Updated Title Publisher
Updated Title Publisher
Updated Title
Published Title Score Editor's Choice Publisher
Published Title Publisher

Starfield

Where to find a Sniper Rifle in Starfield

By
Craig Robinson

Sniper builds in Starfield are pretty effective at picking off enemy targets, hitting them with headshots for some satisfying combat kills. However, the early game doesn’t do a good job of granting you a sniper rifle. If you’re in the market, then here’s how to get a Sniper Rifle early in Starfield.

How to get a Sniper Rifle early in Starfield

(1 of 2) Fly to Cydonia on Mars, enter the city, follow the pathway down, and turn right to this building when you reach the stairs.

Fly to Cydonia on Mars, enter the city, follow the pathway down, and turn right to this building when you reach the stairs. (left), You can buy this Soviet-era hunting rifle, one of Starfield’s earliest long-range sniper rifles. (right)

From our playtesting, there’s a few areas where you can get a sniper rifle in Starfield early. Players can easily find Snipers along the "Akila City" iconAkila City areas, especially during the main storyline. There’s also a pretty poor quality sniper rifle players can get their hands on in Mars too, which is likely the cheapest and earliest method of grabbing one.

When you finish the tutorial and visit Constellation, players can begin to explore the Milky Way. You’ll note that Sol is near Alpha Centauri and can easily travel there in your ship. Go to Sol, visit Mars, and enter the "Cydonia" iconCydonia city. From there, enter the city from the spaceport, follow the pathway down, and then find the Martian "Trade Authority" iconTrade Authority, which is a larger store on the right-hand side as you enter the marketplace near the residential doors and the elevator. Go into the store, speak to the dude behind the counter, and look for the weapon called "Old Earth Hunting Rifle" iconOld Earth Hunting Rifle. It is a 100-range weapon, that deals 30 damage per round. It’s essentially a Soviet-era weapon. It costs around 5264 credits to buy it, which could be lower if you have the Bartering skill or not. You should have enough money at that point to buy it from the tutorial. If not, do some side mission beforehand.

(1 of 2) For players looking for a decent sniper rifle, visit the Freestar Collective for a good unique scoped rifle.

For players looking for a decent sniper rifle, visit the Freestar Collective for a good unique scoped rifle. (left), As you progress through the campaign, you get to visit Akila City in a few hours of playtime, which comes with some enemies that drop scoped rifles that act as snipers. (right)

The next set of decent sniper rifles in the early game of Starfield comes from Akila City. If you progress through the main story of Constellation, you will naturally head over to Akila City once you’re done with "Sarah Morgan" iconSarah Morgan’s errands. From here, follow "Sam Coe" iconSam Coe’s storyline, and then you will visit a place called the Nest. From here, you can kill a few enemies, and some scoped repeater rifles begin to drop fairly often, granting some more mid-range scoped sniper rifle-type weapons instead.

Moreso, if you visit the gunstore in the Southgate part of Akila City, you can buy a good unique sniper rifle. If you’re entering the city from the Spaceport, turn right when you cross the wooden bridge. From there, follow the road down, until you see the Shooting Range in the distance. There should be a gun store on the right you can enter. Speak to the cashier, and you can buy a "Head Ranger" iconHead Ranger gun. It is a weapon that has range of 48 and fires 50, caliber rounds. It also comes with a perk to increase attack speed, and a lot of modes to make it better at ranged accuracy, a scope, and some better damage mods and other accuracy and attack rate-themed mods. It’s a fairly decent semi-automatic mid-range rifle, that costs 9219, or slightly less if you have trader discounts. It makes it the best early game and unique scoped sniper rifle in Starfield for instance.

Read More:

Best Sniper Skills for Early Game Snipers in Starfield

(1 of 2) If you need a high-damage and reliable side arm, grab yourself the Prime, which is one of the strongest, yet unique and guaranteed revolvers in Starfield in Akila City.

If you need a high-damage and reliable side arm, grab yourself the Prime, which is one of the strongest, yet unique and guaranteed revolvers in Starfield in Akila City. (left), The Elegance is a solid pistol for damaging armored opponents or use while stealthed. It’s arguably one of the best unique weapons in the early game of Starfield. (right)

Remember that snipers in this game don’t have their own classification. Players can often find the sniper role gets buffs from combat skills that are often related to the keywords “Scoped” and “Non-Automatic Rifles.” Both of these suggested weapons to buy are indeed Scoped and non-automatic weapons, so, if you want to level up the combat skills like

Skills Bonuses
"Marksmanship" iconMarksmanship Crit chance to non-auto rifle weapons
"Rifle Certification" iconRifle Certification Rifle damage increase
"Sniper Certification" iconSniper Certification Better breath, sway and scoped weapon damage improvements.
"Sharpshooting" iconSharpshooting Crit damage and crit improvement chance.

As you can see, all of these better improve the early-game sniper builds, so don’t worry about grabbing better weapons from random weapon drops, as these snipers with these skills can make them scale from the early game to the late game fairly easily.

Also, some of the scoped pistols you can get from the other gun stores in Akila City will also count with the sniper buffs, thanks to their scoped tendencies too. The examples include "Elegance" iconElegance, and "The Prime" iconThe Prime, which is something else to think about when grabbing your early-game sniper rifle in Starfield.

Read More:

No Comments
No Upvotes
User profile pic

Comment submission error:

The comment must be at least 1 character in length.

Guide Information
  • Publisher
    Bethesda Softworks
  • Platforms,
    PC, XB X|S
  • Genre
    Action Adventure, Action RPG, Shooter
  • Guide Release
    30 August 2023
  • Last Updated
    18 October 2023
    Version History
  • Guide Author

Share this free guide:

Starfield is an action role-playing game from Bethesda Game Studios set in a futuristic interpretation of space exploration and colonization. Earth has long been abandoned, but there are plenty of other planets in different star systems where humans have ventured and settled. You have the freedom to create your own character with a unique background, but the main story will take you through a series of adventures as you uncover more information about mysterious artifacts which create gravitational anomalies. Along the way, you can build and customize your own space ship, establish your own outpost, befriend and romance new companions, and more. As a Bethesda game, you can also expect to see a lot of creative mods which have the potential to change your experience of the base game, or take it in an entirely new direction.

This guide features the following:

Get a Gamer Guides Premium account:

Quick sign up

Already have an account?

Quick log in

Don’t have an account?