How to swim in Starfield

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A barren planet in Starfield.
November 7, 2023 - Learn whether you can swim in Starfield.

Traversing the cosmos is no walk in the park, and as such there will be times when you want to swim in Starfield. But given that Bethesda's newest RPG prides itself on the variety of planets and biomes on offer, it wouldn't come as a surprise to see a planet full of water for you to trawl through.

So in this guide, we'll break down everything we know about how to swim in Starfield. Swimming has never been a major component in Bethesda's previous mainline RPGs, but with Starfield looking to push the genre to its limits like never before, that could well change.

We've got loads of Starfield content for you to sink your teeth into! We've got a look at how to crouch in the game, or you can browse all of our Starfield topics in our dedicated hub.

How do I swim in Starfield?

As it stands, the only way to swim in Starfield is to directly walk into bodies of water. Jumping into water that's adequately deep will see your character dipped torso-deep, slightly changing the viewpoint of your first-person camera.

From there, you just need to move forwards and backwards as you would regularly, using the analogue stick or WASD keys depending on your platform. Jumping up and down in the water will cause ripples in the water physics, but it doesn't seem like that causes you to dive underneath the surface, either.

So as it stands, swimming doesn't seem to play a major role in Starfield. You can walk around in water, but it doesn't appear to be more fleshed-out than that. It could change in the full release - there could easily be a planet made entirely of water, after all - but we can't know for sure just yet.

Can you drown in Starfield?

Given the swimming mechanic in Starfield appears to be fairly, ahem, shallow, we don't anticipate the ability for your character to drown. We haven't been able to submerge our character's head underwater yet, which pretty much rules out any chance of drowning.

But if this changes and you actually can drown in Starfield, we'll be sure to update this guide.

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However, until then, be sure to check out some of our other Starfield guides, including how to aim down sights and what the Starfield max level is.

For more articles like this, take a look at our Guides and Starfield page.