You may be carrying illegal contraband on your ship while playing Starfield. Here is how to sell contraband for quick and easy credits.
Contraband goods are illegal items that get confiscated if you are caught by scans in patrolled areas such as New Atlantis or Neon. They are labeled with a yellow marker in your inventory, just like stolen items are labeled with a red marker.
You can always deny the scanners and fight to the death, but you will have to deal with a similar penalty when you get caught stealing from officers.
Fortunately, not every planet includes patrolled areas, so you can carry contraband freely to other locations.
Trade Authority Kiosks
You will find that most vendors refuse to deal in smuggled goods. However, the Trade Authority will happily purchase your contraband and have more money to do so than other merchants.
Simply locate a yellow kiosk marked Trade Authority at all settlements with a spaceport.
You can locate Full Trade Authority storefronts in Cydonia (Mars, Sol system) and Neon (Volii II, Volii system).
Smuggling
There are two ways to smuggle contraband to avoid being detected in Patrol Areas. One includes leveling Deception, and the other includes upgrading your ship.
Deception
In the Social Skill tree, you can spec into the second tier skill known as Deception. This provides additional protection for your ship when being hit with contraband scans. Specifically, it decreases your risk of being caught by 10% (rank 1) to as much as 50% (rank 4).
Upgrade Ship
While speccing into the Deception skill improves your ship’s ability to avoid detection, you can also upgrade the ship with shielded cargo hold space to store the contraband. Furthermore, you can also purchase a scan jammer (~3,000 credits) to avoid scans by a certain percentage.
Ship upgrades for contraband smuggling can be purchased (~2500 credits) from Lon Anderssen in the Red Mile on Porrima III (Porrima system).
Starfield is an action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and initially released worldwide in 2023 for PC and Xbox Series X|S.