Yes, you read that headline right. Among the many, many options for your crew in Starfield is none other than aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart—well, sort of. If you’re tired of hearing the same handful of lines from the Adoring Fan, the process of recruiting her is a fairly simple and straightforward one, even if it is fairly drawn out.
With just some star coordinates and a very, very good gun, you too can count her among your crew… just try not to get starstruck.
Where to find Amelia Earhart in Starfield
As with many of the cooler things in Starfield, the ability to recruit one of the world’s most famous pilots comes as a quest reward. You’ll want to pick up the quest Operation Starseed on Charybdis 3, which can be started via a distress signal the first time you enter the Charybdis system. Upon landing, you’ll quickly discover that the entire planet is some kind of historical reenactment nightmare right out of Night at the Museum, with a whole society of clones of famous historical figures trying to determine who created them and why.
The three leaders of the clones—US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Mongol warlord Genghis Khan, and Amanirenas, Queen of Kush—all have different ideas of why the colony exists and what direction it should move in, and as a Bethesda protagonist and thus the center of the universe it’s on you to choose which to support. FDR wants the clones to remain where they are and seek a peaceful life, Ghenghis wants to break their metaphorical chains and spread across the galaxy as free men and women, and Amanirenas is convinced that the entire thing is some sort of experiment meant to cultivate the next leaders of the Settled Systems.
After meeting FDR and having the premise of the quest explained to you, you’ll be approached by a clone of Amelia Earhart, offering to join your crew if you free her from the twisted experiment. Just like the genuine article, this Amelia carries on the spirit of boundless adventure, wishing for nothing more than to see the galaxy and all its sights at your side.
Luckily, any resolution to the quest, save for outright killing all of the clones, will allow Amelia to join you, as she remains firmly neutral in the conflict. Although it consists of a single delve into the labyrinthine cloning facility to override its protocols and make your choice, it should nonetheless be noted that this is one of the longest dungeons in Starfield, rivaling even the final one, and is intended for high-level players. Going through it at level 25, I encountered more than one enemy that killed me in one shot but pressed on all the same for the bragging rights of flying with Amelia Earhart.
The actual act of making your choice boils down to selecting an entry on a terminal at the end of the dungeon. Ultimately, I chose to hand control over to Genghis Khan, even though that same terminal revealed that Amanirenas was actually correct in her assumption and, indeed, the intended choice of the experiment’s creators… even though I’d killed her earlier in the quest. Oops. Still, all was well that ended well, and some of the clones stayed behind with FDR while the others took to the stars. Either way, once all is said and done, Amelia will no longer be bound by the programming keeping her on Charybdis once you finish the quest and will be more than happy to join the ranks of your ship’s crew.
Unfortunately, Amelia’s skills aren’t the best, meaning that if you have her on your crew it’ll probably be for the novelty factor more than anything else. As one might expect, she’s trained in Piloting, so simply having her on your crew will allow you to squeeze a little more power out of your engines—if nothing else, this makes her a decent crew replacement for Sam Coe should you anger him enough to lose him as your companion or make a certain choice in a late game main story mission. She also has a decent Rifle skill but starts out with a period-appropriate M1911, so you’ll have to hunt down a rifle for her to use yourself if you want her to be able to hold her own in combat.
Still, she makes for a better adventuring partner than Sarah Morgan, but then again literally anyone would.
