Initially planned to go on sale in Q2 2024, Crew Packs are now officially becoming available for purchase on August 13th, with Solana-based sci-fi MMO Star Atlas revealing that the biggest airdrop in the project’s history is coming to ship holders on August 9th.

What kind of airdrop is this? Is it still possible to participate? What’s the sale about? Let’s find out!

How to Participate in the NFT Airdrop

Ships sold on this metaverse’s official Galactic Marketplace consist of crew and components before the airdrop takes place. This means that by buying and holding Star Atlas ships before the snapshot takes place on August 8th at around 3 PM EST, you will officially be eligible for an airdrop of singular Crew Packs and ship components on August 9th. You have to hold your ships either in a Solana cold or hot wallet, but you’re also eligible if the ships are in SAGE Labs, the Faction Fleet Program or the Galactic Marketplace. Ships in other programs such as “escrow services and third-party apps like marketplaces” will not be eligible for the airdrop.

Around 2.5 million crew members are set to be airdropped to ship holders, and for every crew member included in your ship, you will be awarded a single Crew Pack featuring one crew member. As each ship contains 5 different crew members, this means 5 singular crew packs for that ship. When searching for ships on the Galactic Marketplace, you can check out which crew members are included by clicking on the “Item Details” button.

There are 3 types of Crew Packs you could possibly get: Silver, Gold or Platinum. The type you get will depend on the rarity of the ship – if it’s a Common or Uncommon ship, then Silver singular crew packs are on the way, while Rare and Epic ships get the Gold type, and Legendary and Anomaly ships get the rarest Platinum packs.

Next to airdropping these packs, holders will also accordingly receive Ship Component Bundles depending on the contents of the ship NFT. As each ship has different tiers of components, this will also affect the tiers you’ll be getting.

From that day and onwards, all ship NFTs bought on the Galactic Marketplace will no longer include crew and components, meaning that future buyers will need to buy ships, crew and components separately. Players need to have crew members to use ships in-game, and all future ships will start off with tier 0 components. Ships sold on the Galactic Marketplace after the snapshot date will not be eligible for crew and component airdrops.

Crew Pack Sale Details

On Tuesday, August 13th, Crew Packs will go on sale separately, and all packs bought and airdropped will be possible to open from that day in order to reveal your unique characters in the form of crew cards. Holders will be able to trade their crews on the same day thanks to a partnership with a “strong third-party marketplace” that will likely be announced closer to launch date.

You can choose the faction you want the crew members in the pack to belong to, and you will be given the option to send the crew to SAGE Labs straight away, or keep them in your inventory to gain some background info on each of these NFTs. This option is important, because if you deposit them straight away to SAGE Labs, you will be sending the whole crew in one transaction, while choosing to deposit at a later time will require sending each crew member individually.

According to a detailed Medium post back in May, there will be 3 types of Crew Packs to buy through the official marketplace:

  • Silver Pack: $25 USDC
  • Gold Pack: $37.50 USDC
  • Platinum Pack: $50 USDC

Crew Card Utility

From August 20th, players will be able to use their unpacked Crew Cards in SAGE Labs to improve crafting. It is said that they will act as “autonomous units” as they will no longer be tied to any ship, and because of this change, the developers will have to make some updates related to crew operations that will require all players to disband their fleets. This means that all players should bring their ships to their faction’s Central Space Station before August 20th to disband their fleets. Whoever doesn’t do so will have their fleets automatically disbanded, which will lead to losing any cargo present in your fleets.

Crew members are divided into rarity tiers but also into 7 different crew aptitudes that affect the randomly-generated characters’ talents and abilities. These aptitudes include Command, Flight, Engineering, Medical, Scientist, Operator and Hospitality. This means that if you assign a member with an Engineering aptitude to an Engineering role, the crew’s experience will increase faster in that area of expertise, making it significant to properly assign members to roles fitting their natural aptitudes in order to get the most out of your crew.

Every crew member also belongs to one of 7 different species: Sogmians, Mierese, Punaabs, Usturs, Manus Ultima Divina (MUD), Photoli or Tufa. This means that each crew member will have a different background story, as each species has their own set of values. Details on each are available the previously-linked Medium post, and you can check out what the Sogmians species looks like in this tweet, with the rest set to be introduced ahead of the official Crew Packs launch.

It looks like crafting efficiency will be one of the first utilities for your crew in SAGE Labs, and players can look forward to more utilities getting added as new expansions arrive with new progression systems and more. They will also be able to act as in-game avatars in the Unreal Engine 5 R2.2 release that will allow players to use their crew on their own spaceship while training them and collecting gear in RPG-style gameplay through the mobile app.