Hello, Astroneers! We hope you’ve been having fun with STARSEEKER over the weekend. We’ve got a new Patch with some performance and stability fixes we wanted to get quickly into the game, and also some answers to share for some recent community questions.
Over the weekend, Creative Director Adam also shared another update on behalf of the team that’s worth a read, if you haven’t seen it yet.
CROSS-PROGRESSION WHEN OUT OF PARITY
In our previous Patch Notes, we called out that the Patch will take a bit longer to go through certification on Nintendo, leaving the system temporarily out of version parity. We shared a warning about issues that may be incurred by playing on the Switch 2 if you’ve linked other platform accounts and wanted to explain that a little better.
What does “Out of Parity” mean? This happens when one platform is on a version number different from other platforms. It’s often caused by taking longer for a Patch to be certified by the platform.
Can I still play on a platform that’s “Out of Parity”? Yes! You should have nothing to be concerned about; you just won’t be able to play with players on other platforms during this time. The only exception is the following question.
What happens if I have Cross-Progression enabled and I play on an “Out of Parity” platform? If you have linked your platform accounts to enable Cross-Progression across platforms, and one platform is out of parity, we recommend playing only on the platform that is up to date during this time. We don’t expect any permanent harm to your account or your character progression if you do otherwise, but you may encounter some weirdness in your Mission and Tasks progress during this time. This should return to normal once parity is restored.
What happens to cosmetics and other items I earn while I play on an “Out of Parity” platform? Those will all be saved as normal and be available across platforms without issues. The only instance where something is saved to only one platform is when buying a Supporter Pack, due to platform limitations.
THE ENGINEERING PACK
We’ve seen some questions about why the "Miner Miracle" Sticker is added to your Stickerbook once you purchase the Engineering Pack. This is because the Palette in this Supporter Pack has three different versions that are intended to be unlocked as you make progress in this Sticker. The more resources you mine, the more progress you would make toward unlocking the "Dirtier Work" Palette, and ultimately the "Dirtiest Work" Palette.
Given the confusion we’ve seen around how this works, we’ve decided to instead simply grant all three Palettes immediately to anyone who has purchased this Pack or buys it in the future. The "Miner Miracle" Sticker will remain, but no rewards will be tied to it anymore. We think this is a fun mechanic, but we missed the mark on having the proper UX to explain the sticker-based gameplay. This change will go into effect today.
We will go back to the drawing board to rethink the idea of progressive Palettes, and you may see this again in the future as part of a Community Challenge.
TANGLE COMMUNITY CHALLENGE
And in case you missed it, tomorrow marks the start of our first Community Challenge! Starting Tuesday, June 16th at 8AM PST, players will be able to pitch in together toward completing this challenge and unlock a new Region, the Tangle! Keep an eye on the big screen in front of the Flux Drive at the center of the station for updates!
PATCH 1.0.7
We have a small but important patch for you today. On Friday, we issued a partial fix to a “memory leak” that was occurring when players interacted with the DAD and Stash UI systems. This patch delivers a fuller fix for this issue and should be a noticeable performance improvement on all platforms. Below is a full list of what is included:
Nintendo Delay: The Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game will continue to be out of version parity until Patch 1.0.7 is released on the platform. The latest news we've received tells us that we should expect this to go through around the middle of this week. We’ll share messaging on our social channels once the update is going live.
Cross-Progression Warning: If you play on the Switch 2 and have more than one Platform linked for cross-progression, then we recommend playing only on the platform with the latest version of the game available. Avoid playing on the Switch 2 only in this case, until the latest patch has released on Nintendo.
Cross-Play Warning: While the Switch 2 version is mismatched to other platforms, multiplayer won’t work across platforms to the Switch 2.
BUG FIXES
AG-18028 – Implemented a fuller fix for the UI memory leak that could occur when interacting with DAD and Stash UI systems.
AG-18027 – Fixed an issue that was showing incorrect messaging on the launch screen when the game is in planned maintenance mode.
AG-18206 - Fixed an issue where players were getting stuck in the game’s startup flow when rejoining after a server crash.
STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions is now available on Steam, the Xbox for PC App, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2 in Early Access!
Follow our STARSEEKER social channels to keep up with the latest news. If you run into an issue while playing the game, please send us a bug report with as much context as possible: [email protected]
– Honourael.