Stellaris is all about exploring space. Your fledgling civilization sets a course across the stars to colonize, expand, and interact with myriad interstellar peoples, and your job is to guide it. But what if your goal was different? What if, instead of settling on new stars, you were tasked with preservation? From Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis developer Paradox, that’s the goal of the new Stellaris Grand Archive DLC. So put down your weapon and pick up your clipboard, because it’s time to manage the best museum in the universe.
In the Grand Archive, you take control of the eponymous Stellaris megastructure with one goal: to collect and preserve life from across the universe. There are 151 specimens to collect (coincidentally, the same number of generation-one Pokemon), and up to an extra 240 spread across the 4X game’s expansions. Your mission isn’t just in the name of ecological preservation, though, as you can breed the space fauna in the Vivarium, and use genetic enhancements to help you engineer custom fleets.
These genetic enhancements are going to come in handy very quickly, as the Grand Archive introduces a brand-new mid-game crisis called The Voidworm Plague. Taking the form of a galaxy-wide infestation, you’ll need all the help you can get in taking on this new threat to your empire. Who would’ve thought fighting gargantuan cosmic Cthulu monsters could be fun?
You’ve also got two new origins to choose from: Treasure Hunter and Primal Calling. The former means you have a “thirst for adventure,” while the latter grants you a “primal connection” to wildlife, essentially making you a steward of the fauna of your world.
To complete the expansion, you also get the new Archivism and Domestication tradition trees, 17 more relics, and two new civics in Galactic Curators and Beastmasters. So if your galactic conquest is feeling a little stale, the Stellaris Grand Archive expansion is the perfect refresher.
Stellaris story pack Grand Archive is out now and will cost you $14.99 / £12.79. The free 3.14 update Circinus is also available now for all players. You can find the Grand Archive DLC right here.
If you want to enhance your experience even more we’ve got all the best Stellaris mods to up your game, alongside some incredible strategy games if you’re looking for something a little different.
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