Trove, the voxel sandbox MMO, has been a cult classic with PC fans since 2015. After being released to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 just last year, Trion Worlds is just a few weeks away from its first major expansion, Geode. At E3, I was given the opportunity to check out all of the new additions the expansion brings.

Trove Geode is an interesting expansion, for has bigger focus on exploration rather than combat. The expansion takes players to a new planet, Geode, and you are able to explore underneath the landmass. However, you are limited to the amount of time you can explore the underground of Geode as indicated by a gas meter. Upgrades can be purchased to increase gas and decrease gas usage, and this will allow you to stay underground longer. While underground, you will find a plethora of materials to collect and obstacles to overcome.

Each time you go underground, the environment is randomly generated, and the deeper you go underground (as indicated by tiers up to 5), the better materials you will find. each tier drains your gas meter quicker, so upgrades are necessary to do lengthy exploration with higher tiered areas of the underground. Players can still access these parts, but they will be super limited with their time. There are also dead ends within the underground, but this is made up by rewarding players with a lot of resources at the dead end. This was done to avoid boring backtracking and wasted time whilst underground since every second underground counts. These dead ends are marked, so the player has a choice of deciding to venture further underground to find rarer items, or to spend that time instead getting a lot of lower tiered resources.

To add to the sense of exploration, there 8 different types of critters that you can help in the underground, and aiding them rewards you with some loot. You can also find some rare eggs that, when hatched, turn into one of the 8 critters you can save, and they follow you around after hatching.

There are also new ways to get around, such as the rocket shoes or the grappling hook. The rocket shoes act as a jetpack, allowing the player to glide through the air or get to hard to reach places, and the grappling hook hooks the player to a location at a quick speed. These new tools allow players to quickly traverse through the lower tiers of the underground in order to reach higher tiered areas with more time to collect resources.

This expansion is part of a three-part expansion series. this is the first part, and it has the player collecting resources under Geode as to preparation for a battle. The next expansion will have players traveling to the surface to battle against evil forces, and the final part of the expansions will go into the aftermath of the two previous adventures.

While there is a bigger focus on exploration with this expansion, there is another part of this expansion provides a new PvP mode, bomber royale. It is an interesting take on he battle royale genre, and I got to personally try it out. To start off, there are 20 players, and they are put in a clear box above the map. Everyone starts with bombs that can be thrown three times in quick succession and a grappling hook. Once the game begins, the box will start to disintegrate, and players can jump out onto a part of the map. As we all tried to bomb each other, the bomb explosions destroyed parts of the map, and the map also slowly started to disintegrate, which also shrank. It is a slow shrink, so even though I was caught on the edge of the shrinking map, I was able to run back to safety, but if I had fallen off the map, I would have died. Across the map are new bomb abilities and bomb upgrades. These ranged from bombs that launched me into the air while destroying the landscape around me, or sticky bombs, which stuck to a surface and caused a massive explosion after a couple seconds.

To add to the hectic nature of the mode, towers of lava are present across the battlefield. Once partially destroyed, lava will start to flow out onto the map, which just adds to the chaos. It only took a few bombs to kill an opponent, and health regenerates very slowly comparing to the amount of damage dealt with bombs. I managed to place 3rd, which was apparently really high for someone who has never played the mode before.

It turns out that ff you place high enough, you are rewarded with experience and other goodies. The idea behind the new mode is to allow more casual players to participate in a much less serious PvP while giving those who aren’t too good at PvP a chance to win due to the random nature of the mode. Games also usually only last 7 minutes, so it will be a huge time commitment at all.

Trove Geode is currently available for a sneak peek on the Trove test servers, but be warned, for their are bugs still present in the current build. Geode is expected to be released on all available platforms on June 26.