Starfield Terror Brew: What To Do With the Fermented Coffee Beans

Terror Brew is a fetch side mission you can play while exploring New Atlantis in Starfield, but similar to Olive Branch, it involves a choice that can lead to losing a good amount of Credits unless you are careful with all the details provided by the devs at Bethesda Game Studios.

Starfield Terror Brew also requires your presence on another planet where you must deal with a predator or a Hunting Ikuradon to obtain some Fermented Coffee Beans.

What you do with them after that determines the rewards you’ll receive at the end of the mission.

Since the NPC looking for the Fermented Coffee Beans has some secrets he doesn’t share with you initially, throughout the following Starfield Terror Brew walkthrough, I’ll tell you the best choice you can make while playing this mission so you don’t miss anything.

But first, let’s see where to find the sketchy coffee lover or Markieff Sutherland.

How to Start the Starfield Terror Brew Mission

Markieff Sutherland, or the NPC from which you can pick the Terror Brew mission, is found in the Residential District area of New Atlantis.

Specifically, you’ll find him sitting at a table in Dawn’s Roost restaurant, part of the Pioneer Tower building.

If you have already played the missing A Break At Dawn, then you are familiar with Dawn’s Roost. Simply head inside and look for Markieff Sutherland sitting at a table.

When talking to Markieff Sutherland for the first time, he’ll introduce himself as a classy character who loves good food and coffee.

While the food is not important here, the coffee served at Dawn’s Roost is simply terrible, as Markieff outlines.

Feel free to ask him why and if he tried the Terrabrew Coffee. He’ll tell you that he is a coffee expert and that you insult him by asking about Terrabrew. But Markieff Sutherland is more than that, as you will see.

Now, to start the mission, pick the “Wher” would you find better coffee?” line, and Markieff tells you that in Akila City.

According to his friend, the coffee was made from beans fermented in the digestive tract of an alien beast.

As a side note, this is an Easter Egg for the Kopi Luwak coffee or the world’s exclusive and most expensive coffee, except that instead of the Civet Cats, in Starfield, the coffee beans are ingested by the Hunting Ikuradons.

Feel free to ask Markieff Sutherland additional questions about the coffee, and as you can guess, he’ll ask you to hunt down a predator and retrieve the beans for him because the man he hired was killed.

So, your next objective is to find the Fermented Coffee Beans and the predator.

Starfield Terror Brew Predator Location

The predator you must hunt down is found on Planet Hyla II in the Hyla Star System. From your current location, head back to your ship using the fast-travel option, then after you take off, access the star map.

While tracking the current quest, use the objective marker to find Hyla II. If needed, perform multiple Grav Jumps to get close to the planet. Next, open the map again and choose the Deserted Relay Station as your landing spot.

Once you land, before exiting the ship, make sure you are well-equipped because the predator you are looking for is waiting for you outside.

Deal with the Hunting Ikuradon pictured below, then approach its corpse to loot the following:

• Fermented Coffee Beans
• Kieran Cooper’s Slate
• Settler Workwear
• Aromatic (Gland)
• Cosmetic (Bone)

After obtaining the Starfield Fermented Coffee Beans, your objective changes, and you are asked to return them to Markieff Sutherland; however, alongside the beans, you also found Kieran Cooper’s Slate.

Kieran Cooper is the man hired by Markieff Sutherland, and reading his slate is mandatory for getting a second ending for the Terror Brew mission.

The slate outlines that Markieff Sutherland tried to fool Kieran Cooper, and he is slicker than owl dung because he agreed to pay Kieran less than the deserved amount.

By reading the slate, you will unlock a second option to finish the mission, but this leads to a choice:

• Return the coffee beans to Markieff Sutherland
• Sell the beans to the competitor

Should You Return the Coffee Beans or Sell Them to the Competitor in Starfield?

The main difference between these two Terror Brew objectives is the amount of Credits you receive at the end of the mission:

• If you return the Coffee Beans to Markieff, you will receive around 2,000 Credits
• If you sell them to the competitor, you will receive around 3,500 Credits

However, now that you know that Markieff Sutherland tried to underpay everyone, you may want to choose the second alternative.

For the first option, all you need to do is head back to Dawn’s Roost and hand over the beans, but for the second one, you’ll want to return to New Atlantis and visit the Commercial District. Use the fast-travel again, and after you arrive, check the Terrabrew terrace in front of the Valberg building.

When you get close, look for the Terrabrew employee marked above and ask about Kieran, then tell him/her that you’ve got the beans. The Terrabrew Manager will tell you that the beans will be destroyed so that people won’t find out that a better option for coffee exists.

While this may not look morally correct, being fooled by Markieff Sutherland is also not an option because you are underpaid. Therefore, you can apply the lesser of two evils principle and pick the one with the best reward.