How to Follow Distortions on the Scanner in Starfield

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The quest Into The Unknown is likely your first time dealing with distortions in Starfield, and it’s an important mission because it unlocks distortions on other planets. Essentially, once you beat this mission, you are free to do any other mission without worrying about missing out.

If you’re looking for more Starfield guides, be sure to check out where to store resources, how to assign weapon group, and how to build a base. By completing a scanner distortion mission, you will gain a unique power, so let’s show you how to unlock one of the biggest parts of Starfield.

If you’ve already gotten the quest from the lodge or the eye spaceships, we can help you out.

Starfield – How to find distortions on the Scanner

Before you start running in any direction at Procyon III, you’re going to first have to see what distortions look like. Follow the instructions below to find the distortion:

1. Stand still for a moment
2. Turn on your scanner
   • LB button on controller
   • F button on keyboard for PC
3. Turn the camera around very slowly, left or right.
   • Keep it slow so you can easily find the eerie frequency or scanner anomaly
4. Look at the outer ring of your scanner until you see it start to distort or glitch.
   • To know that this is the direction, hold it still. If it keeps distorting or glitching, then that’s where you need to go. Otherwise, keep moving it near the direction you first saw the distortion or glitch until you find it.

This will be the way you find distortions on any planet. They are easy to miss if you aren’t looking for them, but you’ll start to notice distortions become far more frequent as you get closer to whatever is causing them.

It’s easy to not notice the distortions because the open world is huge, this is one of many random locations, and this feels like an unknown mission if you’re not paying close attention.

How to follow the distortions on Procyon III in Starfield – Into the Unknown

Now that you know how to find the distortions, you can follow them. Anytime you notice the distortion disappear, try the above method again. You should be able to find the right direction quickly as you need to take a straight shot.

Do not worry about any combat from any spacers or pirates. The most you may fight is animals and you can always just avoid them. No need to keep your crosshair out or look around in anticipation, just focus on the scanner.

You are looking for Temple Eta, which looks exactly like an abandoned temple. It’s hard to miss so if you don’t think you’ve found it, you haven’t. As you get closer to Temple Eta, you will be given your next objective, which is “Investigate the Source of the Anomaly”.

From there just go into the ancient structure and capture enough balls of light to turn on the light prisms.

You’ll have successfully followed the distortion and will now know what to do next time. Keep in mind that if you’re not using a PC or Xbox Series X, you’ll likely deal with crashes so save often. We had the game crash three times when we reached the temple room, and had to show off the low-gravity field.

We received the anti-gravity field power, which you will likely get from this mission. This will unlock other scanner distortion missions as your comrades in Constellation point you to the direction of the glitch on each world.

How to fix the Into the Unknown scanner bug in Starfield

There are two bugs that can affect the Into the Unknown quest in Starfield:

• Into the Unknown quest not appearing in log
• Scanner not working

The first bug can be fixed by using console commands to skip the quest. This is done by hitting the Tilde ~ Key. With the console command menu up, type in “setstage 000160A9 600” to skip the quest.

The second bug causes the scanner not to work when trying to find the distortions. There are two fixes that can help with this bug. Try exiting out of your scanner, bringing up your weapons, and then bringing your hand scanner back up. If this does not work, simply go back to orbit in the galaxy and then reload the anomaly landing zone.

Thankfully Starfield is one of the Bethesda Game Studios titles with fewer bugs so you may not encounter this issue.