Surface maps! Ship decoration! Ground vehicles?
Before Starfield was released last year, Todd Howard and Bethesda promised the game would be supported for at least 5 years post-launch. And despite the naysayers, they’ve been staying true to their word so far, with a host of updates, additions and bug fixes arriving since its initial release.
However, most of the previous game additions have introduced minor quality-of-life improvements, such as the ability to open doors while using the hand scanner. Now, with their latest announcement, BGS seem to be addressing some of the bigger, more common, community requests.
What’s included in Starfield’s May 2024 update?
Surface Map Improvements
Bethesda’s ‘1.11.33, May 1, 2024 [BETA]’ update looks set to correct one of the biggest at-launch gripes — the objectively crappy surface maps. Posting on their official blog, BGS say, “We’ve heard your feedback, and we’ve made some big improvements to surface maps, so you’ll always know just where to go”, which will come as a relief for anyone who’s found themselves lost while trying to navigate New Atlantis, Akila City or Neon.
Accompanying their blog post, Bethesda also uploaded a video to YouTube, which covered their work on surface maps, among other things. We’ve added a couple of screenshots for you to get an idea of what to expect.
Ship Interior Decoration
Next up, you’ll now be able to decorate the interior of your starships, bringing to the ship builder the same sort of personalization players will be familiar with from creating outposts.
You’ll now be able to fully furnish and customize your ship’s interior layout, placing furniture and decorations however you wish, which should make it much easier to create your ideal home away from home in the stars.
This update also brings with it the addition of new empty hab modules, meaning you can start from a blank canvas, instead of having to deal with all the usual clutter associated with ship building!
Tailored Gameplay
Alongside these bigger changes, fans will undoubtedly be excited to hear that the developers have made changes to the amount of credits that vendors carry — making it easier and quicker to offload the more expensive items from your latest haul.
You’ll also be able to more finely tune your gameplay experience in a number of different ways — from adjusting your character’s overall carry capacity, to increasing the difficulty of ground combat and making space battles a little less taxing (or vice versa), should you wish. This update will also introduce a new ‘extreme’ difficulty level — sitting above the current top ‘very hard’ mode.
Depending on how you choose to tailor your settings, the XP you earn from certain scenarios will also change, allowing for bigger payoffs when taking out larger ships or trickier alien swarms, for example.
Ground Vehicles
Perhaps the most exciting news was left until the end of Bethesda’s YouTube video, where Tim Lamb, the game’s lead creative producer, revealed the team have been working on the addition of ground vehicles to the game. We’ve had rumblings about this in the past, but this was the first time we got a (brief) look at what these might look like.
However, there’s no firm date with regards to when we might be able to play around with them. But, of course, if we hear anything, we’ll let you know on the GG.deals news feed!
As always with these Starfield updates, the patch notes are long — really long. We’ve only included the highlights here, but you can find the full list of improvements and bug fixes via Bethesda’s official blog post.
It should be noted that these welcome additions, as always, will first be available to Starfield players who’ve opted-in to the game’s Steam beta. Players on other platforms should probably expect to gain access in a week or two.
Have you read through the full patch notes for Starfield’s May 2024 update? What stands out most to you? And what do you hope they’ll reveal next? Let us know in the comments!
Source: Bethesda.net // Bethesda Softworks YouTube
