Good evening/afternoon/morning!

The first automatic nightly build is live! If anyone is interested, you can opt-in the same way you opted into the unstable branch.

Nightly builds are there for people who really wanna track our progress– not for people who just want to play the latest version of the game. Please back up any saves or worlds you care about. No, seriously. Back up your saves. It’s always best to assume they will be destroyed and the game will be at least somewhat broken.

Tonight, for instance, because we’re working on monster spawns, monsters aren’t spawning. This is the sort of thing you should expect from nightly builds.

(Tiy note: Also, because we’re currently working on progression, the very first thing you’ll probably notice is that your ship is damaged and the fuel system doesn’t work (sparks flying out of it). The only way to currently fix the ship is through admin commands so unless you know them you’ll be stranded. This is *really* for people that want to see progress + modders. You have been warned!)

I’ve updated the support page with a guide, but I’ll paste it here too:

What is the “nightly” branch and how do I switch to it (or back)?

The “nightly” branch of the beta receives updates automatically every single day. This means that using the nightly branch will frequently destroy your saves or contain other game-breaking issues depending on what we’ve been working on that day. Only use this branch if you really really want to follow our progress and don’t care about breaking the game. 

To switch between branches (click on images to enlarge them):

• Right-click on Starbound in your Steam client’s “Library” tab and select “Properties”:
  
• In the window that appears, select the “Betas” tab and then select the branch you want to use from the first drop-down.
• You should receive a confirmation message along the lines of “Successfully opted into the ‘nightly’ content beta.” below the textbox next to the “Check Code” button (note: no beta access code is required to opt into the nightly branch).
• Click close and let Steam download the update for the new branch. If you’ve switched to the nightly branch, Starbound should now be listed as “Starbound [nightly]” in your Steam library, otherwise it will be listed as just “Starbound”.