Starfield’s “Into the Unknown” has a few confusing steps, including ‘follow distortions on the scanner’, which may have a bug — here’s how to solve it.
After the first two quests in Starfield, you’ll gain access to three main missions at once, one of which is the mysterious sounding “Into the Unknown.” If you came here from our guide on which quests to pick first, you’ll see why we recommend you do this one first in a sec.
In this Starfield guide, we’ll walk you through all the quest steps for “Into the Unknown” — including “follow distortions on the scanner”, which has appeared to be bugged for some players — and help you navigate the game’s bizarre take on procedurally generated planets.
A possible bug at launch is that players are sometimes unable to follow the scanner. If this happens to you, we recommend returning to orbit and waiting by passing time. Consider shutting the game off and launching it fresh as well, just in case.
Also, when you make to re-land on the planet, be absolutely sure you’re picking the Scanner Anomaly Site. If you land anywhere else by accident, the temple won’t appear on the map and you won’t be able to find it.How to fix “Into the Unknown’s” bugs
Some players have reported a number of bugs with “Into the Unknown”. Here are the only solutions we’ve found after researching both. “Into the Unknown” isn’t in the quest menu
If you run into the bug where Starfield just doesn’t give you the Into the Unknown quest, for now, you’ll actually need to skip it using console commands.
Unfortunately, that means Xbox players are completely out of luck if they run into this bug. If you find yourself in that situation and you can’t install the game on a nearby PC, you may just need to wait for a patch.Can’t follow the anomaly
Another bug is that players are sometimes unable to follow the scanner and find the temple with the anomaly inside (which we describe below).
If this bug happens to you, return to orbit and waiting by passing time (just for good measure). Consider shutting the game off and launching it fresh as well, just in case.
When you make to re-land on the planet, be absolutely sure you’re picking the Scanner Anomaly Site. If you land anywhere else by accident, the temple won’t appear on the map and you won’t be able to find it.
The “skip it” fix that we described for the first bug also works for players who are hit with this one, but this mission is very critical to Starfield’s story — especially the end — and we recommend holding off on skipping the mission until Bethesda issues a fix.Finding the artifacts
“Into the Unknown” introduces to you Vladimir and Andreja, and tasks you with collecting two artifacts.Talk to Vladimir and choose which planet to go to first
To start “Into the Unknown,” zoom out to the Alpha Centauri system map. Right next to New Atlantis, you’ll find a space station called The Eye. Travel there and dock with the station. Once inside, head down the hallway until you meet Vladimir.
Vladimir will tell you he has leads on two different artifacts — a pretty good haul for one main quest. Both of these planets are randomly selected from a pool of potential planets, meaning your quest will differ slightly from ours, but only in which planets you need to travel to on the map. For us, Vladimir served up Piazzi IV-C and Piazzi I.
For this step, you’ll need to help Vladimir find a girl named Andreja, who hasn’t checked in in a while.
