For beginners, the Oxygen mechanic can be misleading. In reality, it's analogous to the stamina bar – the amount of time your character can sprint continuously.

The bar appears right after character creation and increases as you progress in the game. The more oxygen you have, the longer you can sprint, which is very convenient for fast travel, exploring the world, and combat.

In this guide, we will explain how to increase your oxygen supply in Starfield and make your character more enduring.

What Happens If You Run Out Of Oxygen

In reality, you can continue to expend oxygen even after it's depleted. Only then does the bar start filling with another color – red, which represents carbon dioxide (CO2).

Once the bar turns completely red, the character will start taking damage periodically and may die. Try to avoid this by taking breaks between sprints, not filling the red bar completely.

How to Increase Your Oxygen Supply

Three physical skills affect your character's stamina and strength:

• Gymnastics;

• Nutrition – restore stamina through food;

• Fitness – increases overall stamina.

Oxygen is directly affected by the Fitness skill, while the others reinforce the result and increase your character's overall stamina.

Other options for increasing your oxygen supply include:

• Modifying your spacesuit;
• Using food and medications with stamina-boosting effects;
• Unlocking new abilities;
• Using the Boost Pack – a jetpack that replenishes oxygen while in flight.

Spacesuit Modification

You can find a Workbench in every city's shops. Upgrading your spacesuit is relatively simple:

• Open the Workbench;
• Select the piece of equipment you want to improve – it doesn't have to be just the spacesuit;
• Select the upgrade slot;
• Choose the desired upgrade related to oxygen from the available options. The necessary materials for crafting will be displayed on the right.

Using the Workbench also levels up your Engineering skill.

Food

Food provides a temporary effect and briefly increases your current oxygen supply. This can be useful during combat, chases, or when you want to clear a location quickly. Use caffeinated and juice-based drinks:

• Orange Juice: +8 to oxygen supply for 5 minutes;
• Boom Pop: +10% oxygen regeneration for 3 minutes;
• Can-Uck Double Double: +18% oxygen regeneration for 3 minutes, and so on.

Alcohol, on the other hand, reduces oxygen reserves. You can purchase these items at any store in every city.

Medications that restore oxygen:

• Boosted Injector: +20% oxygen regeneration for 5 minutes;
• Boudicca: +30 to oxygen supply for 3 minutes;
• Penicillin X: +20 to oxygen supply for 2 minutes;
• Snake Oil: +20% oxygen regeneration for 2 minutes.

Special Abilities

After completing the mission "Into the Unknown" in the Cheyenne System, you'll gain access to one of 24 unique abilities – "Personal Atmosphere." With this ability, you'll have infinite stamina, and carbon dioxide won't accumulate.