Today’s Steam announcement revealed some key information about the upcoming Starfield expansion Shattered Space, which sends the player to the home world of House Va’ruun. The most important part of today’s announcement is that Shattered Space launches on September 30 for Xbox Series X | S and PC,at 8am PDT/5pm CEST. There’s a helpful image to find your specific region’s time — they even used the local language to name (some of) the cities!
A decent amount of information has been released already on Shattered Space, but if you haven’t been following the news closely, here’s the short version: On the planet of Va’ruun’kai, you’ll investigate a mysterious vortex that has destroyed the city of Dazra, causing chaos in house Va’ruun.
Minimum and Recommended System Requirements
Unsurprisingly, the system requirements for Starfield have not changed in the expansion.
Graphics AMD Radeon RX 5700, NVIDIA GeForce 1070 Ti
DirectX Version 12
Storage 125GB Available Space
Additional Notes SSD Required
How to Access Shattered Space
If you bought the Premium Edition or the Constellation Edition of the game, you’ll get Shattered Space for free when it comes out. Otherwise, you’ll need to buy the Digital Premium Upgrade to gain access to the expansion — this also comes with some goodies like the Digital Art book, Soundtrack, 1,000 Creation Credits and the Constellation skins. Game Pass users can pay to upgrade to the Premium Edition of Starfield to access the expansion.
In game, all you’ll have to do is finish the first mission, One Small Step. Once that’s done, grav jump to any orbit that is not part of a mission or enemy encounter, and you’ll receive a distress call that sends you to The Oracle, a large star station.
Level 35 is the recommended level for the expansion.
Starfield Updates and Improvements Post-Launch
There have been a number of minor and major improvements to Starfield since its launch. Today’s announcement lists the most notable ones — we’ve reproduced the list below.
REV-8 Land Vehicle
The REV-8 has landed! Now is your chance to explore new frontiers (and reach new heights) in your very own land cruiser. The REV-8 land vehicle is fitted with a mounted turret to fight off hostile wildlife and forward boosters to get you where you want to go fast.
Improved Maps
One of the most requested features for Starfield, improved and more detailed surface maps were implemented, adding points of interest. We also added fast travel markers for vendors in cities making getting around in Neon and other large cities much easier.
Starfield Creations
We also launched Creations for Starfield bringing a whole host of new bespoke content to the game from our devs and Creators.
New Gameplay Options
There have been a few exciting updates to Starfield that allow you to customize the way you play the game, including accessing ship cargo from anywhere in your player inventory, the ability to increase vendor credits and carry capacity.
In addition, we’ve added difficulty settings and the ability to change survival features such as the effects of food and environmental hazards. In terms of combat settings, you can make space combat more difficult or make run-and-gun combat easier.
For an extra challenge, play on the new Extreme difficulty setting!
Bounty Scanning
The added bounty scanner system enables you to seek out and destroy targets with bounties on their heads. For more bounties, check out the Elite Trackers Alliance mission board.
Melee Weapon Improvements and Ammunition Crafting
We have also added improved tiers for melee weapons and the ability to improve your melee weapons at crafting benches.
Additionally, you can now research types of ammunition at a Research Station and craft them at an Industrial Workbench. No need to fear running out of ammo for your favorite gun when you can just craft more.
The fact you couldn’t really learn much about the mysterious House Va’Ruun was a big criticism of the game when it launched, so we’re very excited to go see what the Great Serpent is all about. Let us know your thoughts on the expansion in the comments!
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DanielD
Unabashed FromSoftware fanboy still learning to take his time with games (and everything else, really). The time he doesn't spend on games is spent on music, books, or occasionally going outside.
