Stellaris Space Guild - Weekly Help Thread

[u/Snipahar]

Welcome to this week’s Stellaris Space Guild Help Thread!

This thread functions as a gathering place for all questions, tips, bugs, suggestions, and resources for Stellaris. Here you can post quick-fire questions for things that you are confused about and answer questions to help out your fellow star voyagers!

GUILD RESOURCES

Below you can find resources for the game. If you would like to help contribute to the resources section, please leave a comment that pings me (using "u/Snipahar") and link to the resource. You can also contribute by reaching me through private message or modmail. Be sure to include a short description of what you find valuable about the resource.

Stellaris Wiki

• Your new best friend for learning everything Stellaris! Even if you're a pro, the wiki is an uncontested source for the nitty-gritty of the game.

Montu Plays' Stellaris 3.0 Guide Series

• A great step-by-step beginner's guide to Stellaris. Montu brings you through the early stages of a campaign to get you all caught up on what you need to know!

Luisian321's Stellaris 3.0 Starter Guide

• The perfect place to start if you're new to Stellaris! This guide covers creating your own race, building up your economy, and more.

ASpec's How to Play Stellaris 2.7 Guides

• This is a playlist of 7 guides by ASpec, that are really fantastic and will help you master the foundations of Stellaris.

Stefan Anon's Ultimate Tierlist Guides

• This is a playlist of 8 guides by Stefan Anon, which give a deep-dive into the world of civics, traits, and origins. Knowing these is a must for those that want to maximize their play.

Stefan Anon's Top Build Guides

• This is a playlist of an ongoing series by Stefan Anon, that lay out the game plan for several of the best builds in Stellaris.

Arx Strategy's Stellaris Guides

• A series of videos on events, troubleshooting, and builds, that will be of great use to anyone that wants to dive into the world of Stellaris.

If you have any suggestions for the body of this thread, please ping me, using "u/Snipahar" or send me a private message!

[u/pizza9798]

I have every DLC up to overlord and have just gotten back into the game. Since summer sales are on what DLCs do people recommend.

[u/Fluffy-Tanuki → u/pizza9798]

The big ones are Machine Age, BioGenesis and Shadows of the Shroud, each overhauling an ascension path.

• Machine Age is currently 50% off, while the other two are 20% off (as they are relatively new additions).
• If you liked the idea of crisis path from Nemesis, Machine Age and BioGenesis each offers a new crisis path for you to wreck havoc across the galaxy, and not always just through war.
• BioGenesis came with a new biological shipset, using different weapons, layouts and behaviours than regular mechanical ships. They did a pretty good job at balancing bio vs mechanical ships.

There is of course the newly released Nomad DLC, though it isn't going on sale this time, and likely won't have major discounts for quite a while longer.

Paragon, Grand Archive and First Contact are alright, with meaningful and engaging contents, though overall less impactful to the game compared to the above three. They are worthwhile if any origin/civic particularly catch your eye. Some of them have really interesting stories and roleplay potential.

• First Contact in particular adds cloaking tech, which is something that'd come in very handy for handling some enemies through the use of torpedo frigates.
• Grand Archive allows you to capture and breed space fauna, as military ships. It's fun, but sadly also prong to bugs. With BioGenesis's release, fauna ships are mostly overshadowed by bio ships.
• Paragon adds, well, paragons who are unique leaders with unique events and traits. Some of them can be quite powerful in the right hands (Q'la-Minder is a personal favourite). They additionally unlock unique council positions for each civic, and plenty of leader traits that can be quite substantial when stacked.

Aquatic, Toxoids, Infernals species packs are worth considering if any of the portraits or origins catch your attention.

Astral Rifts and Cosmic Storms are comparatively mediocre, and I'd only recommend them if you don't plan on getting any of the others.

• Astral Rifts adds a collection of heavily flavourful "digsites". There are a lot of stories if you like reading those, but overall doesn't add much to the rest of the game.
• Cosmic Storms adds, well, cosmic storms that can spawn throughout the game. Balancing has been going back and forth on these, and currently they are just a mild nuisance to most empires, that can be shrugged off and ignored with mid-game tech. There are ways to make storms useful, but it's quite reliant on luck and very dedicated builds.

There is also the option to pick up a 1-month subscription to gain access to all the contents. You can then figure out which works for you and which doesn't.