Psionic Ascension has long been the least favored among Stellaris's four ascension paths. Look, Synthetic Ascension offers explosive stats with consciousness uploading, having almost no flaws except for uglier portraits; Cybernetic Ascension has a cool setting, enjoying both biological and mechanical buffs with full compatibility; after updates, Genetic Ascension fixed its past "amputation" issues, offering adaptive species traits and three route choices, maximizing population count, quantity, and quality...
Yet Psionic Ascension has long gone without updates, its mechanics quite outdated. Gaining buffs relies on lengthy cooldowns for infiltrating the Shroud, the lack of population growth buffs makes the startup process tedious, and the gacha-like effects from the Shroud are highly random. Not actively save-scumming drastically reduces the gameplay experience, and the representative resource, Zro, is still blue... It really reminds one of that certain blue character next door who is constantly persecuted and ranks fourth strongest in the game.
Alas, such is the mechanism
However, despite many complaints about Psionic Ascension, players generally still love it. Any Stellaris player cannot be unfamiliar with the famous "Cycle's End ", also known as the "Round God" event, feel unfamiliar. The concept of sacrificing the entire empire for a 50-year Golden Age, only to face reckoning when time runs out, is simply cool—whether you secure victory within the time limit to escape judgment or face the reckoning head-on, which is the most malignant and difficult disaster event in the game, it offers a unique flavor. This ascension path, beloved by players, deserves a more comprehensive modernization update.
Not long ago, we received Stellaris's latest DLC, "The Shroud." This DLC significantly reworked the original Psionic Ascension, introducing more modern designs like situations into the process. It completely overhauled the Shroud gacha system and added the powerful "Psionic Aura" buff. Players can delve deeper into the Shroud, build rapport with higher-dimensional beings called "Transcendent Entities," and sign contracts, exchanging partial sacrifices for unique benefits. For example, the Great Transcendent "World Eater" occasionally consumes your population but greatly increases naval capacity, ship fire rate, and other military attributes; meanwhile, the High Transcendent "Whispers of the Void" tempts you to betray existing entities, providing substantial research bonuses... Overall, the playability of Psionic Ascension has been significantly enhanced.
At this year's Tokyo Game Show, Paradox Interactive brought Stellaris: The Shroud to the event, along with the DLC's producer. We experienced the two unique starting origins of the new DLC together and explored the new Psionic Ascension situation to some extent.
What, you ask how I managed to explore two starting origins in less than an hour? The answer, of course, lies in the traditional skill of the "Fourth Disaster": pressing "~" to awaken cheats—let's just say the producer gave them to me.
I first tried the anti-psionic origin called "Psionic Suppressor." In the backstory, the subjects of this origin were long troubled by psychic powers, forcing them to invest huge manpower and resources into developing anti-psionic technology before entering the stars. Therefore, they start with Level 2 Fortress technology "Star Bastion," and their home planet has an additional anti-psionic building called "Ancient Bulwark." Due to their special anti-psionic ideology, this nation can use "Psionic Suppression" as a casus belli to declare war on any nation undergoing Psionic Ascension, while also gaining increased damage and evasion against psionic units.
At the start, some neighboring star systems in the Psionic Suppressor origin are blocked by special powers from hostile psionic empires, making navigation difficult for various ships. Meanwhile, these systems emit a powerful Psionic Aura, causing huge negative effects on friendly fleets and population—exaggerated impacts like -30% all production, -200% shields, and -125% fire rate.
Therefore, players must upgrade the Ancient Bulwark on the home planet into a powerful anti-psionic building, the "Grand Bulwark," complete the special sociology project to unlock the "Psionic Suppression" research option, and after researching, build Psionic Suppressors. This allows them to gradually suppress the spread of the Psionic Aura, eventually invade the psionic empire's homeland, destroy these annoying void whispers, and obtain precious artifact rewards.
The next origin I demoed can be described as the extreme opposite of the "Psionic Suppressor." Called "Herald of the End," this origin sees neighboring celestial bodies completely destroyed by a disaster originating from the Shroud before entering the stars, turning them into Shroud Worlds. Preliminary archaeological excavations on this planet point to one conclusion: "The End is Nigh."
After completing the archaeology, initial contact with the Shroud is established, unlocking research options for Psionic Theory. Once researched, the pathways to the Shroud gradually open. Unlike other empires where the sounds are chaotic and filled with countless whispers, here a clear voice calls from the depths—"The time has come."
As the psionic pathways open, madness and paranoia from the Shroud sweep across the entire civilization. The whole empire is driven by a single goal, suffering massive debuffs to Happiness, Stability, Pop Maintenance, and Comfort. Only by constructing special "Sanctuary" buildings and advancing Psionic Ascension progress can this madness be reduced.
At this point, we can enter Psionic Ascension earlier than other empires. Normally, we need at least the third slot to unlock the four major ascensions. However, ascending early comes with a price: the moment we enter the Psionic Ascension situation, each of our colonies loses between 100 and 300 pops—the Shroud craves voluntary sacrifice.
Thus, we began our journey toward Psionic Ascension, a long and torturous path. The only shortcut to speed up progress is so-called "sacrifice." You can choose to sacrifice your subjects' sight; each month, some people gain the Blind trait, drastically reducing their work efficiency but making them deeply happy due to being closer to the Shroud. A more radical approach is to discard the physical body, refining flesh into pure Zro, greatly increasing cohesion and ascension speed, at the cost of consuming 25 pops per month as fuel.
During the ascension, costs follow closely. Some leaders, dissatisfied with their mortal flesh, take poison to merge with the Shroud faster, while some citizens, unable to cope with the madness, choose lobotomies to exchange sanity for peace... Indeed, these events are far more insane, terrifying, and unhinged than previous ascension events. While Genetic and Cybernetic Ascensions might still be debating how many extra arms to install, Psionic Ascension is already performing lobotomies.
Regarding this, the producer of Stellaris: The Shroud explains that they deliberately chose a darker development path for this series of events. They hoped the "Herald of the End" events would be shocking and terrifying enough to highlight the insanity of this origin... Clearly, they succeeded.
By the way, this game has a PEGI age rating of 7+. Is... is that right?
In short, after paying a heavy price, we finally opened the gate to the Shroud, formally embracing the blessing of the "Cycle's End." Signing a contract with this Transcendent Entity prevents you from signing with others but grants a powerful Psionic Aura. For you, this aura provides terrifyingly comprehensive bonuses to ship maintenance and all resource output; for enemies, it acts as a horrifying curse that gradually erodes fleets, increases pop maintenance, and lowers stability. Your goal is to cover the entire galaxy with this aura within just fifty years (though the Herald of the End origin can delay progress by sacrificing resources, population, colonies, or even declaring war on all nations).
If you succeed, the End arrives, and you win the game directly; if you fail, the Reckoning comes, and your empire will be consumed by the Shroud.
Unfortunately, demo time was limited, making it difficult to explore more origins within just one hour. However, this DLC also brings the long-awaited "Psionic Canning" for Psionic Ascension players, along with new "Canned" species traits. In terms of both quantity and quality, it stands out among Stellaris's vast array of DLCs. Overall, for all you Fourth Disasters, Stellaris: The Shroud is flavorful and worth a try.