This past May, the development team over at Paradox Interactive published a grand 4X strategy sci-fi experience known as Stellaris. The player takes the role of a space-faring civilization that explores the universe in an effort to expand their territory. But they come to realize they aren’t the only ones kicking around the galaxy, and so they either have to learn to be diplomatic or prepare for war and go into battle against one another. The amount of customization and the level of variety involved in the experience is what drew people to this game in the first place, and soon they’ll have more stuff to keep them entertained for a while longer. The gaming community only needs to wait ten short days for some Stellaris DLC to release, and it can be theirs for only $9.99.
The name of the Stellaris DLC is Leviathans. The Guardians you can encounter are beings that you can take on in a fight, but if you’re patient enough to take the time to understand their ways, grand rewards await you. The Space Dragon is a classical type of creature, hoarding a large cache of resources and materials for you to plunder. It won’t go down without a fight, and pissing it off too much might enrage it to come after you instead. The Infinity Machine is a metal sphere of mystery, where the odds of something worthwhile happening are up in the air no matter what you do. The Stellarite Guardian exists inside a star, and the question of how it can survive in such extreme circumstances is left for you to answer.Enclaves are hubs of information, where the colorful personalities of the intergalactic community come together to kick back and relax. Exchange goods with the traders, buy valuable information, and take the plunge by commissioning an artist to make a masterpiece for your empire. The last point of interest in the paid DLC is the War in Heaven scenario. What happens is two very old rival Empires of ancient history might decide to settle things once and for all, and you get the opportunity to choose how to take advantage of the chaos.
Not interested in shelling out the cash? Paradox plans to release a free “Heinlein” patch update alongside this paid content, giving something new to everyone regardless if you want to pay or not. On their forums, Paradox went in-depth about the changes that would happen with that. It’s worth reading their 1, 2, 3 part diary series directly to get the full grasp of it, but to sum it up: an Auto-Explore option that’s introduced at some point during your campaign, a Rally Point feature that’s built to help organize freshly constructed ships, an Expansion Planner menu to plot out your path to planetary domination, making dedicated roles for your ships to help specialize their battle purposes, a reworking of the Utility Slot system to provide a better sense of free choice, and finally there will be changes to Federation related options, Planet Habitability mechanics, Galaxy Setup Options, and other Sector Improvements.
Stellaris is available for PC (Mac/Linux) and the Leviathans DLC is set to arrive on October 20th. To learn more about the game be sure to check out the developer’s website, Twitter, and Facebook.
