Latest Starfield Update Bug Makes An Underused Tactic Totally Overpowered

Summary A bug in the Starfield 1.11.36 update makes stealth damage massively high when hydrated.

Dehydration reportedly causes sneak attack damage to drop to zero in Starfield, making attacks less effective.

Bethesda had these stealth issues in the beta version of Starfield, but they were pushed to the main version of the game.

The Starfield 1.11.36 update has a bug that has made one underused tactic completely overpowered. The new update launched May 15 and brought with it a wealth of new features that had been requested by the community, such as city map markers and the option to further customize a ship's interior, rather than just its exterior to make for a more unique vessel.

As shared on the Nexus Mods description for youngneil1's Sneak Damage Hotfix mod, the 1.11.36 caused much higher stealth damage multipliers when the player's character was hydrated. Instead of it being a 15% increase to stealth damage when hydrated, the mod states that the damage was actually closer to 15 times higher, leading to 30x or more stealth damage multipliers.

Related Starfield Update Introduces Easy Solution For All Your Item Storage Needs The most recent update for Starfield allows adventurers to expand the storage capacity of their ship in a way that shouldn't break the bank.

There May Also A Stealth Damage Debuff Issue

Sneak Attack Damage Drastically Shifts The Other Way When Dehydrated

In the comments on youngneil1's mod page, it became evident that the official Starfield update had more issues regarding its stealth than making it overpowered after a drink - which in the grand scheme of things sounds like it could be pretty chaotic in a fun way - as letting a character get dehydrated has the complete opposite effect, which sounds far less enjoyable. As reported by Morte78, if a character is dehydrated, their sneak attack damage goes to zero and players' attacks don't count as sneak attacks for skill leveling.

youngneil1 did point out that they weren't aware of this bug so far, but when they tested they saw that they could do sneak attack damage while being dehydrated, which increased their stealth/sneak skill count, but noted that the sneak damage reduction when dehydrated was showing at 25% instead of 15%. They did note that it was unlikely that this dehydration issue was fixed as a result of their mod and noted that it's more likely that the bug only appears under certain circumstances, leaving another mystery to be solved either by modders or Bethesda.

Bizarrely, the stealth issues were present on the beta version of Starfield, and had been pointed out by many content creators on the first day of the beta update's release, meaning that Bethesda had weeks to look into the issue before pushing it out to the main version of the game. Hopefully, Bethesda will look into fixing both the dehydration and the hydration modifiers for stealth soon, but until then, at least youngneil1's mod, which is also being incorporated into the popular Starfield Community Patch, seems to have been well-received for sorting one of these issues.

Sources: Sneak Damage Hotfix/Nexus Mods, Starfield Community Patch/Nexus Mods