Starfield's May Update Adds Improved Surface Maps & Ship Customization

Bethesda’s Todd Howard described some of the features coming in Starfield’s May update while discussing the game on the Kinda Funny podcast and now shortly after that, the update has rolled out on PC in Steam Beta, with a full release planned for May 15.

One of the marquee features of the update are the improvements to surface maps. According to Bethesda, players should no longer get lost when navigating surface areas. The new 3D maps allow players to see terrain and its details, trees, rocks, structures, etc.  Cities now have markers that clearly denote where shops, Enhance boutiques, restaurants, and other points-of-interests are. Surface navigation has been a huge pain point for players since launch, and these changes should hopefully go a long way towards resolving that issue.

Other new features include the ability to customize difficulty with more granularity. Players can tweak the difficulty of ship and ground combat independently, for example. Want ship combat to be super easy while ground combat is extremely punishing? No problem.

Lastly, Bethesda made good on Todd Howard’s comments with regards to improving ship customization. In this latest patch, players can decorate the interior of their ships the same way they can Outposts. There are also new habs that are completely stripped so players can start decorating from scratch if they like.