Elite Dangerous: Odyssey's planetside missions can now be shared with friends

Astronauts exploring — (Image credit: Frontier)

Bounty hunting's always been better with friends—and with this week's massive update to Elite Dangerous: Odyssey, you can now share the spoils of your planetside missions with the rest of your crew.

Odyssey's Update 5 brings land missions in line with their spacefaring counterparts, letting you share gigs with your wing. Items and objectives will all count towards the same pool, with everyone eligible for the same rewards. Objective items will be handled by the team leader on departure, and items carried by teammates who die during a mission can be reclaimed.

That you couldn't gang up for heists together in this way at launch was a startling omission, one whose fix should make ground-based adventures a more tempting proposition. But just getting those mates to jet around Odyssey in the first place should now be a little easier, too.

Odyssey notoriously launched in a pretty shoddy state, enough so that Frontier CEO David Braben felt compelled to issue an apology. The expansion has received several major bug-fixing updates since, bringing it ever closer to ship-shape. It's just a shame that between doll-like NPCs and uninspiring missions, Odyssey's biggest problems will require more than another round of bug fixes.

20 years ago, Nat played Jet Set Radio Future for the first time, and she's not stopped thinking about games since. Joining PC Gamer in 2020, she comes from three years of freelance reporting at Rock Paper Shotgun, Waypoint, VG247 and more. Embedded in the European indie scene and a part-time game developer herself, Nat is always looking for a new curiosity to scream about—whether it's the next best indie darling, or simply someone modding a Scotmid into Black Mesa. She also unofficially appears in Apex Legends under the pseudonym Horizon.