This guide explains what to do if you have Crimson Fleet bounty when travelling to The Key for the Rook Meets King mission in Starfield.
Starfield takes you across the galaxy to all sorts of weird and wonderful places. Along the way, you’ll meet various factions – some good, some bad – who you can fight or align yourself with.
Of course, it’s up to you who you decide to side with. But if you’re just getting started in the game, it can be somewhat overwhelming.
The Rook Meets King mission involves travelling to The Key to meet with the Crimson Fleet. The Crimson Fleet are a large band of pirates that leave bloodshed in their wake across the galaxy.
At this point in the game, I arrived at The Key in the Kryx system and discovered that I had a large Crimson Fleet bounty on my head. Frustratingly, this prevented me from progressing the Rook Meets King quest before resolving the debt.
In my case, I had a massive bounty of 60,000 credits. Players online are reporting similarly large debts – one player on Reddit said their debt amounted to an astronomical 1,200,000 credits.
So, let’s take a look at what options you have for the Crimson Fleet bounty at The Key for the Rook Meets King mission in Starfield.
Crimson Fleet bounty at The Key in Starfield – Rook Meets King
I worked out that this is how to solve Crimson Fleet bounty at The Key in Starfield for the Rook Meets King quest: If a debt is preventing you from progressing, you have two options. You can either pay off the bounty (as I did) or kill all the non-essential Crimson Fleet NPCs at The Key.
Paying the debt is the simplest solution. If you have the spare cash, consider paying it to save yourself the headache of fighting the Crimson Fleet. The fight can be difficult at lower levels.
If you don’t have the money, don’t worry! There’s a great glitch that you can exploit to get yourself the cash you need to pay off the bounty. Check out this guide from YouTuber Goody.
If you don’t want to pay, the alternative is to kill all the non-essential Crimson Fleet NPCs at The Key. Make sure you load up with ammo, grenades and med packs before you confront them.
After defeating all the non-essential NPCs, head to The Key’s medical bay, find a seat, and wait for 72 hours. At this point, all essential NPCs should have forgotten that you slaughtered their comrades. You can then progress with the Rook Meets King questline.
Bear in mind that killing the Crimson Fleet at The Key will only add to your overall bounty, so it could carry negative consequences in the long-term.
Did you find this Starfield guide useful? Let us know in the comment section below and don’t forget to check out our other gaming articles…
