 This is Witchface News for Friday the 10th of November 2023. I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, we've some late breaking news of new additions to the game. If you're looking for an adventurous quest in Elite, a new website has you covered and we provide an Fdev status report during an unusual period for the game and the company. You know how this bit goes, like, subscribe and ding that little bell so that the YouTube gods show you all our content and if you'd like to help our work you can also support us through Patreon, links to that and everything else are in the description below. This has to be one of the more unique things we've featured on the show over the years and if you're looking for a purpose in Elite Dangerous at the moment and the Thargoid War exploration or BGS etc are not doing it for you currently, then this could well be the impetus you're looking for. The French website Elite Dangerous has begun publishing an original and very ingenious series of quests and stories that are designed to be followed in-game and ideally on a second screen. Each adventure starts in a specific system and then via the website uses text, YouTube videos and embedded audio clips to send the player off on a story mission in the game. When you reach the next objective, system or destination mentioned in the story you click on the next chapter, ingest the content the website delivers, follow the trail it sends you on in the game and off you go again. One of the criticisms often levelled at Elite is the lack of story driven structured narratives and quests etc and this fascinating solution from the team goes some way at least to solving that issue. The content on the website including audio etc is available in English and Italian as well as it's native French and is beautifully presented, dripping with atmosphere and immersion with appropriate animations, screenshots and audio. Incidentally if you're in the market for a French language Elite Dangerous podcast then they have you covered there as well. The team's podcast is in the Networks tab at the top of the website which you'll find linked below. Senior Community Manager Sally Morgan Moore's departure from Frontier last week has left an understandably considerable void in the regular flow of communications from Frontier. The company hasn't yet announced who Sally's replacement will be and given the challenging circumstances the company finds itself in at the moment we don't yet know if they will even be a replacement for Sally in the foreseeable future. The only CMs now left on Elite Dangerous are Community Manager Paul Crowther and Principal Community Lead Arthur Tolmey who oversees all of Frontier's community operations at FDF. Both Arthur and Paul both work forward facing on Warhammer Age of Sigmar, a very significant title for Frontier especially at the moment. With that game launching in just 6 days from now it will therefore be keeping them both extremely busy for the foreseeable future. Taking all this into account Elite for now is in a very unusual and somewhat unhealthy situation in so much as it's an active live service game with a very thinly spread community team that is understandably more focused on the company's next major and undoubtedly important release, leaving our favourite space game currently feeling somewhat rudderless and set slightly adrift. The next Elite Dangerous live stream is not scheduled until November the 23rd and so here at the burpit we're expecting FDF communications to remain fairly low key on the Elite Dangerous front until then at the very least. We do know there is an update 18 in the works for Elite Dangerous, a release window for that update or the likely content of the update are complete unknowns at the moment. There is however an interim stability patch expected to be delivered into the game toward the end of this month. In frontiers ongoing financial woes the next major benchmark moment will be mid-January when the company is due to report its interim results to the stock market and give some initial feedback on its recently announced organisational review that encompasses significant staff cuts and redundancies at the company as well as some more inward looking strategic analysis on how the company does business going forward. Although not explicitly stated we think this review is highly likely to encompass reviewing and assessing the entire stable of FDF games Elite Dangerous included. We will of course be eagerly anticipating that report and as soon as we know any more about this we'll let you know right here. And finally some very late breaking news today as we were going to press Frontier released a new cosmetic suit onto the Arc Store named the Strike Gearset or Strike Combatant set respectively depending on if you're looking at Twitter or the Arc Store itself. In name and appearance it would seem to be aimed squarely at the Dominator suit market but the description on the Arc Store is decidedly more Artemis in nature or perhaps just more generic despite the suit's name. Galnet News also piped up late this afternoon with a story covering discoveries made by Professor Palin around the nature of the spire sites after deliveries of spire recovered materials had been handed in by players. It seems that the spire sites are acting as refineries to process materials needed to sustain or perhaps fuel the Titan mother ships and he further eludes that a contaminant could be introduced into the spire site to disrupt this process. We were digesting this news when we heard from multiple sources in the community that new missions had appeared at the rescue megaships connected to the spire sites. Upon further investigation it appears that recovered materials from the spire sites are a mission requirement for these new missions and upon delivery a successful commander will receive contaminated spire refinery compound. As yet it hasn't been explicitly stated but we're guessing that this is perhaps the new Palin contaminant mentioned in Galnet and that delivery of this tainted goop will perhaps have a derogatory effect on a spire site. At the time of recording I'm frankly making a hell of an assumption there so the results of any community based science on the subject are likely going to prove valuable in the coming week at least. If you find anything out yourself please do let us know in the comments below. Are you planning on running on foot spire material gathering missions for your local friendly rescue ship? Will you be following a new narrative driven adventure? What would you like to see in update 18? Let us know in the comments below. That's it for now. Thanks very much for watching. We'll be back later this week with more videos. Until then, O7 commanders follow the Greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack. We very much look forward to seeing you next time.