Starfield No Sudden Moves – Walkthrough and Petrov Choices

No Sudden Moves Overview

Questline: Constellation, main mission 10
Starts after: Short Sighted, automatically when Vladimir speaks to you aboard the Eye
Location: the Scow, in orbit of Procyon V-B in the Procyon A system
Companion: locked for this mission to the Constellation member you have the weakest relationship with
Objectives: travel to the Scow, get aboard, find Captain Petrov, take the Artifact, then return it to the Lodge
Rewards: XP, credits and Artifact Phi
Unlocks next: High Price to Pay

Save before you talk to Petrov. This mission lets you kill him permanently.

1 – Talk to Vladimir

Mission Text:
“Vladimir Sall needs my help with something. I’ll have to speak to him to find out what.”

Talk to Vladimir aboard the Eye in Alpha Centauri. He has one more Artifact tracked down, and it belongs to a collector who will not part with it.

Before you leave, note who Constellation pairs you with. The game locks you to the crew member you have spent the least time with, and that pairing matters later during High Price to Pay. For this run it was Barrett.

2 – Travel to the Scow

Mission Text:
“I need to retrieve an Artifact from Captain Petrov, who owns a salvage ship called the Scow. Vladimir suggested I might have to steal the Artifact.”

The Scow sits in orbit of Procyon V-B in the Procyon A system, northwest of Alpha Centauri on the starmap. You can set course from the mission log or fly there manually.

3 – Board the Scow

Mission Text:
“I’m in orbit near the Scow. I can either try to talk my way on board, or open fire, disable the engines, and board by force.”

Two optional objectives appear once you are in orbit. Pick one.

Talk your Way in (Peaceful)

Hail the Scow and pose as a buyer. The speech challenge asks you to fill four persuasion meters inside three turns. If Barrett or Sam Coe is your companion, they each get their own dialogue line that talks you aboard without a check. Failing the challenge turns the Scow hostile.

Disable the Engines (Aggressive)

Open fire and knock out the engines instead of destroying the ship. The Targeting Control Systems skill makes this trivial because it lets you lock onto individual ship systems. Boarding this way means the guards inside are already hostile when you dock.

The peaceful route is the cleaner one. It does not change what you walk out with, but it saves you a fight on the way in.

4 – Find Captain Petrov

Mission Text:
“I’ve made it aboard the Scow. Time to find Captain Petrov.”

Use the switch on the wall to open the door and leave the dock.

Head up and you run into a guard named Tao Xun. How he greets you depends on how you boarded. If you talked your way in he just waves you through. If you came in shooting he is hostile, and a speech check makes the guards stand down.

Walk past him and take the stairs up. Leave the locked doors alone unless you want the attention. Petrov is at the top, sitting in a room packed with his collection.

5 – Follow Petrov and Steal the Artifact

Mission Text:
“I’ve talked Petrov into letting me see the vault. I should follow him.”

Talking to Petrov opens several routes into the vault. Take whichever suits your build.

Persuade him: the check is harder than the docking one. Succeed and he walks you down to the vault himself. If Barrett is with you, let him do the talking.
Ask to look around: this adds three optional objectives, Fight Petrov, Pick the Vault Door Lock and Pickpocket the Key to the Vault. You can still switch to another route afterwards.
Pickpocket the key: works if your Theft skill is up to it, and gets you into the vault without a word.
Pick the lock: the vault door can be opened with Security if you would rather not touch him.
Attack him: Petrov surrenders after very little damage and hands over the key.

There is no way to buy the Artifact. Asking him to sell it gets a flat no with no follow-up, so every route ends in a theft.

Follow him down and take Artifact Phi off its display. The moment you pick it up, Petrov and everyone aboard turns hostile.

Should You Kill or Spare Petrov

Once you have the Artifact, Petrov draws on you. Drop his health to zero and he goes to his knees instead of dying, and the conversation reopens.

Spare him: pick the line that tells him to call his crew off. The whole ship stands down, you walk out unharmed, and you can help yourself to anything aboard on the way. Sarah Morgan approves of sparing him.
Kill him: you get his outfit and whatever he was carrying, and you fight your way back through the crew, Tao Xun included.

Sparing him is the better outcome in almost every case. You get the same Artifact, more freedom to loot, no fight on the way out, and better companion reactions.

The one thing neither choice avoids is the bounty. See the section below.

Loot the Scow

Once Petrov surrenders, the crew treats you as a pirate but will not stop you. They insult you as you walk past and that is it. This is the only chance you get on this ship, so take it before you leave.

Note that you cannot keep the Scow. It is not a ship you can steal, board and pilot, or capture, so do not waste time trying to disable and claim it.

6 – Leave the Scow

Mission Text:
“I have the Artifact. Time to leave the Scow.”

Head back out the way you came in and dock with your own ship.

If you accepted Petrov’s surrender, nobody stops you. If you killed him, you fight your way back to the airlock. If you disabled the Scow’s engines on the way in and never took the surrender, you may need to finish the ship off or escape before you can grav jump.

Clear the UC Bounty First

Every route out of this mission leaves you with a 500 credit United Colonies bounty for piracy. Peaceful or not, spared or killed, you are wanted.

That matters because of what happens next. If you grav jump into a UC system with the bounty active, you get scanned, recognised and told to surrender. If you have not started the SysDef and Crimson Fleet questline yet, that ends with you arrested aboard the UC Vigilance, and you have to deal with that before you can carry on.

Two ways around it:
1 – Fast travel straight to the Lodge from the mission log and skip the scan entirely.
2 – Stop at a bounty clearance kiosk, Akila City has one, and pay the 500 credits off before you go anywhere near UC space.

7 – Add the Artifact to the Collection

Mission Text:
“I should return to the Lodge and add the Artifact to the collection.”

Fly back to the Lodge and interact with the Artifact collection to slot Artifact Phi in.

This immediately starts High Price to Pay, and that mission opens with an attack. If you have faction or side quests you want to clear first, do them before you touch the collection.

No Sudden Moves Not Starting or Bugged

A few things that go wrong on this one:

The mission does not appear:
it triggers automatically when Vladimir speaks to you aboard the Eye after Short Sighted. If he has nothing to say, finish Short Sighted first and wait for him to approach you.

You cannot board the Scow:
failing the docking persuasion makes it hostile. Undock, disable the engines and board by force instead.

The door will not open:
the dock exit uses a wall switch rather than the door panel itself.

You cannot leave the Scow:
check whether you accepted Petrov’s surrender. If you did not, the ship stays hostile in space and you have to disable or destroy it before jumping.