Starfield: How to Get SF40 Sheared Flow Reactor

A good reactor is essential to building a great ship in Starfield, and few reactors provide more pure output than the SF40 Sheared Flow. It comes with a whopping 40 energy supply and good health, making it more difficult for enemy ships to disable. Getting your hands on one, however, will take either a lot of grinding or some ace piloting skills, plus a lot of perk investment. We’ll go over how to get the SF40 Sheared Flow reactor using two different methods in this guide.

How to Get the SF40 Sheared Flow Reactor in Starfield

I’ve been able to find ways to get the SF40 Sheared Flow Reactor in Starfield: either by buying it from a ship services vendor or stealing a ship that already has one equipped. The former is technically easier, as it doesn’t involve fighting ships that might be way out of your league, but it will take quite a bit longer.

To purchase and equip an SF40 Sheared Flow reactor, you need to:

• Be at least level 57. If you visit a ship services vendor prior to reaching the level threshold, it won’t even be in their inventory. That means you’ll need to do a lot of questing, combat, exploration, and any other level grind activities before you can equip the SF40.
• Have both Starship Design and Piloting at Rank 4. You need to destroy almost 100 ships to reach Piloting Rank 4, and you need to equip an equivalent number of unique ship parts to reach rank 4 in these two skills, so don’t expect to reach either milestone quickly.
• Buy the SF40 Sheared Flow Reactor at Ship Services for 81,700 credits (by default). As class-C ship part, and one of the best reactors in the entire game, the SF40 is expensive. Of course, if you’re level 57, you probably have plenty of money, or you know some good ways to make it easily.

The other way to get an SF40 reactor is to capture a ship that already has it equipped. You will still need Piloting 4 to actually claim the ship for your own, but you won’t need Starship Design 4. The catch? The only ships that come with the SF40 for free are in the highest-level systems in all of Starfield. I found mine in Archimedes in the lower-right-hand corner of the galaxy.

The ship you want with the SF40 is a Spacer Hyena III, which you can find by wandering between planets the high-level systems until you encounter them. The second catch? They won’t be alone. When I found mine, they had backup from a level 66, a level 58, and a level 46 set of companions. It took me about 45 minutes to clear the fight (yes, I died a lot).

However, when I did win, my ship’s power level instantly went from 50 to 72 instantly, and I managed to get the SF40 Sheared Flow reactor without spending a single credit. I did lose some sanity points, though, but I think that’s a fair price to pay.

Now you know how to get a SF40 Sheared Flow, go out there and one of your very own. Trust me. It’s worth it. And if you need more help with Starfield‘s masses of content, check out our guides on the 20 best mods to install right now, the best places to sell contraband, and more in our Starfield guides hub.