of your Outpost areas in the same tile

Strategy

Long term specific problems

Mêlée (and Nishina)

• Get Rejuvenation early-ish. likely between level 14 and ~20, solving most of the anti-medkit-ish issue
• Duelling, Concealment
  • Get one of:
    • a Wakizashi (Seokguh Hideout)
    • or Schimaz (sometimes?) in the Oracle,
    • or Painblade (an early quest reward on the Va'ruun'kai main questline)
  • Berzerker is the perfect perk for this sort of run
• Prioritize powers. This run requires traversing a lot of lunar vacuum naked
  • Personal Atmosphere is an absolute requirement
  • Buy the Rover from your Large Landing Pad
  • With the Rover, get to the site to gain the POI's Fast Travel, then FT back to ship
  • Recover - chems, wait or sleep to recover from atmos dmg, munch if needed
  • FT to new POI
  • Do whatever you were going to and FT out

Starships (and the fight over Masada III with three Starborn Guardians)

The need to either upgrade the Frontier, or capture some marvellous ship early (and upgrade it), to a level you can take on the Guardian trio, is where all your credits are going to go (other than bribes and bounties).

You can be ready at lower levels specifically by capturing some monster ship with a Reactor and weapons that your Starship Engineering skill and level won't let you buy. This still means you need to get to max tier Piloting early on to complete the capture.

You can be more efficient in using your relative sparse credits by skipping as many intermediate ship upgrades as possible. This is especially true if you can capture some class C/40 Reactor behemoth somewhere.

The Isolation Skill will boost your ship's weapon damage if you don't have an active follower

Transit through Harsh Environments

Chems. Frostwolf being especially notable for moons, but rare. You may want to skill up to craft your own.

Defense

• Food and drink. The Nutrition Skill. Pairs well with Gastonomy in Nude runs
• Reactive Shield. Moon Form. Void Form
• Crowd control: Anti-Gravity Field, Sunless Space, Gravity Well
• Stealth and Concealment
• Social: Instigation, Manipulation (free with Ryujin)
• Ranged Powers to keep distance and avoid getting hit in the first place
• Followers to distract and kill foes

There are some additional Social crowd control skills, Intimidation and Diplomacy, but I'd rather use Creator's Peace, which doesn't consume Skill points.

Followers

• While most followers are viable, I personally use either Andreja for stealth or the Fan for his faith the nearly anything you do is perfectly fine (and he can carry a lot)
• Upgrade their armor and weapons
• Weapons that consume ammo don't when followers fire them
• So it's a great time for a MagShear, MagStorm or Microgun
• Weapons that use rare ammo like XPL or 20mm are also good candidates
• I gave Andreja a Starshard with Berzerker/Hitman/One Inch Punch, probably found in the Oracle
  • (Which didn't help, since I got mad at her for losing her temper, assigned her to an Outpost, and then for a while just punched her in the face every time she continue her tirade. She returned to normal a day later, but I left her there)
• I gave the Fan my Vanguard armor, and later Va'ruun Heavy Assault Armor

Resources

You'll have to gather your own if looting isn't enough.

• Early on, without Personal Atmosphere, you'll need hospitable planets
  • Murphrid IV has some Al + Fe spots
• Later, with PA, you have more options
  • Linnaeus IV-b has a spot where all extractables except Lead can be had at one Outpost { H2O Al Be Fe He-3 HnCn Yb }
  • Charybdis V has a spot with { H2O Au Cu Pb Sb Ti W }
    • It's also often a good place to farm Starborn Guardians
• With even more skills
  • Farming Foxbats (XP) and Luxury Textile is an option on Schrodinger III
• Remember that even though you're not using healing kits, certain types of them are use in chem crafting, so don't just jettison scores of them like I did ;-)

Starborn Power Restoration

Essences can be farmed wherever starborn land - although it's convenient if Guardian IV and VI land there too if you want to steal one. These need to be skin-friendly. Some examples:

• Strix I (sandy desert - many interesting resources adjacencies, He-3)
• Fermi III (sandy desert)
• Huygens IV (frozen plains)

I had though the Dwarf Star Heart chem would be enough (+50% Power recovery) to make Personal Atmosphere sustainable, but no, it isn't even remotely enough for this (PA tier 1), so focus on Essences.

Quests

("FT" = Fast Travel, "PA" = Personal Atmosphere)

Random notes from quests from my run in this style.

One Small Step

• The game forces you to have a helmet at start in the mine, so mine everything you can while you have it
• Once out of the mine, your helmet is automatically removed
• Don't back back into the mine, you'll need the health to get into the Frontier
• You MUST don your helmet to open the airlock.
  • The rest of the suit isn't needed
  • Once open, it will disable the activator until a scripted event
• There are two ways to get the airlock to work again
  • Mind, it's draconian of them to disable the airlock, I'd call that game-side cheating
  • The Honest Way
    • Stand near, but not against the outer airlock door as Lyn opens it
      • If you press against the door, you may fall into the Glitched Way
    • The moment it shows light on the hemispherical part, jog out towards the Frontier landing spot
      • This means it'll have just become fully lit as it vanished from view
    • Pass the diagonally-segmented, white line at the start of the ramp
    • About 1m past that is circular inset with 5 points on the ramp
    • Stand past that star, and between the white markers on opposite sides of the ramp's walls
    • Wait for Lyn to stop a bit before the ramp, for the moment the quest change pop-up appears
    • Run ASAP back to the airlock, in a straight line, sprint-jump the boxes, sprints as much as you can
    • Inside, the switch should be activatable, so activate it
    • You don't need to throw yourself at the inner door. Just wait
    • If you don't die, it worked
  • The Glitched Way
    • By running against the outer airlock door's right side before it starts opening,
    • For me (PC) This always glitches removing the "in atmosphere" status from my character
    • This trivializes the Nude part of the run, so I reload and do the honest way above
• Once you have the watch, do not run to the Frontier, run back to the hab!
• Once you recover, then run out to the Frontier

Into the Unknown

• Sumati has no air, and has hostiles at the target. Ugh...
  • Turns out there's enough time before asphyxiating to drop in at the airlock switch tent outside, trigger it, and get into the airlock
    • although getting mobbed in the cave by six guys from outside was amusing
  • It's possible to sleep in the instance to recover from the vacuum damage
  • Had to FT out

Back to Vectera

• on Vectera
  • No air, dammit.
  • Airlock in the second hab cycles, but it doesn't matter - there's no air inside
  • Worked around it using the first hab and FT
  • super weird, since the ship was bugged underground, only reachable via FT
• getting Heller - exactly times to 99% kill you if unsuited, very tight for FT
• saving Barreet - hostile env and turrets
  • huh. just running to the instance doors works fine, especially starting with PA I
  • FT out

Mantis

• Nothing surprising. The inside of the base is fine. I used a lot of grenades since I didn't have Solar Flare yet

Job Gone Wrong

• Sam RUINS stealth. Tell him to stay while OUTSIDE of the bank.

Empty Nest

• Reprogram the turrets to friendly (tty at the west end) and let them do cleanup with Sam for a bit before going in

Watchtower / McClarence / A Material World

• Use FT
• If a target is, as I saw, beyond even the map edge, make stepwise progress through other POIs and/or build temporary outposts for FT until you can reach it

Watchtower / McClarence / Mock-A-Teer

• For me, the target was on a 500+C world's cryolab, so 90% yellow damage on entry.
  • Good news: there are places where you can rest and clear yellow damage

All that Money Can Buy

• You can actually bail early committing some criminal act outside the private room after you purchase it -(I use Anti-Gravity Field on the agent)_ You can leverage the resulting bounty to get teleported to prison, then just go to your ship. NO IDEA what happens if you continue though, bugs likely - I reloaded and went back to the expected route.

Further into the Unknown

• Both of these are on moons, in UNPRESSURIZED underground areas. Ugh.
• Artifact Tau (Reactive Shield) in the cave, where one Starborn appears
  • You have to FT out, and can't unless:
    • You use Creator's Peace on the Starborn
    • The turrets (depending on the cave) didnt notice you
    • Hypothermia isn't dealing damage over time
  • Frostwolf will get you to the Artifact in time
  • Overall, Hypothermia's RNG is the real killer
  • Recommend quick saving as you progress w/o serious Hypothermia
• Artifact Theta (Solar Flare) back entry also used by the huge pipes
  • Literally all the same issues, but with more enemies to avoid, plus
  • You probably want to avoid the liquid in the Artifact cave
  • Don't take a follower, s/he'll just aggro more of them
  • I ended up making a number of sorties to kill NPCs until I finally took out one of the trio nearest the Artifact, furthest from it, up some stairs, to remove his 95%+ tendency to alert the other two about me running by
  • Amusingly, the pacified Starborn may shoot at some of the humans when they chase you

Fishy Business (making Aurora)

• This is the case where you, in one visit to Inventory, both don AND doff the cleansuit (so it doesn't show outside of Inventory)
• Chasmbass Oil is not plentiful from a gathering perspective, with only about 4 being available from Chasmbass themselves, and reportedly a shockingly long wait for respawn, that might be tied to gameplay or real-world time instead of something you can just sleep through

Power from Beyond

• General notes
  • Serious levels of Heatstroke and Hypothermia have damage-over-time, blocking FT
  • You really should have Rejuvenation by this point, full health makes some of these easier
  • Use FT whenever possible, both from the scanner/groundmap and navmap to FT to your ship
  • This is all a great time to do Environmental Conditioning challenges
• Prepping for travel
  • Decide whether your follower should come
  • Check whether you have any resources you want for hurried Outpost construction
  • Clear any afflictions that have damage-over-time, and improve any that would have that effect if they worsen
  • Heal if you can (chair, bed, etc, needed)
  • Make sure you're not overburdened
  • Let your Power bar fill
  • If there's a storm, try to outwait it. If it's scalding sun, wait for nightfall, etc.
  • Knock back any needed / available chems
  • Use Personal Atmosphere if needed
• The ship-to-temple journey
  • If you have POI or Outpost nearer to the temple, FT to it
  • Rush towards the temple (or most promising POI)
    • You need to reach the POI/FT zone around the target
    • Any POI along the way will help, even if you have to build it
    • If you haven't reached the temple interior yet
      • Re-prep before continuing, even if you have to FT back to your ship
  • So you've reached the temple interior. WAIT! - Check to see if you if you can survive the return before you grab the power.
    • Decide if your status warrants grabbing the power and dealing with whatever will be on the roof, if not, and you think you could return in better shape, do all that first and return here
  • Use Reactive Shield and prime Creator's Peace
    • If you don't have the latter, roof encounters will take longer
  • Dive into the rings
  • Pop out and pacify the Starborn (or whatever other plan you had)
  • FT to your ship if you haven't picked up a damage-over-time effect, otherwise you might be able to return to the temple, or just reload

Trackers / Bounty: The Starjacker

• Air… ✓

Ryujin / Infinity LTD

• If you happen to kill Ularu in her office for being a traitor, you end up in a timeline where you're provided with R&D clothing to pass as a developer. Apparently this is instead of the noxious gas I'm familiar with from every other run. The disguise is useless on a Nude Unity run, and going up is much harder without a boostpack... I had Void Form by this time, which works well if you're patient. ;-)

World Apart - Barretts temple quest

• By some marvel, RNG put this on Vega II-c, which means the usual problem of dying from asphyxiation during the conversation with two Barretts isn't going to be a problem. A shocking relief. The impact of the cold alone is far less of a issue - there are even liquid puddles here. Normally it is extremely difficult to get the dialogues to finish fast enough to restart Personal Atmosphere. (I had 15 Thermal Resistance from Environmental Conditioning at this point)

Groundpounder

• Assuming you end up on the same planet I did (Altair II), the default climate is fine for the skin.

Nishina / Freya II

• All good air, yay (barring storms)
• BUT horrible solar radiation during the day, so go at night
• The Cataxi are venomous
  • Techically you only have to kill one of the first two the first time you switch universes. (discovered during a minimum-kill run where it was the only human, creature, or starborn directly killed) Practically that doesn't help us much
• This is a good time to have the Isolation skill and a good blade

Unearthed / Sol / Earth

The major test of not having O₂

• Having piled up the following, it's time to run the hold-your-breath test:
  • ✓ 47 Essences
    • Harvest more from Starborn inside (Void Form + melee)
    • Got the Artifact and returned to my ship with 40 Essences left
    • This super-fast trip still ate around 4 hours of game clock, ~20:00 to 00:05
  • X 8 Dwarf Star Heart (from Innovative Synthesis
    • Despite the stats below, +50% Power recovery is nowhere near enough to matter - Essences are the only answer
    • +50% Power recovery for 5m - so I have 40 minutes worth
    • +250 Damage and Energy resistance for 5m
• Go at night to avoid solar radiation
• While that hab in the museum doesn't provide air, they broke it more so the door doesn't even cycle :-(
• Don't try to grab the cinnamon rolls from the tip of the tower this time
• Don't try to beat a set of armor out of the Emissary - if one succeeds (highly unlikely, the time I saw it was probably a mod bug), it's very difficult to resist wearing it for the rest of the run, which is why I'm doing this run, my second nude run (and on higher difficulty), because of that damn Starborn suit.
• Build an Outpost and get an airlock as close to NASA as possible to maximumize time inside
• Remember you can't boost, but you can use the Rover to ascend to the elevator quickly (the quest marker should be on it, so you can tell how high it is, and, when you emerge, to Fast Travel to you ship

Revelation / Masada III / Buried Temple

Usually the major test of not having armor for Thermal Resistance.

I arrived, for the quest (I'd been here once before it), at level 60-ish, and visited the Unity at level 64. Still naked.

• If you want to collect Caelumite from the anomaly, make sure you get go to the Temple corresponding to the Artifact from NASA (Unearthed) for Elemental Pull before doing the Buried Temple
• Essences and Dwarf Star Heart are useless against the cold
• Can be done in stages by returning to the ship to recover
  • Difficult if you're frozen to the point of draining health to 10%
  • Don't need to relay on mods to give the Rover resistances
  • Helpful to have Thermal Resistance from Environmental Conditioning
• On my arrival, during the quest, temperature was only -1°C, and for the first time ever, my character isn't freezing into Hypothermia
  • Then the snow came :-(
• Void Form + melee works fabulously against the Starborn in the midsection
• Soloed the part by the instance door, Void Form + melee, and it ended shocking fast, under one minute for each of the three phases
• Sleeping didn't recall my Rover from where I left it on the landing pad so I was able to Fast Travel back to save some exposure. But, when I tried this with the Rover way back by the instance door, it moved the Rover to my ship
• Noticed that the afflictions list includes incoming hazardous weather alerts, in this case about the incoming snow, a minute or more beforehand
• In the first Anomaly, reprising the Vectera mine... air! Yay :-)
  • Interestingly, you can't use the scanner in this segment
• In the instance, in the work area full of robots, turrets, and Starborn, with Master Security, you can run to the center office and turn everything against the Starborn
• At the bottom of the shaft, at the level of the Temple, I ran around the right side, stealth-hid in the front, walled part of the temple, and shot the Starborn with Solar Flare (twice), killing him (I missed at long range, but when he moved to a high area by the temple…). No normal combat, took no damage
• Paramour + Bayu's Reserve let me convince (on the first try, at +50% persuasion, despite no Skill investment) the Hunter and Emissary to blow off combat

Amusing notes in my run with character Zenith ♀

• Barrett and Sam ambushed her on the white Ryujin executive floor, (no explanation given for how they got in there), so that Barrett could tell her about Vlad givin him temple coördinates, so both Barrett & Zenith could go. Then several minutes of catching up with all their reactions to my past actions followed, still in this restricted area in Ryujin.
• Tomo's corpse, killed in Ebbsite, mysteriously moved to the middle of Neon
• The Wakizashi from Seokguh, my first Schimaz from the Oracle, and the Painblade quest reward, all had Berzerker perk
  • That Painblade does more damage per hit than any gun I found on the entire run, including the Hard Target

Other notes from that run

• Melee combat was so successful by level 60 that I'd stopped using Reactive Shield, and could almost always default single opponents within about 6 seconds even when they were elites or Starborn. Jockeying around to avoid being on their gun side is pretty important
• While I captured about a half dozen Guardians (and passed on one or two more), two were tier I and four were tier IV - I never got the tier VI I was actually looking for, thanks to rebellious RNG.

Nudity Comments from NPCs

?"...." means approximate. "..." for literal.

Sarah

• "Did I miss the memo about clothing being optional today?"
• "Honestly, you must be freezing."
• "I know you're in a rush, but maybe you should get dressed?"
• "If you're trying to impress me, you're going about it all wrong."
• "Nope, nope, nope. Get your clothes back on."
• "Uh, you can walk around without clothes all you want; mine are staying on."
• "Yes, we've all seen everything. :) Now put your clothes back on."

Andreja

• "Do you not worry about exposure to the elements, or prying eyes?"
• "Forgive me if I… do not share your fashion choices."
• "I believe most people consider clothing… non-optional."
• "If your goal is to confuse your opponent, :-) you're well on your way."
• "Is this a conscious choice, or have you recently suffered a head injury?"
• "It is likely in your best interest to let you, know… put on some clothes."
• "Not a choice I would make, but if you're comfortable…"
• "That is certainly one way to show you do not fear the judgement of others."
• "You may wish to consider a change of attire."
• "You will forgive me if I do not share your fashion choices."

Sam

• "If you're expecting -me- to travel in the buff, you're mistaken."
• "You might wanna, I don't know, put something on."

Barrett

• "Is this a cry for help?"
• ?"You know those nightmares when people have when they dream they're naked when they didn't intend it? You're awake! Right now!"
• ?"Couldn't decide what to wear and just gave up? Huh. Been there."
• "Just so you now, I can see, well, all of you. Everything."
• ?"Exploring the galaxy generally involves more… gear."
• "Spacesuits were invented for a, you know, a reason."
• "Something's different about you. Oh yes, of course, you're naked."

Rayna Marquez (UC Vanguard Pilot in the Den)

• "I didn't recognize you out of uniform."

Ryujin / Linden Calderi

• "You're looking… interesting today."