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

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. 

Update 5 comes with a staggering array of bug fixes, enough that the patch notes have been split into two parts on Steam. Major changes include a complete retuning of ship interior lights, more lenient AI guards, and better terrain detail on older planetside. But the update covers almost everything, from audio mixing and server improvements to a truly massive list of UI tweaks.

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.