The inevitable has finally happened. This past August, when the year-long Azimuth Saga storyline of Elite Dangerous ended with the misfiring of an alien-killing superweapon, the Thargoids finally ran out of patience with humanity. They have fought back. To put it plainly, Elite Dangerous Update 14 has arrived, and all-out war has broken out. [They've had enough of our defenses," said Luke Betterton, lead game designer. 'They don't want to look at our defenses anymore. They are launching a massive invasion of the human bubble from multiple directions"

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That massive invasion has already begun: Elite Dangerous Update 14 is live now. Good luck, humans!

If you haven't been keeping up with the latest news, strange anomalies have begun appearing throughout the Elite Dangerous galaxy after a human-made superweapon failed. These anomalies, dubbed Stargoids (which look like stars and were suspected to be the work of Thargoids) by players, have now officially arrived and are causing many problems. At each of the eight known Stargoids, Thurgoid has deployed a "giant caustic cloud" called a maelstrom

that is believed to have been created by the Stargoids.

Upon entering a star system where the Maelstrom is located, the Maelstrom appears as a huge cloudy space. Players will notice a large number of Thargoids in the Maelstrom's vicinity and will find even greater danger awaiting them as they take on the difficult and dangerous task of flying directly inside the Maelstrom.

Frontier Developments showed us a short video of a ship encountering the Maelstrom. It is frankly enormous, roughly 180 km across. The interior is covered in a reddish-brown space fog, lit by flashes of bright crimson lightning, creating a truly eerie atmosphere. Entering the Maelstrom feels like flying through a hellish thunderstorm.

Not only is the Maelstrom scary to look at, but it is also environmentally dangerous. Inside the Maelstrom, you can see small cirgoid structures (like alien versions of navigational beacons) emitting caustic clouds. In the small area of Maelstrom I saw, there appeared to be at least a dozen of them. I also don't think that blowing them up one by one would be that effective.

What else is lurking in the Maelstrom is for brave elite pilots to discover. I imagine it probably won't be friendly.

The invasion also means that for the first time there will be a combat zone around Starport. Frontier showed us a video of human ships dogfighting with cirgoids around the spaceport, which was on fire and partially covered with strange green alien vines and moss.

In addition to combat missions, there are also many rescue missions to get the citizens of the spaceport out of harm's way or to bring in supplies. Ports on small stations and planets are also vulnerable to attack, so imagine the tricky job of landing on a planet while being attacked by aliens.

A new war map has been added to Elite Dangerous to track invasions: maybe you're on high alert, maybe the invasion has already started, maybe you have a malestorm: ...... Or they may have already lost and the Thargoids may be in complete control of the star system. In the last video I was shown, the spaceport was completely abandoned, like a giant ghost ship floating in space, damaged and darkened, with its blast doors closed and unable to land.

It's a daunting sight, but it highlights the seriousness of the invasion. Thurgoid is not kidding around, and Elite Dangerous may cause very real damage.