Pixels are currency – not just in the sense that they’ve made Starbound developers Chucklefish an awful lot of money, but entirely literally. In Starbound’s beta, pixels are cashed in at on-ship 3D printers in exchange for items. Is that meta, or just silly? Dunno.
Anyway, you’ll have more of them. Chucklefish have “massively” reduced the pixel cost on early weapons and armour – in some cases making them completely free. And that’s just where it starts with this, the first, super-exciting update to Terraria’s unofficial successor.
Elsewhere in pixels, players can now build refineries which will enable them to turn ores of any kind into money – providing them with an easier means to stay solvent.
The majority of today’s update is dedicated to giving players an easier ride when they first land on one of Starbounds procedurally-generated planets. Bandages can now be crafted using plant fibre as well as fabric, for instance. Monsters now occasionally drop meat when killed with normal weapons, and at a much higher rate when shanked with the new hunting knife. And space travel’s fuel cost has been reduced ever so slightly (hey, whoever said this wasn’t a fantasy world?).
But other changes range between intriguing design decisions, like disabling the ability to teleport to another player’s ship when underground, and tonal tweaks – like the guards of the headline, who’ll now be suitably subservient.
Take a look at what’s in store below. I’ve highlighted my favourite:
- Massively reducing the pixel cost (sometimes eliminating it entirely) on early weapons/armor. You can build a refinery in later tiers to turn ores of all kinds into pixels. (done)
- Monsters now have a small chance to drop meat when killed with normal weapons. (done)
- You can no longer teleport to another players ship from underground (done)
- Bandages are now craftable with 4 plant fibres, no longer require fabric (done)
- Fix human starter chest showing apex starter items (done)
- Monsters now have a 70% chance to drop meat when killed with a hunting weapon, up from 50% (done)
- Make guards you’ve summoned refer to you as their boss (done)
- Make the refinery appear earlier in the game (done)
- Reduced fuel costs a bit to go to other planets (done)
- Tweaked wording of starter quests to encourage exploring of more planets. (done)
- Added hunting knife weapon that also makes monsters drop meat (done)
- Added new legendary weapon (done)
- Pixel loss on death reduced to 20% for testing, might change further (done)
- [16:27]
Tiy_, Also, could you make silver more visible, please? (Done) - Added new armor that provides a good amount of warmth early on in the game at the sacrifice of armor levels. (done)
- Tweaked the UFO boss to make him smash blocks. (done)
- Also make him a little bit easier by changing him to level 9 from level 10 (done)
- Revamping the warmth bar to make it more obvious (suggestion by thedbp on reddit)
- tp://i.imgur.com/O2IYd6k.png (done)
- Increase mining speed a little (done)
- Add numbers above the hotbar slots http://i.imgur.com/qTJiFrS.png (done)
- Craftable climbing ropes! (done)
- Make sure hunger bar is always shown when eating food (done)
- Make hunger bar display when the alt key is held down (done)
- Added a dumb, quick way to advance through some of the tier 4-10 content (armors, weapons), just for fun. Complete tiers of content are coming really soon. I’d like to get 1/2 tiers of content done per week. (done)
- Fixed a bug where minibosses over level 11 were not dropping the rare items they were supposed to be dropping. They now drop guns. (Thank you to
for finding this) (done) - Ufos should hopefully not fly off anymore, they were actually flying off to attack birds! (done)
- Tons of bug fixes
“This is just what I’ve done so far this morning,” wrote apparently indefatigable developer Tiy. “I’ll add to this list as more is added for tonights update.”
Were you among the throng that descended on Steam to play Starbound last night, and the night before? How’ve you found its flavour of space-based survival?