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Starfield
Everything in Starfield’s Free Lanes Update & Terran Armada DLC
Apr 7, 2026 · Steam update tracked by Buffs & Bugs
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Official note“Steam :: Starfield :: Everything in Starfield’s Free Lanes Update & Terran Armada DLC Sign in Store Home Discovery Queue Wishlist Points Shop News Charts Community Home Discussions Workshop Market Broadcasts…”
What officially changed
April 7 is a stellar day for Starfield.
Starfield’s most expansive free update yet and a new story DLC are both available now. The Free Lanes update is a game-wide evolution, touching everything from space travel and late game content and progression to gear and ship customization and outpost building, and countless improvements in between. Alongside Free Lanes, players can dive into Terran Armada, a new story packed with repeatable content and tons to discover.
As if that weren’t enough, Starfield is also out now on PlayStation 5, opening the stars to an entirely new batch of captains.
Since launch, Starfield has received more than a dozen patches packed with thousands of fixes, performance enhancements, expanded options and controls, and meaningful quality-of-life improvements. New content has continued to roll out, including the REV-8 land vehicle, the Shattered Space story DLC, and Tracker’s Alliance bounty contracts (complete bounty series available now on Xbox/PC), plus over 1000 Creations from Bethesda Game Studios and Verified Creators, bringing new weapons, spacesuits, missions, characters, skins, and even reimagined game systems to Starfield.
Get an in-depth look at Free Lanes and Terran Armada with Lead Creative Producer Tim Lamb, Art Director Istvan Pely and Design Director Emil Pagliarulo, then continue on below for a complete breakdown of everything included in the free update and the DLC.
New to Starfield? Get even more insight into the game and Free Lanes here.
Free Lanes Update
All the content in the Free Lanes update is free for all players.
Free Lanes
Free Lanes & Cruise Mode: 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: 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 hoarding 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.)
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