Frontier has just announced the beta for Elite: Dangerous 2.1, better known as The Engineers, will open for beta access players the week of May 8th. We learned back in March that the launch had been delayed at least six weeks to “push the quality up,” as David Braben put it, but we didn’t have a clearer date until today.
“The Engineers (2.1) is the second major release in the Elite Dangerous: Horizons season of expansions that started with Planetary Landings. The Engineers adds Loot and Crafting and the eponymous Engineers themselves as the headliner features, but also delivers a massive number of new gameplay elements. Through the engineers, you will be able to improve and upgrade the stats on every module of your ship, and add rare, experimental effects to your weapons for some special outcomes. We’ll be showing more of these weapons in the coming newsletters, but here’s one example of the abilities that you can implement.”
Frontier has also announced that the 1.6 patch will be made available to everyone, not just Horizons owners, and will enter beta at the same time. Newsletters outlining more of the company’s plans are promised over the next three weeks.
