Hello Stellaris Community! The Devs are currently working on a small update planned for next week, containing fixes for some of the more pressing issues that youve found so far. So no Dev Diary this week, but please keep providing feedback and bug reports, theyre very valuable to us! Instead we have something special for this week: To celebrate the release of the First Contact Story Pack, our Art Department has teamed up with ArtStation to do an Art Blast featuring completed and concept art from First Contact! We looked to the stars and saw that we were not alone. First contact. It has been the inspiration for so many stories in so many IPs over the years and now it has come to Stellaris. That exciting, sometimes frightening point in your civilization's timeline when the signals and messages youve sent out into the darkness of space have been answered. Or perhaps you have been living a peaceful life, minding your own business, believing that you are the only ones out there when suddenly that alien ship appears in your atmosphere. Are they friends? Are they foes? Will they advise and aid your people? Take you to another level in your evolution or do they have something else in mind? Something... more sinister? First Contact, is the latest addition to Stellaris and this is some of the mind blowing art that went into making it a reality from our amazing art team. Scott Austin Art Director - Stellaris
"Some early explorations onto what cloaked ships could look like in Stellaris, and what the transition to cloaking would be like. Lots of fun to do!" Lloyd Drake-Brockman
"Some early theme exploration sketches for the front end Illustration. We ended up going with the the lower left one; Herders in swamplands of some distant planet are frightened by a sudden visit of an unknown." Pavel Goloviy
The Chemical Ship of 'First Contact' based on Lloyds' concept Art. David Lindh
The MSI Flagship for 'First Contact', based on Lloyds' concept Art. Tim Wiberg You can check out the full Art Blast here. Dev diaries will return next week! Thanks for playing Stellaris, and you can pick up the First Contact Story Pack right now!

• Deep & Varied Exploration.
  
• Enormous procedural galaxies, containing thousands of planets.
  
• Explore Anomalies with your heroic Scientist leaders.
  
• Infinitely varied races through customization and procedural generation.
  
• Advanced Diplomacy system worthy of a Grand Strategy Game.
  
• Ship Designer based on a vast array of technologies.
  
• Stunning space visuals.

• OS: Ubuntu 20.04 x64
• Processor: Intel iCore i3-530 or AMD FX-6350Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 or AMD ATI Radeon HD 5870 (1GB VRAM). or AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 or Intel HD Graphics 4600Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 12 GB available space

• OS: Ubuntu 20.04 x64
• Processor: Intel iCore i5-3570K or AMD Ryzen 5 2400GMemory: 4 GB RAM
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1GB VRAM) or AMD Radeon R7 370 (2 GB VRAM)Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 12 GB available space