Huge winter update!

**The huge winter update is here! **

After many months of work the winter update has finally been released. It contains more changes than we can list but below are some of the most obvious updates.

• Universe and Worlds

• 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

• Ships and Navigation

• 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

• Outpost

• 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

• Missions

• 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!

• Novakids

• New playable race!

• Unique progression of craftable guns

• Unique progression of armor sets

• Unique progression of ship upgrades

• Tech

• 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

• Many new techs

• Mining

• 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

• Combat

• 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

• New weapon type staves!

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Monsters

• New monster type: large flying monsters

• New monster type: large aquatic monsters

• Many improvements to monster AI

• Birds less of a menace

• Survival Mechanics

• 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

• Farming and Cooking

• New crops

• Hundreds of new cooking recipes

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

• Bug Catching

• Bugs unique to each planet type now spawn across the universe

• Use the bug net to collect and display them!

• Wiring

• Most lights in game can now be wired

• More interactable switches

• More sensors, switches, and logic gates

• Fixed lots of usability bugs with wiring

• Other Content

• 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

• Performance Enhancements

• 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

• Modding Features

• 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

• Server Features

• Access to tile protection system, preventing modification of specific dungeon IDs

• Ability to set spawn point for a world

• Several other new admin commands

• rcon support