Good evening, all!

At long last, we’re updating Starbound’s stable branch later today. Thanks so much for your continued patience, support and feedback! Check below the cut for a list of major changes since the last stable update back in March 2014.



PS – Starting tonight at 6PM GMT, Starbound will be 25% off on Steam for 48 hours. <3

Sectors have been removed, so all stars are part of the same map

Star and planet types correspond to difficulty levels, giving players access to progressively more extreme environments as they advance through the game

Added oceanic world types including tropical and arctic oceans, toxic and magma planets

Added rare Barren and Asteroid worlds with no monsters for large scale building

New biomes

New surface and underground mini biomes

Many changes to surface and underground terrain generation

Improvements to background parallaxes and sky coloration

Player ships now include an AI avatar specific to each race that gives access to the player’s techs, missions, 3D printer, and a variety of ship-related commands

Each race’s ship has its own unique set of upgrades, giving players much more room to expand as they progress

Fuel costs for travel have been reworked. Moving between planets within a system is now free, while jumps to other systems require fuel in proportion to the distance traveled.

Coal no longer powers spaceships! Instead, they can use either radioactive ores or the new Liquid Erchius Fuel that now appears in Moon biomes

Many improvements to the Cockpit interface, which now indicates more detailed planet information including weather and environmental hazards





The universe now has a civilized hub containing shops, quests, and other services. This is where players will find quests, missions, and ship upgrades which allow them to advance through the game

Includes a Sign Store based on the popular Custom Signs mod, where players can design and print their own signage for use in game. Thanks Wellbot!

At key points in the progression, players will unlock special Missions

Missions take place in unique instanced dungeons containing special monsters, bosses, and rewards not available anywhere else. Some missions can be quite difficult, so you’ll want to prepare carefully – or bring friends!

New playable race with their own unique progression of armor sets, craftable guns and ship upgrades!

Techs are now split into head, body, legs and suit slots, so you can equip up to four at once! Head techs provide various activated effects triggered using the tech hotkeys Body techs provide lateral movement abilities triggered by double tapping direction keys Leg techs provide vertical movement abilities triggered with the jump key Suit techs provide passive protection from specific environmental hazards

New tech unlocking system makes a variety of techs visible each time the player upgrades their ship. The player can then use Blank Tech Cards to unlock and equip these techs

Lots of new techs! Techs techs techs. It’s stopped sounding like a word now.

Matter Manipulator can now be upgraded over the course of the game to increase its mining power, area of effect, and allow it to collect liquids as well as blocks

Pickaxes and drills are more powerful, but have lowered durability and cannot be repaired, making them a consumable alternative to the Matter Manipulator

Smashable rocks found rarely underground contain richer deposits of certain ores

Energy Energy regeneration has been changed. Rather than continuously regenerating energy at a slow rate, energy rapidly regenerates when not being used Using energy that exceeds your maximum pool will disable energy usage for a few seconds until your energy has fully recharged

Staves New weapon type! Use a staff by holding the fire button to charge it, aiming, then releasing the button to unleash a powerful effect Unlike guns, staves manifest their projectiles directly at your targeting cursor for precision combat A variety of staves can be crafted at the new Manipulator Table



Armors Beginning at Tier 5, armors are divided into three different progression paths with different stat balances Separator armors have high armor and low energy for melee weapon users Accelerator armors have a balance of armor and energy for ranged weapon users Manipulator armors have low armor and high energy for staff users

Weapons Many new unique biome weapons More bows (and crossbows) for higher level hunting Many new thrown weapons of various tiers



Defense Turrets have been massively improved and can be equipped with a variety of weapons for different effects

New monster type: large flying monsters

New monster type: large aquatic monsters

Many improvements to monster AI

Birds nerfed– they are now less of a menace

Temperature has been replaced by a system of specific planetary hazards, which the player will need to unlock new technology to resist

Hunger has been removed for now, replaced by an expansion of the cooking system with a variety of buffs (see below)

New difficulty option to drop ores and other valuable materials on death

New crops

Hundreds of new cooking recipes



Cooked foods now provide a wide variety of buffs, with more elaborate recipes giving stronger effects

Bugs unique to each planet type now spawn across the universe

Use the bug net to collect and display them!

Most lights in game can now be wired

More interactable switches

More sensors, switches, and logic gates

Fixed lots of usability bugs with wiring

Many new status effects

Many new costumes

Many new biome furniture/object sets

Many new block types

Many (over 150) new underground microdungeons

Many new toys and novelty items

Tile rendering

Liquid processing

Many other optimizations

Miscellaneous Improvements Specialty hotbar slots and keys for Matter Manipulator, Wire Tool and Paint Tool New font Keybinding GUI Character deletion option



Items are now scriptable

Status effects are now scriptable

New Script Console functionality gives a client-side scripted canvas to build your own GUIs, games, or whatever you can imagine

Many new Lua API bindings

Access to tile protection system, preventing modification of specific areas

Ability to set spawn point for a world

Several other new admin commands

RCON support

Because of these all changes, we recommend that everyone start a new character. The game has changed so drastically that you’d miss out on most of the new content if you simply used an old character. As a result, the launcher will automatically rename your old data. We may be releasing external tools in the next few weeks to import and convert these files to approximately equivalent characters, but unless and until then they will be unusable.