After nearly a year of radio silence on Starbound’s stable branch, the long-awaited update has finally come. Rest assured, the developers are not lounging on a beach until the end of time with your Early Access money.

Instead, they’ve been adding new planet types, biomes and mini-biomes, a new race called Novakid for your Roland Deschain roleplay, and Outposts scattered through space to ease progression. They’ve also been working on over 150 microdungeons, tons of novelty items, staves as a weapon type, and much, much more.

You can see the full list here. With the purported final character wipe having happened a couple of weeks ago, this is very much enticing me to give Starbound another go. I liked it a lot when I first played it for 13 hours one day, but groaned at the thought of character wipes and found I really just didn’t want to deal with Early Access at all. It seems to be inching ever closer toward a final product though, and this update is close enough for me – especially with the end of character wipes.

Image credit: playstarbound.com