Best Electromagnetic / EM weapons in Starfield

As an open-world roleplaying game, Starfield gives players the chance to explore outer space freely. You can pilot spaceships and visit a plethora of planets that are home to many other people. As expected, not all of the inhabitants of the galaxy are friendly. Encountering hostiles can quickly become a very common experience, and defending yourself becomes a necessity.

The game provides several ways for you to defend against hostile forces. Typically, you would do so by utilizing powerful, lethal weapons that can make short work of anyone who opposes you.

However, you might prefer to go on a pacifist run or you may find yourself in a situation where hostiles need to be neutralized non-lethally. For this purpose, Starfield provides non-lethal weapons known as Electromagnetic weapons or EM.

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Brawler's Equinox and Novablast Disruptor stats in Starfield

The Novablast Disruptor is one of the two default EM weapons in the game (Image via Bethesda)

The choices for EM weapons are limited in Starfield. By default, there are only two that can be found in the game: the Brawler's Equinox and the Novablast Disruptor.

The Novablast Disruptor is by far the most powerful EM weapon in the game, as it does a base damage of 100 EM damage. It uses Heavy Fuse ammo, and its rate of fire and range both sit at 20 by default. It has five mod slots, so it can be improved according to your preferences.

On the other hand, the Brawler's Equinox in Starfield only does a measly two points of EM damage, but what it lacks in the damage-dealing department, it makes up for in other aspects. It has a range of 50 and a firing rate of 180, and it can be modded to some extent as well.

You should also take note that EM weapons have the ability to temporarily neutralize hostile robots, which adds to how they can be utilized.

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EM weapons locations

EM weapons can be found as random loot in Starfield (Image via Bethesda)

There aren't any fixed locations where these two weapons might show up, so those who want to add non-lethal options to their arsenal might need to do a bit of searching.

You can check with the different vendors that specialize in weapons around the different star systems in Starfield, or you can check the loot that enemies drop after neutralizing them. Furthermore, they might show up randomly in some loot containers, especially the ones that typically contain weapons.

There is also a mission in the UC Vanguard Faction's questline that tasks you with incapacitating some panicking civilians through the use of EM weapons, which will be provided.

This is the fourth mission in the questline known as Eyewitness, and once the action starts, there will be a few EM weapons lying around. Once the mission is complete, you can keep whichever EM weapon you pick up at the start.

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Modding an EM weapon

Weapons can be modded to do EM damage at a Weapon's workbench (Image via Bethesda)

Of course, those who want to have more options when it comes to EM weapons can freely modify any of the weapons that are already in their possession to do EM damage.

This will turn whatever weapon was chosen into a non-lethal weapon, but the Brawler's Equinox and the Novablast Disruptor are already the best options when it comes to EM weapons in Starfield, so there is no need to mod a different one to do EM damage.

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Looking for Starfield's best weapons? Check out these 10 best weapons in the title.