Nothing is more important for an intergalactic leader than helping their empire reach its ultimate potential.
The best way to help your people achieve their final form is by spending the Unity they give you wisely. Every tradition you pick will significantly impact your empire’s future – and that’s doubly true for ascension perks.
These powerful boons range from minor changes like increasing your edict fund to transcendental shifts like perfecting your genes, unlocking your psychic powers, and erasing the line between sentient lifeform and machine.
But what if you want even more power?
Then you’ll have to break away from the shackles of the vanilla game and supercharge your ascension perks with some fantastic mods. Let’s get you started!
Stellaris keeps the three different ascension paths separate to keep the game balanced.
That means your race of Psionic molluscoids can’t also edit their genetic sequence to perfection and replace their bodies with machinery all at the same time.
Ascension Paths Unlocked throws all balance out of the window by keeping all the ascension paths available for every species – even if they already took another one. It also makes Psionic and Cybernetic pop modifications available for Gestalt species.
In vanilla Stellaris, you need to be very picky with each ascension perk you pick – as you’ll only get a maximum of eight per game.
If you want to surpass your limitations and spend your hard-earned Unity getting every ascension perk you can, then the More Ascension Slots add-on for UI Overhaul Dynamic is the way to go.
This mod adds a staggering 92 extra AP slots to your traditions screen for a total of 100 – over 60 more than you’d need to get every perk in the vanilla game.
Plus, getting UI Overhaul Dynamic is always a good idea.
Now that you have access to more AP slots than you could ever need, it’s time to get some new perks.
The Plentiful Traditions mod already features four new perks and 17 new traditions – but this Extra Perks add-on takes that to the next level with 26 all-new ascension perks for your transcendence needs.
These new perks will grant you powerful bonuses, such as making Food so easy to produce it becomes trivial and allowing you to create slave species with powerful bonuses and no desire to rebel.
Make sure you get Plentiful Traditions first, or it won’t work as intended.
For something more vanilla-flavored, consider the Ascension Perks Broadened mod.
This seeks to expand perk variety without leaving Paradox’s design philosophy behind.
More specifically, the mod features 17 new ascension perks, nine of which are extensions of vanilla perks, while the other eight are all-new vanilla-friendly additions.
Some of my favorites are Prioritized Diplomacy, which grants five new envoys, and Fortify Our Grasp, which enables you to build 10 more Starbases.
This mod introduces 26 new and powerful ascension perks to unlock powerful buildings, technologies, and empire-wide effects.
More often than not, each perk will unlock two more that expand upon the original’s effects. You might even have to get all “sub-perks” to achieve an even greater result, such as unlocking a new OP technology.
It’s a surprisingly good mod for roleplaying. You can continue to focus on specific ascension ideals rather than doing everything at once because you have a ton of Unity and don’t want to waste it.
Expanded Stellaris Ascension Perks is one of the most extensive additions to Stellaris traditions, introducing 45 new ascension perks.
Besides its size, this mod shines for how exciting and fun each AP is.
Rather than just giving you more production or Starbase capacity, it introduces new planetary decisions, enables new edicts, and opens new ascension paths that add to your roleplaying experience.
Now, not all of these will be available to every empire at all times. Some are incompatible with each other, and many are dependent on specific ethics and government types – so it’ll take several playthroughs to try them all.
And even though this mod was created to work in tandem with Expanded Stellaris Traditions, it will run just fine by itself.
Nelson Chitty is a Venezuelan expat living in Argentina. He’s a writer and translator passionate about history and foreign cultures. His ideal weekend is spent between leisurely playing games of Civilization VI and looking for the next seinen anime to marathon.
