Since our last update on Chucklefish's space exploration sandbox title Starbound the team has added a variety of new content into their game. From skyhooks to Pokemon-like pet training, the team were quite the busy folks ensuring their Early Access title wasn't keeping players waiting for new content as they move their way forward to an official release.

Today the team has revealed through the official website that the first major patch since getting back from the holidays will be arriving shortly, set to introduce new weapons, a new permadeath mode and of course more hats than your head can handle. In addition, there's a reassuringly big list of bug fixes to look forward to.

Alongside the bug fixing and new content, Chucklefish has also revealed that this update will be introducing "the highly anticipated/possibly feared final character wipe." This change will make it so players won't have to fear future patches potentially wiping their characters or ships. The blog update notes that this will "definitely be the last time we’ll need to wipe characters or ships, and will hopefully be the last time we’ll need to wipe worlds."

“The problem is that the organization of planets may change so if they go muck with a planet, how do we put it in the celestial map? Or if they build on a biome we remove, or something. So no promises, but we’ll try. But promises on the player / ship.”

The update is scheduled for sometime next week. Check out the full patch notes over here.