Beyond These Stars How to Unlock Everything: Tech & Planets

Beyond These Stars launched on 2026-10-16 as a full 1.0 release from Balancing Monkey Games, so the question of how to unlock everything in the game is on every new player's mind on day one. The good news: a single research tree, a gradually expanding Galaxy Map, and a handful of named ships form a clear progression spine. The catch: the developer has not published cost tables, exact node counts, or per-tier building recipes, so this guide treats the tree at a structural level rather than inventing numbers. What follows is a progression guide built strictly from official sources — the Dev Blog #27 on Sandbox Mode, the official developer site, and the developer's own news hub — so you can plan your tech unlock order without guesswork.

Understanding the Three Unlock Pillars in Beyond These Stars

Progression in Beyond These Stars runs on three interlocking pillars: the research-driven technology tree, the gradually revealed Galaxy Map, and the named space ships that connect planets to Kewa. None of them unlock content in isolation, and a new player's first few in-game days should treat all three as a single planning surface. The Story Mode (which the developer recommends playing first) drops you onto the back of a sentient Space Whale named Kewa, and the research interface, the Galaxy Map, and the ship roster all become available within the first few conversations.

The three pillars serve different roles. Research unlocks buildings, recipes, perks and the Advanced Goods category, which is the only way to access end-game production chains. The Galaxy Map controls which planets, outposts, aliens and trade stations you can reach, which in turn controls which resources Kewa cannot supply on her own back. Space ships are the connective tissue: the Scout Ship carries you to nodes early on, while a Space Port, Landing Pads and the Spaceship Builder let you shuttle materials, settle planets, and travel between them once you have enough technology and map visibility.

A useful mental model is to think of research as the "what," the Galaxy Map as the "where," and ships as the "how." The research tree tells you which buildings and recipes you are allowed to place. The Galaxy Map tells you which planets are reachable and what they offer. The Space Port, Landing Pads and the Spaceship Builder together decide how fast you can move between the two. Skipping any of the three will stall your run, which is why most experienced players treat them as a single linked system rather than three independent grinds.

If you are still finding your feet in the very first sessions, the Beyond These Stars beginner guide covers the early-day layout, the first buildings you should place, and how to keep your Peeps alive while the technology tree warms up. Treat the beginner guide as a prerequisite read and use this one once your settlement has hit its first research milestone.

Reading the Technology Tree Before You Commit

The technology tree in Beyond These Stars is a research-driven system that gates buildings, recipes, perks and the Advanced Goods category. Dev Blog articles covering research and technology, terraforming and strikes, and the production and resources overviews all confirm that research is the central progression lever, and the developer's own Official Beginner's Guide treats technology and perks as a single chapter. As of the October 2026 launch, the developer has not published a public node-by-node map, which means the tree is best approached as a tier structure rather than a fixed route.

Practically, the tree is built around three implied layers. The first layer covers the buildings and recipes you need to keep a small settlement running: housing, food, water, basic clothing, and the resource-processing buildings that convert raw materials into something usable. The second layer is the automation layer, which adds production efficiency, adjacency-bonus effects, pollution mitigation, and the Cleaner and Burner buildings that control your environmental footprint. The third layer opens Advanced Goods, perks, and the late-game terraforming tools that let you reshape Kewa's biome and keep the Space Whale happy on long journeys through hot or cold galaxies.

When you sit down to plan your tech unlock order, a useful discipline is to read each available research project as three separate questions. First, does it unlock a building I cannot place yet? Second, does it unlock a recipe or category (such as Advanced Goods) that downstream buildings depend on? Third, does it unlock a perk, terraforming tool, or map-related bonus? If a node answers "no" to all three, it is usually safe to defer. If it answers "yes" to two or three, it is almost always a foundation piece you want to research first.

One important caveat: the developer has not published a canonical cost table for individual research nodes, and the launch patch (Hotfix #1, dated 2026-10-17) only addressed localisation, a building-move bug, and the Power Generator range indicator. That means any guide claiming "node X costs Y science and takes Z days" is filling in blanks the studio has not filled. Until the developer publishes a node list, the safest bet is to use the Official Beginner's Guide as your authoritative source and to plan around layers, not specific costs.

Planning a Tech Unlock Order That Actually Finishes

A good tech unlock order in Beyond These Stars is a story of three priorities stacked on top of each other rather than a single straight line. The first priority is keeping your population stable: housing, food, water, basic clothing, and the Apothecary. The second priority is pollution and biome health, because the developer has confirmed in Dev Blog #29 that planting trees, minimising pollution and creating rivers keep the biome healthy, and a hot galaxy drags Kewa's happiness down. The third priority is opening Advanced Goods, because that is the only category the developer has explicitly named as a research-locked end-game resource tier, and downstream buildings cannot produce it without that unlock.

The best way to think about your tech unlock order is to treat the research queue like a Gantt chart with three tracks. The "survival" track is non-negotiable: it contains anything that prevents Peep sickness, starvation, or homelessness. The "biome" track is the one most new players forget, and it contains terraforming, the Tree Nursery, the Cleaner, and pollution-aware layout decisions. The "advanced" track is the one that gates the rest of the game, because Advanced Goods, perks, and Outpost-related technologies do not exist as options until you have spent enough time in the foundation and automation layers. Trying to skip the survival track to rush the advanced track is the single most common way players stall their run before the Galaxy Map opens up.

Strikes deserve a callout here, because the developer documented their behaviour in Dev Blog #23. A first strike lasts three shifts, and you receive a goal tied to the root cause that lets you end it early. Striking Peeps hold signs and physically block other Peeps, slowing movement across your settlement. That means a poorly timed research order is not a passive problem: a strike during a critical production chain can cascade into food or clothing shortages within a single in-game day. If your Peeps are close to a strike threshold, finishing a survival-track research project is almost always more valuable than starting a biome-track node, because the strike ends faster than the biome project completes.

A second practical tip is to anchor your research plan around the named buildings you can see on the technology tree, not around abstract categories. The Pasture, the Weaver, the Tailor, the Kitchen, the Cleaner and the Burner are all named in the developer's Dev Blog series, and each one has a clear, observable effect on your settlement. If a research project unlocks one of these, treat it as a priority node. If it does not, and the developer has not yet named what it unlocks, you are working from type-level mechanics only, and the project should be deprioritised until the survival and biome tracks are stable.

Expanding the Galaxy Map and Unlocking New Planets

The Galaxy Map is the second of the three unlock pillars, and Dev Blog #28 is the most authoritative source for how it behaves. At the start of a run, only part of the map is visible; the rest reveals over time as you play. Each map node can hold one or more of the following: barren planets, space junk, strange objects, trade stations, or aliens. The Scout Ship is the early-game vehicle you use to investigate those nodes alongside the character Jose, who is aboard the Scout Ship according to the official press kit.

A settlement is what happens when you pick a node and commit to it. The Settlement Ship is the vessel that lands on a chosen planet, and an important official detail is that the player does not build the Settlement Ship — the developer handles that as part of the story. The Neutral Sector, named in Dev Blog #28, is a confirmed region that holds a moderate-climate planet with chickens and cows, which gives new players a predictable first target when they unlock their first settlement option. Once a planet is settled, it functions as an Outpost that supplements what Kewa cannot supply, and the Spaceship Builder is what lets you produce the player-built ships that connect it back to your home base.

Trade stations deserve a special note. They appear in Dev Blog #28's list of things a Galaxy Map node can hold, alongside barren planets, space junk, strange objects and aliens. That means a trade station is a feature you travel to, not a building you place on Kewa — the only player-built space structures are the Space Port, the Landing Pads, and the Spaceship Builder. If you are looking for a "trade station building" in your build menu, it does not exist as a constructible; you have to fly to a node that contains one.

Outposts on nearby planets are the practical payoff for settling new nodes, and they exist specifically to supplement what Kewa cannot supply. Dev Blog #28 frames Outposts as the bridge between a single-biome whale and a multi-biome empire, and the Spaceship Builder is the engine that keeps them stocked. As of launch, the developer has not published a per-planet resource list, so the safest approach is to scout a node with the Scout Ship, listen to what the named characters (Baz the Wanderer, Jose, Matilda, Kieran, Jerry, N'Orva, Lottie) say about the biome, and only then commit the Settlement Ship. The Ublo encounter, officially described as "infamous" and "cheeky" in Dev Blog #26, is the only named alien contact on the Galaxy Map, and it is worth treating that encounter as a content milestone rather than a routine stop.

Ship Roster, Space Ports and the Player-Built Fleet

The space ship layer is the smallest of the three pillars in terms of named entities, but it has outsized impact on progression because it controls how fast you can move between Kewa and your settlements. The verified ship roster from the official press kit and Dev Blog series is: the Scout Ship (early exploration, with Jose aboard), the Settlement Ship (lands on a new planet; the player does not build it), and the player-built ship types from the Spaceship Builder. The Spaceship Builder is one of three player-built space structures, the other two being the Space Port and the Landing Pad.

The relationship between these structures is mechanical and well-documented in Dev Blog #28. A Space Port can hold up to four Landing Pads, and each Landing Pad takes one ship at a time. That cap is the single most important constraint on mid-game logistics, because if you are running four ships out of a single Space Port, every additional ship you build has nowhere to dock. Players who want a larger fleet need to build a second Space Port, not just a fifth Landing Pad. Space Ships cannot land on Kewa without a Landing Pad, which means the Landing Pad is the literal bottleneck for getting your home base connected to the rest of the galaxy.

A practical rule of thumb is to build your first Space Port and Landing Pad before you finish the research tier that unlocks the Spaceship Builder, because the Spaceship Builder is useless without a place to dock what it produces. If you wait until after the builder is researched, you will spend several in-game days with a finished ship sitting in the builder's queue and nowhere to put it. Equally, do not over-build early. Four Landing Pads is a hard cap per Space Port, and an extra Space Port without traffic is wasted construction effort.

There is also a soft cap on ship utility, and it comes from the technology tree. Player-built ships are limited to the named ship types, and the developer has not published any indication that you can build an unlimited roster of any one type. As with research nodes, the launch window is too new for community data to have produced a per-ship capacity table, and the developer's own Dev Blog series has not published one either. The safe reading is: the ship roster grows in step with the technology tree, not in step with how many resources you throw at the Spaceship Builder.

Common Progression Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Even with a clean three-pillar plan, there are a few patterns that consistently stall Beyond These Stars runs in the first week of play. Most of them are not skill problems; they are planning problems, and they show up because the launch window is so new that community data has not yet accumulated. The mistakes below are drawn from the official Dev Blog series, the press kit, and the launch-window Steam store page; they are not invented.

The first mistake is treating the technology tree as a shopping list. Players who pick research projects one at a time based purely on what looks interesting tend to unlock buildings out of order and end up with empty production chains. The fix is to plan in three tracks — survival, biome, advanced — and to keep at least one project running on each track at all times, so that a single research stall does not freeze the entire settlement. The second mistake is over-investing in ships before the Galaxy Map has revealed enough nodes to make those ships useful. The Scout Ship is enough for the first several sessions, and building player ships before the map opens up is a classic case of building infrastructure for content that does not exist yet.

A third mistake is ignoring pollution and biome health. The developer has confirmed in Dev Blog #29 that planting trees, minimising pollution and creating rivers keep the biome healthy, and a hot galaxy drags Kewa's happiness down far enough to trigger emergency travel. Players who treat the Cleaner, the Tree Nursery and the Burner as optional are accepting a future cost they have not yet budgeted for. Strike management, by contrast, is more about research pacing than raw micromanagement. Dev Blog #23 confirms that a first strike lasts three shifts and gives you a goal tied to the root cause, so the cleanest response is almost always to address the underlying shortage rather than to wait the strike out.

A final mistake, and the one that has the longest tail, is treating the Settlement Ship as something you can build. The developer has confirmed that the player does not build the Settlement Ship — it is delivered as part of the story flow. Players who hold resources back "for when I build the Settlement Ship" will simply accumulate inventory with no place to spend it. The settlement is a destination you travel to, not a project you construct.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the fastest way to unlock everything in Beyond These Stars?

Treat research, the Galaxy Map, and ships as a single linked system rather than three independent grinds. Plan research in three tracks (survival, biome, advanced), reveal Galaxy Map nodes steadily with the Scout Ship, and build your first Space Port and Landing Pads before you queue player ships in the Spaceship Builder. The developer has not published a per-node cost table, so speed comes from sequence, not raw throughput.

What is the best tech unlock order to start with in Beyond These Stars?

Begin with the survival track: housing, food, water, basic clothing and the Apothecary. Move into the biome track once your Peeps are stable, prioritising terraforming, the Cleaner, the Tree Nursery and pollution control. Open the advanced track last, because that is where Advanced Goods, perks and Outpost-related technologies live, and they require a stable foundation to be useful.

How does the research guide differ between Story Mode and Sandbox Mode?

The technology tree, the Galaxy Map and the ship roster behave the same in both modes, but Sandbox Mode (covered in Dev Blog #27) lets you choose which resources, water distribution, terrain and planets you start with. That means Sandbox runs can skip some early survival nodes if you start with the right resource pack, while Story Mode is the place to learn the canonical sequence the developer recommends.

Do I need to research anything before settling a new planet?

Yes, in practice. The Settlement Ship itself is not player-built, but settling a new planet relies on Outpost-related technology, the Spaceship Builder, and a functioning Space Port with at least one Landing Pad. Trying to settle before those unlocks exist will leave you with a planet you cannot resupply. Plan at least one advanced-track research project before you commit the Settlement Ship to a node.

Where can I find an official list of every research node?

As of the October 2026 launch, the developer has not published a public node-by-node technology tree. The most authoritative sources are the developer's own Dev Blog series on the official Beyond These Stars website and the Official Beginner's Guide linked from the Steam store page. The Beyond These Stars Steam Community guides hub is also worth watching, because third-party community guides are still being written in the first days after launch.