Battle Arenas, Clan Vaults, Loot All, Crown quarry and the Portcullis

New

Battle Arenas

• Duel bubbles in open space. Arena Grounds sit in open space, where duelists fight inside glowing energy bubbles with a hard boundary.
• Stakes and rules. Fit your ship, set the rules with your rival and put credits on the duel. The winner takes the prize.
• Spectators. Fly up and watch any duel from outside the bubble.
• Rankings. Duels are rated, with tiers, a record and Arena Points. See the standings on the Arena board and on pilot pages.
• Cinematic duels. A duel camera frames the fight with flybys and a finale, and a result card shows both pilots' stats.

Ships

• Portcullis. A tier 6 battle tender built like a gatehouse. Twelve strike fighters launch between two flight-deck hulls, and a dorsal battery of heavy turrets hits harder with every Gunnery level. Lighter and quicker than a Colossus.

Hunting and gear

• Crown quarry for high Hunting levels. Six exclusive Crown quarry hunt in Lawless space, unlocked at Hunting 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 95. Below the level you cannot hurt them and you get a warning, so grow into them. Masters hand them out as tasks, and their drops are found nowhere else.
• Hunter's Trophies. New drops that fall only from Bounty Master tasks: the Crown Transponder Tag, Shade Cipher Chip, Butcher's Control Rod, Ravager's Targeting Core, Warlord's Data Slate and Dreadlord Hull Plate. Trade them or use them to craft.
• Trophy turn-in. Any Bounty Office now buys trophies and ultra-rare uniques for credits at their full value.
• Ultra-rare uniques. Every master tier has its own ultra-rare drop, from collectible trophies to powerful modules. Legendary and Exotic finds are announced to everyone, and you can turn announcements off in Settings.
• Loot value summary. Each kill shows what dropped and what it is worth, and a finished task shows a card with your whole haul.
• Top earner. Hunting now pays among the best of any skill at high levels.
• Task-master Bounty Masters. Masters now pay in Bounty Points, and the money comes from what your kills drop.
• New Hunting materials. Quarry materials now go into Overclock Reagents, the Capital Jump Charge and Exodus reforging, with seven new utility modules and four new charges.
• Long Contracts and Writs. Long Contracts now stack with a quarry's Writs.
• Tuned mining lasers. Small and medium tuned lasers for every ore family, with recipes, blueprints and stock at industrial stations.
• Always on modules. Doctrine arrays can stay on. They re-arm after undocking, jumps, warps, respawns and low battery.
• Squad warp. A wing leader can warp the whole squad together, and members land in a spaced ring.

Loot and inventory

• Loot All. Take everything that fits from a wreck in one tap, richest per cubic meter first.
• Loot window. Open a wreck as an item grid beside your cargo. Drag items across, use the long-press menu, take a selection, and watch it update live.
• Inventory grid view. Your hangar, ship cargo, clan vault, contract picker, colony depot and rover garage all have a grid view with a custom order and long-press menus. Pick your default view in Settings.
• Hangar tools. Hide ships from the hangar list with one toggle, and use the new sections on phones.
• Help tips. A small "?" now explains things in place across the game, from the loot window to Settings, the clan vault, Industry, the Almanac and more.
• Liveries page. Every livery has its own page with a live 3D preview on your hull or any released hull, in three lighting setups.

Clans and credits

• Clan Vaults. Clans get a shared vault at one station, with tabs, ships in the vault, drag and drop, and per-rank rights. Vanguard leaders can open more vaults.
• Credit Ingot. A stackable item worth exactly one billion credits. Convert credits into ingots and back in the Wallet with no fee, then trade them like any other item.
• Colony deposit. Deposit into a colony from any station in the colony's system, from anywhere in that system.

Worlds

• New planet clouds. Weather now has fronts, storm swirls, bands and cloud decks based on real satellite imagery.
• Geography. Planets show biomes, climate color, ocean shelves, pack ice and richer ground detail from orbit down to the surface.
• Forests. Trees grow in groves, clearings and open woodland, so a world no longer wears a solid carpet.
• Voice-overs in ten languages. Quest and mission lines are voiced in all ten of the game's languages. Pick yours in Settings › Audio › Voice.

Interface

• Fitting Bonuses. A new section in the fitting window lists every passive bonus by stat with the net total, the modules behind it and the stacking penalty.
• Vanguard store. A cleaner store with Charter and Permits tabs, a comparison table and a better phone layout.
• Galaxy map. The map now opens centered on your system. You can turn this off in Settings › Game.

Improvements

• Minimap. Ships show up first and reach to the edge of your range, squadmates show beyond sensor range, and a Filters popover is new. The planet view appears only when you are landed.
• Market search. The search stays usable on narrow windows.
• Flotilla. Trips take about half as long.
• Dynamic Resolution. It is now off by default on desktops and laptops, so the picture stays sharp.
• Thrusters. Engine glows and plumes look right again, and the thruster pods are back to full size on many hulls.
• Textures. Hull textures were re-encoded, so more ships load their sharp textures and use less memory.
• Loading. Graphics cards that compile shaders slowly now show a short Preparing graphics cover, so the first flight no longer stutters.
• Performance. Fewer frame drops, and desktop pages hold less memory in long sessions.
• Wing warp. Wings hold at the edge of warp until the captain's warp starts, then catch up quickly.
• Droneworks. The window loads with silhouettes and skeletons instead of jumping around.
• Controls pages. The Handbook shows accurate drawings of game pads, the Steam Deck, a mouse and a flight stick.

Fixes

• Mining. End run now stops the whole run: lasers off, hauling canceled.
• Mobile auto-mining. The Stop and auto-mine buttons work on touch screens, including right after you launch from the bay.
• Infiltration. A failed splice no longer leaves you stuck, and the splice screen recovers on its own.
• Cold Caches. Resolved Cold Caches show system-wide for at least 10 minutes, with a notice that lists names and distances and lets you select and warp.
• Stranded pilots. A crew pilot left without a ship now gets a card with ways back: board, leave the crew, transfer a ship, shop, or take a starter Sparrow.
• Spawn points. Crown captains and other enemies no longer appear inside planets, their air or the star.
• Tutorial. The starter kit is easy to find with a tracker line and an Open button, a missing kit repairs itself, and the lesson list is no longer clipped.
• Second tab. Opening the game in a second tab no longer pushes the first tab to a fallback graphics mode.
• Phones. WebGPU errors on phones and after returning to the hangar are fixed.
• Trees. The strip of trees on some planets is gone.
• Launching. You can no longer steer or fire at the ship behind the hangar during a bay launch.

Balance

• Bounty pay. Pay no longer drops as a master's tier rises.
• Hunting rewards. Rewards at the top levels were raised, and rare drops and Crown quarry carry much of them.