Starfield lets players explore an entire galaxy, which, while sounding like a great selling point, begs the question of just how many planets there will actually be.

Flying through space is a wonderful experience, but there’s nothing quite like landing on a mysterious new planet and exploring it for the first time. Fortunately, Starfield promises to let players do that across an entire galaxy.

Below, we outline just how many planets there are in Starfield, how many will actually have life on them, and look at all the confirmed ones so far.

How Many Planets Are in Starfield?

There are over 1,000 planets in Starfield spread across over 100 different star systems.

Each planet is completely explorable and is entirely randomly generated with its own weather system, animal species, flora species, unique resources, and random events.

This was confirmed by Bethesda at the end of the Starfield: Offical Gameplay Reveal in June 2021.

During the video, Todd Howard told viewers that there would be “over 100 systems, over 1,000 planets, all open for you to explore.”

You can see Todd Howard reveal the number of planets in Starfield in the clip below:

Additionally, Todd Howard explained on the Kinda Funny Xcast how the procedurally generated planets would work.

He explained that they couldn’t handcraft each planet but would instead generate the planet you’re on as you explore it and then place handcrafted content, such as outposts, around you.

So, while there are over 1,000 planets to explore, not all of them will be incredibly detailed or even have life on them.

You can see the full quote and watch the clip for yourself below:

“There’s no way we’re going to go and handcraft an entire planet. What we do is we handcraft individual locations and some of those are placed specifically, obviously the main cities and other quest locations. And then we have a suite of them that are generated or placed when you land depending on that planet.”

How Many Planets Have Life in Starfield?

Only 10% of planets in Starfield will have some form of life on them. That means you will encounter life forms on roughly 100 of the 1,000 planets.

This was confirmed by Todd Howard in the Kinda Funny Xcast, in which he said that, in an attempt to remain scientifically accurate, “about 10% of those planets have life on them.”

However, he goes on to explain that barren planets without life will still have resources to gather and things to do generated on them.

Howard attributes the lack of planets with life on them to a design decision. He states that they wanted to avoid too many “gamey” elements while attempting to make the game as fun as possible.

His full quote, as well as the clip from the podcast, is below:

“It’s a difficult design thing. If you add too many things, if it’s generating too many abandoned bases or towers or things to find, it starts feeling too gamey in some of those locations. So, I think we dialed that in pretty well, depending on the planet you’re on.