Icarus News

In our weekly update we some changes to fix the reload issues where buildings, deployables and deep ore viens would not reload. An unfortunate side-effect of this update meant some of the progression and missions in Styx could not be completed. We also have been experiencing a bug where clients would crash when completing open world missions.



We do apologize for doing the hotfix, as we know it is disruptive with how the downloads work and some users experience long times where Steam has to verify the entire game. Unfortunately we really do need to get this change out, as it is badly impacting some players.

• Fixed SANDBOX, INFLUX & WETWORK missions which where blocked from completion due to them only checking for the pre-mesh swap actors.
  
• Fixed a client crash that could occurring when spawning a reward pod upon completion of an open world mission, this was caused by the particle system attached.
  
• Fixed Map Blockers in STYX re-appearing when the mission was reloaded and not being destroyed as intended as part of the quest. This will not fix missions in progress.
  
• Fixed for dropship spawns not reloading correctly and allowing multiple players to drop in the same location.
  
• Fixed Dynamic Cache and Collect missions with clients and servers having their crates & dead prospectors in different locations.
  

We are aware of the save issues some players are experiencing after unlocking the new tonic recipes, its a server side issue and we are actively working on fixing this now.

Week Fifty One's update brings an end to one of the longest-standing bugs, disappearing items on reload. With the help of our new bug-reporting tool and the community, we’ve managed to identify and remedy this bug and expect the results to be immediate after updating with the patch.

We’ve also added a range of items that previously have been ‘coming soon’ in the tech tree, along with the highly requested ‘auto-run’ feature and new meshes for an updated aesthetic on a few items.

Pastes have also received a re-work, making them a viable consumable amongst the craftables pool once again.

Finally, a new Repair Bench at Tier 3 has been added for repairing all items, regardless of their original crafting location and for repairing workshop items, when paired with a power source.





A longstanding issue in Icarus that has proved a challenging battle, has been disappearing deployables and in-game features such as Deep Ore Veins or Mounts on reload of a prospect or session.

Most players have experienced and reported these issues to us. These reports have been incredibly helpful and paired with our recent bug-reporting tool, we’ve managed to identify the bug and reproduce it with a 100% success rate.

As a result of this work, we have been able to fix this bug and include it in this week's update. Going forward, we expect this will have a massive impact on persistent and multi-day sessions.

It’s important to note that previously lost items are unable to be reloaded, but anything saved forward of this patch will now save and be reloaded correctly.

Originally posted by author

This patch we have been able to address a few long standing issues brought up by the community.

The first being that of items disappearing when reloading an existing session. This has been most prominent with deep ore veins, buildings & deployables especially on sessions with larger builds. It has been an issue that has plagued us since release and is something that some developers have spent countless hours trying to fix. This week's build contains a fix to this long standing bug. The fix is in no small part due to some members of the community (Twist2021 & Cucu) for providing us with some files where we could accurately reproduce this issue 100% of the time.

Another widely asked for feature is that of auto-run and the various items that have been marked as coming soon (including the waterwheel). In this patch we have added these items and made sure they fit well into the existing Icarus structure.

Fishing is not one of the ‘coming soon’ items addressed this patch. It is something that we hear a lot of community members and internal staff talk about and is something we very much want to add to the game. The original intent of fishing and its place in the game has changed and I wanted to let you know the design team is hard at work expanding the mechanics to make it a fun feature. The main thing for us here is that inclusion of fishing feels natural and has its own place in the game. This may take a little time but will be worth it when we add the completed feature.

- Jake Dodunski, Project Lead

We’ve added a Tier 3 Repair Bench to the tech tree which provides two unique benefits. It has the ability to repair all items you’re wearing or have placed on the bench with a single click, regardless of where they were crafted. When combined with a power connection it can also repair Tier 4 and Orbital Workshop items.

This change means that all Orbital Workshop Items can only be repaired on this bench, rather than the machining bench or fabricator as before. It will still require the Workshop Repair Kit, which can be used in collaboration with the bench to repair workshop items on the go.

The bench costs 20 aluminium, 20 leather, 50 wood and 10 stone to craft, and can be unlocked in Tier 3 of the tech tree.





We’ve added a bunch of new items to the tech tree that have previously been ‘coming soon’.

The ‘Waterwheel’ will be a new power generation source that can be placed in any body of water. It provides 2000 power but requires some active maintenance to keep in service. Every three and half minutes, the waterwheel will collect junk such as spoiled plants, or rarely fish or sponges. After 50 items (which should take just under three hours), the waterwheel will grind to a halt and not generate power until it has been cleaned out. Keep an eye on it to keep your base moving.

The ‘Marbled Kitchen Bench’ will craft most items previous cooking benches can’t provide and has a 50% crafting speed bonus also.

It can be paired with the ‘Marbled Kitchen Storage’ which provides the same aesthetic as the other Tier 4 kitchen items.

The ‘Plumbed Sink’ when connected to active water connection, provides a short buff when interacted with. The Buff increases crafting speed, movement speed, health regeneration, and reduced water and food consumption.

The ‘Electric Stove' has been added to Tier 4 also, allowing you to craft items previous stoves couldn’t and plus a 50% crafting speed bonus.

Finally, we’ve changed the 3D meshes on a bunch of existing items to give them a fresh look. The Electric Furnace, Concrete Furnace, Electric Dehumidifier, Cooking Bench, Glassworking Bench and Lightning Rod have all received a new look. Existing versions that you’ve deployed won’t be updated so as to not ruin existing aesthetics (note: they also cannot be destroyed for a refund due to this change), and new versions will use the new mesh.





Pastes have been an area deserving of attention for a while, and today we’re providing a substantial rebalance to make them a more viable option amongst the consumables pool.

Previously, pastes provided small bonuses such as 10% health regeneration/increases or 50 health on use, which only lasted 60 seconds.

We’ve scrapped this model entirely, and redesigned pastes into ‘Enhancement Tonics’ which provide much stronger benefits.

• Health Enhancement Tonic: Significantly increases maximum health and health regeneration, and provides a large boost to health on use.
  
• Stamina Enhancement Tonic: Significantly increases maximum stamina and stamina regeneration, and provides a large boost to stamina on use.
  
• Sustenance Enhancement Tonic: Significantly reduces oxygen, food and water consumption, and provides a significant boost to each of these on use.
  
• Strength Enhancement Tonic: Significantly increases melee damage, throwing speed and physical resistance, and provides a boost to both health and stamina on use.
  

The new tonics can be crafted on the Herbalism and Chemistry benches and will have a two-minute timer from the point of consumption. Any blueprint points used on previous iterations of the pastes will be refunded to your character.

Originally posted by author

To introduce the revamped pastes, we have created a new mission to complete which requires you to perform research on protective pills and enhancement tonics on behalf of the UDA. Due to a last-minute issue in updating our content sever which stores a lot of the prospect data and player talents we have elected to pull the mission from this week and release it as soon as we can in the future.

- Jake Dodunski, Project Lead

New Content

• Add data setup for new revised Electric Furnace asset. Existing spawned/crafted Electric Furnaces will remain the same for nostalgia reasons. Newly crafted Electric Furnaces will use the new mesh
  
• Add data setup for new revised Concrete Furnace asset. Existing spawned/crafted Concrete Furnaces will remain the same for nostalgia reasons. Newly crafted Concrete Furnaces will use the new mesh
  
• Fix Mats on new furnace DMs
  
• Update Lightning Rod to use new revised asset
  
• Add data setup for new revised Cooking Station asset. Existing spawned/crafted Cooking Stations will remain the same for nostalgia reasons. Newly crafted Cooking Stations will use the new mesh
  
• Tweaked view distance settings for proxy meshes on new revised deployables
  
• Add data setup for new revised Glassworking Bench asset. Existing spawned/crafted Glassworking Benches will remain the same for nostalgia reasons. Newly crafted Glassworking Benches will use the new mesh
  
• Setting up waterwheel logic and power generation, adding new UI & unlocking on blueprint tree
  
• Update Repair Bench BP to use new mesh
  
• Update icon for updated Repair Bench
  
• Fixed texture settings on Repair Bench assets
  
• Delete repair bench mesh/materials/textures which were made obsolete by v2 assets
  
• Fix material errors for Wood Bed DM
  
• Update Interior Wood bed to use new v2 mesh
  
• Add new Repair Bench
  
• Can repair all items previously repaired at Fabricator and Machining Bench
  
• Requires power to repair T4 and workshop items
  
• Bypass stamina requirements for repair at bench
  
• Add data setup for new revised Electric Dehumidifier asset. Existing spawned/crafted Electric Dehumidifiers will remain the same for nostalgia reasons. Newly crafted Electric Dehumidifiers will use the new mesh
  
• Electric Dehumidifier - separated fans for animation
  
• Updating Repair Bench UI to make consistent with the rest of the UI
  
• Unlocking Repair bench in the Talent Tree and shifting to T3
  
• AUGMENTATION: Extermination initial mission setup
  
• Water wheels can now be only placed on flowing water
  
• Adding and unlocking T4 Kitchen Bench, Stove, Storage and Sink, also adding recipes, meshes and deployable setups
  
• Adding Snapping for Advanced Kitchen Blocks
  
• Reworked herbalism bench pastes into enhancement tonics, these provide a much more significant buff, last 2 minutes and cost slightly more than the previous pastes.
  
• AUGMENTATION: Updated mission requirements to utilize enhancement tonics
  
• Added tonics and furnaces to dynamic quest reward options
  
• Advanced Kitchen Bench & Electric Stove are now set up correctly with their available crafting recipes
  
• Updating T4 Kitchen Deployables Names, Descrioptions and Flavour
  
• Updating repair bench to be the only way to repair workshop items
  
• Adding waterwheel generator crafting recipe
  
• Updating Repair Bench UI to include new buttons
  
• Adding new Strings for Repair Bench UI
  
• Added advanced kitchen, waterwheel and repair bench icons
  
• Players can now wash their hands at a plumbed sink for a 2minute crafting, movement, consumption reduction buff
  
• Fixed typo in plumbed sink modifier
  
• Players can now place items in the interactable sink
  
• Cleaning in sink is only triggered when there is an active water connection
  
• Updating Water wheel talent and itemable
  
• Add Multiple Category Buttons To Repair Bench
  
• Add DamagePercentForRepairAll to D_Durable
  
• Added ability to toggle on and off auto-run
  
• Add Multiple Category Buttons To Repair Bench
  
• Removed the amount damage required for repair all from DT to BP variable
  
• Conditionally hide repair buttons and info popup based on repair bench state
  
• Allowed the waterwheel to not be affected by weather
  
• Reorganized T4 kitchen pieces in talent tree.
  
• Added recipes for T4 kitchen pieces.
  
• Ensured recipes for T4 kitchen pieces cover previous recipes as required.
  
• Fixed description of Marbled Kitchen Bench to indicate that it does not craft chemistry recipes.
  
• FORSAKEN: Fixed typo in Thruster step
  
• Fix location of Water network connection position on V2 Glassworking Bench
  
• Add transparent sphere helper guides to show network socket positions in Editor
  
• Removed Floatable trait from waterpump, causing it to error spam after being deployed
  
• Adding in a tonic base mesh with material setup to easily change tonic liquid color and an Icon + color for the front of the bottle
  
• AUGMENTATION: Increased mission timer to 3 days
  
• Added autorun support to mounts. Pressing forward or backward movement input will disable autorun if active
  
• Added enhancement tonic icons and added them to itemable datatable
  
• Added new backend hooks to the Repair Bench for greater filtering/better UX (not yet implemented)
  
• Enabled code enum generation on D_RecipeSets/D_TalentTrees tables
  
• Resaved D_TalentsTree table to fix formatting issues
  
• Reduced recipe costs of waterwheel.
  
• Doubled time between items clogging up the waterwheel, resulting in less item returns but longer running time.
  
• Removed waterwheel talent from repairing tree, as this is no longer required
  
• Fixed crafting location for Repair Bench, now correctly crafted at Machining Bench
  
• Added water connection to kitchen stove and electric stove, as there are now water recipes there
  
• Fixed typo in Condensed Enzymes (was missing z)
  
• Fixed typo in water tooltip for crop plots, receive instead of recieve
  
• Removed fuel slot from electric stove, as this does not do anything.
  
• Update icons for enhancement tonic modifiers to use new icons.
  
• Fix a bug with the enzyme dynamic mission reward where it would show 2-3 enzymes as a reward but only give one (now correctly shows it will give 1)
  
• GetRepairableItems function can now process multiple inventories at once with the ability to include/exclude workshop items
  
• Cleaned up ItemManipulationComponent code
  
• Dynamic Tools Mission: Required number of items no longer scales with difficulty, increasing required items at lower difficulty and reducing it at higher difficulty. - Fixed crossbow attachment reward giving the flexible frame instead of the lightweight frame. - Fixed icon for cooking bench talent to use new version
  
• Fixed the stamina regeneration on the Stamina Enhancement Tonic not applying to the character
  
• Updated Repair Bench description and flavor text
  
• Add new UMG_RepairMaterialStack widget for displaying stacked repair materials in the Repair Bench
  
• Fixed waterwheel item fill timer to correct value for new expected clog time
  
• Fixing Repair Bench Confirmation UI to include correct stat changes
  
• Fixing Waterwheel Timer
  
• Waterwheel now checks there are spoiled plants in its inventory before adding other items to prevent expoits by removing non-stackable items
  
• Increased energy generation of waterwheel to 2000 from 1500. - Increased time for clogging of the waterwheel to 2h50m, now requiring 50 items to fully clog (gains 1 item per 204s)
  
• Changed glow colour on enhancement tonic icons
  
• Update pivot position of Waterwheel SM and offset SK mesh in BP so that the wheel touches the water
  
• Adding new developer prospect to force content server update
  
• Fixed a bug where having sleep quality % buffs (e.g. washing hands) on the player wouldn't affect the well rested buff
  
• ADVANCED ORDER mission: Updated Health Restoration Paste requirement to Health Enhancement Tonic
  
• CONCEALMENT mission: Updated Oxygen Restoration Paste requirement to Sustenance Enhancement Tonic
  

Fixed

• Added pre-compiled Sentry binaries to version control
  
• Added extra logging to ActorStateRecorderComponent
  
• Shifted GPU/Driver info collection to USentrySubsystem::AddDefaultContext so it doesn't spam log with gpu info
  
• Dynamic Quest Reward improvements:
  
• Increased the amount of storage granted by storage improvements (now 3 pieces of storage instead of 1)
  
• Fixed Advanced Modifications: Melee reward
  
• Fixed typo in Dietary Requirements
  
• Added T3 light options to light rewards
  
• Reduced chances for and increased reward amount of cooked T1 items
  
• Increased reward amount for uncooked veggies
  
• Added additional reward options
  
• Removed Prime Meat options from dynamic quest rewards, as the item is no longer in use
  
• Added validation to prevent a crash related to Quest initialisation during prospect reload
  
• Fixing Mission Communication board Mesh
  
• Fixing Water Pump Energy Requirements
  
• Fixing issues with missions created prior to week 50 being in an end state and reverting back due to bad save informaiton
  
• Committing fix for Icon editor crashing when clicking on a folder icon
  
• Fixing issue with caches missions not providing xp
  
• Fixing Collect Mission dead prospects from not being there on reload
  
• Mission Communicator now works all the time in editor
  
• Clients can now see the contents of Quest Rewards during selection
  
• Update wood repair hammer name, description and flavor text to communicate merging of repair and upgrade hammers
  
• Fixed an issue where deployables and buildings pieces could be destroyed when reloading an outpost/open world game. Reloaded IcarusActors and IcarusItems are now assigned their UID as soon as possible after spawning. UActorStateRecorderComponent::AttemptToFindOwner no longer accepts actors with valid UIDs as potential owners. Reduced default verbosity of various recorder-related log categories
  
• Dynamic Hunt mission: Reduced spawning delay on creatures slightly.
  
• Dynamic Cache mission: Items are no longer marked as quest items.
  
• Dynamic Collect Prospector ID mission: Bears no longer respawn, but will still respawn on reload (to prevent login and logout to remove them)
  
• Added missing RepairFunctionLibrary file missing from previous commit to fix the build
  

Future Content

• Updates and improvements to swamp scatters and general ambience finessing
  
• Fixed an edge case with the hotbar focusing secondary slot not going away when reviving
  
• Add Enzyme Geyser to TU/AC/SW on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Apply water physical material to creek water mesh to fix creek footstep sounds, which were broken by the refactor required for lava footsteps
  
• Removing breathing layer from b.dog aggro state
  
• Placing Foliage, Exotic Meta Spawn and Enzyme Geyser's, In Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Cleanup of Ice Cave on Green, Cave AC SML 005 Added & Cleanup on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Moved GetLoadout and GrantMetaItems character functions to their own component to improve dedicated server compatibility
  
• Remove pointless Substance Toolbar buttons which are links to the website, taking up valuable Editor UI real estate
  
• Added DEP_T3_Communiction Device
  
• Adding more swamp lake scatter bubbles and interesting layers
  
• Placed Respawn Dropships in Grasslands, added aspen saplings in GL,polished decals and foliage around GL/TU transition, Green Quad, DLC Map
  
• Increasing the scale of the BatDog by 35% character to its correct size
  
• adding in first pass base level tundra ambience. To be adjusted and fine tuned and adding more scatters
  
• Upping the swamp quad character and corpse scale by 20% to better fit the vocalization feel
  
• RVT Off on CF Sandbanks, Prometheus Cliffs/Rocks/CaveEntrances
  
• Tree Trunk RVT OFF, Pine/Fir/Palm/Cypress
  
• Submitting Flyer and textures
  
• Adjustments to tundra and environment tweaks
  
• Wood Fortifications - all meshes, textures, materials added. Adjusted settings in D_DeployableSetup and added sockets to improve placement
  
• Adding biome data table info
  
• Cleanup of Riverbanks & Cliffs on Green/Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Added DEP_Landmine
  
• Updated LOD for DEP_Landmine
  
• Update Texture reporting in AssetInfo tool to take into account World Normal maps
  
• Fixed Skeletal Mesh checking including Destructible Meshes in results
  
• General Cleanup On, Purple Quad and Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Fix LODs on several SKs
  
• Fix filenames and texture settings on new creature assets
  
• Fix Diorama mesh using complex collision at over 100k tris
  
• Delete test levels for new creatures uploaded into creature folders
  
• Fix DM material errors for new cooking station
  
• Adding tundra and grasslands ambient and scatters. Removing unused assets
  
• UI layout tweaks to AssetInfo tool
  
• Progress on Missing Materials check
  
• Added Enzyme Geyser to SW & General Cleanup on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Placed Respawn Dropships in Grasslands, polished decals and cliffs around GL/TU , Green Quad, DLC Map
  
• Converted HAB Character assets from Virtual Textures to standard to remove unnecessary technical overhead
  
• Fixed up some filenames and deleted unused assets
  
• Adding new tundra and grasslands subtle grass blend layer when around bushes. Adjustments to grasslands levels and dynamic sounds
  
• Fixed Cypress BB texture being VirtualTexture
  
• Fixed Tree and Grass Billboard masters using assets instead of default textures causing dozens of unnecessary asset references
  
• Added Sulfur deposit meshes (duplicated stalagmites) + materials
  
• Adjustments to LC_PlantDebris decal
  
• Added subsurface to red grass in Lava Biome, LC_GrassA
  
• Rename Crate MED asset because it keeps dirtying DTs with casing issues
  
• Rename WildBoar assets folder because it keeps dirtying DTs with casing issues
  
• Tweaked WildBoar GFur LOD settings to fix close up visuals
  
• Adjusted M_RockMacroMaster and MF Dolerite/Moss/Sand/WindSweptSnow to reduce texture lookups and shader complexity, added cheaper triplanar method (MF_CheapTriplanar), WIP and older files saved in Dev folder
  
• Added New Arctic Template Cave, ACMED_005, DLC Map
  
• Fortifications - added first pass on wall piece with window
  
• Made template Cave_AC_MED_006 Level for TU/AC on DLC Map
  
• Placed Respawn Dropships in Grasslands and Tundra/Arctic, polished decals and cliffs around GL/TU , Green Quad, DLC Map
  
• Added KIT_Brick
  
• Added ITM_Brick Resource
  
• Added IsValid check in UpdateSentryContext function to prevent log spam in HAB
  
• Add pathway to climb out of Mega Tree Cave & Set Dress Mega Tree cave tunnel on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Finished Template Cave ACMED_005 and Added it into the Ice Cave On Blue Quad and General Cleanup, Blue Quad, Prometheus
  
• Update D_Durable to fix build validation issue
  

Our initial implementation of Open World has been well received and we are excited to follow this up with the addition of dynamic missions to Open World sessions together with some performance improvements.

These Open World Missions allow us to bring a richer experience directly into our persistent world experience. Inside an Open World session, you can now launch special Missions from a Short Range Radio in your base. Eight mission types and variations depending on your biome and difficulty give you over 50 different versions to play.

Performance improvements to reduce the impact of Unreal Engine RVT tech have been implemented that can improve performance significantly for many players.

We’ve also introduced a new bug reporting feature, which will help provide more detailed debug info to help us solve more challenging bugs such as disappearing deployables and voxels upon reload.

Finally, we talk a bit more about our upcoming Decentralization, and why it’s so important after an outage we experienced earlier this week.





Establishing the Open World mode has allowed us to expand the game into a more persistent experience, but we wanted to bring our mission experience into this. This week we're bringing a variety of dynamic missions into Open World mode. Missions with varying objectives and challenges can be launched from your Open World session, with variations based on your map location, biome and selected difficulty.

The new Short Range Radio can be made at the Crafting Bench (after unlocking in the Blueprint Tree) and requires ten wood, eight ropes and fifteen iron. Once crafted and deployed, engaging with it will provide two contracts to choose between, with any you select being repeatable in the future.



The eight types of mission available are:

1. Hunt: Kill a quota of wild animals that spawn in the current biome
   
2. Grow: Grow a quota of vegetables and deliver
   
3. Mine: Collect a quota of a requested ore and deliver
   
4. Collect: Search for downed prospectors and collect and deliver their IDs
   
5. Scan: Scan a location with the scanner provided, defend the scanner
   
6. Cache: Collect a cache from a previous prospector
   
7. Boss: Kill a wandering boss animal
   
8. Tools: Craft and deliver 3 tools of varying tech levels
   

Completion of your assigned mission will result in a Reward Pod descending to your location, where you can choose between one of three offered rewards and be granted XP for your efforts.



These Missions differ from those in the Missions game mode, so don’t forget to still play them especially if you want to unlock Boss enemy items or find exotics. In future, we’re looking at more ways to integrate the rich mission experience of the base game with Open World mode, while still having some unique stand-alone Missions.

We have experienced three months of back to back growth in player numbers, revenue, and playtime - much of which driven by Open World mode. As such, it's clear that players enjoy this and our community and many content creators have provided excellent advice for us about how to focus the experience. As such we will be expanding and developing Open World mode based on your feedback. Please continue to let us know your thoughts and ideas on how to develop this further.





We’re implementing the performance improvement we talked about last week, with early indications from our experimental testers suggesting positive improvements for mid to low-spec players.

To explain the change, Icarus previously utilized Unreal Engine’s Runtime-Virtual-Texture (RVT) technology to provide terrain texture details and environmental blending for our rocks and cliffs. We found that our heavy use of this tech had led to a GPU bottleneck. We have substantially eased the strain caused by this bottleneck, improving performance and specifically, FPS.

We released this improvement to our experimental branch testers earlier in the week, and have received feedback ranging from no change to significant improvement with one user reported seeing frame improvements from 14fps to 50fps on Epic settings, and another from 40-70fps averages to 60-80fps averages (with DLSS on). Some other encouraging feedback included players now being able to spot creatures at greater distances, and having landscape load far quicker and more seamlessly. This will, of course, depend on your individual hardware spec, settings, world complexity etc. as unfortunately players with high-spec machines already experiencing high frame-rates report less improvement from this change.

At times it can be frustrating as a player to see an update that doesn't improve performance, with comments coming up like "why aren't they fixing performance first?". Performance is an ongoing task and clear focus for our team since launch. With ICARUS we pushed the boundaries of the engine, even working directly with Nvidia on new functionality. This means the development and systems are quite complex, and it can take a log of time to bring performance improvements. We have dedicated team members looking at the game, profiling it, and developing fixes. This area is one of the most complicated to schedule, so sometimes weeks can go by without major fixes being deployed.





We wanted to address one of the larger bugs impacting the community currently which, due to its unique circumstances, make it difficult for us to fix.

Disappearing buildings, deployables and deep ore veins when reloading a game has been plaguing many players for some time. We have difficulty being able to reproduce the bug internally, making it hard to identify the root cause of the issue. When it does happen locally, or players send us their ‘prospect files’, a save has already occurred and overwritten the reload state we needed to see what happened.

We have added a new Report Bug button in the game, that allows you to anonymously send bug tickets to our devs which will include any errors/warnings that have occurred in the logs.

If you lose any buildings or deployables, please hit Escape and use the Report an Issue button.

Feature Upvote is also still active, and is the best place for sharing suggestions, improvements, thoughts and concerns.





As we’ve mentioned before, for the past few months we’ve been working on how to remove the game's online requirement and our dependence on our back-end server architecture for many reasons including resiliency, cost and reducing complexity.

Games as a Service (GaaS) is a popular term in development, referring to online titles that monetize through the games live and run as a live service. Piracy is difficult because of the games "online service" nature. Initially, ICARUS has been very much like this. We have been prioritizing a move away from this, to decentralizing the game and pushing as much as possible to the community. While this means a reduction in some functionality, it dramatically increases redundancy and the ability for players to play the game how they would like.

Decentralizing the games architecture allows our community to run the game how they see fit, and ensures the game a long life independent of the studio running it. This has been a conscious decision at our studio, across all of our products including unreleased ones, so that we can focus on making good games with excellent tools. By focusing on the games, and providing the tools to run them, we believe this maximizes both the lifetime and the creativity of the games themselves.

- Dean Hall, CEO

Earlier this week we had a significant outage with players unable to connect and had us even considering bringing this change forward, but we are making good progress and want to make sure we’ve tested and addressed any issues migrating data from our servers onto users PCs. We still have a few connection issues when first joining a dedicated server which we are actively looking into but we are happy with progress.

We have been working with server providers who have been testing the dedicated server and are providing useful feedback. If anyone is interested in trying the branch, we update throughout the week and talk about bugs and issues in our Discord in the #data-decentralization-branch channel. Click here to join.

This work really will open up doors to us to add a lot of things to the game, including significantly expanding the number of players who can play in a session at once. Our currently testing has been with eight players in a session at one time, for example.

ICARUS is the first major title the studio has produced and it would be fair to say our launch was rocky. With the launch we undertook a review of how we were working and made adjustments, as well as some key decisions. One commitment we made was to work on the quality of the base game, and customer satisfaction, before we looked at monetization. We originally had plans for more additional monetization, such as DLC including more expansions - but have moral objections to monetizing the project while reception was deservedly mixed.

Instead of this, we committed to weekly updates even through holiday periods to build customer and player confidence, to allow us time to develop the experience. As such, we're still not at a point where we feel comfortable releasing paid DLC, as we feel there is still some work to be done getting the base game to an experience players are satisfied with.

To ease our production processes we publish our changelogs verbatim, so keen eyes will have noticed we have been doing a lot of work on future DLC content for some time and we are mostly there in a number of aspects, but I will continue to delay the launch of the DLC until we are satisfied the base game is broadly representative of what our players want and expect.

Even when we do launch future DLC, we will continue to prioritize development of the base game and have DLC being supporting content. Additionally the studio is committed to ensuring DLC does not divide the community such as when playing with friends.

There is no specific targeted date for the launch of paid DLC and content. We will continue to listen to your comments and discuss it with you, here and on Discord.

- Dean Hall, CEO

We have a separate team who very passionately work on Stationeers. We've been working hard on major refactors of the game, and are increasingly proud of where the project is at. We're getting even closer to releasing a major multiplayer update that will make it easier than ever to play multiplayer together. Please check it out, and wishlist it or buy to support our work.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/544550/Stationeers/



New Content

• Adding Dynamic Quests for Growing & Mining, Updating Kill Dynamic Quest
  
• Adding Dynamic Quests for Scanning and Dead Prospector Retrieval
  
• Tweaked Mission EQS to better work with quest distances
  
• Adding Dynamic Quests for Hunt and Cache
  
• Added Anchored Behaviour to Wolves by default that can be enabled via spawner
  
• Adding New EQS for Close AI Quest Spawning
  
• Unlocking 'SMPL' interface for triggering dynamic missions
  
• Fixing Dynamis Mission 'Hunt' as it wasn't counting the creatures killed correctly
  
• Adding Dynamic Quest Table and ability to trigger quests from in session
  
• Update Exotic Delivery Interface to have its own widget and not use the Mission Communicator BP
  
• Adding new Strings for SMPL interface
  
• Adding Rudimentry Flare to Reward Pod which fires into the air upon landing
  
• Fixing up mission communicator text and adding a shift to the base dynamic mission spawn location
  
• Adding FName as a possible generic actor record on the save game
  
• Adding a new UI for Dynamic Quest Reward Selection
  
• Fixing some typos in the Dynamic Quest Descriptions
  
• Submitting missed Dynamic Quest Reward Structure File
  
• Adding cheat to Skip Quest Steps
  
• Updating Enviroment Queries to Query based on Mission Board Or Actor instead of Pawn
  
• Updating Dynamic Kill quest to have different bosses per atmosphere type
  
• Adding functions to call to clean up quest objects when a quest is complete
  
• Updating Scan Dynamic quest to clean its mission objects up after mission complete
  
• Fixing up Quest UI so it works with missions being cleaned up after they have finished
  
• Reworked Dynamic Quest Rewards so there is a lot more variety
  
• Fixed Dynamic Quest reward options now have an interactable tooltip
  
• Resaving DynamicQuestRewardsDatatable
  
• Added first iteration of Dynamic Quest Reward Items
  
• Added first iteration of Dynamic Quest Reward sets, pre-lore
  
• Add basic audio cues for dynamic quest UI and item setup
  
• Adding ability to select from 2 dynamic missions when interacting with the Short Range Radio
  
• Adding fallback cases to mission selection location
  
• Adding DynamicQuestSeed to GameState & GameModeRecorder so missions are set until completed reguardless of Short Range Radio
  
• Adding new UI for Short Range Radio Mission Selection
  
• Adding Weighting to Dynamic Quest Selection for Generation
  
• Setting Dynamic Quest Reward Item Selection Weighting to 100 by default instead of 1
  
• Updating Short Range Radio to Propertly Roll Dynamic Quests based on Weight
  
• Removing unused UI asset for dynamic quests
  
• Fixing default values for various quest weightings
  
• Updating Dynamic Quests to include Difficulty Reward Modifier
  
• Updating Dynamic Quest Distance Spawning logic, so it slightly futher away
  
• Updating Grow Missions to only include things the player can grow on Olympus & Styx
  
• Updating Hunt Quest to include extra spawning of creatures specific to the mission
  
• Updating Mine Quests to include different ores based on session difficulty
  
• Updating Quest reward UI to show the scaled rewards based on session difficulty
  
• Couple of UI audio tweaks for dynamic missions
  
• Added additional dynamic quest reward items and sets.
  
• Added lore to all dynamic quest rewards
  
• More tweaks to dynamic mission audio:
  
• Fix phys mat on T2 communication device
  
• Add charge sound to transport pod ascent sequence
  
• Replace mission confirm UI audio on dynamic quest option widget
  
• Adding new Tools Dynamic quest, scales on both selected difficutly and asks the player to craft & delivery 1 out of a possibly 7 sets of items per difficulty
  
• Unlocking Short Range Radio Talent to be unlocked on the T2 Tech Tree
  
• Resized Reward Pod Inventory as it was not required to be as big as it was (60->24)
  
• Fix flare assets to be configurable for color
  
• Tweak flare logic for Transport Pod
  
• Increasing Dynamic Quest Spawn Location and Updating EQS
  
• Updating Cache Dynamic Quest Spawn Location
  
• Fixing Tools Dynamic Quest Completion condition, so it actually completes
  
• Scaled cache reward options to be similar in level to dynamic quest rewards
  
• Increased minimum cache rewards
  
• Remove debug setup for Transport Pod
  
• Updating Dynamic Quest EQS & Dropship Landing EQS to use the correct QueryContext
  
• Updated Cache quest so it can be completed after a reload & allowing some items a percent chance to spawn
  
• Dynamic missions now generate a mission difficulty, which is saved in the QuestManager and Recorded as needed
  
• Updating all dynamic quests to use the dynamic mission difficulty rather than the prospect difficulty for scaling
  
• Fixing Short Range Radio's itemable and durabable data, it will now have a proper name, icon, description and health
  
• Add an autodetect GPU button to Graphics Settings
  
• Add an Auto Detect button to Graphics Settings
  
• Performs GPU and RAM detection and applies settings based on what is found
  
• This means users have a 'make it go faster' shortcut button
  
• Add an autodetect for GPU button to Graphics Settings
  
• Add an Auto Detect button to Graphics Settings
  
• Performs GPU and RAM detection and applies settings based on what is found
  
• This means users have an opt-in 'make it go faster' shortcut button
  
• Updating Transport Pod Inventory Length
  
• Rescaled quest rewards, notably reducing boss crafting materials and increasing their fully crafted counterparts
  
• Fixing Short Range Radio not having a meshable entry
  
• Add an autodetect GPU button to Graphics Settings
  
• Add an Auto Detect button to Graphics Settings
  
• Performs GPU and RAM detection and applies settings based on what is found
  
• This means users have a 'make it go faster' shortcut button
  
• Made changes to DynamicQuestReward and Mission_Communicator_T2. Still needs to be adjusted
  
• Added new option in escape menu to 'Report an Issue' that can be used to directly report a bug report to our bug tracker along with useful game state information. Added UE4 Sentry plugin to give better integration/control over what is reported back
  
• Adjusted Short Range Radio UI to match concepts
  
• Adjusted Dynamic Mission Reward UI to match concepts
  
• Limited Short Range Radio to only work in Open World Mode
  
• Final touches on Dynamic Missions widget clean up
  
• Dynamic Quests no longer provide the 2 experience events
  
• Swapping Experience granted from Dynamic Quests to use the dynamic mission difficutly variable for scaling
  
• Collect Dynamic Quests now spawns additional enemies
  
• Kill Dynamic Quests now spawns additional enemies
  
• Collection Dynamic Missions Clean Up Correctly Now
  
• Dynamic Mission Locations now increase based on the selected dynamic mission difficulty
  
• Added Settings module to Icarus build.cs, removed WITH_EDITOR flags around SentryModule ISettingsModule
  
• Added Settings module to Sentry.Build.cs
  
• Fixing Short Range Radio not having the correct talent requirement - fixes blueprint talent display
  
• Adding additional Text to Login Screen for Connection Status
  
• Removing ws from socket header
  
• Rebalanced dynamic mission rewards to offer higher tier rewards more often and more basic materials when they appear. - Increased dynamic cache mission rewards. - Fixed dynamic tools mission Antibiotics step. - Quest rewards now correctly show the unscaled value if the value does not scale (eg if you get 1 tool)
  
• Fixing issues with Collect Dynamic Quest where items were not spawning in the collection bodies as intended
  
• Adding redundance case for collection quest bodies item spawning
  
• Dynamic Mission EQSs now avoid generating points on water
  
• Adding ability to cancel dynamic quests, if a quest is cancelled there is a 10minute delay before another quest can be undertaken
  
• Adding Replication for the Dynamic Quest Seed
  
• Adding a new gameplay config option for DynamicQuestCancelDelay
  
• Modifying Exotic Delivery ship Spawning to use the new Dynamic quest pod logic
  
• Updating Dynamic mission range to be slightly larger
  
• Removing Red light on the Short Range Radio
  
• Adding new EQS for quest spawning
  
• Updating Cache Quest to include new cache eqs
  
• Updating Dynamic Quest Weightings
  
• Fixed dynamic mission scaling for Mine mission when selecting difficulty, and removed chance to require titanium as a handin
  
• Fixing issue if clients and the server interacted with the reward pod on quick sucess and selected a reward that both rewards could be given
  
• Fixing the reward pod flare & smoke not showing on the derived classes
  
• Tweaked dynamic mission rewards, making long term quarantine reward and hunting supplies rarer. Increased bone drop from hunting rewards
  
• Added new Test to Dynamic Mission EQSs to prevent picking points next to existing IcarusActors
  

Fixed

• 'Max' Crafting UI button now works as expected for items that require Fillable inputs (water, fuel, etc)
  
• Fixed typo in the MK-200 Weaponized Laser (Repaired) item, and updated to US spelling standard
  
• Water pumps no longer automatically increase the water levels in the water trough
  
• Fixed a bug where on respawning, the off hand item on the quickbar would still be focused while no item is there
  
• Fixed issue causing the STRANGE HARVEST mission flower to not have the poison cloud on first spawn
  
• Grenages dont damage structures or deployables
  
• Grenades (and sandworm spit) will now damage buildings and deployables
  
• Grenades (and sandworm spit) will now damage buildings and deployables
  
• Melee weapons can again damage buildings and deployables (fix for throwables change)
  
• Corrected Caveworm Icon
  
• Add an Auto Detect button to Graphics Settings
  
• Performs GPU and RAM detection and applies settings based on what is found
  
• This means users have a 'make it go faster' shortcut button
  

Future Content

• Updated all Brick Tier Floors, Walls and Beams. Also added sockets
  
• Small adjustments to r.dog movement audio sounds
  
• Adding Sledgehammer Harvest Context Icon Logic
  
• Adding Markers onto Prometheus for Prebuild Structure Locations
  
• Adding Wood Railing Gate audio
  
• First implementation of RockDog enraged behaviour. Added support for GOAP Controllers to dynamically select custom behaviour trees to inject, instead of relying on static D_GOAPSetup data
  
• Added extra stats for Enraged GOAP behaviour
  
• Add audio context component to cave rivers to enable faux audio occlusion based on cave context - still need to set up custom FMOD event and apply parameters once cave volumes have been defined. Move river audio settings to data to facilitate new features and custom audio for different rivers
  
• Fixing up Redirectors in the quest folder
  
• Fix missing texture after cleanup
  
• Added support in Enraged GOAP Motivation for ActivationTime and CooldownTime stats. Fixed Enraged Heavy Slam attack not waiting for montage notify to apply damage. Added new placeholder montage for lava spit attack
  
• Cleanup Character assets part 3
  
• Adding in lava scatter audio and low level base biome amb
  
• DEP_Crate_Sinotai skins variation textures and material
  
• Created New Volcanic Template Cave and Scoria Placed In Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Add TU Cave SML 001, Add Ice Flow To Frozen Lake & Cleanup on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Adding new Skins for the 3 different Orbital Transport Pods & Updating their associated map icon colours
  
• Apply new river audio setup to cave and lava rivers in Purple and Green quads
  
• Prototype cheaper triplanar material function
  
• Cleanup creature assets
  
• Add icon for T2 communication device, fix meshables setups for tiers
  
• SM_Breakable_Clay combined and matched to the blueprint
  
• SM_Breakable_Obsidian combined and matched to the blueprint
  
• SM_Breakable_Scoria combined and matched to the blueprint
  
• FT_Breakable_Clay_Var1 swapped mesh into combined version
  
• Adding rumble audio scatter to lava biome event
  
• Adding batdog specific footstep event and adjusting footstep layers
  
• Basic audio pass for brick-tier buildings
  
• Added burnt versions to all 4 variants of the Aspen trees, including all Foliage Types and FLOD descriptions
  
• Add Ice Tunnel to Ice Maze, Painted Clay in SW & Cleanup on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Created New Volcanic Template Cave, Set Dressing Volcanic Transition Cave and Placement of Breakable Rocks, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• submitting MoBasePrebuilt_Cave first pass
  
• submitting Group15Outpost_Volcanic first pass
  
• Adjustments to predator bird idle call trigger points, spacializer settings and wing pitch randomness and other improvements
  
• submitting MoBasePrebuilt_Arctic first pass
  
• Added Sledgehammer node icon and added it to Valid Interact Queries Datatable
  
• Added Dogtags and Delivery Ship icon and added to D_MapIcons
  
• Prototype initial RockMaster shader and functions, decreases instructions ~10% and PS by half
  
• Shield Mechanics. Shield now works on the quickbar rather than the G slot. There are a list of items based on tags to be used with the shield/off hand
  
• Adding in first swamp scatter cre into FMOD. More to come
  
• Adjustment to small rock debris scatter to make sure it doesn't spawn too close to the character
  
• submitting MoBasePrebuilt_Treehouse first pass
  
• Add appropriate vocalisation states to predator bird
  
• Add Editor tool to check health value of creatures
  
• First pass adding swamp ambient and scatter layers in. To be adjusted and fine tuned
  
• Increased maximum trace distance for SpawnAI cheat script
  
• Added recipes and item setup for potato and tomato recipes.
  
• Increased the maximum stamina and health granted by soups.
  
• Added cooked bean recipe and item setup for the campfire
  
• Added version 2 of the repair bench mesh, textures and destructable mesh
  
• Resaved datatables to fix build validation
  
• Fixed the montage not playing on clients and the floating damage numbers no longer double up and the damage number for the shield is now blue
  
• Added first implementation of BatDog stalking behaviour. Added GetWorld implementation to IcarusGOAPMotivation.h to support function libraries
  
• Added New Volcanic Template Cave, Added Deep Ore Deposits in LC and SW Biomes and Placed Breakable Rocks In the Swamp , Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Add Deep Ore Deposit, Cleanup Clay in SW & Cleanup on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Attached select nodes for relevant 'Shield' damage types
  
• Added eye sprites to BatDog. Increased stalking movement speed
  
• Adding more scatter swamp layers. Also swapping out footsteps to swamp layer which will reduce in volume - to be fine tuned and balanced
  
• Cleanup unused assets
  
• Cleanup unused assets
  
• Created new master materials for common developer materials and recreated in more structured format then reapplied to use cases
  
• Updated Brick Tier Roof assets
  
• Delete actors from unused OP001 map referencing deleted background meshes
  
• Updated descriptions and flavour text for tomato and potato meals
  
• Placing New Deep Ore Deposit Spawns In Swamp and Volcanic Biomes, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Adjustments to swamp scatter, footsteps and base layer
  
• More swamp scatter additions
  
• Cleanup Clay Breakable in SW & Cleanup on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Basic audio implementation for shield - create generic shield static mesh actor and add audio feedback when shield blocks or breaks. Add placeholder audio for wooden shield
  
• Cleaning up unused assets
  
• Improvements to subtlety of swamp biome base layer and some scatter adjustments
  
• Add Deep Ore Deposit to Green & Add Meta Exotic in TU/AC on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Fix MFs referencing asset textures in master materials, changed to default texture sets and resaved all associated materials to break references
  
• Added stamina cost to D_Actionable and removed the manual implementation from actionable shield to better use the preexisting functions
  
• Added hotbar functionality for the shield focusing. Now if the player has two weapons in their hands two different hotbar items will appear focused
  
• Removed accidental debug logging from tick
  
• Small adjustments to swamp biome. Added and removed test cre scatter
  
• Repair Bench - Implementation
  
• Add new Repair Bench
  
• Can repair all items previously repaired at Fabricator and Machining Bench
  
• Requires power to repair T4 and workshop items
  
• Big cleanup on assets, removing old and still unused content
  
• Fix up master materials using assets instead of default textures and resaved to clear references
  
• Fix up numerous redirectors no longer in use
  
• ITM_Shield_Wooden mesh, material and textures
  
• Added Brick Angled corner Roof and inverted assets
  
• Added Brick Roof Lower and Brick Roof Upper
  
• Small adjustment to swamp biome scatters. Addition of tree rustle in gentle wind
  
• Add Icarus Meta Exotic Spawns on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Update transport pod audio, and a couple of other audio tweaks for dynamic quests
  
• Adjusted cave painting colour, and emission to be more obvious in cave lighting
  
• Refactor action fail feedback audio from generic melee actionable into an option on the actionable base BP, so that it can also be used on shield actions. Add missing Shield_Hold stamina reference to shield row in D_Actionable to fix shield stamina
  
• Resaved datatable to resolve build validation
  
• Adjustments and improvements to swamp scatter and bass layers. Separated various layers out for better variability
  
• Update pass to tidy up some issues with swamp lake audio actor edge splines and islands
  
• Update pass to tidy up some issues with swamp lake audio actor edge splines and islands - a couple missing from previous commit
  
• Add Respawn Dropship Placement & Landscape/Foilage Cleanup on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Placing New Meta Spawns and Respawn Drop Pods, In Swamp and Volcanic Biomes, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Disabled RVT on Cliffs, Rocks, Seracs and disabled Snow RVT on Foliage to improve performance
  
• Submitting all the base assets for the Striker, new fur setup to be applied and AI setup to come
  
• Swapped the Map Icons for the Transport Pods to the new Transport pod icon
  
• Fixed ISettingsModule.h not being compiled out correctly in non-editor builds
  
• Added missing Sentry dlls
  
• Trying a more sensible approach to using the Settings Developer module in the provided Sentry source code
  
• Removing dependency to developer module 'Settings' in Icarus.Build.cs
  
• Reverting last commits
  
• Added base setup for spider assets to project. Created charater and corpse BP and added to data tables
  

A core system had an expired domain record. No build needs to be deployed. In some cases, it make take a little longer for your game to begin working again due to DNS propagation, but in most cases it should start working again immediately. If you are already in game, the game will begin syncing. If you are in the main menu, you might want to restart the game eventually waits some time between connection attempts. You can also flush your DNS to expedite the process (warning: this is an advanced maneuver).

Apologies for the outage, many of our team worked throughout the night to resolve it. It ended up being down for between 12-24 hours depending on your DNS.

We have deployed the experimental yesterday (separate to the outage) which has significant performance improvements and includes our initial work on dynamic missions for open-world.

If you still have issues connecting at the main menu:

1. Try doing a "flushdns"
   
2. Try restart your router and/or modem if you have them separated.
   
3. If that does not work, switch your PC to use for example google's DNS
   

This week brings our fourth community feedback update, focusing on player-driven improvements and changes shared with us on Feature Upvote.

Alongside these changes, we also spent some time this week speaking about some of our ongoing work and upcoming features we’re excited to be debuting.

A large Performance Improvement is planned, and we go into depth about what the changes we’re making are, and our expectations for how this will impact performance overall. We also speak about our upcoming Dynamic Quests in Open World, and finally the P2P (player-to-player) benefits and changes as a result of our upcoming Data Decentralization.





Performance is always something at the front of our mind in our work on Icarus and while this has been a long-standing issue, addressing it has remained a priority. We have identified an issue that in early testing could result in large performance improvements for a number of players.

Icarus heavily utilizes Unreal Engine’s Runtime-Virtual-Texture (RVT) technology to provide terrain texture details and environmental blending for our rocks and cliffs. We have found that our heavy use of this tech has led to a bottleneck on the GPU. We're working hard to remove this bottleneck which we expect to significantly improve performance, but this change will take a while to implement due to us having to make changes to a large number of terrain assets.

Improvements such as this are time-consuming, and once discovered the work to rectify them may overlap one or more of our regular weekly updates. However, a portion of our team is dedicated to improving performance, and their work is integral to our future plans and ongoing improvement of the Icarus experience.





We are moving ahead with our plan to develop the next stages of this feature, starting with the first expansion to the world next week, Dynamic Quests.

Open World has been a big success for us, and your support of the new mode has been incredibly encouraging and a proud moment for our team.

Dynamic Quests require you to build a new ‘Short Range Radio’ on the planet, which you can interact with to trigger the start of these objectives.



These Dynamic Quests will provide objectives in the local area and biome to where you have built your Short Range Radio, keeping your missions close to base and your resources.

Completing these Dynamic Quests will reward you with a specialized pod that drops down to the surface, and when interacted with, will provide you with a few different options to choose from such as food, ores or tools for your payment.

Depending on the difficulty of the quest, the rewards will scale appropriately, and players will also receive XP for completing these quests.

Dynamic Quests are the first step in our efforts towards building Open World into being a vibrant, engaging game mode, and the early support you have shown us has given us acknowledgement of your appreciation for this effort. We’re excited to build into the future of this mode with you.





We’re excited to be bringing some highly requested features to Icarus as part of the fourth installment of our Community Feedback patch series.

Due to popular demand on Feature Upvote - You are now able to sit on chairs, allowing you to finally enjoy the comforts of your elegantly designed bases and homes. Set your team up around the dinner table, or rest in front of the fireplace after a long day of surviving the elements, the choice is yours.

We’re also releasing the Water Bomb, a feature we’ve been working on for a while and are excited to bring to the tech tree. Designed as a fire deterrent, the Water Bomb explodes on impact and is far more effective than the fire whacker at dealing with infernos with double the radius and guaranteed effectiveness.

The Water Bomb fits into the grenade class, although its specialized purpose for dealing with fire makes it ineffective in combat scenarios. The other grenades (Smoke Grenades and Frag Grenades) are also receiving improvements in this week's update.

Finally, we’ve also added the only missing trophy from the collection, the Wolf Trophy, so you can display all your conquests on the walls of your base.





Alongside our new features, we’ve addressed some other community-led changes to existing features that have either been highly requested, or come as a result of other changes we’ve made recently to core game systems.

• The Repair Hammer and Upgrade Hammer have been merged into a single item, removing the need for two item slots for a singular tool that shared too many similar characteristics to warrant its own space and recipe. There is also a new input hint in the bottom right of the UI to teach you how to use the item in its new form.
  
• The Tomahawk Talent which provided the ability to throw axes has been removed and replaced with ‘Berserker’, which provides greatly increased damage and attack speed at the expense of durability and stamina costs. The subsequent talent has also been changed to an alternative, ‘Controlled Rage’ which lowers the impact of these durability and stamina cost penalties.
  
• The Bow Crosshair has now been applied across all weapons which have a ‘charge’ effect, such as all bows, throwing spears, and throwing knives. This provides a more informative UI when using these weapons.
  

With Data Decentralization nearing, we wanted to address the impact on players who choose not to use Dedicated Servers for their Icarus experience, and rather prefer to play in the standard P2P model.

There are numerous benefits to a decentralized data model, but to explain to people who may not understand the tangible differences, here is a brief explanation.

All Icarus data will now be stored on players' individual PCs. In the past, this has been stored in the cloud on servers we used from companies such as Microsoft Azure. This data includes player accounts, missions, save games, and more. This data is stored in tiny files, no more than a single megabyte, so won’t take up space on your PC’s hard drive and is written in plain ‘.json’ format so it is easy to access for modders or people who are curious about their game data. This transfer of data from the cloud to players' PCs, is ‘data decentralization’.

Some of the benefits to players will be have immediate impact. These include:

• There will be no cap on character limit, as with this data stored locally, we don’t have to artificially limit it to protect our server performance. This encourages players to investigate specialized builds for unique scenarios.
  
• With data stored locally, characters can no longer be ‘lost’ or be mysteriously deleted by a fault in the servers, as this data is all stored locally and won’t be susceptible to any problems communicating between the server and the player's PC.
  
• Characters are no longer ‘bound’ to an individual Prospect, Open World or Outpost, and can be active across multiple sessions simultaneously. You’ll no longer be required to remove a character from a prospect or mission to take them onto a different one. This also means the ‘remove from prospect’ button will be retired, as it will no longer serve a purpose.
  

Data can now be tracked instantaneously as it is stored locally, no longer relying on the connection between the server to execute outcomes. Some of the noticeable impacts of this include:

• Workshop Items can now be tracked in bundles and stacks, allowing us to provide a similar experience to planet-crafted items. We are also able to track durability, allowing for more crossover between different prospects and sessions.
  
• Mission rewards can now be granted upon the completion of objectives, rather than the completion of the prospect encompassing them. Talent unlocks, Item Unlocks, and Ren can be immediately granted, and players won’t be restricted from receiving their rewards if one player can’t leave the mission or another similar problem arises.
  
• Exotic Extractions will no longer require you to leave the planet's surface, with the addition of specialized exotic drones you can load and send into orbit, all while carrying on your missions on the planet's surface without impact.
  

Some of the benefits have a more future-focused lens, and we wanted to explain a couple of those also:

• With data being localized, this greatly reduces the strain on our servers to withstand large-scale changes and additions, which opens the door for us to dive into some of the more ambitious projects and detailed improvements we’ve been wanting to make for some time. With the impact on your personal hard drives being near non-existent, we can execute these projects without fear of causing further problems for players' in-game experience.
  
• Many of you will remember some of the large server outages we have faced over the last year, and some of these have unfortunately been a result of forces outside our control, including our server providers. With the move of our data to a decentralized format, we will be removing the reliance on these providers to maintain their part of the motor, leading to a more reliable, less affected player experience with the game's active state.
  

The other impact worth mentioning is how active sessions and games are played in multiplayer formats. With this new model, the host is solely responsible for the datasets surrounding a prospect they’ve started. This means unless the host is online and active, that session is unable to be played by any other members who may have joined it. However, with characters no longer being tied to sessions, you are able to use that character elsewhere in the meantime.





New Content

• Add new BuildingHammer actionable setup which combines both Upgrading and Repairing
  
• Apply new combined building actionable to existing hammers
  
• Add keybind UI for hammers to show their inputs (LMB to Repair, RMB to apply Upgrade, R to select upgrade)
  
• Remove original Upgrade Hammer as it is now deprecated by all other hammers
  
• Hooking up Sitting anim bp to the chair base logic
  
• Add Trophy setups and Heads for Conifer, Snow and Desert (Hyena) wolves. Shuffled some rows so they're grouped better
  
• Add support for sitting in Rustic Dining and Living chairs
  
• Remove bed projection widget logic
  
• Added killcam availability to throwing knives and spears
  
• Set waterbomb blueprint unlock to be accessible
  
• Remove Talent unlock requirement for waterbomb
  
• Tweak waterbomb throwing data
  
• Reworked Tomahawk talent, removing throwing from axes but granting greatly increased combat capabilities.
  
• Reworked Oh wait, I need that talent, reducing the penalties for the reworked Tomahawk talent
  
• Removed throw action availability from Axes now that none can be thrown
  
• Reorganized talents in the Habitation: Repairing talent tree after removal of the waterbomb talent from this tree
  
• Disconnect flammability from grenade payload as part of damage refactor. Will instead buff base damage number
  
• Add icons for new wolf trophies
  
• Fixed grenades (and other forms of radial damage) not correctly displaying damage numbers
  
• Double base damage of Frag grenades to bring them more in line with current average creature health
  
• Increase outer radius size of Grenade explosion to be 50% larger
  
• Increase max throw distance of grenades and waterbombs
  
• Add min throw charge for Grenades so they can't be tap dropped at your feet
  
• Fixed Grenade and Waterbomb to use the same StaminaAction handle
  
• Removed water tags off of Waterbomb to stop UI showing that you can water crop plots with it, because this is not possible
  
• Water bomb: Moved talent to T2 crafting bench.
  
• Berserker talent: Increased damage and reduced attack speed even further. Greatly reduced wear rate penalty.
  
• Controlled Rage talent: Now grants less reduced wear rate, increases felling yield
  
• Tomahawk and Controlled Rage talents: Renamed row, causing players to lose these talent and be refunded talent points if they are not already at maximum.
  
• Tomahawk: Reduced durability penalty, increased damage and reduced attack speed.
  
• Controlled Rage: Added addiitonal yield from felling trees
  

Fixed

• Cleanup Character assets part 2
  
• Fix wrong PM being used in several assets which would have resulted in broken visual/audio effects
  
• Add validation checks in AssetInfo tool to pick up incorrectly used PMs
  
• Cleanup unused, old assets to de-clutter project
  
• Delete unused and expensive assets in Developer folders
  
• Fixed Meta Extractor not animating (no AnimBP hooked up)
  
• Removed unused particle system from Extractor base class
  
• Fixed Meta Extractor AnimBP not compiling due to previously removed variable
  
• Remove unused recipe holographic preview logic/assets from ProcessorBase
  
• Remove level BP logic in ReplyTest map that doesn't exist anymore and was flagged during PIE
  
• Fixed Platinum Crossbow repair requiring composites, now correctly requires platinum.
  
• Platinum and Titanium Crossbows are now affected by cheaper bow crafting talents
  
• Fixed a bug preventing throwing knives and spears from consuming stamina while aiming
  
• Fix an issue where manually placing an item was ignoring return values from a remove only inventory, this means that players do not loose grown produce when attempting to place grown produce in a full plot
  
• Cleanup deprecated assets in Assets folder
  
• Fix incorrect shadow settings on several foliage types
  
• Add validation to check FT shadow settings
  
• Reduced weight of throwing spears and knives by 60%
  
• Allow Bow Crosshair to be used on more weapon type
  
• Implement the BP_CrossHairInterface on BP_ActionableBehaviour_Throwable
  
• Use the existing information from D_RangedWeapon for animating the bow crosshair UI
  
• This means that throwing knives and spears provided better UX to players (like bows)
  
• Adjust default projectile camera offset during killcam
  
• Fixed incorrect camera rotation during throwing knive/spear killcam
  
• Update icons for interior wood wall double door and window meshes
  
• Remove deprecated KeybindHints UMG that was replaced with FocusItemInfo
  
• Changed default value for KeybindPrompt to be text on the left
  
• Adding some additional input contexts for various items (torches, throwing weapons etc)
  
• Add new ST_Inputs StringTable to not continue bloating ST_UMG
  
• Removed throwing actionables from D_Actionable axe items
  

Future Content

• Moved dead prospector assets in PRP folder
  
• Trasferred riverbanks from Blue to Green Quad level, and Alien's cave cliff and transition cave from Green to Purple Quad level, DLC
  
• Adding creature notifiers
  
• Adding in geothermal lake and pool audio and adjusting spacializer and volumes
  
• Creating Landmind Actor and Adding Explosion Logic
  
• Setting up the Final Steps for Story Mission 5, swapping quest step to self craft a beacon
  
• Setting up Orbital Strike Quest Spawning
  
• Updated Highlightable on the Mission Data Device
  
• moved alien fossil assets in PRP folder
  
• Adding lava lake audio and event and DT setup
  
• Final Basic Logic For Story Mission 5
  
• Enabling Creature Spawning on Story Mission 5
  
• Fixup redirectors after Dead Prospector assets were moved
  
• Remove deleted row reference for Pro 5 story mission
  
• Cleanup Character assets part 1
  
• Adjustments to lava lake audio
  
• Added Ponga Tree & Foliage Cleanup to Mega Trees Levels
  
• Audio setup for Aspen saplings and seedlings. Also reduced foliage placement random pitch value to match other saplings
  
• Added Scoria icon and added it into D_Itemable
  
• Replaced macros with impassable meshes, artic area, blue quad
  
• Painted Voxels resources in Grasslands biome and polished cliffs/riverbanks, Green Quad, DLC
  
• Adding Basic Mission Flow For Story Mission 6
  
• Voxel Resource Placement in TU & AC on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Adding Clay, Obsidian, Tomato and Potatoi Mesh Hookup
  
• Resource Placement in Volcanic Biome and removed Dead Trees From Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Added potato icon art and added it into Itemable datatable
  
• Added growing frame mesh to version 2 of the bean crops. Removed colour change in the shader and made a change in the base texture to match. Updated foliage type and farming growth stage data table
  
• Submitting alien fossil cave map V2 and 3D assets
  
• Resource Placement in Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Clean up alien fossil cave redirectors
  
• Delete IceCool materials which have compilation errors
  
• Fix Geothermal Pools not working as water and RVT not writing in runtime
  
• Replaced macros with impassable meshes, swamp area, blue quad
  
• Move proto swamp lake audio actor to persistent level as its data was getting trashed by world gen
  
• Placed Cave Volumes and Voids, painted voxels in Tu, AC and SW biomes, Green and Yellow Quad, DLC
  
• Resource Placement And Voxel Placement, Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Voxel Resource Placement in SW on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Added DLC icon art and added them to D_Itemable
  
• Added breakable clay node combined mesh
  
• Added Breakable Obsidian node combined mesh
  
• Fix harvesting small trees temporarily causing incorrect footstep sounds to play by tweaking harvest destructible mesh collision settings so that they don't interfere with surface checks
  
• SM_Breakable_Scoria combined meshes version
  
• Add Steam VFX to Preset Geothermals
  
• Apply correct settings for footstep audio on geothermal pools and lakes
  
• Apply correct settings for footstep audio on geothermal pools and lakes - fix reference broken in previous commit
  
• Add icons for Clay Brick buildables
  
• Fixed up asset pointers in BPs for Clay Brick buildables
  
• Add Beam scene for IconEditor
  
• Fixed ItemsStatic pointing to wrong Buildable rows for Clay Brick buildables
  
• Small adjustments to the swamp lake audio
  
• Changed mask texture on TU_Dirt Decals under Tussocks
  
• Polished Voxels resources in GL,TU and SW biomes and polished cliffs/riverbanks, Green Quad, DLC
  
• Voxel Resource Placement in SW & Added IMP Around Map on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Resource Placement And Voxel Placement, Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Updating most volumes of new creatures, adding notifiers, adjusting notifiers, adjusting spacializers and general creature updates and improvements. Adding footstep notifiers for batdog TBC
  
• Added skeleton rig and bone mapping from the buffalo, These were used in retargeting the animations to the blueback
  
• SK_ITM_Sledgehammer mesh, material and textures
  
• Replaced old IMP with Merged IMP on Blue Quad
  
• Adding FLODDescriptions for Obsidian, Clay and Scoria Breakable Rocks
  
• updated alien fossil cave for final touches
  
• Adding B.Dog howl vocalisations and all footstep anim notifiers and movement audio events
  
• added conch mesh, textures and materials
  
• Add initial pass of a DPS target dummy to help balance weapons - developer only (for the time being)
  
• Added version one of the repair bench mesh and textures to the project
  
• Fortifications - Wood Gate- added prototype mesh and open animation
  
• Fortifications - Wood Wall - added prototype mesh
  
• Fortifications - Wood Walkway - added prototype mesh
  
• Fortifications - Wood Spikes - added prototype mesh
  
• Fortifications - Wood Walkway Ramp - added prototype mesh
  
• Fortifications - Wood Forward Ramp - added prototype mesh
  
• Fix scoria BP not inheriting from correct base class causing FLOD error
  
• Added the option to disable landscape sculpting in WT_RiverSpline
  
• Updated Electric Spline junction mesh to use new mesh, delete old temporary mesh, update texture settings for new mesh
  
• Voxel Placement In the Volcanic Biome And Swamp Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Adding Sledgehammer impact on clay resource audio and event and also corrected B.Dog with wrong vocalisation and added crossbow aim sound to data table
  
• Added aspen seedlings and saplings in GL biome, cleaned up resources, Green Quad, DLC
  
• Rework Geothermals for non-met water setup
  
• Clay Resource Placement Started in SW & Cleanup on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Adding sledgehammer hit rock event to data table
  
• Adding Consumable and Usables to Tomato's and Potato's so they can be consumed
  
• Swapping new Transport ship system to run off an EQS with a basic backup for landing zone selection
  
• Prebuilt Structures now Spawn on a proper building grid and can be repaired players can build off that grid
  
• Adding Utility and Library for adding / loading prebuilt structures from both json files and strings
  
• Setting up cheat function to load / save prebuilt structures
  
• Fixing up various prebuilt stuctures being used in the prometheus story missions
  
• Updated Brick Tier stairs, ramps and Floor pieces
  
• Updated Brick Tier wall pieces
  
• Submitting Hightmap x4y4
  
• Adding Data table for prebuilt structures, adding new ways to build (DTRow, Raw, Json)
  
• Adding New MoHideout prebuilt structure json file
  
• Update DefaultEngine.ini to include Prebuilt Structure files in the packaged build
  
• Adding unique rockdog aggro state vocalisations and correcting path for sledgehammer files
  
• Cleaned up old ranged weapon data for previous spears
  
• Add spline generation tools to generic lake audio actors. Generate edge splines for all swamp lakes. Add a couple of optimisations to decrease update frequency for very distant lake audio
  
• Adjustments to creatures vocal spawn rates and aggro states
  
• Updating of Mo's Base Prebuilt Structure
  
• Adjustments to sledgehammer levels and balance
  
• Changed MA_Decal to add RMA and Sparkle Support, Packaged Alian Fossil Decal textures and adjusted MIs
  
• Updates improvements and additions to Needler
  
• Fix error in LakeSplineComponent breaking compilation of non-editor builds
  
• Updating EQS for Finding the supply ships landing location
  
• Submitting Blueback, carcass, bones, fur, lava and arctic variations
  
• Added first pass of Roat_Swamp. Updated data tables and created blueprints based on the rabbit asset
  
• Add island regions to swamp lake audio
  
• Added Updated texture and Gfur to the Blueback blueprint
  
• Stomp movements added to R.Dog and other various tweaks and updates
  
• Voxel Placement In the Volcanic Biome, Placement of Exotic Materials In Volcanic Biome And Landscape Painting, Purple and Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Add Cliff to Green to Blue Transition, Clay Resource Placement in SW & Cleanup on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• First pass setup of Blueback_Lava and Blueback_Lava_Mount added to project
  
• Adding Base Logic for Dynamic Quest Spawning
  
• Adding Stat for showing Epic Creature Map Icons so they can shown Dynamically
  
• Adding Experience Events for different difficulties for the Dynamic Quests
  
• Adding 6 Dynamic Quests with Common Reward Logic
  
• Adding Roaming Epic Creatures for use in Dynamic Quests
  
• Tidied up IcarusGameState damage numbers logic for better readability, no actual data change
  
• Adding in predator bird Dive behavior and corpse setup, still needs some rotation and target selection polish
  
• Resaving GOAP_Setup to fix validation fail
  
• Adding in base implementation for Wooden fortification gate, as well as the recipes and talents for the rest of the fortification set ups, currently the recipes are just 1 wood and fibre for testing and some collision bounds will need tweaking to enable all the placements we want with the walls