How to Complete Top of the LIST (L.I.S.T.) in Starfield

There’s no shortage of people who’d give up the comfortable, easy life of cities for a chance to strike out on their own on some foreign planet. So, here’s how to complete Top of the L.I.S.T. in Starfield.

How to Complete Top of the L.I.S.T. in Starfield

If you walked into the Broken Spear in Cydonia, there’s a good chance you encountered Phil Hill, a weedy-looking man sitting behind a pile of books in the middle of the bar. He’s part of L.I.S.T., an organization that seeks out habitable planets and matches brave people to those planets, where they’ll establish independent settlements. Phil Hill is how you’ll get the Top of the L.I.S.T. quest.

So, here’s how to help him out.

Sign Up a Settler for the List

Let’s tackle this step first since it’s the easiest. There’s actually someone in the bar with Phil Hill who’s interested in being part of L.I.S.T. She’s in the back of the bar, sitting at a table.

Speak to her, and you’ll have to persuade her to join the League of Independent Settlers. You’ll need to score six persuasion points to succeed, but this is actually extremely easy. You just need to have a pamphlet from Phil Hill on your person.

Once you sign her up, you’ll get 2,400 Credits.

How to Find a Habitable Planet in Starfield

Now, let’s find a planet to put her on. Habitable means temperate, essentially. You can find out a planet’s temperature by scanning or selecting it on the star map. I find that planets that have a vaguely green sheen on the star map are most often habitable ones. They’ll look similar to Jemison.

But I actually went through the entire universe to find every single habitable planet. No, I’m not joking. Here’s what a planet needs to be habitable in Starfield:

• Temperature – Temperate, Cold, or Hot.
• Type – Rock
• Atmosphere – High O2, STD O2

An easy one to survey is Arcturus II in the Arcturus System. There are already colonies on this planet, but that doesn’t matter.

How to Find a Habitable Planet in Starfield

Once you’ve found your habitable planet, you’ll need to fully survey it. This is a tedious process that requires you finding all the resources, all the fauna, and all the flora using your scanner.

To do this effectively, gather all the resources in your local area. Hit the points of interest you see nearby. Always hit the natural land markers, as these are essential for getting to 100%. If you’re missing a resource, make sure to check out any caves you see, as there’s a chance it’s hiding in there.

Once you’ve hit 100% on all the nearby fauna and flora near you, open up your star map and examine the planet again. Press the scan button to show its resources. Select a new area, ideally in a different biome.

This will reveal how much of that biome on the planet you’ve completed. If the percentage is low, find all the nearby flora and fauna. You may have to keep exploring different areas with the same biome label until you find all the flora and fauna you need.

Once your survey data is at 100%, return to Phil Hill on Cydonia.

Sell the Survey Data to Phil Hill

Now that you have the survey data return to Phil Hill in the Broken Spear in Cydonia.

Speak to him, and you’ll be brought into a vendor menu. You can then opt to sell your survey data. The one for Arcturus II got me 3,450 Credits.

To be honest, I’m not sure if it was worth the time I spent getting that data. But this is a good way to get some credits if you know you’re already going to be spending time on a planet gathering resources.

A far more interesting quest on Cydonia is Runaway, which has you helping a woman with lung rot avoid her stalker father.