Hey everyone!!! The ASTRONEER team is back with another one of our monthly updates.

WHERE WE ARE

ICYMI: 2026 ASTRONEER development has been focused on monthly quality of life upgrades, bugfixes, and overhauls to existing content and systems that really needed it. We made a deliberate decision to lower the amount of new content going in, so we could set ourselves on a better foundation for the future of ASTRONEER as we get close to TEN YEARS of development. We have been making improvements to Megastructures, worked on longtime bugs, and improved gameplay systems in the base game and DLCs.

This update is on the smaller side, but with good reason: The team is focused on delivering our first content update in a while to coincide with our 10-year anniversary in December. That being said, we will still maintain our monthly cadence, but we are minimizing risk as much as possible so we can finish the year with a nice smooth rollout. Let’s talk about this update, what is happening, and then I will give you a lil’ preview and some leeks for the Anniversary Update and beyond further down the page.

PATCH 1.45.1

While the content and bug fixes in this bad boy are pretty slim, things are still happening in ASTRONEER land! We are bringing back the LEEEEEEEEK set and the EXO ARCHIVE continues to deliver the fun.

Note: Release of this patch for the Nintendo Switch will be delayed in the Asia region. We’ll notify on our social channels when the update has gone out for this platform and region.

HAPPENINGS

Log in during Leek Weeks!

That is right. Our somewhat cursed meme borne out of a bad joke and misspelling is back. We are doing things a little bit different this time: the full set is available for FREE in the EXO Outfitters store while Leek Weeks is active! No more disrupting your weekend chores all weekend to grab them all.

Expanding the EXO Archive

The EXO Archive has been going strong with our weekly story releases. In case you’re unfamiliar, we introduced this initiative with our previous update. We kickstarted it with the “Snail Tales: Enoki” short story, and since then we’ve also released the “You Again: Bet the F.A.R.M.” short story, the Temple of KTHOOM comic, and the Ode to PUM-KN Shelter poem!

Prepare some tea and get to reading. We also added back a dedicated channel in Discord so all of the lore heads can talk about the ASTRONEER universe if you are interested. Look for the #astroneer-lore-and-spoilers channel.

This week’s drop is a digital re-release of the “Have we Met?” comic that dropped as part of the Astroneer: Countdown graphic novel in 2023. If you couldn’t get your hands on a physical version, now is your chance to enjoy it.

“Conductor Bell is trapped in a simulation with an annoying new partner, Dr. Gabriel Stone—only is he actually new? There’s something familiar about Stone that Bell can’t quite put her finger on…” 

READ THE “HAVE WE MET?” COMIC

PATCH NOTES

Improvements

Bug Fixes

Like I said, short and sweet. Keep an eye on our Live Bug Tracker to check the status on other bugs we are looking at, and if you run into an issue that isn’t listed or you have more information to share, please send us a bug report. 

LOOKING AHEAD

Okay, time to talk about the future. As mentioned, the Anniversary Update is our next big thing, but that isn’t the only stuff the team is working on! We are already working behind the scenes on 2027 content plans, so let’s go through a little bit of the Anniversary, and then some of the work beyond:

The Anniversary Update

There’s some exciting stuff coming in the Anniversary Update we’re eager to talk more about, but I am only authorized to talk about some of it now. Today we will cover some of the rad changes that are coming to the Intermodal Terminal, a.k.a. the “IMT”, a.k.a. the “I want to move items between planets automatically machine” and maybe share a mysterious leek in true ASTRONEER fashion.

The IMT

One thing we identified during the year was that the IMT was “working” but could use some improvements to make it more user friendly. In Patch 1.42.3, we updated automated item tier filtering, how storage items get transferred, the control panel, and the built in Rail Stations.  

With the Anniversary Update, we’re making a significant revamp to the UI of the IMT control panels to make it much easier and more intuitive to use. Now you will be able to manage all IMT’s from a single place without having to travel back and forth. The new UI will show the status and allow for the adjustment of settings of all IMTs on other planets. 

???

It wouldn’t be patch notes by me if I didn’t share a no context leek for you all to furiously speculate on so here it is!

News on Save Management Features

We’ve been teasing the new autosave and other new save file management features for a few months, and now we feel confident enough in them to share a proper update.

What are we targeting? Outside of being able to enable time-based autosaving and customize the autosave event triggers, we’re also letting players manually save, no need to have a vehicle or shelter nearby.

Because autosaves will create multiple saves for a single game, the UI will nest all of these files under a single header, highlighting the most recent saved game so you can more easily see where you left off. Again, this is also a work in progress and may receive additional changes before it goes live. 

The reason we left the game save system as-is for this long is because it is a complex system with lots of knock-on effects. During early access development we had a number of progress wipes, and we promised after 1.0 that saved game compatibility was going to be maintained for years to come.

Now that we are working to revamp them ~7ish years later, we need to be thorough testing a variety of saves to make sure that the new system handles everything gracefully across all of our game save types (vanilla, creative, custom, DLC) and for all of our supported platforms across PC and console. We are going to keep working our butts off to bring these upgrades as soon as they are ready and are currently planning for a release in 2027.

WHEW

Okay, that ended up being a lot! This was a pretty small update, but I wanted to make sure you all got a substantial look at where things are going. Expect to see more in-depth information about ASTRONEER development progress as the Anniversary Update comes together and we get further information dialed in for 2027. See you in the next one.

– jt.