Following its showing at PAX, survival crafting game Astroneer has released the Crafting Update to Steam Early Access which alters the game's crafting progression into a more complex system according to a post on the game's official forums.
The Crafting Update builds on the fundamentals of Astroneer we explored in our preview of the game. A boatload of new materials have been added for players to get their hands on in advance of the game's 1.0 release set to launch sometime in December of 2018.
Crafting progression now has five stages. First, players will gather basic materials with their terrain tool. Some of these materials will be processed through the Smelting Furnace. The newly-renamed Soil Centrifuge can now only extract the common stuff, letting you maintain your focus on hunting for the rarer materials out there. The Hydrazine Catalyzer has been changed into the Chemistry Lab and allows you to mix resources together to form alloys. Similarly, the Fuel Condesor has been changed into the Atmospheric Condensor and it allows you to extract gases from the atmosphere for use in crafting.
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Recipes for many of the game's catalog of objects have been changed, some of which have gotten slightly more expensive. Resin is more important than ever for basic modules, but the frequency of Resin spawns has been increased to compensate for this. A new Small Shuttle (potentially paired with the new Solid Fuel Thruster) will let you make your way to other worlds that much sooner. It's especially important for rarer materials and gases that you might have difficulty finding on the Terran planet. The research catalog has also been overhauled; it now shows the resource cost of modules and organizes them by the type of printer they come out of.
Astroneer is nicely fleshing out its fundamental systems in the last few months before it goes to release. Be sure to read through the patch notes for all of the fine details; you can also check out the game's development roadmap to get an idea of what's in store for the future. If Astroneer looks like the kind of game that interests you, you can buy it right now on Steam or the Humble Store for PC and on the Microsoft Store for Windows 10 and Xbox One.
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What do you think of the crafting changes now live in Astroneer's Crafting Update? Are you excited to see the game making its way to 1.0? Let us know in the comments below!
