The third and final pillar of the Stars Reach tutorial ‘Crucible’ is finally here and brings with it several additions and changes. As some of you will of seen Playable Worlds announced late on Wednesday (11th March 2026) evening (GMT) that they were bringing the servers up for a short impromptu playtest of their newest update ‘A Recruit No More’ ahead of the normal weekend test period. I will go over the additions and changes of the update below as well as giving some thoughts and you can find the official Stars Reach Blog and patch notes here.

Additions

Crucible
Grenade launchers
Ability loadouts
Maps

By far the biggest addition of the ‘A Recruit No More’ update is the Planet crucible which makes up the third and final part of the Stars Reach tutorial. You will be heading to Crucible when you are finished Haven to learn about terraforming, combat and get your spacesuit in order to move out into the TPL Starbase and the ‘open’ world sandbox of Stars Reach. There are also a handful of optional missions to teach you how a few other systems work but it is up to you if you choose to do those.

Grenade launches come into the game as a new weapon type which sees a moving away from and a phasing out of the “original placeholder weapons like the Omniblaster and Companion Orbs” as we head towards fuller weapons tree. The Grenade launcher has new abilities that can be unlocked and upgraded through the skill tree and while it already seems pretty fleshed out it is worth noting the skill tree is still under development and the devs have said that there will be more unlocks soon.

Ability loadouts have arrived with the update allowing you to swap out abilities at loadout kiosk located on the TPL Starbase or any player placed camp kit. Although as mentioned in the latest Fireside developer live stream you should possibly hold off removing special abilities off some of gathering tools e.g the harvester as there is nothing to replace them with and will render your tool useless currently requiring another one to be crafted.

Finally maps are back and while not a totally new addition to the game they have been reintroduced fully overhauled. Previously maps were simple and 2D like in most other MMO’s, this new itteration of the map however is dynamic that you unveil by surveying with the pathfinder which is part of the ranger tree, in the future rangers will have the ability to sell and trade map data complete with custom waypoints.

Changes

Movement
GravMesh
Healix
User Interface

The four biggest changes of the update are to Movement, the Gravmesh, the Healix and the User Interface.

The movement and the GravMesh changes are likely to be the two that most existing players will need time to adjust to as it changes how we have been playing the game in Pre-Alpha. Movement in Stars Reach previously felt like it had no weight behind it and your character would move pretty fast making planets very quick to navigate and combat to feel like a bit of a blur. This has now changed and the pace of things has now taken on a more realistic feel, climbing up hills and mountains is now slow and steady as it would be in the real world, while coming down hills and mountains is quicker depending on the angle. These changes come with new animations for going up and down slopes.

The GravMesh now uses battery power like most other tools instead of stamina. This means you can’t use the GravMesh for as long of a burst as you previously could but will now find it can be used in shorter bursts more often thanks to the faster recharge rate of a battery compared to stamina. No more flying halfway across a map in a single charge I’m afraid.

The Healix change while somewhat smaller than the previous two, is a welcome one. The targeting radius has been increased, no more chasing a wounded creature while on a HEAL mission struggling to target it (at least if you are anything like me). The Healix has also had a model update so it looks less generic.

The final of the big changes come to the UI and not just one sections of it but several. Changes have been made to the following UI sections:
1. Public Events
2. Navigation points (Mission markers)
3. World UI (emotes, nameplates, etc)
4. Worldspace UI Updated (UI elements not in specific UI windows)
5. Crafting UI
6. Chat Style (We can customise chat colours now!)
7. Key Rebinding!!!!
8. Consumable assignment (You can now assign consumables on your inventory screen)

The biggest two hear from an accessibility standpoint are the chat style which has several presets including a colourblind and a streamer mode as well as the ability to customise individual chat colours with hex codes and Key rebinding which lets you rebind practically all movements, actions and abilities to keys of your choosing.

There are several other smaller additions and changes including changes to the dodge roll animation and shields. For a full list of changes check out the full blog on the Official Stars Reach website here.

Thoughts

Finally I wanted to finish this article by giving my thoughts on the additions and changes especially as the tutorial experience is now largely complete barring a few minor changes.

So far I like Crucible it gives you the option to learn about additional systems if you wish to but also skip some of them if you would rather learn them organically. The planet itself looks great and plays smoothly, the bright orange glow of the lava really hits you when you load in for the first time and it is in complete contrast to Haven. One thing I would like to see changed about the Crucible part of the tutorial is the back and forth to Haven from start to end the tutorial has 6 loading screens which I feel is to many, especially when things such as refining bauxite to aluminium could easily be done by adding a refinery on crucible.

Another thing I have realised more and more since the addition of Crucible is that I am not sure we still need the ‘hallway’ for those who don’t know the tutorial experience is currently Hallway —> Haven —> Crucible with hallway having a completely different feel to the rest of the game I feel the hallway could be easily implemented as an obstacle course on Haven.

I like the movement changes they bring a weight to the world that was missing, a few tweaks are needed so going up stairs and ramps doesn’t slow you to the same degree as going up a mountain but the devs are aware and have received a lot of feedback. The GravMesh change is not as bad as I first feared when I first read the patch notes and I actually feel as the planet maps get bigger we will find the Gravmesh is now in a particularly good and balanced state.

The two most positive changes for me personally are the ability to customise chat colours and keybinds sometimes it is the smallest quality of life changes that make the biggest impact and these two make a huge impact and really open the game up accessibility wise which will hopefully result in more people being able to test the game going forward.

What are your thoughts on the A recruit no more update? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to give the developers your feedback over on the Official Stars Reach discord.