One big part of the game’s progression will be the ability to access new planet types as your ship and equipment improve. To facilitate this, we’re making biomes correspond with threat levels as you advance through tiers.

What does this mean, exactly? Previously, some biomes would only appear on planets with higher threat levels, but there wasn’t much relating a world’s appearance and environment to how challenging it is other than the explicit threat level. We’re now grouping the primary biomes by tier in a way that makes the progression of difficulty more logical and encourages players to visit a wide variety of planet types as they play through the game. When a player acquires gear with the appropriate environmental protection (such as heating systems to insulate them from cold environments), they will gain access to several new primary biome types (such as Tundra, Arctic and Asteroid worlds). We’re making sure to have enough variety within each tier to keep exploration entertaining while still retaining a somewhat consistent theme at each stage.

Once a player has completed the game’s progression and can access all of the various primary planet types, they will be able to visit planets with special high-level versions of the biomes. These will include some of the stranger variations like metallic trees/plants, as well as previously unavailable mini-biomes and dungeons. There’s no need to rush or grind to the endgame, but there will still be lots to discover after reaching it!

I’ve also been working on some smaller biome and planet configuration improvements. I’ve made the biome/sub-biome combinations more reasonable, so you won’t find ice trees growing next to pools of lava, and improved the matching of planet types to the distance from their star so you can reliably look for hot worlds in near orbits, temperate worlds in the habitable zone and frozen worlds in the outer fringes.