Frontier Developments has announced Elite Dangerous: Beyond – Chapter Four, will launch on December 11th. The biggest Elite Dangerous update of the year, and the final chapter in the Beyond season of updates, Chapter Four is packed with content and is available for free to all Elite Dangerous Commanders on the PC.
Beyond – Chapter Four is headlined by two new ships, a new discovery system for exploration, advanced mining techniques, additional multiplayer options, plus more. All of these features can be found in the Beyond – Chapter Four launch date trailer premiering today.
A breakdown of the key additions is below:
Exploration
A new Analysis Mode, with the improved Exploration Discovery Scanner and Detailed Discovery Scanner, is a game-changing new way for all Commanders to explore the galaxy. After an initial scan of the system, players will then be able to tune their scanners to find stellar bodies and other phenomena. Not only is this new system a more realistic, satisfying and engaging exploration experience, but also provides players with the freedom to make more informed decisions on where to look next, and be ultimately better rewarded for time spent exploring. Additionally, Commanders will have probes that can be arced onto planetary surfaces, and planetary rings, to map them in detail, locate points of interest and leave their mark on the galaxy in a new way.Mining
New mining tools and mechanics provide a fresh, potentially lucrative mining experience for all Elite Dangerous Commanders. Miners can investigate rings to locate the best spots to start their mining sessions and identify mineral deposits within individual asteroids. Then, with the right amount of skill, can coordinate a detonation.Squadrons
Squadrons is a new in-game way of uniting like-minded Commanders to support factions of their choice, take part in Community Goals together and compete for top spots in weekly leaderboards. Squadrons also feature new communication tools, including in-game chat channels, to coordinate activities across the galaxy.More
Additionally, Beyond – Chapter Four also features a new lighting engine, numerous visual improvements, background simulation updates, and a number of cockpit interface changes to improve the flying experience of players.

John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Elite Dangerous finally hit the news in this site…about god damn time!
I still play since release from time to time, played the Open Beta for this update and it makes the game so much better in so many areas (graphics/lighting, mining, exploration/discovery/codex with in game lore, etc).
More love for actual released games that are still evolving and adding actual content to it even after some years, is what I like to see more in this site. 😉
Thanks for the comment man. I’m a big Elite fan myself, and while I don’t get as many opportunities now to play Elite Dangerous as I would like to, it is always a joy whenever I pick it up.
At launch it was a little sparse on content, but it was still a very sharp space sim. As time goes on more and more content is added making the game all the more of an enjoyable experience.
Elite is one of my favorites, one of a few that never leave my SSD!
Same here, you might not like the grind in it to achieve stuff but the game overall is one of a kind and the sound design and the physics, plus some other stuff (perhaps the science in it) are awesome.