Which Stellaris DLC to Buy First | Every Stellaris Expansion Explained

there are a ton of dlcs for stellaris and more are added every year but i own every one of them so i'm going to give you the super simple breakdown of each one i'll rank them for you and if you stick around till the end i'll give you some tips on how to get the most dlcs for the best price throughout the year but first i've been asked a lot of questions about the graphic tees that i wear on stream and in our videos here and that leads us to our sponsor of this week's video and that is into the am into the am is a group of artists and creators who are making merch that really speaks to me they've got some really cool designs out there especially their super spacey stuff in these awesome vibrant colors i've put this one through the wash twice and the colors have held up so far and it is unbelievably soft like really really soft not only that it fits me perfectly i'm 6'1 and i've got this like long ass torso but the shirt hits exactly where i want it to it covers up all those fleshy bits whether i'm sitting or standing i love it there's a whole bunch of other designs not just spacey stuff that you can go check out on their website and you can get them in bundles of three if you get three graphic tees it's 60 bucks if you get three basic tees it's 49.95 click the link in the description and you'll get 10 off your order thank you so much ndam for sponsoring the video now let's get into it so solaris dlcs are broken down into three types of what paradox considers them to be you've got your main expansion packs your story packs and your species packs and each one of these groupings is meant to sort of explain how much content is in each dlc but i don't find that to really be the case instead the way that i break down dlcs is typically does the dlc add a new play style does it add some kind of major gameplay change or gameplay element or does it add just kind of a nice to have and with this grouping it's a lot easier to see which dlcs might be for you or which dlcs you want to pick up earlier or later in your solaris experience so with these three things in mind i'm going to start listing off the dlcs explaining what each one has where it fits in this kind of categorization and whether you should buy it now or later let's jump right in first up we have overlord it's the latest major expansion from stellaris and it adds a whole bunch of new mechanics for vassalization of other empires i find the dlc to be sort of interesting mainly to more experienced players previously to the expansion there wasn't really a good vassalization mechanic you could vassalize somebody or not but the ai never really actually interacted with it in a way that made sense you could have an overwhelming fleet presence on the border of a much weaker ai and they would just decline vassalization because i don't know they just want to die i'm in danger nowadays the ai is a lot smarter about choosing vassalization sometimes it even offers to be a vassal to your empire in exchange for the resources that your empire produces so it actually creates some really interesting elements and decisions that you have to make having vassals isn't necessarily a good idea all of the time and the new system really improves it overlord also adds new enclaves to fill in the gaps between our other expansion packs you've got a psionic enclave called the shroud walkers that are somewhat interesting to interact with you have the ship salvagers who are kind of like a free-for-all anybody could enjoy these kind of benefits you also get a whole bunch new origins and engineering constructions though i will say the engineering constructions in my opinion were kind of lackluster i never build orbital rings i don't really build hyper relays these are things that i'd rather use my alloys for bigger ships or bigger fleets i'm not really going to put them into my ships moving faster through my own space so they're kind of token additions in my opinion not the sole reason to go for the overlord dlc i definitely put in the major gameplay changes because i think that it has a big impact on the decision making throughout the game but i wouldn't put it at the top of this list there are other major gameplay elements that really change the game more so than overlord does next up we have megacorp now megacorp was given to us as a major expansion but i'm actually going to switch things up a little bit i'm going to call this a new playstyle and the reason for that is because the core of the mega corp expansion is the ability to play as a mega corporation it is completely different than playing as other empires yes you need to manage food and energy and minerals just like the others but the give and takes of an empire megacorporation is completely different you have the ability to build branch offices on other planets and if you're playing a benevolent megacorporation these branch offices can give bonuses to both you and the owner of the planet which is kind of interesting however you can play a mega corporation as a criminal syndicate and the branch offices that you place on other people's planets actually create crime it's a lot of fun to sow crime across the galaxy and it's a really cool playstyle that otherwise wouldn't be made possible mega corporations also work a little bit differently in that they are sort of designed to build tall and not wide and the more that's becoming possible in solaris which with new updates to the game the more interesting that playstyle has become so megacorp has actually become one of my top recommendations in terms of experiencing a new playstyle you get a couple of other elements in megacorp as well you have the ability to build acumenopolises which are planet-wide cities where you can have more or less an uncapped number of pops it's really fun but you're not going to take that every single time you play the other elements that it adds are new megastructures it has a mineral version of the dyson sphere called the matter decompressor and the matter decompressor will give you thousands of minerals of income per month it's pretty fun to play with it not at all necessary but they are some really cool megastructures especially if you're somebody who loves building those end game megastructures that are worth looking into next up is nemesis it adds two main elements to the game the first one is the ability to become either the crisis or the galactic custodian this is more of a late game element that allows you to become the end-game crisis of the game if you'd like to or alternatively to become sort of the counteraction to the late game crisis via the galactic community this is the you know become the emperor i am the senate kind of role for solaris if you'd like to step into it and the second major thing that adds is an expansion to the espionage system now there's a lot of disagreement in the community about whether espionage is really a good system or not frankly as somebody who mostly plays against ai and single-player experiences in solaris i love it i find nemesis to be one of the best expansions for the underdog trying to get out from being oppressed especially when you're new to the game especially when maybe the ai is just better than you at building major fleets or building big armies against you and big fleets against you espionage is a way to break the ai factions apart prior to nemesis there wasn't really a good way to get an ai to break their alliance or break their federation or break their um their defensive bond with another empire but with the espionage updates in nemesis what you can do is suddenly actually so distrust between ai factions doesn't work so much with player factions but it works really nicely with the ai and so if you are typically somebody who plays mostly single player and you're feeling like there should be a way for you to be able to break the ai apart so that you can pick them off one by one nemesis is the expansion you're looking for [Music] if nemesis is the dlc for single players then federations is the dlc for multiplayer focused players now a note about this in solaris if you join a multiplayer session as a guest you can actually get access to almost all of the benefits of whoever is hosting the game so you don't technically need to own all the dlcs in order to experience the full breadth of the game in a multiplayer setting there are a couple things like the customizations of your empire the civics these elements you have to own in order to use them in a multiplayer game but elements like the galactic council which is unlocked by the federation's dlc will actually be automatically in your game as long as the host owns it it's a pretty neat element of stellaris and other paradox games that said the federation's dlc adds a couple of new federation types which allows you to have specialized federations in this way i see it as kind of a nice to have the old federations were they were they were all right they were fine the newer ones they're all right they're fine in the base game without the federation's dlc you can always create a base level federation and you can assign your envoys to that federation just like in the federation's dlc specializations to level up the federation and give bonuses to all the federation members you don't need the dlc necessarily to get you that much more in multiplayer however the galactic council is huge it's a huge huge huge element in the game and it creates these really interesting diplomatic elements between players i find federations to be one of the biggest biggest biggest impacts on multiplayer sessions in single player the ai doesn't seem to have an idea of what's good or bad for it it's it tends to vote yes on basically everything unless something's really really stacked against it so i don't find the federation's experience to be that interesting in single player i really think however it is massively a defining dlc for multiplayer and worth picking up if you're looking for that really diplomatic game between your friends i almost forgot to mention federations adds a whole bunch of new origins for your empire as well which are the starting conditions and sometimes special abilities that your empire can use throughout the game the origins are actually really kind of interesting so in that way if you're looking to spice up your game a little bit grabbing federations might be worth it for you especially if you're tired of the old origins that you have access to utopia if you've been doing some research into which dlc's to purchase for stellaris before this you probably know what i'm going to say about this one it is by far the most important dlc for you to purchase if you bought one dlc for stellaris i would recommend the utopia dlc not only does it add gigantic megastructures that just are fun to build and make you feel super accomplished at the end of your game but it adds a whole slew of gameplay styles you are able to play as a hive-minded empire and similar to synthetic empires you don't have to worry about factions or consumer goods it's just really fun to play you also get access to a bunch of powerful ascension technologies ascension perks rather that give you the ability to bio mod your species and change their genetic traits or convert your species into cyborgs or the ability for your empire to transcend with psionic power it is so much fun and it creates a bunch of new avenues for you to change the play style of your game pick up utopia right now it will change your solaris experience hands down next up we have apocalypse and i'm gonna go a little bit against the grain here and say that this is a nice to have dlc and that's about it yes it does add big ships with titans and colossi yes that is a playstyle that you can start building towards of blowing up your opponent's planets but you probably have already been doing that already the titans and the colossi are really cool editions of the game but they don't completely change the gameplay in my opinion apocalypse only adds one civic to the game which is barbaric to spoilers it's the ability to go and raid other people's planets and abduct their pops and while it adds three ascension perks one is for the colossus and one is probably one you're never going to take honestly in most of your games so it doesn't really make that big of a difference on your gameplay i love big ships and i love the animations with the colossi and it's also worth noting that different other dlc packs will add different types of colossi to the game so picking up apocalypse is sort of foundational i just don't find the dlc to be that transformative it is however included in the major bundle on steam for stellaris and if you're gonna pick that up you're gonna get apocalypse anyway so it's worth picking up i just don't think it's the greatest dlc of all time distant stars is a story pack that adds a small star cluster outside of the game space that you can only access using l gates i'm not going to spoil it for you but you are going to have to research the l gates and when they open random things can happen it's a kind of a fun little spice of life dlc to add a little bit of spice to your gameplay it adds a whole bunch of anomalies and events to the game as well as those roaming gargantuan creatures that roam space and sometimes take over star systems i don't find this in stars to be a necessary dlc but if the game's events are starting to get a little bit stale it might be worth picking it up because it can add a little bit of randomness to the events that you'll encounter in space next up is necroids and i think that the necroids dlc is one of the weakest updates to stellaris you'll get access to a few civics that you might or might not ever take you'll get access to one origin the necrophage origin and that's it of course you get the new ships and the new portraits and the new cityscapes but it doesn't add a lot to the game i'd say pretty confidently that the necroid's dlc can be one of the last that you pick up for the game unless you really want to play as a necrophage or really want to start a death cult and in the case of the latter you might want to start with therapy first along the same lines as the necroids unfortunately is the humanoid species pack this pack is by far the weakest out of all of the stellaris dlcs you get two civics the humanoid ship set which i basically never choose because it's really kind of plain comparatively to the other species ship sets out there and you get an array of humanoid portraits that i think should have been included in the base game it is worth mentioning if you take a look at old information about this dlc previously you didn't get access to the new civics but those were actually added after the fact paradox went back and added two new civics to this species pack to make it worth the cost take it or leave it it won't really change your gameplay in any meaningful way i think you can skip on the humanoids pack until last lithoids on the other hand offer a super unique gameplay style their species eats minerals instead of food and they've got unique species traits on top of that their pop growth is severely reduced but their habitability on planets is massive it is a whopping 50 percent to make up for that from the onset lithoids are one of the most adaptable species in the game so if you love building wide they are definitely the species pack worth picking up you can design some really cool lithoid builds with them but their dependence on minerals for both food and the improvement of their planets means that you have to really manage a single resource it's a lot tougher than it seems i put lithoids firmly in the middle of the species packs available for solaris it's not the worst but it's not exactly my favorite leviathans leviathan's ads do i have to say it i'm not going to say it you're going to be able to find massive creatures lurking inside of star systems and you can either research or destroy these creatures to gain powerful bonuses for your empire it's kind of fun to be sort of a space bounty hunter out to find the leviathans in space and you'll find that the ai actually doesn't end up grabbing certain systems because the leviathans are too powerful for them to be able to take down leviathans are definitely a mid to late game element you're going to need several tens of thousands of fleet power in order to defeat them typically but it's worth doing and it's really really fun to see the different elements that comes out of that with the leviathan's dlc you'll also get access to new enclaves and these are neutral npcs that sit in space and you can do deals with you're able to speak to certain enclaves and get greater technological research speed or maybe add an additional amount of unity every month to your empire it's a nice way to feel like you're role-playing the empire that you built from the very beginning but it's by no means super necessary for you to pick up right away synthetic dawn was released as a story pack for stellaris which is a little bit strange to me because it feels a lot like the mega corp expansion which was toted as a major expansion to the game it unlocks one of my favorite elements of stellaris and that is the ability to play as a machine empire i love giant robots i love space and spaceships and synthetic dawn is the perfect combination of the two it easily sits in my top three expansions of all time utopia synthetic dawn and one other that i haven't covered yet because the play style machines is so different than anyone else machines don't eat food they don't need consumer goods and they don't have to deal with factions and this massively simplifies the gameplay experience they have high habitability on planets and hosts a ton of different playstyles you can choose to be a run-of-the-mill friendly neighborhood machine empire or play as the literal cybermen and capture humans and forcefully convert them into willing cyborgs or you can play a species of rogue servitors which are bound to serve their biological beings that made them machines have a completely different set of buildings to build on planets and they're just kind of fun and isn't that what it's all about synthetic dawn is easily one of my highest recommended dlcs for you to pick up especially if you like our robo boys and aquatics these two species packs are small but i find them to be much much much more interesting to me than lithoids and certainly than humanoids or necroids planetoids come with three unique traits and a civic that can be assigned to either a plantoid species or a fungoid species which is pretty fun and they allow you to really fine-tune your empire in some really fun ways clientoids really shine as a hive-minded species as well so it's just another reason for you to pick up the utopia dlc in the same line and why i'm putting these two together the aquatics species pack is very similar you've got access to one new civic anglers which can be used on pretty much any biological species and it's actually kind of fun to use as well but it also comes with two really fun origins one of which gives you access to a gigantic space dragon do i need to say anything more than that that's so freaking cool i really like the aquatics pack not only that the aquatics advisor is a pirate it's so cool this one is dripping in theme and i love it as a bonus there's also an ascension perk that's been added in that if you live on ocean worlds and you are an aquatic species you can increase the size of your planets by stealing water from other planets i just love love love this expansion if you're gonna pick up one species pack this is probably the one that i would recommend until our last dlc in the list [Music] okay now we come to the ancient relics dlc and in my opinion this one is a bit of a sleeper in the community but i think it adds a ton to the game ancient relics adds the ability to find archaeological sites on different planets and your science vessels can actually go and dig up those archaeological sites through a course of several stories that they they work through kind of like a multi-anomaly story in that way right and at the end of some of these archaeological sites you will gain access to incredibly powerful relics relics can be earned through archaeological sites but also through completing your precursor and you can get some really really fun relics that completely define your gameplay i find the ancient relics dlc to be a really really fun addition to the game not only that the addition of minor artifacts allows you to study your precursor even faster so there's a way of sort of working it so that you can get your precursor out and get that really really fun huge benefit even faster than your opponents there's one last expansion that i haven't talked about and it's probably the most exciting one in this list the anniversary portraits dlc no i'm just kidding i'm talking about toxics it is the newest species pack for solaris it's going to give you access to three new civics two new origins one of which is going to give you a completely different set of traits to use for your empire and a really fun way to interact with those traits in the game i'm super super super psyched for this one on top of that of course we've got the new toxoid ship set we've got the new advisor voice and the cityscape in the background it's going to be very very cool that's all the dlc but we're not done yet because there's so many of them and it is not a small price to pay there are some ways that you can shave off and save when purchasing the dlcs i'm going to tell you how to get the most bang for your buck first off whether you've bought the main game or not there is a bundle on steam called the stellaris starter pack and it includes a bunch of pretty good expansions not the best ones in my mind but two out of the three you'll get access to the base game utopia apocalypse leviathans and synthetic dawn all for 10 off which is pretty decent and if you own any of these already you'll receive a discount for the games that you already own so you're not wasting money by buying it as long as the games are already in your steam library but the biggest tip for rounding out your stellaris collection is to wait for a steam sale paradox runs some deep discounts on stellaris dlc every time a new expansion is released and almost always during the major steam sales in summer autumn winter and the lunar new year the older a dlc is the deeper of a discount it typically goes on sale so you can pick them up in chronological order if you'd like to and you'll typically save the most money by doing so just don't expect the newest dlc to go on sale for at least six months to a year after they release you can also search for deals and discounts on sites that sell steam keys i recommend that you keep it above board and choose sites like the humble store where you can get all the dlcs and the steam versions of them support charity and if you use codemax the catfish you also support myself and the content that i create here every week it's just a great way to kick back to the community or kick back to charitable organizations that you'd like to support that's it that's all the dlcs it's everything you need to know to prepare yourself for stellaris with the groupings that i've created you'll get a sense of where new dlcs will fit into this list but not only that i'm going to update the pinned comment down below as new dlcs release with my opinions about whether they are a must buy or a nice to have and where they fit in to each of our sections don't forget we stream on twitch three days a week you can check it out over at twitch.tv max the catfish and i will see you in our next stream either over on twitch or here on youtube see you soon [Music] you

Channel: MaxTheCatfish

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Id: Lo1ZZmvJ6bA

Length: 27min 1sec (1621 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 17 2022