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The Story: Questline Walkthrough

Starbroken has a single main story arc that runs from your first mining haul all the way to a certified Dreadnought blueprint. It's a chain of STORY quests (non-abandonable, auto-unlocking one after the next) that doubles as the game's tutorial: each step teaches a system (mining, shields, fabrication, warp, planets, salvage, capital builds) and hands you the credits and gear to keep going.

This page is a roadmap, not a spoiler dump: a one-line summary of each step and who gives it, so you always know where you are and what's next. For how the quest system works (journal, tracking, reward kinds, objective types), see Quests and lore. For where the storyteller NPCs stand, see NPCs & Shops.

How the arc flows

STORY quests auto-unlock: finish one and the next is logged in your journal automatically. You can't abandon them. Each step grants a hidden story flag that gates the following step, so the chain only ever runs forward. The arc moves you geographically too: it starts at Hub Prime (Vega Reach, the home station), pushes you out through a stargate to Outpost Alpha in Solyn Cradle, then teaches your warp drive so you can reach drive-only space the gate network never touches.

A handful of named NPCs carry the whole story. You'll talk to them again and again:

NPC	Where	Role in the story
The Quartermaster	Hub Prime (Vega Reach)	Your first contact; runs the opening tutorial steps and the capital-build briefings
Stargate Watch Officer	Hub Prime	Gatekeeper of the gate network and the capital registry
The Outpost Quartermaster	Outpost Alpha (Solyn Cradle)	Frontier handler; refine + fabricate steps
The Salvager	Outpost Alpha	Independent salvager with her own three-job side arc and a mystery
Marcus Halloran	Hub Prime	Cradle Library historian; wormholes and the deeper lore

The main arc, in order

Roughly twenty story steps, grouped into four acts. Rewards listed are the headline credits/items; most steps also grant a story flag.

Act I: Learn the ropes (Vega Reach)

#	Quest	Giver	What you do	Reward
1	First Haul	The Quartermaster	Buy your starter Frigate, mine copper, sell it for your first credits	25,000 cr
2	Field Rations	(auto)	Buy a few Survival Rations from The Food Vendor so you're never running on empty	2,000 cr
3	Pull From the Fold	(auto)	Place the Fold Wave Harvester from your starter kit on your ship — it condenses your own Drive Cells, free	3,000 cr + 25 Drive Cells
4	Teeth and Skin	The Quartermaster	Buy + fit a Shield Generator: skin before teeth	12,000 cr
5	Fit Out	The Quartermaster / Vendor	Upgrade to a Mark II Engine	20,000 cr
6	Required Reading	The Librarian	Buy + read the Field Guide to Fold-Tech	12,000 cr

Act II: Leave the nest (Solyn Cradle + first warp)

#	Quest	Giver	What you do	Reward
7	Through the Ring	Stargate Watch Officer	Fly the Vega–Solyn stargate, dock at Outpost Alpha	14,000 cr
8	Refine the Haul	Outpost Quartermaster	Fit a Refinery, refine copper, deposit it	12,000 cr
9	The Forge	Outpost Quartermaster	Fit a Manufacturing module, fabricate + mount a Cannon Mk II	14,000 cr
10	The Unbound Road	(auto)	Fit a Warp Drive Mk I, jump to the Palewake drift (no gate reaches it)	10,000 cr
11	Groundfall	(auto)	Buy a pickaxe, land on planet Rustfall, mine iron, lift off before the sky falls	12,000 cr
12	The Long Way Home	The Quartermaster	Take a gate or your drive home to Hub Prime and report in	10,000 cr

Act III: Into the Frontier

#	Quest	Giver	What you do	Reward
13	First Blood	The Quartermaster	Stock a Repair Kit + Shield Battery, hunt down a lone raider, report the kill	18,000 cr
14	Hard Lanes	(auto)	Fit a Mk II Shield and upgrade to a Cannon Mk II, ride the gate chain to the Frontier ring, kill three pirates, haul titanium	30,000 cr + Cannon Mk III
15	Pale Light	Marcus Halloran	Talk to Halloran about the wormhole openings, then bring back ten wormhole shards	45,000 cr + 2 Shield Batteries

Act IV: Capital ships (the endgame)

This is where the gated capital blueprints come from; there's no other way to build a Battlecruiser or a Dreadnought.

#	Quest	Giver	What you do	Reward
16	Bigger Bones	(auto)	Earn 120,000 cr and buy a Cruiser (keep the Frigate for planets)	25,000 cr
17	Company Ink	The Quartermaster	Found or join a faction, fit a Fabricator Mk III, deposit refined titanium for the registry audit	20,000 cr
18	Keel and Cradle	(auto)	Post the capital assay: 3 void fragments, 30 refined platinum, 6 power capacitors	10,000 cr + Battlecruiser Guardian BPC
19	The Guardian	(auto)	Bring a Guardian-class Battlecruiser into service: fabricate the kit from your blueprint, then buy/redeem it at a Shipyard	40,000 cr + T4 Manufacturing BPC
20	Colossus Protocol	Stargate Watch Officer	Post the deep-drift bond (80 tritanium crystals + 200 refined iridium) and hear the Watch Officer out	Colossal Dreadnought BPC

Finishing Colossus Protocol completes the main arc and unlocks the endgame capital builds. The Battlecruiser Guardian BPC and the T4 Manufacturing BPC are quest-only: you can't drop or buy them. The Colossal Dreadnought BPC also comes from this chain, but it isn't quest-exclusive: a Null Reaver can drop it at a 1% chance. Either way, this chain is the reliable path to a capital ship.

The Salvager's side arc

Off to the side, The Salvager at Outpost Alpha runs her own three-job chain. It's a SIDE track (abandonable, optional), but it threads the arc's central mystery: she's comparing salvaged hull plates against old Reach manifests and doesn't like what she's finding. It opens up once you've reached Outpost Alpha (after Through the Ring):

First Job: deposit 40 copper as reverse-engineering feedstock (8,000 cr)
Salvage Run: strip five structural hull plates for her inspection (15,000 cr)
Long Jump: the far one: deep Wild Drift in the Korrhast sector for ten iridium, and a recording you bring back (60,000 cr + an encrypted recording)

That last job is the breadcrumb the rest of the mystery hangs on. Leave it there; the wiki won't spoil where it points.

A couple of other side quests stand alone too, like Cold Harvest (land on the frozen planet Palewake and pull titanium from its crevasses), which opens after your first warp.

Daily, weekly, and side quests

Beyond the story, the Mission Officer board at IPU stations carries repeatable contracts. They unlock as you hit the matching story flags (e.g. pirate culls open after First Blood, planet jobs after Groundfall, capital contracts after certification):

4 DAILY quests (reset every 24h, up to 5 active): an ore quota, a pirate cull, a planetary core sample, and a titanium run, at 1,500–3,000 cr each.
4 WEEKLY quests (reset every 7 days, up to 3 active): a trade run, a frontier platinum haul, a wormhole-shard survey, plus a standing Keel Contract: a capital-requisition that re-issues a Guardian blueprint once per week per pilot to certified builders. (There's no weekly Dreadnought contract.)
Side quests: the three-job Salvager arc above, plus standalone jobs like Cold Harvest. Abandonable, one-shot, optional.

The repeatable board contracts are where you go for steady credits and, via the weekly Keel Contract, for re-issuing the Guardian blueprint after you've earned it once through the story.