While the Stellaris team may not be working on anything flashy like a new expansion, the sci-fi grand strategy game is still getting new content thanks to the custodians initiative announced back in June. This sub-team is wholly dedicated to free patches, with the goal of tackling a number of areas such as bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and even new content for existing Stellaris DLC.
The custodians team is currently working towards the next free update, codenamed Lem after Stanislaw Lem. According to this week's dev diary, the team is working towards a September release, and the Plantoids Species Pack is the first to showcase what new content is coming. Two new civics and three new species traits will be introduced for anyone that owns this add-on, one of which will let you create your own Gaia worlds.
The Idyllic Bloom civic lets you build Gaia Seeders, which have four upgrade phases. The final phase will trigger terraforming of the planet it's on into a Gaia world - one of the most coveted types of planet in the 4X game.
RELATED LINKS:
The best Stellaris DLC - a complete guide
New Stellaris update will let you play a race of decadent Star Wars-style clone troopers
The best Stellaris mods