Crafting is one of the main gameplay systems in Starfield, and it requires a ton of resources. Those resources are heavy, and using your ship’s hold is incredibly useful for lugging them around. But what about when you need those resources stored there to craft?
Thankfully, Bethesda thought of this during development, and included several different ways to alleviate the massive weight of resources.
Can resources from a ship’s Cargo Hold be used for crafting in Starfield?
Thankfully, the answer is a resounding yes—you can craft with resources stored in your ships’ cargo hold. This includes crafting of any kind—Research Stations, Weapon Workbenches, Spacesuit Workbenches, Industrial Workbenches, even Outpost Building. If an item is stored in either your inventory or your ship’s inventory, it will appear in all crafting menus.
There is no special thing you must do to enable this feature. By default, ship Cargo Holds are considered the exact same as a player’s inventory where crafting is concerned. For this reason, I highly recommend upgrading your ship’s Cargo Hold capacity, as it is not just meant to be overflow storage. I’ve gotten my Cargo Hold up to almost 1000kg of storage, and I have no intention of slowing down—especially because 1000kg doesn’t even come close to feeling like all the weight you could ever want.
Resources are very heavy in Starfield, and there are a lot of them. Having to carry all that weight on your body would quite frankly make crafting impossible. Imagine carrying enough iron to make an entire landing pad for a ship in your backpack.
How to increase Cargo Hold capacity in Starfield
Your ship’s Cargo Hold is your best friend when it comes to storing resources, as they will always go everywhere you go. The default Cargo Hold has only 400kg of storage—not awful, but you can easily increase this number.
I personally increased The Frontier’s capacity to 900kg simply by putting two new Cargo Holds on the ship via the Ship Builder feature. This takes some tinkering and a basic understanding of Ship Builder, as you need to add a Structure to support additional Cargo Hold slots, which in turn will mean adding an Engine to support the additional weight.
There are practically infinite ways to do this in Ship Builder, so just keep in mind that more storage means more weight, which in turn means more power needed.
Additionally, you can use the Payloads skill to increase your ship’s carrying capacity. Payloads is an Advanced Tech skill, meaning you’ll need to have put at least four points into Tech before you can unlock it. At rank one, all Cargo Holds can carry 10 percent more weight. Getting the skill up to rank four grants a whopping 50 percent added capacity.
However, before getting this skill for yourself, you should know that the companion Sam Coe has rank three of Payloads, and also has rank three of the Piloting skill. Assigning Sam to your crew will automatically increase your ship’s Cargo Hold capacity by 30 percent. Sam can be gained as a companion by completing the mission The Old Neighborhood, available early on in the main story.
