PAT23 Vendor Kiosk
It’s been a whole month, since the last patch. Two or three patches ago, the cadence switched from updates every two weeks, to one update every three weeks - and this patch had an extra week of delay on top of that. Despite of that, it launched with some quite severe issues. The main feature of vendor kiosk wasn’t even accessible at first - and using the storage and bank ultimately lead to loosing all items you put in there. On top of that, you still are pretty likely to have your character corrupted, and if that happened to you on Thursday you couldn’t even create a new one, as character creation was broken as well.
The Ecology Kiosk and related servitor interdictions finally started working a week or two ago
Not everyone is of the same opinion, regarding how much pre-testing should be done, and how buggy stuff may be when being pushed to the test-server. I believe that during pre-alpha a lot more is permissible than during Early Access. But if you want to get closer to EA, you have to become less pre-alpha and more stable over time. You want to not only achieve a certain level of reliable stability, but also know and prove you are able to keep it up - before going EA.
Participation
During this last month, I definitely played less hours than I used to in most previous tests. The reasons for that are many, but fairly simple: There really is not that much to do. I’m taking a break from large build projects (after building the Maze caused my RSI to flare up), and the last few patches didn’t really add all that much. And that’s not meant to be a complaint - these past few patches were mostly focussed on fixing bugs and improving performance, which was sorely needed - so it was the right the thing to do. But it also means, there really isn’t anything to keep me busy for an entire month or more.
In the four weeks between late July and mid August (PAT19 + PAT20) we saw new planets, the TPL space station, the mission system, the tutorial and starter packages, the item recipe revamp, the PQRV system and new skills and skill trees.
In the eight weeks between early September and now (PAT21 + PAT22) we saw the wormhole get a random timer (effectively a reduction in gameplay possibilities), and a few new weapons that aren’t all that super useful with client-side prediction for combat still disabled. Starting with PAT20, we also saw each new update bring a lot more (and more severe) bugs and issues than was previously the case.
From a tester-perspective, things have slowed down considerably. We now seemingly get less than a third of the new stuff, in more than twice the time and with a lot more breaking issues and severe bugs. If you don’t want your character to get corrupted, your items to get lost, your best (and probably only) course of action is to simply not play.
Meanwhile the things we were supposed to already get, but couldn’t be put into testing just yet, are piling up: The new shaders aren’t in yet, the combat upgrade (re-introduction of client prediction) is still M.I.A., seasons are still disabled, the UI upgrade still isn’t finished, waypoints are still disabled, some performance improvements are still outstanding and there haven’t been any notable new skills or professions added in close to half a year. Also on that pile were until last Thursday: marketplace and storage/bank, as well as new mission tiers. With a backlog that big, I definitely wouldn’t hold my breath for GovBot making it in this year still. And Early Access currently feels further away, than it did in July/August.
Direct, predictable result of all of that: less participation. And that’s a shame, as to me, having vendors in the game is a huge, game-changing milestone - and I am not one to use the word “game-changing” lightly. Vendors are the start of the player economy and the first introduction of perpetual game loops. Well, might still need some item degradation to get truly perpetual. But this still is special moment.
The three very last examples of the roughly 20 terraformers I made
On Sunday, October 26, 2025 - for the first time ever - I logged in to check my vendor. I was happy to see, that I had sold a total of 11 high quality terraformers so far. To me, this is a big moment - a historic day to be remembered! October 26th - day of first vendor!
After a month of barely playing, I was fully ready to jump back in, and try get the hoob-a-former mark II made. Since some recipes changed, and I lost my tree farm, I wouldn’t be able to ever make more of the same terraformer mk1. But then my character got corrupted - and while I could start a new one, chances are that’s just gonna get corrupted as well. So here I am - writing a blog post, instead of playing.
Toolbar is gone, inventory doesn’t open - that’s a corrupted character
Vendor Kiosk
This is the big headline feature of the current patch - and to me personally the most anticipated addition to the game of the entire year. It not only got delayed by two patches and then another week - it also got upgraded from being just a single central kiosk at the TPL station, to being craftable item that every player can put on their own homestead (or any homestead they got permissions to). As has been tradition for the last four patches - this headline feature wasn’t actually accessible to players at all, when the patch first landed. You had to first unlock the business skill tree, which was impossible to do. That got fixed by Thursday.
The Kiosk itself is surprisingly feature rich: It supports multiple players - meaning if you give homestead permissions to anyone else, they can also sell their items through your vendor - setting their own prices, and being able to collect their own profits from sales, seperately of yours (or an other player’s). That means that theoretically you can setup a multi-seller shopping mall. In practice though you are a bit limited, with only 1 vendor being allowed per homestead and only 100 items being allowed per vendor (or per player per vendor - unsure about that. That’s something I still wanted to test, when my character broke).
Vendor Kiosk
Putting up an item for sale comes with a 5% fee for now, and the smallest allowed item sale price is 10 Klaatus. That fee is only meant to prevent people from abusing vendors as storage, by putting incredibly high prices on the things they list. Developers are still debating whether the 5% should be fixed costs as a money sink - or whether that amount should be refundable on a successful sale.
Another Vendor Kiosk
I personally feel that the amount of fees and taxes on regular money circulation should be kept as low as possible. I think players shouldn’t be forced to use money faucets just to be able to participate in the economy. The ideal we strive for, would be as close to a closed, circular economy we can get, right? It’s not possible to go fully closed (for many reasons), but if it were, no faucets and sinks would be required at all. There’s no way around faucets and sinks - but I think it still would be preferable to keep those out of the central economic loops of player-to-player economic transactions. To enable the core of the player economy to turn it’s wheels mostly independently of faucets and drains. So, I’d probably prefer to avoid adding sinks to player-to-player transactions if possible - and if not possible, then keep them as low as possible.
Vendor Kiosks Everywhere
As you might already know, during the last two patches, a player built city spawned in that corner of planet Akacala where the space portal sits. Players call it “Aka-vegas”, because of it’s memorable skyline. There’s some huge and impressive buildings there. I myself built only a tree with some benches around it - but since that happened to be the first building, it kinda turned into the central plaza. This city now spawned a large number of vendors - most of them near the portal, but you can find more further out as well. And from what I observed so far, stuff seems to sell as well - even if it’s just random rocks. Missions and Klaatu rewards have been around for two months, and many players have been accumulating some wealth they are more than happy to spend now.
Aka-vegas by night
Even if you offer to just gift some item to someone, chances are they’ll tell you to put it on the vendor instead, so they can buy it. Testers are quite eager and excited to try out the first economy features in the game. And knowing that there will be more wipes - there’s no reason to save up your money. It’s way better to just spend like it was your last day before getting character corruption! Which might be more likely to happen than you think.
Bank and Storage Boxes
Both of these allow you to store items and currency.
The bank is located at the TPL station and can hold up to 60 (stacks of) items and is account-wide. That means you can put in stuff with one of your character, and take it out with another. This is a huge help, if you want to transfer any items from your main to an alt, or vice versa. But it also means, that those 60 storage slots are shared between all of your characters.
Bank
Storage boxes are currently limited to a maximum of 3 per homestead, with a maximum of 10 (stacks of) items per box. Access to this boxes is shared with anyone who has permissions to the same homestead. That means that multiple players and guilds can have shared storage to asynchrounously pass around items - which too is extremely useful. The 10 slot limit is a bit tight though. But as with everything - those numbers are preliminary and subject to change.
Storage Box
In addition to those storage options, an inventory limit has been implemented as well. Right now, the player backpack can have up to 1000 slots - but that number will definitely get smaller over time. It’s just that big, as inventory used to be unlimited, and there are some testers who indeed have accrued thousands of items in their backpacks. The limit is high for now, to not feel too punishing to people with a ton of stuff lying around.
Bank Interface
Talking about people with a ton of stuff lying around - given how central it is to crafting, to have stocks of materials with just the right PQRV values - I feel that storage crates should probably both be bigger, and allowed in larger numbers. Pack rat or not - people are going to legitimately want to store a LOT of stuff. And three times ten slots just feels very limited for that. The number of different materials already present in the game, is in the hundreds. Multiply that by multiple versions of each, and 30 slots isn’t even enough for a miner that just wants to keep the gems they get while mining, while happily dumping all the rocks and metals.
Mission Tiers
All missions at the mission terminals now come in multiple tiers (with differently sized rewards). For all the non-combat missions, the tier is purely about distance to the portal. So basically, the farther you have to go, the more you get paid. Since planets aren’t that big yet - and you also have to travel from the TPL to the planet portal and load in the planet - the highest tier missions are definitely the most worthwhile doing right now. The extra-distance you have to go might increase the total time for doing the mission a bit, but the Klaatu-reward you get increases substantially.
Mission Tiers
For combat missions, the tier is now seemingly both about the difficulty level of the enemy, as well as the distance to the portal (didn’t get around to testing that, before my character got corrupted), which means that basically if you take an easy enemy, that’ll be close to the portal, if you take a more difficult one, that will be farther away. Here the stated difficulty level still doesn’t really reflect how hard an enemy is to defeat - because right now, enemies that multiply (like Kharvixes that split into two smaller ones on death) are a lot more work to kill, than enemies that just die. Knowing the enemy and selecting based on type is still the preferred method for picking combat missions.
Other Stuff
The inventory has been renamed to backpack. That’s because according to the lore, all stuff can be nano-compressed to the point of fitting inside your pocket, or an earring, or your tooth-cavity, or whatever. That’s also why characters don’t need or wear any backpacks - not even fanny packs, and aren’t designed to either. So to make things absolutely clear, to open your backpack, you have to press the ‘i’ key - you know, ‘i’ like in ‘backpack’.
All jokes aside - maybe you actually do have a nano-size backpack™, which you can carry inside your tooth cavity, and it’s accessed with the letter ‘i’ because it’s your (I)ntraCavityBackpack. There’s always a possible lore explanation for anything!
Paths will now slowly form, if people walk the same route again and again an again. Well, in theory at least, it practice it doesn’t work prefectly quite yet.
Four or five of us trying to form a path by running back and forth for minutes
Like in previous patches we again got a number of new plants (bringing us closer to the new shaders) and some improvements to the UI (bringing us a little closer to having the new UI everywhere and getting rid of the old one). There’s also been various general improvements and a few smaller bugfixes. After two mainly bugfix and performance oriented patches, there wasn’t a whole lot to fix this time around. Check out the (official patch notes)[https://starsreach.com/vendor-kiosk-update/] for more information.
Conclusion and Summary
This is the first bigger content update since mid August. It brought vendor kiosks, storage boxes and a bank - all taken off the pile of things that were expected sooner, but got delayed due to the last two patches being mostly about bug fixes and performance improvements. Just like with the last three patches, the headline feature of the update was broken or inaccessible at first, and a number of severe new bugs and issues were introduced as well, including a character corruption bug - which is still not fixed as of yet. You are still in danger of bricking your character, everytime it saves (using a portal, entering a homestead or camp, using a relife station, etc.). Best way to avoid that: don’t play.
The headline feature of vendor kiosks is decidedly more than was announced - we actually got player vendors instead of just a shared TPL marketplace - and this is major step towards player economy and in my eyes a great milestone. The vendors are also pretty well-featured for a first version, including robust multi-seller functionality. Testers were really excited to use them and various shops sprung up around the Akacala planet portal, and elsewhere. Shops not only offered a variety of goods - they attracted sellers as well, and at least for that first day, commerce was flourishing. I’m afraid though that current active player numbers are still way too small to sustain that economic activity over a longer time frame.
This should be a milestone and major change that drives up participation and entices some less active testers to check back in on the game - at least once the character corruption bug is fixed.
And always remember: October 26th is first vendor day!
See you again next month!