Ship Upgrade

Fully upgraded Apex ship

As the player progresses through Starbound's story, they can unlock optional upgrades to their starter ship. These upgrades provide more space on the ship to place objects like crafting stations, containers and furniture, and let ships hold more crew members.

To repair the ship engines, enabling flight to other systems, players must clear the Erchius Mining Facility mission. After repairing the ship's thrusters and FTL drive, Penguin Pete, the shipyard captain at the outpost, will open quests to upgrade the ship size. He gives these quests at his shop just west of the outpost.

To upgrade your ship you need crew members, each upgrade also increases the max number of crew members. To get crew members you have to do generated quests for NPCs throughout the universe - either in villages or summoned tenants. These quests will earn favor with the quest-giver once completed, and they may ask to join your crew. The NPC type determines what role they can get on the players ship.

Players can also recruit penguins as crew members from the Beakeasy bar beneath the outpost. To recruit penguins the bar must be reopened by defeating the miniboss Dreadwing. Then bar patrons will join your crew in exchange for a dubloon.

Alternatively, illicit ship licenses can be bought for pixels from the Penguin Bay. These licenses will upgrade the ship without needing crew, but players must still provide upgrade modules to Penguin Pete at the shipyard.

Before 1.3, the ship level determined its planetary Tier which did affect Tenants spawned in your ship. For example, merchant tenants could sell tiers 7 or 8 random Weapons (normally tier 6 is the highest possible tier for random weapons). As of 1.3, the ship's planetary Tier is always 1.

The fully upgraded ship sizes from greatest to smallest are: Floran (4013)> Avian (3762)> Novakid (3760)> Human (3752)> Glitch (3735)> Apex (3730)> Hylotl (3450).

Note: As of 1.4.4 the mechanical, grey background shown in the upgrade GIFs below has been covered by a layer of Wall Panels, Ship Supports and Metal Railings. This block pallet stays the same for all race's ships. These blocks can be mined, revealing the original background.

Upgrade requirements

note: getting the required crew members produces an item that may land on the ground if your inventory is full. Just pick it up and it will be used immediately, triggering the upgrade quest.

#	Quest	Quest Requires	Ship Requires
1	Boot Up	--	Interact with SAIL
2	Become Space-worthy	--
3	Erchius Mining Facility	The Erchius Mining Facility	20 Erchius Crystals
4	Sparrow Ship Upgrade	2 Crew Members or Fake Sparrow License	2 Upgrade Modules
5	Kestrel Ship Upgrade	4 Crew Members or Fake Kestrel License	4 Upgrade Modules
6	Falcon Ship Upgrade	6 Crew Members or Fake Falcon License	6 Upgrade Modules
7	Eagle Ship Upgrade	8 Crew Members or Fake Eagle License	8 Upgrade Modules
8	Condor Ship Upgrade	10 Crew Members or Fake Condor License	10 Upgrade Modules