Starbound adds terraforming and new dungeons

Sci-fi sandbox Starbound [official site] may have left early access and officially launched in July (it's "sincere, incredibly ambitious sandbox that's as full of charm, and space-faring pirate penguins, as it is stuff to build and places to explore" is Wot Fraser Brown Thinks) but content updates keep on rolling. The latest has added ancient vaults full of nasty enemies and lost technology, terraforming so players can give planets makeovers, weapon upgrades to juice up old favourites, and, of course, Space Santa.

The focus of the Vault Update is - surprise! - those ancient vaults. Available only to players who've finished the main campaign, they're procedurally-generated dungeons with procedurally-generated bosses and the promise of tasty loot. For example, Vaults are where to find terraforming technology, which let players transform regions and even entire planets into different biomes.

Vaults also house ancient anvils which can upgrade legendary weapons. I do like the sound of that, making old types of weapons - and their accompanying fighting styles - useful again.

Space Santa being stingier than Earth Santa, the old coot hanging round the Outpost now charges for his festive items.

The Vault Update hit Starbound's Steam version last Thursday (sorry, I was distracted by some water or something) and arrived for GOG today. Some players have reported performance problems with the patch, so developers Chucklefish have released a small follow-up patch and say they're investigating further. The full patch notes for v1.2 are over here and here's a wee trailer showing some of the new stuff: