In the epic sci-fi space opera role-playing game Starfield, you travel to hundreds of different planets in dozens of solar systems, often within the same mission. But as you can probably imagine, having traveled to so many planets in real life, this can take a fair bit of time. That is unless you opt to take some of the shortcuts that have been built into this game by the good people at Bethesda Game Studios.
For people who want to play Starfield like it's a realistic space simulation (i.e., without using any of the handy shortcuts), traveling from one planet to another starts with a single step... back to your spaceship.
Once there, you have to enter your ship's lower deck, click on the ladder to climb up to the main cabin, walk over to the cockpit, sit down, launch your ship into space, pull up the star map, choose your destination, hit the button to make your ship engage its engines, and, finally, pull up the planetary map, chose where you'd like to land, and engage your ship's automated landing system.
But if you don't have time to spare, you can instead fast travel back to your ship by pulling up the starmap, where you'll see a button prompt that conveniently says "fast travel to ship." This only works if you're outside; if you're in a structure, you'll sometimes need to exit before fast traveling. Either way, when fast traveling to your ship, you can also choose to go straight to the cockpit, or to the ship's main cabin.
Even quicker, you can just bring up the main menu, go to the starmap, and use it like you would normally to travel to the planet you'd like to visit.
But the quickest way to get from one planet to another is to bring up the main menu and go into the "missions" section. Then, simply click the mission you'd like to do, and hit "set course" to jump to the planet you need to go to.
Using these shortcuts, as opposed to going the long way around, can save you as much as half an hour. That's a half hour you can spend sleeping or reading or oh, who are we kidding, you're going to spend it playing Starfield.
Now, there are limitations. You can't fast travel if you're carrying too much loot, or engaged in combat.
You're also limited by the engine in your ship and often have to hop from one planet to the next instead of taking a direct flight. You can't, for instance, jump straight from Alpha Centauri to Cheyenne; you have to go to neighboring Olympus or Narion first.
Lastly, no matter how you travel, you always arrive in orbit over your destination planet when you arrive at a solar system. This means you may run into pirates or bounty hunters who are looking to take you out. There are some things even the best shortcuts can't circumvent.
While you're here, check out our full review on Starfield. We also have a guide on selling and buying loot while out in space.