Bethesda Revealed Details of Free Lanes Update for Starfield

Last month, Bethesda Game Studios officially announced the long-awaited PlayStation 5 version of Starfield, which is set to release on Sony’s platform on April 7. Not only that, the studio also announced Free Lanes—so far, the biggest update for the sci-fi action RPG and the new DLC, Terran Armada.

Recently, Bethesda has released a blog dedicated to Starfield’s latest update, Free Lanes, which reveals the game will receive a lot of new features—including Cruise Mode, X-Tech, Inventory Management Improvements, an Asteroid Base Home, and more. You can check out the highlights from the studio’s statement below:

“Since launch, you’ve been asking for more options for space travel, so we’ve added the ability to freely fly between planets in a star system! With Free Lanes and Cruise Mode, you’ll be able to take off in any direction, letting the Frontier guide you through the massive expanse of space. Cruise Mode lets you truly experience the fantasy of life on your ship. Everything you can do while in orbit or docked, you can now do in Cruise Mode. Decorate your ship, chat with your companions and crew, hit up the workbenches. It’s all there for you. And don’t worry about overshooting your destination; autopilot will automatically slow you down when you arrive. There are also tons of new space POIs to discover as you travel in Cruise Mode. You’ll see them dynamically pop up and you can change your destination on the fly to automatically head to one of these POIs, or you can just keep on moving toward your original destination.

New Encounters: New space encounters have been added to the game, and their frequency has been increased to give you even more reasons to get out there and explore space. Some of these new encounters will pull you out of Cruise Mode automatically and you’ll need to deal with them before you can move on.

X-Tech: X-Tech is one of the most exciting new additions in Free Lanes. This new resource will let you customize all of your weapons, gear, and even your ships even further. This update will be huge for players who really want that super deep customization in their gear. You’ll come across X-Tech through combat and exploration – on bosses and in chests and ship wreckage – and trust us when we say you’ll be hording it like credits.

Customize Weapon Effects: We've updated the way you upgrade your weapons to allow you to use X-Tech to re-roll your legendary effects until you get the one you want. You’ll get 5 rerolls that you spend X-Tech and credits on, but don’t worry. If you don’t get the one you want, after those 5 re-rolls, the full list will open up and you can pick the modifier you’re looking for.

Tier 4 Legendary Effects: Free Lanes adds a new legendary rank for your weapons, Helmets, Packs and Suits. Once you have a rank three legendary item, you can apply a new rank four effect for credits and X-Tech. You don’t have to roll for these. You can just pick the modifier you want. Some weapons and gear even become “Exotic” when you reach max upgrades. Some of the new Tier 4 legendary effects include: - Saboteur: Damaging robots has a chance to instantly kill them. Robots explode on death. (This will definitely come in handy for Terran Armada.) - Reckless: Ranged only. Magazine size is reduced to 1; damage is increased by 500%; health is reduced by 50%. (We’re looking at you, snipers.) - Enigmatic: Suit only. Holograms of yourself appear while in combat, confusing enemies.

New Quality Tiers: Two new quality tiers above Advanced have been added. You can now build out your gear to Superior and Exceptional tiers.

Ship Optimization Terminal: A Ship Optimization Terminal has been added and can be dropped directly into your ship (and yes, you can poke through it and make changes while you’re in Cruise Mode). From this terminal you can use X-Tech to upgrade different systems like shield strength, weapons, engines, grav drive and more.

Anchorpoint Station: Anchorpoint is a new starstation with vendors and quests.

New Ship Modules: New ship modules have been added to upgrade different ship specs and even add some unique new abilities to your ship, like a new stealth module that cloaks your ship while boosting. These modules will drop in ship combat as schematics and can be installed at any ship services technician.

Upgrade Module Slot: You’ll notice as you’re customizing your gear that there’s a new Upgrade Module slot. This slot lets you upgrade a specific stat like range, rate of fire, etc. on your gear.

Colony War Action Heroes: There are 27 Colony War Action Hero collectibles for you to track down. Each one gives a stat buff (with different buffs for opened and unopened versions) and will look great decorating your outpost in the new outpost display cases.

Many more planetary POIs: You’ll notice an increased variety in the types of planetary POIs as you explore.

New Elite Crew: Fan-favorite NPC Muria Siarkiewicz can now be added as an Elite Crewmember. Find her at her normal spot near Galbank in New Atlantis.

New side quests: There’s a number of people on Anchorpoint that could use your help. Talk to everyone.

New land vehicle: Bounce your way across the surface in style with the new Moon Jumper land vehicle. With its impressive boost capabilities, the Moon Jumper is built for verticality, allowing you to reach high up places much easier while in a vehicle.

Asteroid base home: For those with a lot of credits to burn, you can now purchase a very ritzy asteroid base to call home. Explore Anchorpoint to learn how to purchase it.

New enemy modifiers: Add some extra challenge to combat with new enemy modifiers like Tank (3x more health), Tricky (chance to avoid damage), Martyr (dying puts nearby allies into a rage), and more. These modifiers can be tuned in the Gameplay Options menu. All new modifiers will be identified with new icons near enemy health bars and full descriptions can be found in scanner mode.

New weapon skins: New Constellation and Neon skins for select weapons

Photomode poses with the REV-8

New camera features: A toggle to always play a landing camera has been added to Accessibility settings. Additionally, a more distant ship POV level has also been added to camera options.”

Bethesda also didn’t forget to reveal more about the PlayStation 5 version of Starfield and confirmed the game will feature upgraded performance modes. They also released a special trailer, Starfield: Official PS5 Features Trailer, which you can check out below:

Are you excited about Starfield’s Free Lanes update? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Free Lanes update for Starfield and the game’s version for PlayStation 5 releasing on April 7.