Starfield update fixes its long-bugged answer to Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood quests, so now you can't rob your targets and then get paid extra for killing them

A trackers alliance agent cocks her head to the side as she tries to entice you to join the organisation
(Image credit: Bethesda)

Starfield has just received a new update that removes a lot of bugs, so you can no longer extort your bounties before killing them and turning them in anyways. 

The Trackers Alliance's radiant bounties in Starfield - which are similar to Skyrim's recurring Dark Brotherhood quests - are infamously inconsistent , but there's one exploit that seems fitting if you want to roleplay as an unscrupulous bounty hunter. When tasked with hunting someone down, you're sometimes given the option to take a bribe and let them go. Before, you could take the bribe and then kill them anyway, pocketing the extra credits and still fulfilling your duties. You can't do this anymore, so you'd better get used to playing by the rules.

While this was more of a fun exploit, like grinding your skills in Skyrim during the tutorial dungeon and breaking the game, some more annoying issues have been fixed, too. Roach will now properly keep track of how many bounties you've done, the targets will appear in more places, and they'll have more varied appearances.

All you Xbox Series X users can now uncap your framerate again, and your stealth bar should work better when in crowds of NPCs. There were some console commands that didn't disable your Starfield Steam achievements before, but this has also been fixed. If you want to collect them all, you have to play legitimately.

While the Tracking Alliance bounties seem to have been the focus of this update, many other quests had some tweaks, too. Bethesda detailed more changes made in the 1.14.74 update over on Twitter, so you can check all of the specifics for yourself. It should be noted that this is a beta update, so if you're on Steam you have opt into the beta branch by going into the game's properties from your library.

If you've already had your fill of the vanilla version of the game, you should try out some of the best Starfield mods available right now. 

Issy van der Velde
Contributor

I'm Issy, a freelancer who you'll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I've always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the Univesity of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you'll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I'm currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.