Greetings, pilots! The wait is over: the hotly anticipated Summer Update aka Drake: Gang Wars is finally here! Its our most significant Early Access update, adding tons of new things to the game even though were not done yet - therell be one more update later this year before we wrap things up and work on the v1.0 release which is still scheduled for early 2023. For now, you can enjoy Drake, an all-new star system featuring well over a dozen carefully hand-crafted locations with stunning lava and ice environments, underwater exploration, exciting new enemy types and status effects, brand new challenges and puzzles as well as a three-chapter side quest, introducing daring pilots to the new system, and much more. Have a look at our official release trailer! [previewyoutube=aGyJxlMMjcE;full][/previewyoutube]

Drake | New Side Missions

Drake is undoubtedly the star (pun intended) of the summer update with its mesmerizing new lava, ice, and underwater locations. These environments not only look darn pretty; they also feature new damage types that players have to deal with on planets and in open space, too.

I think both the lava and ice locations are absolutely awesome. However, I was just blown away when I had to go underwater to disable mines and plant my own explosives in a gigantic, half-sunken space station. I havent seen anything like this in any other game before, and from my own wreck-diving experience I can testify this is precisely how it looks and feels. Granted, I wasnt scuba diving on another water planet, but you get me. Gosh, I wished we had even more underwater content, but our team already said we might be revisiting those locations, again at v1.0; fingers crossed!
You get to Drake via a side quest you must pick up from Elek at the Homebase in Ceto. Its quite a deep side quest, expanding over three missions, and will introduce you to the new system, its most prominent locations, new gameplay mechanics, and three new factions.

New Factions

In Drake, youll have to deal with three new Factions, the Coalition, Retaliators, and Zurilia. They have quite a vicious beef with each other which will escalate into a massive space battle. I dont want to spoil too much but heres some basic info about them.
The Coalition is a faction that veteran pilots probably still remember from Elek, one of the five side characters in the EVERSPACE Encounters expansion. Its loosely named after the Cohhilition community from top streamer CohhCarnage whos a huge fan of the EVERSPACE series and one of our top Kickstarter backers. This time, he even went for the Space Architect pledge, which allowed helping name and design a space station in the game: The massive Letho Star Port, the main hub in Drake you have seen in the trailer, is what Cohh has been working on together with Uwe, our Creative Director. This is also where the three-chapter side quest kicks into gear if you know what I mean when checking out Cohhs logo on his twitch channel.
The next faction youll encounter is another fan-inspired faction, The Zurilia, named after Zurilia, another top-tier Kickstarter backer of ours. They control all locations that are fire-themed. Naturally, they are a pretty hot-headed bunch, and even their ships and gear make good use of some fancy heat-based technology, which can severely damage your ship components.
The third faction is The Retaliators, who control the water/ice-themed locations in Drake. You might expect them to be cool-headed, but they are also aggressive when you enter their territory, attacking with frosty weapons and dealing stun damage to your ship which can have some dire consequences when hit in the heat of a fight. Ok, my puns are not getting any better, but youll get the gist when listening to their dialog. ;) BTW, since we know that not everyone is a fan of our TTS placeholders, keep in mind the new story content will be voiced at v1.0; the same goes for localization as things are still subject to change, and to make sure that voice-recording and translating text and UI are worthwhile, we need to hit a certain amount of lines.

New Perks

With the new update, we raised the player level cap to 25 and added three new player perks. Pro-tip: Retaliation, reflecting 30% of incoming damage to your attackers, is especially useful when dealing with the new damage types within the Drake system.
Good ol buddy Tareen, also known from the Encounters expansion, received new perks for ship dealers.
Lastly, HIVE also offers a new perk, improving your ability to switch secondaries mid-battle.

High-Risk Area Mutators

High-risk areas have received a major upgrade by adding Mutators into the mix. These expand upon the gameplay variety while creating a higher challenge for those who want to get a taste of what to expect in the upcoming endgame of EVERSPACE 2. And yes, HRA bosses are now a delicious loot piata.
There are a number of positive mutators, like Enemies dropping lots of credits upon death, G&B reinforcements on-site, or Spawn a protector sphere generator, which can be grabbed and used to get immunity to debuffs. On the negative, you might have to deal with Enemies deal area damage upon death, Enemies drop proximity mines upon death, Enemies slowly repair their hull, Two bosses, Enemies are resistant to EMP, Enemies leave behind corrosion fields when killed, and more nasty surprises.

QoL Improvements

Furthermore, the team has been working on several Quality of Life improvements, many of which were community-inspired. For instance, the possibility to craft consumables. But that's not all! You can now craft components from resources, too, so you can build that much-desired Catalyst even though you might not have every single component in place but plenty of others you're welcome!
Tracking required resources for crafting is an all-new feature that goes nicely together with the new resources map mode. Not only will you see right away what resources are still required to make that nifty new piece of equipment, but with one click on the map's submenu, you'll see right away where chances are high to find that precious ore or crystal that's still missing. Hot-swapping armor was long in the making and a hot community demand, too, so now it's here! Furthermore, some perks like Percussive Maintenance have been overhauled to better work with regenerating armor. Not really a QoL improvement but very noticeable: Gero, our Sound Director, has implemented significantly improved weapon SFX based on item rarity, giving primaries more oomph and distinction.

Major Rebalancing

With Drake: Gang Wars Early Access pilots are also receiving a massive round of rebalancing based on internal playtests and community feedback, which is one of the main reasons for our open-development approach. Therefore, we highly encourage everyone to start a new game and let us know how the progression/difficulty feels on the Steam forums. Especially around level 10, the difficulty curve should feel much better now. That said, we also want to give all pilots a heads-up that Drake sits at a much higher difficulty level, so you will have to use all your weaponry, consumables, ship devices and mainframe expansions to the fullest while also keeping your gear up to your current player level to succeed. Also, we strongly recommend doing side activities and not just beeline through the story content Drake is no picnic in space!

TrackIR and AMD FSR Support

On the technical side, TrackIR support and AMD FSR have also been added to the game. The implementation of TrackIR was much more complicated than we thought the devil was in the details, as it always is. However, Ingmar, our technical programmer, didnt let go, and were pleased with the result. He was also responsible for implementing AMD FSR and is still working with our friends at AMD on improving the experience with FSR 2.0 further down the road.

Changelog - 0.9.28028

Features

• Added new star system: Drake
• Added new side missions
• Added new faction: Coalition
• Added new enemy faction: Retaliators
• Added new enemy faction: Zurilia
• Added mutators to high-risk areas
• Added crafting of consumables
• Added new companion perks
• Added new player perks
• Increased level cap to 25
• Added new music
• Added new challenges
• Added new consumables
• Tier 3 ships are now available at ship dealers
• Added new ship modules
• Added new decals
• Added new weapon sounds
• Added new secondary weapon bonus attributes
• Added new passives for all ship sub-classes
• Added new map mode to show resource deposits
• Added new job type in Drake system: "Battle Support"
• Added option to enable TrackIR v5
• Added option to enable AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution
• Added option to hide XP numbers
• Added tracking of resources
• Added action to craft from an empty equipment slot
• Added an info banner when all secrets have been discovered in a location
• Added shortcut keys (and bindings) to directly open specific menu pages like "Missions" and "Perks"
• Added pre-caching and quick refresh for crafting tab to improve performance
• Added proper (gamepad-) navigation for crafting inventory incl. implicit scrolling
• Added various new G&B turrets

Tweaks

• Armor can now be swapped out at any time
• Prevent Flak projectiles from triggering while player is inside damage radius (prevents most cases of accidental self-damage)
• Armor hits will now also trigger the "Percussive Maintenance" perk
• Consumables now have item rarities assigned to them
• Freshly installed primary weapons now start with 0 energy and need to charge first
• Potential mining yield display on the star map can now be unlocked earlier with a HIVE perk
• Vanguard Time Extender ULT will now leave the ship mostly unaffected by the time dilation
• Changed movement pattern and speed of first Outlaw boss' ship so it can be hit easier
• Wrecks will now fully repair a Vindicator drone when used
• Enemies now have better accuracy when firing at stationary targets
• ARC-9000 explosion can now be triggered manually by deactivating the ULT prematurely
• The Flying Dutchess is now also offering a handful of ships (via perk)
• An alternative set of passives of offered ships can now be chosen (via perk)
• Ship dealer offers can now be rerolled every 10 minutes (via perk)
• Shops will now sometimes offer equipment 1 or 2 levels above the player level
• Jobs now give faction-independent "renown" instead of faction-based "standing" (consolidated old save files by transferring "standing" into "renown")
• Decals are now unlocked after completing certain side missions, reaching a certain renown rank, or when completing Prescott Starbase location 100% (when loading old save games decals are given retroactively)
• The small lines at the top and bottom of the HUD now turn red while in combat (if any enemy is targeting the player or if any enemy is within 2km range)
• Tweaked look of G&B ships and turrets
• Tweaked look of Maddocks' freighter
• Refined many environments and assets
• Moved autosave file generation after undocking to start of animation to avoid freeze while flying out
• Integrated localization changes suggested from Crowdin community
• EMP Generator "Shield Surge" mode will now restore 10% shield hitpoints for each target hit, instead of an explicit value
• Fusion Hook now takes ship mass into account
• Balancing: Rebalanced loot rarity drop chance
• Balancing: Doubled effect of high-velocity affix
• Balancing: Mainframe Expansions will now increase an attribute's value by 5%, not by 20 points
• Balancing: Reduced player ship base shield and plating hitpoints
• Balancing: Increased armor and shield bonuses of most player ships across the board
• Balancing: Increased player ship hitpoint scaling from tier level
• Balancing: Reduced Structure attribute scaling
• Balancing: Increased base weapon damage but reduced Firepower scaling
• Balancing: Revised energy economy and leveled out shield, boost, and weapon energy to equal ranges
• Balancing: Reduced Quantum Tether duration from 20s to 16s
• Balancing: Buffed "Prime Zapper" and "Equalizer" coil guns and made them feel more unique
• Balancing: Increased Corrosion Injector damage
• Balancing: Reduced Armor Drone buff radius
• Balancing: Increased Annihilator Virus cooldown, slightly reduced range and damage
• Balancing: Switched Annihilator Virus damage types so it will primarily deal kinetic damage
• Balancing: Dismantling items will now yield fewer lower rarity parts
• Balancing: Increasing the rarity of an item now also requires lower rarity parts
• Balancing: High-Risk Area bosses and Elite units will have a greater chance to drop higher rarity loot
• Balancing: Decreased Outlaw Drone Carrier deployment frequency for Link Drones
• Balancing: Reduced Scatter Gun charge duration by 50%
• Balancing: Increased Flak range and damage radius
• Balancing: Reduced Rail Gun energy consumption
• Balancing: Increased Missile Defense System duration
• Balancing: Decreased Recharge Booster's recharge delay
• Balancing: Revised Bloodstar Repeater, making it more competitive
• Balancing: Significantly increased Scatter Gun damage
• UI: Reworked catalyst selection including craft & install functionality
• UI: Added option to craft missing components to speed up catalyst and consumable crafting
• UI: Reworked error-prone "tap to show" (unlock-) banner behavior and added proper queuing
• UI: Added and improved multiple smaller features for the perk tab like invest indicators
• UI: Perks - Changed that invest indicator is only visible if player can upgrade the perk
• UI: The state of having the dialog board open or closed in the pause menu is now saved
• UI: Added option to immediately resume the game from the "game saved" screen
• UI: Change style of HUD warning that warns players that a mission will fail when leaving the location
• UI: Prototype and Starforged Items now stand out more
• UI: Added border to clickable buttons
• UI: Items now display the name of the companion perk and the current invest ratio if this item is tracked
• UI: Added complete new indicator logic for the crafting tab (e.g. unlocked blueprints)
• UI: Stackable items in shop or container now show the owned item amount in the upper right corner of their item info widget
• UI: Optimized display logic of the item level arrow indication
• UI: Added quick jump markers when buying resources
• UI: Crafting inventory now lists already found resources even if current amount is zero. (To make them trackable)
• UI: Crafting panel - Multiple design adjustments and optimizations (e.g. requirements)
• UI: Crafting: Removed result screen for catalysts and components to speed up the process
• UI: Crafting tab - Added ship cargo empty slot ratio
• UI: Added an error message after trying to unequip an overheated item
• UI: Added an animation for the compare slot indicator image
• UI: Added "new" indicator for devices within device pool (will be reset after device was equipped for the first time)

Bugfixes

• Fixed Gunship turret tracking targets without line of sight
• Fixed Plating Item not receiving condition change when armor hitpoints are healed via Void Swarm
• Fixed that Outlaw ships launched from Redeemer base hangars
• Fixed that some pillar-shaped asteroids in random Zharkov locations still could have a wrong rotation
• Fixed that some "Rips in Space" tasks did not succeed when having them active at the time of installing update 0.8
• Fixed location progression bug where one secret was counted multiple times, leading to > 5/4 display and >100% completion rate
• Fixed question marks shown for location progression on some occasions
• Fixed missing Expertise name for Stinger in Ship Dealer screen
• Fixed compare values falsely transferring from Ship Dealer tooltips to Ship tab tooltips
• Fixed health and ULT ratio falsely taken from different ship when switching ships on Homebase and undocking
• Fixed Gunship turret not being hidden when arriving via Spatial Bypass
• Fixed Excessive Force perk falsely working without a shield installed
• Fixed high-capacity secondary weapons not using less energy when flying the Bomber
• Fixed Teleporter's "Parting Gift" Mode mine damage not scaling with Utility
• Fixed ARC-9000 and Quantum Tether recharging their own ULT energy
• Fixed Scorpion Missile having an infinite range
• Fixed upgrading rarity of plating items
• Fixed ULT icon and charge ratio not immediately updating after changing ships on Homebase
• Fixed destroying enemies with mines not repairing armor
• Mounted turrets are less likely to hit their owner and do not cause damage if they do
• Fixed Spatial Bypass locations not being selectable on any zoom level
• Fixed that there was an Outlaw Turret in one of the random Redeemer bases
• Fixed hud marker of vindicator drone wrecks disappearing after ULT use
• Fixed that under certain conditions it was possible to infect yourself with your own Annihilator Virus
• Fixed that some location actors like turrets were not respawning after some hours
• Fixed that weapon characteristics like splash damage could carry over if you swap weapons before the projectile hits
• Fixed optimized affix still present on item after installing new affix catalyst
• Fixed corrosion mines spawned from minefields applying too much corrosion damage
• Fixed zero amount pickups being spawned for hardened ore patch explosion
• Fixed that when completing a job with item rewards and pressing tab while "claim rewards" was shown, no xp, credits, or renown (used to be standing) were given if item reward was then claimed before leaving the current location
• Fixed that Eclipse weapon switch buff was not granted when directly equipping weapons via hotkey
• Fixed that modify action wasn't displayed for purchased equipment
• Fixed that missile locking animation and sound persisted when uninstalling all secondary weapons while currently in the process of locking
• Fixed Fusion Hook activation VFX
• Fixed that Vindicator drones would attack and potentially kill Maddocks during chase
• UI: Fixed that amount of items in crafting inventory was sometimes clipped while scrolling
• UI: Fixed that longer item names may have been cut off in the shop tab
• UI: Fixed multiple smaller spacing and alignment problems with the numeric font
• UI: Fixed item selection button design in crafting modify panel
• UI: Repair widget gamepad navigation was sometimes broken
• UI: Fixed some minor rendering issues of inventory sorting icons
• UI: Fixed Quickly CTRL+Left click on a lot of items for mass-marking sometimes skips one
• UI: Fixed that item icon shine animation wasn't always working
• UI: Fixed that using the mouse-wheel in the device selection menu could lead to unexpected selection behavior
• UI: Fixed misleading outdated equipment indicator on coilgun in tutorial
• UI: Fixed missing refresh of cooldown slot animation after "craft and equip" of secondaries
• UI: Item selection - Fixed that slot indication frame of source item wasn't properly rendered sometimes
• UI: Item selection - Scroll indication bar at bottom was accidentally shown in case there was nothing to equip
• UI: Item selection - Fixed bug that ship inventory was invisible when trying to swap fully stacked consumables of the same type
• UI: Item selection - Fixed bug in "other ships" category that was listing empty slots after ships slots expansion via Tareen perk
• UI: Item selection - Fixed multiple bugs when installing consumables from another ship
• UI: Item selection - Fixed that initial slot information may have been wrong for modules in some cases
• UI: Fixed bug that ingame inventory could be rendered haft transparent due to stuck fadeIn-animation
• UI: Fixed Preferred compare target slot logic was not fully working in some cases
• UI: Fixed that moving the mouse during crafting (hold-) action may reset the progress sometimes
• UI: Fixed Elek perk requirements. For new games, upgrading the Elek perk now requires an Equalizer (coil gun)

Tweaks (Only relevant when having played on the experimental branch before)

• Increased Advanced Combat Challenge Reward Buff duration from 10 to 20 seconds
• Changed secondary autofire bonus attribute to only work for locked targets and missiles

Bugfixes (Only relevant when having played on the experimental branch before)

• Fixed that there could be floating turrets and other weird issues in a generic Zurilia base
• Fixed that some cargo drone containers could be opened by shooting them instead of requiring interaction
• Fixed that there was an engine trail missing on some of the new ship modules
• Fixed that upgrading prototype gear did not change the ring color
• Fixed asteroid turrets in high-risk areas not giving XP and armor refill
• Fixed that "Wealthy Foes" mutator could spawn Bloodstar equipment and credits for boss entourage in high-risk areas
• Fixed Advanced Combat Challenge Reward Buff triggering after loading
• Fixed that the "Flying Dutchess sells ships" perk was not considered for shop/ship dealer icons on the map and in space
• Fixed Fusion Hook being usable underwater
• UI: Fixed that inventory mark action was active in some cases even though no slot was selected

Ok, and thats that for our summer update! We hope you will enjoy all the new content, improvements, and fixes, and we very much look forward to your esteemed feedback. If you like the experience, please give us a thumbs up, leave a comment, or even a positive review, which really does help a lot. If you dont, feel free to let us know, too. Rest assured, we read every comment and every review, while we hope for your understanding that we wont be able to please anyone, and that some features would be just too much work or simply dont fit into our vision for EVERSPACE 2. With that, Ill leave you to it, and we hope to see many pilots in our first official Drake: Gang Wars live stream on Twitch and YouTube, every Friday from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm CEST / 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm EDT / 11:00 am to 1:00 pm PDT. This time, well have another premiere, as Garry, aka GeekByteUK, long-term EVERSPACE fan and Kickstarter backer for both titles will be your host since Erik, aka Giraffasaur, our beloved Community Ambassador, is on another short break. Dont stop being awesome, and see you in Drake! Michael and your dedicated ROCKFISH Games Team