Distant Worlds 2 News

The Atuuk are the youngest starfarers of the galaxy. They are highly sociable and are eager to take their place amongst the other factions in the galaxy and prove that they too can be great.





While the Atuuk don’t excel in any particular area of empire building, in fact, they are a generally a bit worse, they more than make up for it with their high population growth, overall higher levels of happiness, and affinity for diplomacy. However, the Atuuk’s greatest strength is their society’s ability to mobilize and organize around the Great Direction – their faction’s flagship mechanic.



Whenever the Atuuk choose a Great Direction, a general focus for their society, they become extremely proficient in one area of their empire and can even surpass some of the other factions, though only temporarily. Alongside the Great Direction, the Atuuk forego the normal leadership mechanics of Distant Worlds’ governments and instead their leaders will change occasionally based on the constantly shifting Great Directions the Atuuk pursue. The Atuuk yearn for a Great One to lead them on their Great Directions, and this Great One, in turn makes Atuuk society all the more inspired and motivated. It is possible that these Great Ones may turn out not to be true Great Ones, which will lead to a new selection of Great Ones until a true Great One is found.



Atuuk victory conditions also flow from their Great Directions. There are seven Great Directions in total, each providing a unique objective that thematically fits with the Great Direction’s features. As such, the Great Directions are there not only to provide bonuses to your faction, but to challenge you to truly take the Atuuk to galactic greatness.





Players can expect the following unique features for the Atuuk when they purchase Distant Worlds 2: Factions – Atuuk and Wekkarus:

• Unique mechanics tied to the Atuuk Great Direction – a cyclical change of focus for Atuuk society that greatly improves their abilities in a singular area of their empire, ranging from improved research to greatly enhanced combat strength, and many more, while also providing an increasing number of victory objectives to prove their greatness to the galaxy. Periodically, Atuuk will need to choose a new Great One from a pool of their own marked with Great Potential to lead them on their Great Direction. Some Atuuk may have reservations on the direction the Atuuk are taking with Direction Doubt, though this is only temporary.
  
• The Atuuk are a happy faction that plays well on the galactic diplomatic stage, though they are naïve, gullible, and quite dim-witted, which means they don’t excel in any particular area when not following one of their special Great Directions.
  
• Additional and surprising bonuses and effects when pressing the big glowing Red Button on their science stations
  
• Atuuk construction standards aren’t quite up to snuff compared to the other galactic players, so their ships will experience unexpected malfunctions while traversing the galaxy.
  
• Bonuses to combat when outnumbering their opponents when fighting on the planet surface. There are a lot of Atuuk!
  
• The Intergalactic Welcome Center makes the Atuuk empire more attractive for all migrants and tourists, thus strengthening the bonds of interstellar understanding
  
• Collection of Great Things – a unique facility that gathers all the wondrous things the Atuuk have gathered in their travels and exploration that improve their overall happiness and research
  
• Special thematic Character Traits for their entire lineup of characters bringing out the flavor of the Atuuk faction
  
• Their unique story gives them an advantage when dealing with some of the factions in the galaxy to help them form strong bonds and long-standing treaties.
  
• Atuuk are the first faction to be completely immune to psychic effects, making them a useful ally for anyone fighting psychically-capable factions
  

WISHLIST NOW:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3350550/Distant_Worlds_2_Factions__Atuuk_and_Wekkarus/

Welcome Back, explorers.

We're thrilled to announce that Distant Worlds 2: Atuuk and Wekkarus, the third Faction DLC for the acclaimed 4X space strategy game Distant Worlds 2 is coming on the third of April. This new DLC brings two brand new playable factions: the naive and energetic Atuuk and the mysterious Wekkarus.

The Atuuk were one of the last races to develop faster-than-light technology and make their first steps into interstellar travel before the Cataclysm hit the galaxy. They are not a particularly smart race and were only able to develop faster-than-light technology after ships from a faction they call The Long-Ago Friends crashed on the Atuuk homeworld. The Atuuk make up for their diminished intellect with a great sense of wonder, excitement at trying new things, and an overall friendliness towards other factions. Although the Atuuk aren’t particularly great at anything, their strength comes from the ability of their society to unify and focus on a particular area for a limited time. This is encapsulated in their central feature of choosing a Great Direction every few years which provides a set of objectives and bonuses for their society. The Atuuk narrative centers around their desire to find these Long-Ago Friends who gave them faster-than-light travel and to take their place in the wider galaxy to show everyone and to prove to themselves how great they are. During this journey, they face difficult and challenging truths about the galaxy and who their friends really are.



The Wekkarus are the most alien faction to inhabit the galaxy. Some among them even say they did not originate in this galaxy. Their legends speak of a timeless, ancient war that left them far diminished from what they once were. As such, they keep to themselves and live in the deepest darkest caverns of ocean planets, preserving what remains of Wekkarus society. Their story centers around rediscovering lost artifacts, outposts, and ruins to learn of their origins and the secrets of their ancient war with a dangerous enemy. The Wekkarus highlight feature is their mysterious connection with their ancient ancestors – a manifested collective memory of the Wekkarus. This ability can trigger whenever Wekkarus find themselves under heightened stress. In such times they connect with the echoes and vestiges of their ancestors for both guidance and direct support.




Each of these new factions also comes with their own special storyline and unique story locations, adding to the possible exploration events and to your knowledge of galactic lore. The Atuuk will take you on a path of discovery and revelation as the Atuuk are introduced to the wonders of starfaring and realize who their friends are, while the history of the Wekkarus will take you on a quest to find powerful ancient artifacts that will lead to earth-shattering truths about their origins and a terrifying connection to the greatest threats to the galaxy!

[h3]CONTROL UPDATE [/h3]
But that’s not all, we have some other exciting news for you the Control update is coming soon.



Control Update Highlights:

• Boskara and Zenox factions refreshed with new gameplay and improved ship and station textures
  
• Queued Mission support added for Ships and Fleets to help with manual playstyles
  
• Galaxy Search added to allow players to easily find any star, planet, moon, station, ship or any other item on the galactic map
  
• UI improvements to help with information management:
  
  • Exploration now tracks pinged locations in the Special Locations section
    
  • Improvements to top header bar
    
  • Additional sort and filter options for various lists
    
  • Improvements to Migration and Tourism map overlays
    
  • Additional tooltips
• Additional Galaxy Setup options for your starting system
  
• Improvements to Upgrade Ship Designs and Design/Research Policy AI
  
• Improved management of Planetary Facilities
  
• Save/Load Fleet Templates
  
• Improved Fleet and Ship Behavior
  
• Improved Colonization behavior, especially with Outposts
  
• Improved modding support for localization.
  

Keep an eye on our channel because there will be a lot of special streaming event with Erik Rutins, producer and co-designer of Distant Worlds 2. Get a reminder here.

WISHLIST NOW:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3350550/Distant_Worlds_2_Factions__Atuuk_and_Wekkarus/

Hello and Happy New Year to everyone in the Distant Worlds 2 community.
As before, Elliot and I would like to thank our players for their patience and support since Distant Worlds 2 was released. 2023 saw our first two expansions for Distant Worlds 2 along with four Major updates (Aurora, Hyperspeed, Discovery and Fleet).
We continued improving DW2 with the Stellar, Game Faction and Maintenance updates in 2024, along with the release of our first feature expansion, Return of the Shakturi. Thus in 2024 customers received faction refreshes and many, many game improvements and fixes for free along with the one big Shakturi expansion.
We hope you have been enjoying Return of the Shakturi and we’re excited to share with you what’s coming next for Distant Worlds 2.



[h3]The Current State of the Game[/h3]
We’ve continued to put a large part of our effort into ongoing free updates for the DW2 community to keep improving the game, rather than just focusing on DLC content or locking everything behind expansions. As a result, the base game is much improved and continuing to improve over time. We continue to improve almost all gameplay areas as well as the AI, which saw major improvements as part of the work on Return of the Shakturi and would run circles around the empire AI at release.
There has been a lot of positive feedback about our free base faction refreshes and I’m glad to say that these will continue, with the next two just around the corner. We have the Boskara and the Zenox due to be refreshed in the next official update by the end of Q1 2025, which includes some texture fixes for the Boskara ships and stations and a major overhaul of the look of the Zenox ships and stations. The Teekans and Haakonish should follow by the end of 2025, leaving the Ackdarians as the final base game faction to refresh, likely next year.
Return of the Shakturi took a great deal of our time, but we think the results were worth the effort. As a result of that, we are already planning our next Feature Expansion while we finish the upcoming Atuuk and Wekkarus DLC, which we expect to officially announce soon. Both of these factions have some very unique gameplay which we think you will enjoy and they also have some unique lore and gameplay that interacts with the Return of the Shakturi expansion.
While we are a very small team, we are committed to both expanding the game with new DLCs and expansions but also continuing to update and improve the base game through our ongoing free updates. We want to make sure everyone who purchased DW2 can enjoy it to its fullest on their system and for their playstyle.

[h3]Roadmap 2025[/h3]
We are happy to share our journey with you, along with the roadmap outlining the next steps for this year.



[h3]Our next areas to focus on:[/h3]

1. Update the base factions in the game, one by one, to a similar level as the recently released DLCs when it comes to faction and government gameplay differentiation. Completed for the Humans and Mortalen, Boskara and Zenox are almost finished. Teekan and Haakonish should follow late this year and the Ackdarians are last in line, probably in 2026 to complete the base faction refresh.
   
2. Continuing improvements on fleet and ship behavior. There have been major improvements and fixes for the fleet and ship AI as part of the Return of the Shakturi, which was in the base game updates, though it always seems that there’s another corner case or two to address. We still plan to also add more guidance for fleet and ship tactical settings as well as more detail in the galactopedia to help players understand how to use their fleets.
   
3. Further improvements to pathing issues as well as pathfinding performance. We made some significant improvements here during 2024 and the more recent reports suggest that pathfinding issues are far less frequent now, but some remain especially when starting a path from deep space and near nebulas. Additional improvements are planned after the next official update.
   
4. Improve the AI further. As part of the Return of the Shakturi work, we greatly improved the AI in many areas including economic management and diplomatic/military strategy. As always, there’s more that can be done. We still need to improve the population policy side, specific to slavery but also other policies. We plan to revisit the design of these in the future and also improve the AI’s management of population policies.
   
5. Improve quality of life for manual players further. We have just added support for queued orders in the first public beta update for 2025. We’ve also added a map search function to the exploration menu along with a few other features to help with manual exploration. We have a list of additional improvements for manual play which we will be working through as the year progresses.
   
6. Improve message handling and awareness further. We added a new much more detailed message filtering system with separate message centers in 2024, including a new combat overlay to help with spotting battle activity during wars and a separate message center for advisor messages. We are still working to add the ability to tell an advisor “do not suggest this again” or to tell a Pirate or an Empire “do not contact me again with this offer” to help further reduce message spam.
   
7. Adding a Galactopedia and Galaxy map Search function. We now have a galaxy map search aand a distance measurement tool. The Galactopedia search will be coming in an update this year.
   
8. Modding support will continue to be a priority. We’ve expanded this greatly since release, including the addition of an in-game mod manager, Steam Workshop support and much better handling of multiple mods. We also recently added support for code modding and deobfuscated more methods to better support localization mods for more complex languages.
   
9. There are also other reported issues beyond those above which we will also address as we go forward, this is by no means an exhaustive list, but these are our current highest priority goals. We have been compiling master lists of all issue reports by category and as our time allows, we work our way through these areas to make sure we continue to improve the player experience with DW2.

[h3]Future Expansions[/h3]
As always, the Content and Art teams are not heavily involved in most of the game fixes we’ve been working through, so they have been spending most of their time working on future releases.
Our first priority is the Atuuk and Wekkarus DLC, which will release in early Q2 2025. Stay tuned for our official announcement in Q1 which will reveal the exact release date and more details about these new factions. Each of them has unique new gameplay features and interesting lore that ties into the DW2 and Shakturi storylines.
The Wekkarus are among the most ancient and mysterious aliens in DW2 with possible connections to the Shakturi. The Atuuk are space lemmings of a sort who were just barely smart enough to figure out FTL. This DLC will work fine whether you have “Return of the Shakturi” or not, but will have some additional features/content related to that expansion if you have it. If you don’t like what the Shakturi psychic abilities can do to you when they show up, you will probably love playing as the Atuuk, who are almost entirely resistant to psychic effects.
We are also in the planning stages for the next feature expansion and I can tease that it will at last bring playable Pirates to DW2. We won’t be announcing that officially until much later this year as we are still working through the design. We expect it to be a 2025 release.
Work has also begun on the fourth "Factions" DLC. All we can say about that now is that it includes the Securans and the Naxxilians and will likely release in 2026.



[h3]Update Schedule[/h3]
It will generally take 6-12 weeks of public beta updates to get to an update that is stable enough to become official. For 2025, we expect to release public beta updates roughly every two weeks and new free official updates every 3 months or so, though there may be a slow down in that schedule once the Pirate expansion work gets into high gear.

[h3]Our Thanks[/h3]
Thank you again if you took the time to read all of this and for your support of Distant Worlds 2. Please check in regularly going forward and try the newest beta updates if you’d like to see how things are shaping up.
Please stay tuned for more information on Atuuk and Wekkarus DLC in Q1 and more on the Pirate Expansion and future DLCs later this year.

Sincerely,
Erik Rutins and Elliot Gibbs
Matrix Games and CodeForce

Hello everyone.
This is the second of two Developer Blogs covering strategy after the release of Distant Worlds 2: Return of the Shakturi. As most Distant Worlds players know, the Shakturi are an ancient and terrible threat which was responsible for the last cataclysmic galactic war, the scars and remains of which are visible throughout the current galaxy. The goal of these blogs will be to pull back the curtain a bit on the Shakturi crisis and help you figure out how to defeat these terrifying arch-enemies.
If you don’t want any spoilers regarding the story, you should stop here. If you’d rather try for one of the other two endings, either joining the Shakturi and helping them win or staying out of both the Shakturi Axis and the Freedom Alliance, we’ll mention those only briefly. Our focus will be on how to stop the Shakturi conquering the galaxy.

Genetic Engineering
We discussed the importance of the Genetic engineering research tree in Part 1 when it comes to countering Shakturi influence on the Rift Striders and other space creatures. However, there’s a second part to this tree which gives you the opportunity to make some notable improvements to your empire. You can improve your troops, your militia, your ship crews and marines, your leaders and your population growth. While these are less direct counters to the problems posed by the Shakturi, if time allows they can add up to a significant boost for your forces.

The Ancient Guardians
Soon after the Shakturi emerge from the rifts, you will detect some anomalous magnetic pulses. Investigating these will allow you to make contact with the only remaining fully functional Ancient Guardian artificial intelligence. The Ancient Guardians may even pre-date the previous war against the Shakturi and have been preserving information that is critical to your war efforts.
They will give you the location of a map which will lead you to three special vaults, the Vaults of Creation, Aggression and Concealment. Exploring and opening these vaults before others can will give a special boost in countering the Shakturi advantages. I recommend prioritizing these as soon as you have the opportunity.


The Ancient Guardians will be reluctant to reveal the location of their final vault until the Shakturi bring in their first reinforcement fleet with a Planet Destroyer. Note that the frequency of Shakturi reinforcement fleets depends on the number of beacons the Shakturi control, so the timing will vary from game to game and of course if you take out some of their beacons that will buy you some time.


Either way, once a Shakturi Planet Destroyer arrives in the galaxy, the Ancient Guardians will reveal to you their final most hidden and most dangerous vault – the Vault of the Shakturi Mind.


The sooner you can open this vault, the better. Contained within are two key areas of knowledge. The first is the knowledge to build Mega-Ships like Planet Destroyers. You will get access to two projects once you open the vault. The first is for the special Mega-Ship hull, the second for a special weapon or other component for the Mega-Ship. These will vary depending on the faction you are playing. These projects will start mostly researched thanks to the knowledge in the Vault.


Being able to field Mega-Ships and possibly Planet Destroyers of your own can prove to be a decisive leveler against the Shakturi. Planet Destroyers are the quickest way to take out the Shakturi Beacons, but you’ll need to use them carefully.
Mega-Ships are best used manually for best results, coordinating with your automated fleets to provide them cover and clear defenses before sending them in. Even if you don’t normally design your own ships, you may want to choose your own Mega-Ship design to make sure it has all the capabilities you want it to have. Once a Planet Destroyer arrives at a location with a target, it takes time to charge up its weapon and while these are huge and tough ships, they are not meant to take on entire fleets by themselves and do require some coordination and support. Some Mega-Ships, like those of the Zenox or Quameno, are not about destroying planets at all but give you other unique capabilities to help you hold the line.


The second and most terrible secret revealed in the final vault is the information required to engineer the Xaraktor Virus. This is the only virus known to be targeted at the Shakturi. When you first gain access to research it, understand that it starts out quite dangerous to all living beings. If you have time to develop it further before deploying it, you will find that the improved versions becomes less dangerous to all except the Shakturi. The improved Xaraktor viruses become so dangerous to the Shakturi that a single outbreak could wipe out most of their population if deployed to the right world.
The Xaraktor Virus and Planet Destroyers are both weapons of desperation for the Freedom Alliance, but if you see no other path to the defeat of the Shakturi, it’s better to have these last ditch options than to not have them.
If you fail to open the Vault of the Shakturi Mind, the Ancient Guardians will eventually distribute this information as the Shakturi continue to rampage through the galaxy, but years of time will be lost waiting for that to happen which you could have used to build those Mega-Ships, so don’t delay!


Alternate Paths
If you choose not to fight against the Shatkuri, there are two other options.
First, you could join with the Shakturi and try to become part of the Shaktur Axis. If you do this, you will have a very powerful ally indeed, but realize that you will never be seen by the Shakturi as an equal. Within the Shaktur Axis alliance, they get the only deciding vote. If you join them, they’ll share the knowledge of the cure for the Psionic Virus with you and the Rift Striders will not focus their attention on you. They’ll also eventually share the knowledge of Mega-Ships with you so you can build your own to help them.
For the Shakturi Axis, the simple goal is conquest of the galaxy. You just need to get your victory score high enough by having the most population, worlds and the largest economy in order to win.
Second, you may decide that your path is a neutral one. If you don’t join the Freedom Alliance or the Shaktur Axis, you will be looking to make sure neither of them win and they remain locked in a stalemate allowing your empire and other neutral empires to survive independently. In this case, the Ancient Guardians will eventually share the knowledge of Mega-Ships with you as well in order to fortify all non-Shakturi aligned factions, though you’ll get them later than the Freedom Alliance would get access to them unless you can find and open the Vault of the Shakturi Mind without help from the Ancient Guardians.
Your goal is to survive long enough while preventing both the Shaktur Axis and the Freedom Alliance winning before enough years have passed. Good luck, this can be quite tough to achieve!


I hope you enjoy your experiences with the Shakturi Crisis, whatever way you choose to play it.
Please stay tuned for more information in early 2025 about our plans for the next Distant Worlds 2 release!

BUY NOW:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2926560/Distant_Worlds_2_Return_of_the_Shakturi/

Welcome back explorers,
the Maintenance Update, the latest major update for Distant Worlds 2, is out now and ready for you to discover.

This major update is mainly focused on fixing issues that have been reported since the release of the Return of the Shakturi expansion, but also includes many other improvements, especially in the areas of Diplomacy, Fleet and Ship Behavior, UI and AI automation.

This update also improves modding support for those using Harmony modding for localization and should make easier localization for languages with larger and special character sets much easier.

But that's not all. For those of you who want to know every detail of the Maintenance update, a detailed changelog is available at this link



In case you didn't have the chance to watch Erik's stream on Distant Worlds 2 and its future, you can take a look at it here:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The Galaxy lives on

BUY NOW:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2926560/Distant_Worlds_2_Return_of_the_Shakturi/