As promised last week, the first Kepler build was made available as an opt-in beta last Sunday. There have been two patches since then to fix potentially significant bugs, but at least [i]some[/i] players have made it to the game's end. Here are the changes relative to Jupiter (the last opt-in beta): Non-spoiler changes in Kepler: [list] [*] New side-quests [*] 27 new anomalies [*] Additional void regions [*] Changes to existing missions [*] Difficulty / skill roll modifiers now in 5% increments [*] New alien [*] Several changes to late game [*] Player drones [*] Ability to toggle mission goal tracking [*] New music tracks [*] Three new achievements [*] New analytics tracking for various progress metrics, localization [*] If anomaly image changes during anomaly, the last image will appear in the log [*] New enemy weapon [*] New ship modules [*] New technologies [*] New achievements [*] Numerous balance changes [*] Changes to fighter sounds, trails [*] Changes to enemy AI [*] NPCs now automatically aggro'd by attacks to their allies (unless also allied with aggressor) [*] Refactor fighter drone logic [*] Various performance optimizations [*] Various UI fixes [*] FPS limit option [*] Priority mission identification [*] Fixed transient objects, screen shake persisting after game load [*] Added discovery sounds/tier labels [*] Block players from interacting with [spoiler]cloaked ships[/spoiler] [*] Fix several minor anomaly bugs reported by players [*] Fix for potential soft-lock in late game [*] Fix for null reference exception [*] Added some missing gamepad UI indicators, controls [/list] Known Issues: [list] [*] Loading a game during a transition (such as a wormhole) can break the game camera [*] Plasma range extender doesn't unlock [*] Player drone behavior/balance needs some work [/list] Since Jupiter was never promoted to default, unless some critical bug appears, I hope to make Kepler the default build once enough players have finished it that I'm confident in the stability. If you're about to start a playthrough, you may want to switch to Kepler, as it has the most content/improvements, although there may still be some undiscovered bugs. ([url=https://wx3.com/early-access-updates-and-save-games/]Opt-in instructions here[/url]). Until next week! - Kevin