Stellaris Dev Diary #390 - 4.0.23 Released, Visions of the Shroud
Date: 2025-08-28 13:19:43
by Eladrin
Hi everyone!
The 4.0.23 update went live today with the following changes and improvements - thank you for your bug reports and feedback, which helped us generate most of this list of fixes:
4.0.23 Release Notes
Balance
- Ion Cannon reactors now have more power output. Auto-designed ones should now be less likely to run out of power for the main armament.
- Auto-modding traits will now scale to 100% efficiency even if a pop group is assigned to multiple jobs.
Bugfix
- Fixed an issue with job assignment not being able to fill all jobs on a planet properly. This was most visible for Virtuality
- Fixed Necrophage secondary species refusing to work any Worker jobs on game start
- Fixed necrophage purge sometimes does not generate pops.
- Fixed Agrarian Villages disappearing on wet worlds for non-angler empires
- Fix Planet view job types tooltips being wildly incorrect
- Jobs that require non-slaves should now actually enforce that limitation
- Several space fauna weapons are now correctly tagged as space fauna weapons
- Fixed being unable to fire the Devolution Beam
- Capturing Tiyanki in your Gravity Snare will no longer make the galactic community mad at you for hunting them. You are just putting them in a nice protected enclosure.
- Effects that create a pop group will now correctly generate a tooltip entry
- Completing the Clone Potential special project will no longer block Clone Army empires from undertaking non-Cloning ascension paths.
- Prethoryn Scourge now purges pops on planets they occupy
- Damn the Consequences now explains what it means to damn the consequences
- Fixed multiple broken text icons in non-English languages
- Head of Education can now correctly be filled by both Scientists and Officials
- Fixed an issue that caused the Distribute Luxury Resources decision cost to cap out very early.
- Fixes some country map colors being white upon loading of the savegame
- Fixed Corporate angler councilors being a tenth as powerful as they should have been.
- Fixed automation building not having upkeep, or being able to build two in a single district under some circumstances
Stability
- Fix to a relatively common crash related to the toast notification manager
We’re going to monitor stability over the weekend, and the Custodians of the core Stellaris team will continue focusing on improving the base game.
Breaching the Shroud
Reality is only one thread in a vast, trembling web.
In Shadows of the Shroud, empires reach beyond the material realm, attuning to ancient powers and bargaining with entities that exist beyond time. Psionic Auras ripple outward, warping systems and reshaping destinies. While the Mindwardens wage silent war against psionic corruption, the Shroud Patrons gather, their gifts as lavish as their demands. The deeper one delves, the harder it is to return.
Shadows of the Shroud is a Major Expansion that completes our “Arc of Ascension” trilogy with a comprehensive remastering of Psionic Ascension.
We tapped Abrakam for help with this one after their fantastic work on The Grand Archive and Astral Planes. They’ve been working hand-in-hand with us for over a year on this release. This kind of partnership lets us keep several development tracks running simultaneously, so while Abrakam brought their strengths to the new expansion, our internal teams could stay focused on updating the base game, addressing community feedback, and work on long-standing issues.
When we first sat down to discuss the Shroud, we challenged Abrakam to broaden the horizons of Psionic Ascension and The End of the Cycle, reading deeper into the tea leaves already there and channeling whole new visions of thematic content. Their task was to open our third eye to fresh possibilities and project new mysteries into the minds of players willing to pierce the veil.
Over the next few weeks we’ll reveal more about Shroud exploration, the new Ascension Situation, new paths through the Shroud, go over how you influence your relationships with Shroud entities, introduce some Minor Patrons, and see what’s in store for Gestalts in this expansion.
At this time, we do not yet have a date to announce for Shadows of the Shroud and the 4.1 release.
A piece of Concept Art from each of the Two Shipsets
All Will Be Revealed
We’ll be switching to twice a week dev diaries with the following planned schedule:
Shadows of the Shroud |
Psionic Ascension and Delving into the Shroud |
Entities of the Shroud and Psionic Auras |
Mindwardens and Machines |
THE END IS NEAR |
[THE RECKONING HAS PREVENTED OUR TELEPATHS FROM DIVINING THE TOPIC OF THIS DEV DIARY] |
It has been foreseen: Our next dev diary will be next Tuesday, at 15:00 CEST.