Welcome to our 193rd newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, focuses entirely on the development of this ambitious game. Here, we attempt to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits revealed, primarily by the team, throughout the past week.
The second Star Atlas Summer Town Hall delivered a few surprises! The team announced the imminent launch of Holosim Season 1, introduced z.ink as a new Layer 1 blockchain, and launched a completely redesigned landing page on StarAtlas.com.
Let’s dive right in!
Star Atlas Summer – Town Hall Pt. 2
Town Hall
The second Star Atlas Summer Town Hall is behind us, and the team announced three new developments:
- Holosim – Season 1 improvements, rewards & launch date
- The launch of a new L1 blockchain: z.ink
- New Landing Page for staratlas.com
In terms of product releases, the team launched the Landing Page as the Town Hall was ongoing. Holosim will go live this Wednesday, and z.ink will go live in December. That said, the z.ink airdrop campaign will start in September already!
We’ll go into each of these three topics below! If you want to read everything that happened, then please check out our Town Hall Report! Alternatively, you can check out the full recording!
Holosim – Season 1
Holosim Season 1 will launch this Wednesday, August 20th, at 18:00 UTC!
The team has added another layer to the seasonal setup by splitting every season into one or more chapters. Every chapter, at least this first one, will reset the entire game state before the next one starts. Every chapter will likely introduce new mechanics and fix bugs. But Seasons will introduce significant changes, including new or completely overhauled questlines.
Season 1, Chapter 1, will start this Wednesday with the following changes compared to the beta:
- Cargo Manifests — The team overhauled the Transport (freight) Automation (see image below). On top of what you could do before, you can now keep certain goods supplied up to certain levels, while hauling back mined resources automatically, or specifying up to 4 materials it needs to return.
- Basic Territory Control — Starbases now have health (HP) and shields (SP), just like ships. They will defend themselves automatically when attacked. When its HP and SP hit 0, the last faction to fire at it will take control, after which they will have to repair it. Anything that was stored inside that Starbase (ships, crew, resources) will be deemed a prisoner of war and will be locked in (unavailable to you). Reclaiming the Starbase at a later time will unlock all of these again.
- Audio Voices — Every character that is part of the quests will have a unique audio voice.
- Crew Emissions — These will be tied more to progress (quests) and less to daily check-ins. This will favor people actually playing the game.
- Ships — There are a few new ships available for crafting (especially smaller ones).
- No HRZ — There will be a Safe Zone and Medium Risk Zone, but no High Risk Zone in this Chapter. That said, if you have a fleet docked at a Starbase that another faction conquers, you will lose them until your faction reconquers that Starbase.
- Additional In-game Bonuses — There will be new in-game rewards tied to login streaks (e.g., claiming the daily quest 5 days in a row)
Holosim – New Transport Automation Options
Monetization
The team added Stripe integration and will be offering a Battle Pass for sale. Since Holosim does not require a wallet to play, there will be no option to pay with crypto, unfortunately. This battle pass brings the following benefits:
- Cosmetic rewards
- A bonus to the daily quest rewards
- You’re allowed a pass on the daily login streaks. You will not lose it if you miss a day.
The primary purpose is not to generate substantial revenue, but rather to showcase the team’s ability to monetize this product and offer some engaging mechanics.
The above information is from the Town Hall. Right before publication of this issue, the team shared the following:
Holosim is launching Chapter 1 with a basic Battle Pass option. You can pay $10 USD (via credit card) to get a boost to your daily zATLAS rewards (and a few other things).
Rewards
You may consider purchasing a battle pass because there are now rewards available! Season 1 – Chapter 1 will run for 5 weeks. At the end, the top 1500 players on the leaderboard will receive a reward. On top of that, the first 1000 players to complete the entire quest chain will receive a reward as well.
During the Town Hall, Michael announced that the team had successfully established a major partnership with Solfare Wallet. Solfare contributes 5000 USDC and 50 SOL to the rewards pool, while the team itself adds another 30k in assets (VWAP prizes).
Holosim – Rewards for Season 1 / Chapter 1
In addition to the funds, Solfare will also prominently display a banner in the Solflare Wallet to encourage more people to visit Holosim. The goal is to introduce Star Atlas to more Solana natives and encourage them to join.
To return some value to Solflare, the team will suggest Solflare as the preferred wallet option whenever someone wants to connect their wallet to receive rewards, but does not yet have a wallet. This is a great opportunity to direct Web2 players to Solflare.
Lastly, many community members have asked if, or when, Holosim will be available on mobile. Michael shared that the mobile market holds a lot of potential and that the team will build towards that.
Updated Guide
We would be remiss not to let you know that we updated our Holosim guide with the latest information. If you haven’t already, make sure to check it out before Wednesday!
z.ink — An Identity Linked SVM L1 — Crafted by ATMTA
z.ink
During the recent Town Hall, the team revealed they are building z.ink, a brand-new Layer 1 blockchain. This chain will take over core game logic with two key benefits:
- Massively reduced fees — expected to drop by 99% or more
- No more congestion headaches — smoother gameplay at scale
There’s much more to z.ink than just performance improvements. You can dive into the full details in our Town Hall Report, or check out our brand new dedicated z.ink article, where we’ve distilled everything from the Town Hall and subsequent Discord discussions into a concise, community-focused deep dive.
Star Atlas – New Landing Page
New Landing Page
The team has revamped the StarAtlas.com landing page! Parts of the “old” website can still be accessed through various links, but the homepage, the main page that users land on, has been completely rebuilt from the ground up.
The new page is focused on practicality, enabling people to get into Star Atlas immediately. It now shows evocative (background) videos and goes into the various games and game modes available.
In addition, there is a prominent email signup at the top, which will trigger an email with a game code to your mailbox. Additionally, you will receive the brand-new Star Atlas Guide to Everything. This PDF contains roughly 150 pages of Star Atlas lore, species, ship manufacturers, and more!
News Bits
- The second edition of the community-hosted Unreal Engine 5 Gunplay competition, Iris Quest, will take place this Sunday, on August 24th. Many guilds have sent teams to represent them, but there are also teams mainly consisting of lone wolves. ATMTA will be sending their Dyson Sphere team, which competed in the previous edition as well, and has garnered quite the reputation with the recent Team vs Community battles during the Community Week! It’s guaranteed to become a spectacle!
- The Star Atlas Gamesom Meetup “Comet” will take place this Saturday, August 23rd, in Cologne! Expect to be bombarded by a lot of social media posts from community (and team!) members joining this event!
That is it for this week! Thanks for reading, and until the next!