In , the known galaxy is yours to explore, meaning tens of thousands of light-years separate one edge of the Settled Systems from another. You won't be making Skyrim-esque excursions from one side of this RPG's setting to the other, to put it mildly. You'll need a ship - conveniently gifted to you at the beginning of the game - and the ability to make grav jumps, AKA Starfield's take on the warp drive.
In this guide, we'll show you how to make those galactic jumps with ease, so you can head out from New Atlantis at your leisure and see what's out there.
Initiating Grav Drive
There are a handful of ways to go about navigating space in Starfield, and grav-jumping's no exception. The first, and most hands-on, is by pressing the corresponding button while locked on to a mission target in space.
Mid-Flight
For instance, if you're in the Sol System, and the objective for the mission you've currently set as active is over in Alpha Centauri, there should be a targetable marker while you're flying around that leads straight to Alpha Centauri, specifically because it's where your mission objective is situated.
In this situation, on Xbox Series consoles you'll hold the 'X' face button for a couple of seconds while locked on, whereas on PC, you'll press whichever button you've got hotkeyed for this.
If nothing is happening, check whether you have any power distributed to the grav drive! Your drive, much like shields, missile capability, engines, and more, has its own corresponding socket. The more you allocate to the grav drive, the swifter the jump, which can get you out of sticky situations; but if nothing is allocated, your ship will simply go nowhere until you distribute at least a bar's worth.
Via Star Map
Whether you're flying around in space, or you're down on a planet, moon, or ship, you'll be able to make grav jumps via your star map so long as you can currently fast travel. (Note that this won't be available at the start of Starfield, when you're on New Atlantis for the first time.)
Open up your menu, pick the star map tab, and there are several ways to make this work, depending on how precise you wish to be. If you want to venture to an overall star system, and/or if you've not been to that system previously, you'll need to go to galaxy view (the most zoomed-out overlook of the Settled Systems) and hover over the star system of your choosing.
If it's within range, and you've explored all systems en route already, you should be able to press 'X' (or the corresponding keyboard button), and thus start your grav-jumping course.
If you've already been to a system, and you wish to arrive at a specific part of it - say, in orbit around Jemison in Alpha Centauri - zoom in on the star map via Alpha Centauri or the desired location, hover over Jemison (or wherever), and confirm the direct route. So long as there aren't any plot-related or 'dungeon'-related obstacles in your way, Starfield will totally let you skip the fluff, warping you straight out of one place and back to the other.