Phoenix Point arrived on Steam five years ago, and it truly warms our hearts to see a steady flow of new players still discovering it - as well as many veterans returning after a long break. This anniversary felt like the perfect moment to celebrate, and we wanted to show our appreciation by bringing you a new free update, along with a 60% discount for newcomers.
Below you’ll find the areas we focused on for this update, followed by the full patch notes. But before diving in, we owe a major shoutout to the Terror From The Void mod and all of its contributors.
For more than three years, the TFTV team has been tirelessly updating and refining their vision of Phoenix Point - polishing existing systems, rebalancing missions and classes, adding brand-new mechanics, and creating great additional tools. With TFTV you can find a huge range of optional gameplay adjustments, UI enhancements like a screen showing every available haven recruit, redesigned missions and classes, the terrifying Revenants (nightmarish replicas of your fallen soldiers), and countless other improvements.
In fact, many of the changes in this update were inspired by TFTV. If you enjoyed Phoenix Point, we highly recommend trying the mod.
Since large updates can easily break large mods, we worked closely with the TFTV team throughout development. The result is full compatibility, even for ongoing TFTV campaigns.
If you’re playing with mods - such as Terror From The Void or the Officer Class Mod - please make sure you have the latest versions installed.
If your mods don’t update automatically, simply exit and restart Steam.
The Firebird Update - What We Set Out to Improve
Campaign Pacing and Player Progression
One of the main issues we identified is that the campaign - especially in the mid and late game - can start to drag, feeling repetitive and overstretched. Phoenix Point is packed with content, but sometimes that content extended the campaign more than it enriched it.
Because the research system controls so much of your progression, we wanted to help players advance more smoothly without cutting content. To that end:
All research times have been reduced by 20%.
Construction time for the major faction-ending project buildings has been reduced by 50%.
These changes help the campaign reach its more interesting decision points sooner, without rushing players or removing depth.
Resource Pressure and Economy Adjustments
A common frustration for players - especially newcomers - was ending up with just slightly fewer resources than needed to restock basic ammo. This created tedious loops instead of meaningful strategic choices. To ease this unnecessary pressure and help players focus on the broader game, we’ve made the following adjustments:
Reduced ammo production costs by 20%.
Reduced facility construction costs by 20%
This should ease early-game pressure and allow players to invest in their bases and squads more freely.
Haven Defense – Fairer, Less Repetitive, More Optional
Haven Defense missions are an important part of the game: they’re a way to earn resources, diplomacy, and reveal Pandoran bases. However, the sheer frequency of them - combined with the inconsistency of their difficulty - often made them feel repetitive rather than rewarding.
Instead of reducing their number (which would break multiple progression loops), we made targeted systemic improvements:
Threat level is now calculated not only from the attackers’ strength, but also from the difference between attacker strength and Haven Defense strength, leading to more logical and fair battles.
Training and Elite Training Centers now grant improved defensive structures, making havens more capable of defending themselves.
All this means Haven Defense missions now feel more optional, giving you breathing room to focus on higher-priority objectives.
Geoscape Quality of Life Improvements
We also wanted the strategic layer to be smoother and more intuitive.
Manufacturing Clarity
The manufacturing screen is now far easier to read and manage:
Ammo is displayed directly on the same row as its associated weapon, reducing clutter dramatically.
A new button has been added to reorder items in the manufacturing queue more easily.
Partial Magazine Visibility
For years, players wondered what happened to partially used magazines after missions. Previously, these were hidden until they combined into a full stack - which caused confusion.
Now:
Partial magazines are displayed clearly, with a proper interface designed specifically for them.
Simplifying the Pandoran Evolution Loop
We’ve removed one of the hidden sources of late-game enemy scaling:
Pandorans no longer receive evolution points when their bases are destroyed or when they lose battles to you.
This keeps the long-term difficulty curve fairer and more predictable.
Tactical Layer Improvements
Rescue Soldier Missions
These missions often felt too unforgiving. We wanted to preserve the tension, but reduce the randomness of instant soldier deaths.
Changes include:
Deployment points are now weighted toward reinforcements rather than initial deployment.
Buffer zones have been added between the rescued soldier and nearby aliens.
The rescued soldier is now more likely to survive long enough for you to reach them - but extraction will require more planning.
Ambush Missions
A long-standing issue caused ambush missions to become extremely rare after loading a save. This has now been fixed, so expect to encounter more of them.
To make ambushes more rewarding and strategic:
Some maps now include loot crates containing valuable items - if you’re willing to take the risk.
Surviving an ambush now grants Skill Points, which you can distribute among your squad.
DLC Improvements
Blood and Titanium
Cybernetics repairs were often prohibitively expensive. To encourage players to actually use these systems:
Repair costs have been reduced by 50%.
Legacy of the Ancients
The ancient weapon progression was atmospheric, but too long and too complex, often slowing down campaigns significantly.
To streamline it:
You no longer need to control processing sites to use ancient resources.
Processing sites have been removed from the Geoscape (existing saves will still show them, but inactive).
Processing site maps have been merged into regular resource site missions.
Excavation of ancient sites no longer costs resources or time - missions can begin immediately.
Umbra Adjustments
Umbra enemies also received a round of adjustments aimed at smoothing out difficulty spikes while keeping their encounters tense and memorable.
Arthron Umbras now deal slightly less damage.
Triton Umbras have been reworked to heal on hit and move even more fluidly, but their attack cost has been increased from 1 AP to 2 AP to keep them in check.
All Umbras now die instantly when they come into contact with fire, regardless of remaining HP.
Festering Skies
Festering Skies has always introduced a unique tension with the Behemoth - a threat so large that players often felt they had little control over its destructive path. One of our biggest goals for this update was to give you more meaningful ways to interact with, disrupt, and counter the Behemoth’s behaviour.
One of the biggest steps was refining how and why the Behemoth attacks havens. Previously, these attacks could feel sudden or inevitable. Now, the Behemoth only targets havens if a Pandoran flyer has visited them and successfully returned. This creates a clear strategic window: if you intercept the flyer before it makes it back, the haven remains safe.
To reinforce this sense of influence, we broadened the systems that generate disturbance for the Behemoth.
You’ll now gain disturbance not just from air battles, but also:
When destroying Pandoran bases
When havens defend themselves during Behemoth attacks
These additional sources make the Behemoth cycle feel more dynamic. Even if it moves into a region you cannot reach immediately, the world still pushes back, and your actions elsewhere still matter.
To support all this, we improved the UI for the air game. It’s now much easier to track enemy aircraft and inspect their weapon loadouts - a crucial part of preparing your own aircraft to counter specific threats.
Myrmidon Adjustments
The Myrmidon has also received a significant redesign to make its behaviour more interesting and more consistent with the theme of the DLC. Ground movement has been reduced while flight range improved, leading to encounters where they take to the air far more often. This changes overwatch possibilities and limits their follow-up attacks, shifting the overall dynamics of these encounters.
Their base stats have been unified across all three variants, with the body receiving increased durability - and disabling it now results in the immediate death of the Myrmidon. The wings remain fragile, giving you the option to ground them by disabling flight and further crippling their movement even when you can’t eliminate them outright. Myrmidons are now also fully capturable, allowing you to gain the vivisection damage bonus if you choose to research one, and to process them into food or mutagens depending on your needs.
Corrupted Horizons
Our main focus here was improving the Acherons.
They were originally designed as support units that complicated the battlefield with strange abilities and disruptive effects. But in practice, they often dominated encounters by repeatedly summoning reinforcements or resurrecting corpses - quickly overwhelming squads and forcing a “kill this immediately or lose” situation. We wanted to preserve their identity while reducing this oppressive behaviour.
The first step was making them easier to bring down: their husk armor has been reduced significantly. But the more important change was separating their signature abilities so that no single variant can do everything at once.
Call Reinforcements is now exclusive to Asclepius and Asclepius Champion
Resurrect Corpses is now exclusive to Achlys and Achlys Champion
Both abilities now also have increased AP and WP costs, which prevents them from spamming these actions endlessly. They can still disrupt your plans, but they no longer take over the entire mission.
To keep them dangerous and interesting, we expanded their basic attack options with effects like mist, poison, and acid, and reshuffled their supporting abilities to create more variation between encounters. Acherons should now feel like a tactical puzzle again - unsettling and unpredictable, but fair and beatable.
And Much More…
This isn’t everything. The full list of bugfixes and adjustments can be seen here:
We would love to hear how the game feels now and what future improvements you’d like to see.
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