Stellaris: Grand Archive is the third and final content drop for the game’s eighth season of DLC. Compared to this year’s excellent The Machine Age update or the visually stunning but divisive Cosmic Storms expansion, Grand Archive is decidedly less ambitious. It’s also less focused, blending a pirate quest, treasure hunting, and monster ranching. While these additions sound promising, they feel too light on substance to feel fully realized.
But that’s not to say it’s bad; it’s just not for everyone. There are impressive changes to fleet dynamics and a customizable set of modifiers to fine-tune various aspects of the game. For Stellaris fans who are excited about the prospect of new ways to micromanage their empires, this DLC is definitely for them.
This new content update is a loose collection of ideas, all tied together through the titular Grand Archive. The Archive itself is a dual-function mega structure that houses two new classes of collectibles: Specimens and Space Fauna.
“Compared to this year’s excellent The Machine Age update or the visually stunning but divisive Cosmic Storms expansion, Grand Archive is decidedly less ambitious.”
Space Fauna can be captured by Science ships using the new gravity snare technology. Once caught, they’re sent to a vivarium, essentially a cosmic fishbowl. Fauna comes in different rarities, with rarer animals providing more food and science when they perish. As these captured creatures breed constantly, proactive culling is required to maintain a valuable population. If left unchecked, players may need to manually remove hundreds of low-value hatchlings one by one. While the concept of a cosmic “slaughterhouse” is intriguing, the vivarium unfortunately adds more tedium than excitement in its current form.
However, once an animal’s DNA is in the Archive, things start to get interesting. Archived creatures can be cloned through the new “Beastport,” a shipyard variant that creates fleets of weaponized fauna. These “meat ships” function almost identically to regular combat craft but are paid for with food, introducing a unique way to balance naval expenditures within the economy. Additionally, these animals can be customized with new weapons, armor, and organs, offering even more options to fine-tune and optimize fleet compositions.
“Stellaris is a game with solid foundations, but under the weight of eight seasons of DLC, you can feel the structure beginning to strain.”
Aside from amebas and space whales, two new species of fauna can be pressed into service. Voidworms can be lured from black holes and used to convert populations into more voidworms through an orbital bombardment of parasites. And then there’s Cutholoids, ambush predators that can disguise themselves as asteroids and capture enemy ships.
The new fleet compositions are undoubtedly the most exciting feature of this DLC. The ability to create navies that can abduct and infect brings a fresh dynamic, enabling some truly unique and potent empire builds. Complementing these new playstyles are two additional civics and tradition trees. The “Galactic Curator” civic and “Archavism” tradition enhance relic collection and increase the benefits from the Grand Archive. Alternatively, the “Beastmaster” civic and “Domestication” tradition enable players to clone and deploy creatures with greater efficiency, catering to those who want to maximize the new fauna mechanics.
Finally, there are two new origins: “Treasure Hunters” and “Primal Calling.” Primal Calling is the more substantial of the two, providing access to space ranches, wrangler jobs, research insights, and wildlife-focused policies. Treasure Hunters, on the other hand, is more of a one-off choice. It’s required to unlock the pirate adventure but lacks any meaningful advantages for building an empire around.
Stellaris is a game with solid foundations, but under the weight of eight seasons of DLC, you can feel the structure beginning to strain. Fully loaded with expansions, the once well-paced space sim has become an endless sea of prompts and alerts. Managing the noise and chaos now requires careful curation of active DLC packs. For new players and casual empire builders, Stellaris: Grand Archive doesn’t offer enough to be essential content. But for avid strategists and spreadsheet aficionados, remember to take deep breaths and stay hydrated.
