Icarus News

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
  

This week we’ve added throwing variants of the knife and spear into the weapon pool, providing a specialized option with stacking capabilities, while changing the standard versions to melee only. This will make it easier to use these weapons as projectile alternatives to other strategies, and stop you from accidentally misclicking and losing them in the wrong situation.

We’ve also added two new crossbows: Platinum at Tier 3 and Titanium at Tier 4 to provide alternatives to firearms at higher levels.

Finally, we talk about our decision to not provide workshop variants of the throwing knife and spear, and how this will change as we move towards decentralization in the near future.





We have separated knives and spears into their own variants. You will now be able to craft ‘thrown’ versions which can’t be used in melee situations or to skin carcasses but can be stacked in multiples of 50 for knives, and 20 for spears.

Thrown variants recipes are unlocked with the melee variant, so unlocking one node on the tech tree allows crafting two separate recipes. The recipes have unique icons and names so it’s easy to distinguish between them.

Melee versions are no longer able to be thrown, and won’t receive the ‘stack’ option that their thrown counterparts do. They will, however, still be able to skin creatures, so are still important to have on hunting expeditions.

There are multiple reasons we’ve made this change, with a key one being irritation caused by people accidentally throwing their weapons with a misclick or being unable to stack them and having to scroll through the hotbar in combat situations.

This also addresses a balance issue with knives using durability when skinning carcasses, particularly as we add a ‘stacking’ element which would amplify this issue and make managing your gear more complicated. It also adds a new dynamic to combat, allowing you to throw knives and spears with more ease, making it a viable mechanic.





Two new crossbows have been added at Tier 3 and Tier 4, providing more alternatives to firearms at the higher tiers. Tier 3 is the Platinum Crossbow and Tier 4 the Titanium Crossbow. Both crossbows also share the valuable benefit of being repeating crossbows, able to fire up to 5 bolts in a single burst. In intense situations, this provides considerable damage for players with a steady hand and good hit-scanning technique. They also come with the intrinsic stats of the other crossbows, a chance to slow on hit, and extra damage when piercing the hardened spots on creatures.

These fill a gap we had in the game for higher-tier projectile weapons and will prove useful for some upcoming creatures we plan to bring into the game.

The Tier 3 Platinum Crossbow is crafted at the Machining Bench and will require Platinum alongside the standard Epoxy, Leather and Wood. The Tier 4 Titanium Crossbow is crafted at the Fabricator, and like the Platinum Crossbow, will require the standard resources but paired with Titanium.

The Platinum Crossbow does sit at the higher end of the Tier 3 items, and as a result, has a higher cost. The Titanium Crossbow will line up closely with the firearms of Tier 4 but cost half the Titanium Ingot investment, making it a viable alternative for the harder missions and combat scenarios.





The new stacking ability with the throwing versions of the knives and spears will not be applied to workshop versions, and we wanted to explain why.

In our current backend system, many dynamic traits are lost when bringing items back to the workshop. This was an early concession made to prevent the amount of space a workshop item uses in the backend. The most notable of these dynamic traits is stack count. Therefore we had to work around this by not allowing workshop items to stack, and came up with the solution of bundles which players could take down to the planet and bring back up if they want to. But once consumed on planet (Arrow Bundles) they are no longer able to be returned to space.

There are a few effects of this decision, including the inability to stack workshop items, and limitations on being able to track the durability of items that are taken back from the planet. It also means that many forms of item persistence were unable to be explored.

This is something that will change with Data Decentralization, as the removal of backend server opens up a wide variety of options to save other data and allow us to investigate more persistence between sessions.

This will be most noticeable in consumables and projectiles, but also across armor and weapons and mounts with the ability of tacking many dynamic properties across multiple drops.

We are very close to releasing a public branch of the Data Decentralization Icarus Client for community testing, so if you are interested, join the Discord to be one of the first to jump in.





New Content

• Removed ability to throw basic knives and spears
  
• Allowed throwing knives and spears to stack
  
• Slightly increased bone and titanium throwing knife damage
  
• Unlocked Throwing Knives recipes for upcoming patch
  
• Unlocked recipes for thrown knives and spears
  
• Added break chance to thrown spears
  
• Reduced stamina cost on thrown knives and spears significantly.
  
• Allowed thrown knives to be thrown at lower charge, going less distance
  
• Implemented base Platinum and Titanium Crossbows
  
• Fixing issue where thrown knives and spears where recieving the durability and felling damage crafting Alterations when players had the appriopriate talents
  
• Adding new Tag 'Tool.Thrown' and new tag queries for thrown/melee spears, thrown/melee knives
  
• Fixing issue when throwing Knives & Spears that the item thrown would not be 1 but be the entire stack, example, throw one knife, the thrown knife has a stack count of 20
  
• Added textures and Mat for BOW_Crossbow_T3_Platinum
  
• Added textures and Mat for BOW_Crossbow_T4_Titanium
  
• Removed throwing knife bonuses on Shengong Daokou Knife and replaced with a wear rate reduction bonus
  
• Added icon representing thrown weapons
  
• Updated item text for T3 and T4 crossbows
  
• Added Throwing Weapons Item Icons and added into Itemable table. Updated throwing weapon icon
  
• Add LOD for T4 Crossbow. Fix materials pointing to wrong Physical Material
  
• Adding in base animation implementation for the new crossbows including character animations for the new type of reload, just missing the bolt part of the implementation where it shows in the players hand and on the crossbow
  
• Fixing D_Meshable buildvalidation fail by pointing the crossbow entry to the correct mesh
  
• Tweaking new crossbow reload animation montage to incluide a final bolt at the end section of the reload
  
• Unlocked crafting recipes for Throwing Knives and Spears.
  
• Increased throwing knife and spear stack size
  
• Adding TV crossbow fire audio
  
• Fixing throwing knives not appearing in your hand after throwing by adding in a notify to unhide the projectile after throwing
  
• Fixed a bug where you were able to use throwable objects while in a menu
  
• Adding in base implementation for the platinum crossbow, missing preview mesh of the bolt showing up buth all reload and fire assets hooked up and ready
  
• Adding Titanium crossbow mechanical sounds and events and notifiers
  
• Adding crossbow to data table
  
• Fixed spear not blending back to idle smoothly after releasing input key. Fixed throwing spear action deducting stamina cost before throw. Fixed throwing spear not un-hiding after throw montage completed
  
• Added support for chambered weapons to show a visible preview projectile mesh; AmmoController_SingleRoundReload now inherits from AmmoController_VisibleProjectile. Fixed Titanium Crossbow not showing preview projectile during reload animation
  
• Updating thrown weapon recipes to provide a stack of 10 on each craft
  
• Throwing knive actionable now only consumes primary input action
  
• Adding in Item Classification Icon for the thrown weapons
  
• Updating thrown weapon recipes to provide a stack of 5 on each craft
  
• Rebalanced thrown weapon recipes around 5x craft. - Slightly reduced Platinum Crossbow fire rate
  
• Tweaking the crossbows relead animation so that the bolt follows during the reload animation and adding in item icons for the new crossbows
  
• Fixed icons for Platinum and Titanium Crossbows
  
• Lots of additions and improvements to the crossbows. Separated each semgent out for speed variations and added new layers
  
• Adjusted high tier crossbow pull to have more slide to match length of stretch sound and other small adjustments to spacializers
  
• Updating the crossbow meshes to using the latest version, slightly cleaning up weighting and movemnts
  
• Updating physics assets and adding LOD to the Platinum Crossbow
  
• Slightly reduced delay between throwing a knife and starting your next throw, added the same delay to thrown spears (previously no delay)
  
• Update new Crossbow icons
  
• Allowed thrown spears to be charged for longer, providing slightly more power than before but lowering power at lower charges
  
• Adding the spear equip to the end of the throw montage to make the throwing equip feel smoother than the previous snap
  

Fixed

• Changing Resolution Scaling max value from 100 to 200 as a test to see if its supported
  
• Add custom view distance settings for various world objects: EnzymeGeyser, Meta Deposits, Ore Deposits, Dropships
  
• Added support for non-GOAP characters in GOAP debugger cheat
  
• Fixed level not retrieving from correct source
  
• Readding Translations lost in all languages in a commit last week where crowdin was trampled
  
• Adding new Crowdin Recipe which force pushes all translations to crowdin
  
• ABYSS: Fixed bug where biomes aren't tracked correctly for research station deployment quest step
  
• Add advanced mode to GetActorCount widget to pull any class type
  
• Fixed typo in Healing Boost Module description
  
• Resolved data table errors with the chamois variant
  
• Fixed typo in Neat and Tidy talent Fertilized Alteration
  
• Changing the min/max values of Resolution Scaling setting to match the min/max supported by the engine, which is 33 to 100 percent
  
• Optimized Loading screen images, changed format to pow2, removed unused DT
  

Future Content

• Undo single //Icarus_Stream/Trunk/Icarus/Content/ASS/VFX/WAT/SM_WaterfallBase.uasset revision 3 - still in use but ref didn't flag
  
• Fixing and hooking up T2 Communication Device so it can be deployed correctly using its own static mesh
  
• Adding Scoria, Potatoes, and Tomato Item Meshes to D_Meshable datatable
  
• Adding B.Dog aggro and idle breath audio
  
• replacing proxy meshes for alien bones
  
• Adding mangrove harvest audio, event and data table entry
  
• Updating Setup for Scoria / Obsidian / Clay Reward Nodes so they provide the correct resource
  
• Shifitng location of nodes so they are contained within their own folder
  
• LC Impassables - geometry fixes, added additional LOD level to improve houdini integration
  
• adjustments to mangrove harvest audio
  
• Added Mangrove in Levels & Added Foliage to Trees in Levels
  
• SM_Breakable_Obsidian Var 1 and 2 updated textures and collections
  
• Adding Lava sapling harvest sound and adjustments to mangrove harvest audio
  
• Set up the first of the swamp lake audio actors for testing
  
• Adding Prometheus Story Mission 5 Basic Flow
  
• Adding new prebuild outpost base
  
• Setting up new required quest blueprints and mission hazards
  
• B.Dog Data table setup
  
• AI Setup for audio for new creatures
  
• Polished foliage in TU and GL biome, deleted old Aspen trees and cleaned up resources in grasslands, Green Quad, DLC
  
• Manual Foliage Cleanup in the Swamp Biome and Cave Void Placement, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Added Macros to Transition SW to GL , Added Trees to TU, Set dressed Transition Cave SW to TU & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Added polished details to main trunk pieces for AC_Aspen_Var1, as well as added burnt version of the same tree
  
• Improvements and updates to mangrove harvest
  
• Moved Top Layer Macros to Persistent Level, Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Foliage tonal adjustments for consistency
  
• Update proto swamp lake audio due to lost data
  
• Adding bulbous harvest and adjustment to sapling harvest
  
• Update to lava sapling collision
  
• Polished foliage in TU and GL biome, deleted old Aspen trees and cleaned up resources in grasslands, Green Quad, DLC
  
• Manual Foliage Cleanup in the Swamp Biome and Cave Void/Volume Placement, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Generate Edge Spline to TU Lakes, Generated Water Points, Set Dressed Transition Cave SW to TU & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Added Aspen seedlings to the project. Added foliage types, blueprints and added them to the Flod data table
  
• Added Aspen saplings to the project. Added foliage types, blueprints and added them to the Flod data table
  
• Adding Aspen specific tree events and adjustments and a few additioanl layers to make them more unique
  
• Added version 2 of the tomato crops and items to the project with tomato fruit scaled up 100%. Uopdated foliage type, blueprint, and framing data table
  
• Adding swamp bush harvest audio, event and data table entry
  
• Add new Editor Utility Widget (EUW_GetActorCountInBiome) to look up actors and output their numbers on a per biome basis
  
• Adding param to reduce volume of footsteps in swamp water based on event trigger consistency. Added to data tables
  
• Added version 2 of the bean crops with z transform offset removed and growing frame mesh added
  
• Manual Foliage Cleanup in the Swamp Biome and Cave Void/Volume Placement, Purple and Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Swap out all mangrove hollow trunk static mesh actors for BP versions in Blue and Purple quads. Mark meshes in hollow trunk BPs as static, and update fallen log master material to use correct physical material
  
• Adding S.Bird notifiers to animations and also setting up event for geo pool for sound design
  
• Fix Stalactites foliage setting to be able to paint on ceiling
  
• New Voxel Added for DLC Map & Named with Pro Prefix
  
• Fix Ponga Tree Z up foliage setting
  
• Foliage Setup for Aspen Sapling and Seedlings
  
• Changed Lava river mesh to be on 0 on WT and BP
  
• Generated River and Lakes splines in Grasslands and Tundra, Green Quad, DLC
  
• SM_Breakable_Clay Var 1 and 2 mesh, BP, textures and material
  
• Updated text for the Orbital Exchange Interface item
  
• Adding audio for geothermal lakes WIP. Also small adjustment to S.Bird notify timing and reverting water footstep to standard until DLC release
  
• Fixed spelling error in ST_UMG
  
• Added T2 Mission Communication Device Icon
  
• Adjustments to Geo Lake event and data table
  
• Updated item descriptions for new resources, crops, communicators, and devices
  
• Updated name for new exotic resource
  
• Updated new communicator names
  
• Added prototype merged impassable and macro meshes, purple quad
  
• Adding swamp lake audio and event and data table entry
  
• Orbital Lase Strike Prototype BP and VFX
  
• Added Ponga Tree to Mega Tree Var 1, Set Dressed SW to AC Cave, Added Mushrooms to BP_HollowTrunk & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Manual Foliage Cleanup in the Swamp Biome and Resource Placement in Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Created chamois variant base setup as a duplicate of the regular chamois
  
• Resolved data table errors with the chamois variant
  
• Added base setup for CRE_BlueBack and CRE_Mount_BlueBack. Needs to be updated with texture, fur, and IK control rig
  

Open World is here. This week we’re releasing the highly-anticipated traditional survival mode - with both the Styx and Olympus maps available to play. This has been one of the most-requested and discussed features by our player community.

When you start a session you’ll be given a variety of drop locations, difficulty options and challenges such as World Bosses, Storms and Hordes to overcome. With full persistence and multiple sessions being able to be saved simultaneously, the planet can be conquered any way you wish.

Below, we also talk to the future of Open World and our other big upcoming feature, Dedicated Servers. Jump in and get all the details you need before launching into Icarus and beginning your newest challenge.





Open World will provide the traditional survival experience, placing you in a battle against the elements and predators of the planet. Your sole objective is to survive Icarus' challenges as long as you can.

You will be able to choose between either the full 64sqkm Olympus map (previously available as an Outpost) or the full Styx map for your Open World session. Multiple drop points in different biomes will be available for you to select. Your session, buildings and resources will be persistent with no timer or expiry to worry about. Storms may damage your buildings, but only while you are playing.

The planet is rife with danger, with storms, respawning World Bosses, Hordes and scaling predators across the landscape, along with fierce storms to contend with. You are able to choose your difficulty just like Outposts, but there is no option for a threat-free environment, so always be on your toes.

Your friends can join you on your Open World, following you onto the planet in the same drop point you chose, and you’ll find Moa and Buffalo across the biomes for taming as pets and transport.

With 64sqkm to explore, resources are abundant. Deep Ore Deposits can be found, so there is a wealth of ore to smelt and craft. Workshop items can be brought down to the surface and taken back with you to space, so returning to grab necessary gear is as easy as leaving and returning in your dropship.

Multiple Open World sessions can be hosted, so if you feel like taking a different approach, starting somewhere different or simply testing yourself under different difficulty settings, you can simply start a fresh session from the menu.





Open World can be found on our new look homescreen on the left-hand list of game modes. Once selected, you can carry on an existing session or start a new one.

You can select your dropship’s landing location when you create a new game session. There are a range of different sites on the map in different biomes with varying resources. Beware, once you’ve chosen a drop point, this is where your drop ship will leave from and return to every time you join the session, so pick one near where you plan on establishing your base.

You’ll have drop point choices in every biome, so use your experience in Missions and Outposts to plan accordingly for what you might need to survive in the harsher climates.

Once selected, begin your session and let the games begin.





With three game modes now, we wanted to provide a simple breakdown of each mode's unique features.

Open World is the traditional survival experience. With persistence, a full map and scaling difficulty, it’s raw, authentic survival at its most pure.

Missions are our time-limited, curated experiences on Icarus, challenging you to complete various tasks across the surface under contract by the factions, and then meant to be left behind when completed. Currently, they’re the only way to mine exotics and earn Ren so you can buy Workshop gear.

Outposts are the smaller 1x1sqkm ‘sandbox building environments’ with regenerating resources and options for a threat-free experience where you can build, create and experiment to your heart’s desire.

We’ve put together a table showing the key differences in each mode below:



Many of you have been wondering, why add persistence to your game now?

Originally posted by author

Open World has been one of the most popular community requests for Icarus for a longtime, and it is traditionally how most survival games are structured. We frequently have conversations with players about ideas on how to structure Icarus, how to mix missions and open world, how to introduce aspects of persistence and more.

We originally launched Icarus with a unique Mission-based approach to survival games, which aimed to breakup sprawling sandbox experiences into more focused sessions. However, many people just don’t want to rebuild a base so frequently, or want their time and effort to be permanent and meaningful. So while we want to keep our unique Missions, adding new modes like Open World helps cater for those who want something a little more traditional when it comes to the genre.

This isn't simplifying our approach or flipping on what we intended the game to be, its an expansion towards a feature-rich game that caters for more players, regardless of how you prefer to play.

Adam Johnson - Design Lead

With this being the first iteration of Open World, we thought we’d talk about some of the future features we’d like to add.

Resource Regeneration is already something players have asked for. In Outposts, resources respawn each time you join, so you have ample building blocks for truly creative builds. In Open World we still want you to work for and earn your resources. For a persistent environment, immersion is important, and therefore any signs of regeneration should feel natural and subliminal. This is an area we’ll closely watch player feedback for.

We expect players may want to switch between Open World and Missions, where they can mine exotics, focus on a Mission goal, and earn Ren towards buying Workshop items. On Open World they may choose to work towards Tier 4 tech instead.

We’re also looking at ways to integrate Missions and Open World sessions in future, such as starting some Missions from your Open World base. We’re designing our next DLC’s map with this in mind (more details coming soon, but check the Future Content in our patch notes for a preview).

We have many plans for all three modes, but large features and overhauls take a considerable amount of time and we have a limited number of staff that can work on all these features and optimizations while still working towards the DLC and optimizing the base game also. One of these is data decentralization or ‘dedicated servers’, which is something we want to get right so the transition is smooth from the current application to the new one. We are finalizing this process and getting ready for a public test soon.





New Content

• Added selection mode screen icons
  
• Added selection menu window textures
  
• Updated to use new open world prospect flow UI, open world map selection screen
  
• Added top border, tweaked font, colours and animation to UMG_TopLevelButton. Added mode tag Icons to theselection button (only as images, non-functional)
  
• Added MapSelection_Border.png for map selection border
  
• Added descriptions for each game mode to add the Open World update for localization
  
• Updated Open World drop point selection screen to match concept. Selectable drop points are now pulled from applicable items in D_DropGroups.
  
• Added new string table entries related to Open World UI. Added new Utility Widget for baking spawn group data into D_WorldData.
  
• Renamed Olympus prospect from 'DAYLIGHT: Olympus' to just 'Olympus
  
• Updated Open World drop point selection screen to match concept. Selectable drop points are now pulled from applicable items in D_DropGroups. Added new string table entries related to Open World UI. Added new Utility Widget for baking spawn group data into D_WorldData. Renamed Olympus prospect from 'DAYLIGHT: Olympus' to just 'Olympus'
  
• Tweaked borders on Drop Group selection UI. Updated Drop Group names to match corresponding spawn biome
  
• Added more 3 more icons for drop selection
  
• Added first pass difficulty indicators for each drop zone.
  
• Adjusted text prompt displayed to user when trying to leave an outpost or Open World map by dropship.
  
• Added new 'UseCustomTextKey' UProperty meta flag for disabling auto generation of localized text keys
  
• Tweaked difficulty settings for new Open World prospects. Removed Olympus outpost (existing saves migrated to Olympus Open World)
  
• Open World Terrain Selection is Now Ordered 'Olympus, Styx, NFTerrain'
  
• Widgets and animations for open world have been updated to keep consistent with the mission terrain selection
  
• Tidying up Open world drop point Selection so its a bit clearer and more readable
  
• Adjusted drop attributes to include new icons, images and layout
  
• Drop attributes are not capitalised and drop groud data structure has changed
  
• Added new WorldStat to disable Juvenile spawning on a per-prospect basis. Fixed bug where ensure would be thrown when trying to fetch best drop location for new Outpost
  
• Adding Basic Tooltips for the DropGroupAttributes
  
• Tidying up Mode Selection, Removed Open Animation, Resized Buttons
  

Fixed

• Remove a ton of unused content from Developers and TRD folders to de-clutter project
  
• Tweaks to trees falling in water sounds. Also fixing spacializer min / max to be the same as the events on a few events
  
• Hook up new Screen Hit Effects Strength option to associated events in Character BP
  
• Add an options slider for Screen Hit Effects Strength in the Gameplay menu, which controls the strength of the screen effect when hitting a target, or being hit by a target
  
• Remove Dev Meta Reveal item and converted to Cheat function instead
  
• Fixed TextureLODGroup settings changes not being applied to all Windows profile groups, causing cooked assets to not be optimized
  
• Massive project content cleanup from Developer and ThirdParty folders, clearing out unused content
  
• Modify ShowRepairWarning logic in PlayerChar to be a separate event so it can be called externally
  
• Damaged buildings can no longer be Upgraded without first being Repaired
  
• Fixed naming conventions of booleans added to code. As per upsource ID:102730
  
• Cleanup ThirdParty/Maps/Hab/Orb content
  
• SPELUNKING: Increased requirements for all resources, requirements aproximately double higher tier resources, triple outside resources, and additional increases for resources the workshop picks provide bonuses for. This is to give the mission a bit more duration (it's still shorter than most other missions) and give more reasons to explore and use the provided tools effectively
  
• Enable shared DDC by default
  
• Added support for selecting drop ship spawn group when first starting an Open World prospect
  
• World bosses now have the ability to respawn if the correct world stat flag is set. Added new FDropGroupData in WorldData.h to make drop group information accessible outside of level context.
  
• Fixed editor crash that occured when UIcarusMapIconComponent tried to GetWorld as it was tearing down
  
• SPELUNKING: Removed requirement to find second cave entrance, better described cave entrance in quest objective
  
• Removed unused worldmarker and query lookup after removal
  
• Rename Rustic Bench to Rustic Sitting Bench to not confuse it with the actual crafting bench
  
• Disable weather damage on Rustic furniture
  
• Added fix for bug where outpost inventory wasn't being cleared correctly when player returned to hab via dropship
  
• Fixed incorrect encoding on ST_UMG
  
• SPELUNKING: Reduced Aluminium requirement and increased Iron requirement, this is to alleviate cases of bad RNG
  
• Temporarily disable Buffalo from spawning on Outposts to prevent Mounts from being accessible on Outposts. Will be re-enabled once a stat to prevent juvenille spawning is added
  
• Fixed bug where player would get dropped at group index 0 regardless of mission setup. Resources will no longer regenerate when Open World levels are reloaded
  
• Tidying up Mode Selection, Removed Open Animation, Resized Buttons
  
• Adding Basic Tooltips for the DropGroupAttributes
  
• Added new WorldStat to disable Juvenile spawning on a per-prospect basis. Fixed bug where ensure would be thrown when trying to fetch best drop location for new Outpost
  
• Fixing issue where the dropship inventory was not being checked for meta items in some code that was committed in preparation for the data decentralisation patch
  

Future Content

• Added potato item asset
  
• Moved Cliffs on Green Quad to work on separatly, Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Added tomato and Potato growth stages to the farming data table
  
• Created Mo's Cave template in Cave template asset
  
• Adding Striker Flinch and Death audio and events
  
• Setup Foliage for Potatoes and Added to PFS
  
• Delete legacy Jungle/Lava/Wetlands DT/assets, use Swamp/Volcanic instead
  
• Update T019 Biome map and add specific biome areas
  
• Setup WeatherBiomeGroups for Prometheus
  
• Add DT Validation to make sure Biome rows don't use already used color combinations
  
• 2nd pass on Glacier mesh and materials (red quad)
  
• Fix Grass Plains to Grassy Plains
  
• Adding in striker aggro state audio and event
  
• Added 'Any_Meta_Consumable' D_TagQueries entry
  
• Included OnlineSubsystemNull in Build.cs to reduce compile times when switching between Trunk/Dedi branches
  
• Fixed normal maps and adjusted shader settings for all Aspen tree variants, which now share a single master billboard shader, as well as fixed some incorrectly rendered billboard textures
  
• Created cliff side for Mo's cave in lava biome, placed river flow points and ice flow points on frozen lake, generated resources in grasslands, Green Quad, DLC
  
• Manual Foliage Placement in the Swamp and Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Added Macro Tops, Reeds to Swamp, Added Riverbanks to Deepwater Swamp & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Added Prospect UI notification functionality from the dedicated server branch to improve merging between the development teams
  
• Added BP_SurvivalMetaController to help split functionality from the main controller which will reduce any merging conflict" #PORT
  
• Cleaned up Meta item query functions on BP_IcarusPlayerControllerSurvival to improve dedicated server usage
  
• Removing dedicated server code from prospect notification UI that currently doesn't exist in the live game
  
• Adding all new creatures to the data tables
  
• Fixing Volcanic and Swamp Atmosphere controller Switches so the New Atmosphere types work with the new biome map
  
• Improved collision on Macro Top meshes
  
• DC_Macro_08 - changed collision to complex (using LOD3)
  
• Create blueprint versions of mangrove hollow trunks so that we can run additional logic not provided by generic static mesh actors - still need to swap these out in map.
  
• Update audio shelter system with an additional option for actors to implement custom shelter-defining logic through an interface. Implement audio shelter and occlusion on the hollow trunk base BP
  
• Add BP_HollowTrunk to approved classes for world generation
  
• SW, TU, GL CanyonWalls - tweaks to materials, added NORVT mat to last LOD
  
• Added Colour variations of the beans, pumpkin, squash, wild tea, and cocoa plants. Created foliage types and blueprints, added to FLOD data table
  
• Updated view trace actor for FT_LC_Squash FLOD data table entry to correct blueprint
  
• Added throwing knives across all tiers of basic knife options
  
• Added cave volumes to the ignored actor list to allow world builders to start placing them for new map
  
• Foliage Setup for AC Tussocks and Recolored Crop Assets
  
• Adding Quest Steps for a new Prometheus Mission
  
• Update Visual Map textures for T019
  
• Initial work to set up audio implementation for rock breaking feature. Created a new datatable to define breakable rock data, and moved some hardcoded references from the base class there in a default row. Added a multicast to play effects when a node is broken off the rock base, and a placeholder audio event for this
  
• Painted new foliage types tomatos, potatos, pumpkin in TU and GL biome, generated resources and manually painted AC rocks and stones, Green and Yellow Quand, DLC
  
• Added Macro Tops, Reeds to Swamp, Added Rocks to the Tundra & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Manual Foliage Placement in the Swamp Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Spawned General Resources in SW on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Audio data setup for potatoes and tomatoes
  
• Adding B.dog attack vocalisations and event
  
• Audio data setup and simple collision setup for all FLOD Tussock varieties
  
• Audio data setup for initial lava biome saplings
  
• B.Dog Flinch audio and event
  
• Adding prototype merged shadow geo for Prometheus
  
• Cleaned upo foliage in TU and GL biome, generated resources and manually painted AC rocks and stones, Green Quand, DLC
  
• Added Potato, Pumpkin, Wheat & Rocks to TU, Added Reeds to SW, Added Macros to Transition SW to GL & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Manual Foliage Cleanup in the Swamp Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Added throwing spears across all tiers of basic spear options.
  
• Hooked up new customizable animation set to throwing knives and spears
  
• Added missing LOD Texture Groups to various DLC foliage
  
• Adding in full base setup for Swamp Quadruped, D_AIsetup character and corpse blueprints, missing corpse description text and custom skeleton mesh, Added animation montages. Haven't done crit region setup
  
• Foliage and tree audio setup for Grasslands biome, added simple collision and PMs as required
  
• Cleaned up and added foliage in Grasslands, Green Quand, DLC
  
• Setting up various new tags and queries for promethus quests
  
• Added new quest component which deals with item functionions in quest item inventories
  
• Adding basic mission steps for Prometheus Story Mission 4
  
• Updated version 1 of the tomato crops with the latest version with the transform offset removed. This will stop them floating above the crop plots. Updated blueprint, farming growth stage data table, and foliage type
  
• Reconfiguring all dead prospector blueprints
  
• Copied the swamp stalagmites and stalactities to the correct SM_SW_Rocks folder along with foliage types and materials
  
• Adding B.Dog death sounds and event
  
• Added protoype shadow geo to persistent level, Prometheus
  
• Added grassland stalactities and stalagmites to project and created foliage types
  
• Cleaned up foliage in TU and GL biome, generated resources and manually painted AC rocks and stones, Green Quand, DLC
  
• Adding B.Dog Idle audio and event
  
• Shifted Swamp stalactite foliage types from the SM_LC_Rocks folder to SM_SW_Rocks. Leaving redirectors in original folder
  
• Manual Foliage Cleanup in the Swamp Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Audio and simple collision setup for foliage in Tundra biome
  
• adding B.Dog Aggro audio and event
  
• SM_Breakable_Obsidian Var 1 and 2 mesh, material, blueprint and textures
  
• Starting on Promethus Mission 5 Basic Quest Flow
  
• Creating Sols Hideout Prebuild Base & Adding Sols Communicaton Device
  
• Creating Audio Log items
  
• Finishing Basic Quest Flow for Promethus Mission 4
  
• Resaving World Data Datatable as the underlying data structure was saved and causing save issues
  
• Added Drop Icon for drop zone. Icon_AreaDrop
  
• Feature locked thrown spears and knives, to prevent accessing in current patch
  
• Implemented the Swamp Bird creature including Mount setup. Still needs Physics setup and crit region setup. Waiting on corpse and skeleton skinning pass and fur groom
  

This week, we’re introducing the second phase of our armor changes and improvements, addressing durability and resistance and how armors are dealt damage alongside characters. Our goal here has been to simplify and structure this system in a way that allows for scalability, and better ‘tiering’ of armors and more situations to use them in.

We’ve also gone through our top 250 tickets with some community members, and addressed a few that were quick and important wins for the game. At the bottom, we have also included the briefing for your new mission, SPELUNKING: ASSISTED STOCKPILE, and a Q&A for the upcoming Open World game mode.





This week we wanted to tackle some issues we had with Armor balance.

In the original implementation, we only processed durability loss based on how much damage the armor absorbed. The higher tier armors (which naturally resist more) ended up taking significantly more durability damage because of this, and the resulting perception was that Cloth armor appeared more durable than than Composite Armor.

For example, if a bear delivered 100 damage and your armor provided 50% resistance, 50 damage would go to your character's health and the other 50 would be applied to the armor. However, if you had 25% resistance on your armor, only 25 damage would be dealt to the armor and 75 to your character. This meant armor with more resistance would lose durability considerably faster.

In addition, this also meant that damage which wasn't resisted at all resulted in no durability loss being dealt to the armor. This limited our ability to provide new situations/scenarios where players will need to factor in their armor set before proceeding, making their armor choices and access to better armor more important to general gameplay.

To rectify this, and make it simpler to balance armor sets compared with one another, we've changed this to no longer take into consideration how much damage was resisted, rather, simply how much damage was dealt at the source before any resistance was applied.

In the new format, the bear would deliver 100 damage to the armor and 50 damage to the player with a 50% resistance higher tier armor set. With a lower tier 25% resistance set, it would deliver 100 to the armor and 75 damage to the player.

This means that we no longer need to give higher tier armor excessive durability values in order to be perceived as comparatively "strong" gear. This is an important factor with the addition of new sources of durability damage, albeit typically low values such as storm damage, that would have been of no significance otherwise.

We'll be sure to keep an eye on community feedback with these changes but the hope is that these changes result in armor quality being a more important factor for players. This should reward players who keep their gear maintained, and make investing in higher tier armors feel more worthwhile. Ultimately, this means we can find opportunities to introduce new gameplay mechanics to take this even further.





We’ve been working with some of our Discord community members on sorting through our top 250 Feature Upvote tickets and choosing some quick wins and larger tasks, which may have flown under the radar, to roll out this week. A big thanks to Twist and Derkatron for your time and support, you’re both integral to this game. With their help we were also able to remove outstanding suggestions which had already been fixed in the past but remained on the board.

• Crafting on tables will now pause when inventories are full, preventing the loss of items which when finished crafting would be popped into the world nearby
• Debuffs reducing ‘maximum stamina’ no longer prevent jumping - notably in ice caves. This also means players can jump repeatedly while out of stamina to better navigate rocky terrain
• The UI can now be hidden in photo mode and while mounted
• We’ve fixed a couple of issues preventing progress in PAYDAY and VOYAGER (restarting the prospect won’t be needed for these fixes)
  

We’ve added a new mission for you to tie off week forty-six, requiring you to explore Icarus’ caves and hidden crevasses.

Designed for rookie prospectors, this mission provides some workshop gear to even the playing field, so get out there, get some ore and look out for those worms! Your briefing for SPELUNKING: ASSISTED STOCKPILE is as follows:

// OPERATOR: UDA
// BIOME: Forest, Olympus
// BACKGROUND: Workshop personnel request additional supplies from the surface.
// MISSION: Supply pod with requested ore samples.
// TERMS: Prospector will be provided pre-fabricated workshop gear, courtesy of Shengong.





With Open World very close to being added to Icarus, we wanted to cover a few pressing questions the community has had since we originally announced it.

Will I be able to leave in my dropship and come back?

Yes. You can leave and return to your Open World session at any time.

Can I have multiple active Open World sessions?

Yes. You can have multiple active Open World sessions going at any time, and multiple sessions of the same map.

What is happening with my existing Olympus Outpost?

Don’t worry, your existing Olympus Outposts will convert over to an Open World session when the update goes through.

Can I personalize the difficulty settings for my Open World prospect?

You can set your difficulty just as you have been in Outposts up to this point. In the future, you will be able to adjust difficulty on the go.

Will resources regenerate?

Resources in Open World will not regenerate at this time. However, this isn’t set in stone and expect this in future in a different format than Outposts currently do.

Are their World Bosses in Open World?

Yes, and they will respawn as well.

Is it possible to leave and return with a different workshop loadout to and from my Open World prospect?

Yes, this is possible.

Can I earn exotics in Open World?

No, exotics will not spawn in Open World currently.

Are Open World sessions stored locally?

Open World sessions are saved locally on your PC’s harddrive.

Can a prospector who joined my Open World host it themselves later?

No, the Open World session will stay with the original host.

Can you choose your landing zone in Open World?

Yes, you will be able to choose from an array of available landing zones when dropping in, so you don’t have as far to travel to your chosen building location. Any multiplayer team members will have to follow your landing zone selection, rather than selecting their own.

Can you choose a different landing zone when you return to the map or are you locked to one?

No, you will be locked into the landing zone you choose on your first descent.

Why didn’t you leave Olympus as an Outpost?

We want outposts to be a controlled sandbox environment, with respawning resources where players can test and create builds. We felt that the Olympus Outpost was leaning more towards the future of Open World than our vision for Outposts, and belonged in that part of the game. Expect more updates to this more to reflect this intention.

How are Open World and Missions related and are there plans for it?

Currently, Open World and instanced Missions are separate, but you character can switch between the two. For now, if you run a Mission on a map, you won’t see any buildings from your Open World session - that might give you an unfair advantage in some missions. However, in future we have plans to tie these modes more closely together, allowing a seamless experience between the two.





New Content

• Updating Armor Damage Equation so the Damage Dealt to armor is no longer tied to the amount resisted but instead directly off raw damage. This means that all armors will now take damage even if they dont have a specific resistance for that type (Something that resists only fire will be damaged by anything). It also means that resistance & armor durability is no longer inherintly linked and therefore better balancing can occur, both Durability and Resistances can be scaled independantly
  
• Adding GameplayConfig datatable for default values for various gameplay constants
  
• Updating Armor Damage Equation so armor accually takes damages
  
• Reduced all armor durability values by 50% as part of armor damage mitigation refactor
  
• SPELUNKING: Enabled Mission.
  
• SPELUNKING: Moved supply crate to be closer to first objective, rather than close to dropship
  
• Update quest queries to resolve build validation.
  
• SPELUNKING: Update quest steps to better guide players to cave entrances
  
• SPELUNKING: Fixed quest completion not being granted on prospect completion.
  
• SPELUNKING: Added Aluminium to quest objectives
  

Fixed

• Tweaked chatbox for readability
  
• Modified DefaultScalability config to improve view distance settings. Default settings were too aggressive resulting in extremely short view distances which offered little to no performance gain, as distant objects are well optimized and don't cause a huge performance hit
  
• Deleted some old unused StaticMeshFoliage assets
  
• Improved Culling Distance settings on various StaticMeshFoliage assets to draw at more appropriate distances (some way too far, some way too short)
  
• Added Dithered LOD Transition support to MA_ITM shader as many foliage assets use this shader and without it, culling doesn't work properly
  
• Modified DefaultScalability config to improve view distance settings. Default settings were too aggressive resulting in extremely short view distances which offered little to no performance gain, as distant objects are well optimized and don't cause a huge performance hit
  
• Deleted some old unused StaticMeshFoliage assets
  
• Improved Culling Distance settings on various StaticMeshFoliage assets to draw at more appropriate distances (some way too far, some way too short)
  
• Added Dithered LOD Transition support to MA_ITM shader as many foliage assets use this shader and without it, culling doesn't work properly
  
• submitting all dead prospectors with aging variations BPs, textures, and materials
  
• Clean out 15GB worth of unused assets in the Megascans folder
  
• Added DataTable validation for D_MapIcons to prevent invisible icons due to invalid colour
  
• Clean up a ton of unused assets. Lots of triplicate unused Material Functions and shaders/materials. More removal of unused Substance and Megascans assets
  
• Fixed cave worm spawn on reload, if a player saves and reloads inside a cave then caveworms previously killed do not immediately respawn on load
  
• Crafting jobs are now aborted if output storage becomes full, instead of the previous behaviour where each item was dropped into the world
  
• Fix divide by zero assert seen in PIE
  
• Update HideUI function to work while Mounted
  
• Permit UI to be hidden when mounted
  
• Gate attempts to open Inventory/Crafting/TechTree/Map/Menu Toggle when UI is hidden
  
• Fixed an issue where the player would try to attack an arrow embedded creature/object with a melee weapon, the arrows would block the hit and the intended object would be unharmed
  
• PAYDAY: Updated quest step to factor placed extractors, preventing issues where you could find the exotic deposit but not progress the mission. - PAYDAY: Updated Prospect view tooltip to indicate that it unlocks the workshop radar and extractor
  
• Update HideUI function to work while Mounted and Photo Mode
  
• Permit UI to be hidden when mounted
  
• Permit UI to be hidden when in camera mode
  
• Gate attempts to open Inventory/Crafting/TechTree/Map/Menu Toggle when UI is hidden
  
• Gate attempts to open containers and context menus when UI is hidden
  
• Unhide UI on death
  
• Unhide UI on ESC
  
• This means that the game is playable to a large degree when the UI is hidden
  
• Fixed a bug where if you had too many stamina debuffs your stamina would drop so low that you wouldn't be able to jump and would get stuck if you fall into any hole/crevice
  
• Prevent cave worm spawn on reload, save respawn timeouts for cave worms, this means that if a player saves and reloads inside a cave then caveworms previously killed do not immediately respawn on load
  
• VOYAGER: Fixed a progress blocker when the ship launches earlier in the quest.
  
• VOYAGER: Fixed typo in quest description
  
• Fixed bug where player couldn't remove last item from crafting queue
  
• Fixed bug where on-player crafting would not start if there were no backpack inventory slots available
  
• Crafting jobs that run out of storage space now leave the paused crafting job in queue for visibility
  

Future Content

• Added 4 variants of LC_Sapling_A to the project. Created foliage types, blueprints, and added to the Flod Data table
  
• Spawning TU & AC Foliage on Blue/Green Quad, DLC Map
  
• SW Impassables - fixes to 11 and 14, added 15-17, plus GL and TU variants
  
• Finished first pass macro replacement with impassables, green quad
  
• Spawning SW Trees, Ground Foliage & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Manual Foliage Placement in the Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Fix geothermal material disabling sulfur on medium/low
  
• Removed VertexPainting from Ice Shader, added RVT Points shader functionality and BPs
  
• Added new Crossbow Bolts, Explosive, Scatter, Bleed and Tazer
  
• Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in arctic biome and underwater dressing, Green Quand, DLC
  
• Submitting dead prospector sinotai with aging variations BP's - test
  
• SM_Breakable_Scoria all variations mesh, material, blueprint and textures update
  
• Added version 2 of HRB_Crop_Tomatoes with colour adjusted to fit the grasslands biome and optimised mesh. Added 5 growth stages, a dead variant, and a wild variant. Created a blueprint and foliage type for the wild variant
  
• Removed unused BlueprintNativeEvent specifier on TerrainAnchor GetAnchorBounds to solve crashing when playing in editor
  
• Added Tomatoes to GL_Foliage PFS
  
• Added TU_Dirt to SnowLite Trees foliage
  
• Removing large lava biome rocks from the interactable list because they are way too big to be used as minable voxels
  
• Changed Shader on IcePillars/Icicles/GlacialCliff to MA_SnowIce and added Thickness mask option to shader
  
• Changed DF Self Shadowing bias on Assets using Serac Shader to fix weird shadows, also enable mesh distance field to ice cave floors
  
• Disable Pixel Offset on Frozen Lake Shader fix collision issues
  
• Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in GL biome, Green Quand, DLC
  
• Spawning SW Trees, Ground Foliage & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Manual Foliage Placement in the Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Adding new Crafting Recipe for T2 mission communication device
  
• Delete CF_Fern_01 FLOD row to fix build validation
  
• Adding Mega Tree on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Test for Shared quad landscape painting and foliage spawning, Green and Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Reduced spawn rate of general resources on DLC1 Spawner
  
• Fix Shader on old ice stalagmites and self shadowing issues with ice cave entrances
  
• Add simple collision and physical materials to swamp plants, update collision settings, and update audio tags in FLOD table
  
• Added SW_ReedA with 5 variants, including updating the foliage types
  
• Reduce spawn rate of large rocks on GL
  
• Add ability to apply surface type and water depth parameters to felled tree impact sounds, specifically so that we can handle swamp trees landing in shallow water
  
• Submitting Deer variant, including carcass, fur and winter variation
  
• Spawning SW Trees, Ground Foliage, Added Riverbanks to Deepwater Swamp & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Exotic Delivery Radio - Static+Destructible mesh, textures, materials added
  
• Exotic Delivery Radio - textures missed in last commit
  
• Resave D_TreeAudioData to prevent validation error
  
• Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in GL biome, Green Quand, DLC
  
• Manual Foliage Placement in the Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Removed some meshes from Terrain 019 that are meant for voxels
  
• Removed large swamp meshes from the voxel table because they're too big
  
• Fixed lava lakes/rivers in Terrain 019 not displaying properly after generation
  
• Adding Transport Pod Base Class, Exotic Delivery and Supply Pod Inherit from this, allows for common functions in each class
  
• Adding Dynamic Travel Quest which allows a variable location rather than a hard set one
  
• Added new Exotic Delivery Interface Item which can call down an exotic delivery ship
  
• Adding new Quest Steps for Promethus Missions
  
• Adding a base class for retrieve item, renaming quest retrieve item class to reflect its operations (it also spawns a crate)
  
• Added new Quest Functionaility for Retrieving items
  
• Adding all base implementation setup for the Bat Dog, all data table entries and base montage, blueprint and animation setups
  
• LC Flax/Sapling, Rocks, Stalactites Foliage Setup + Spawner
  
• Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in GL biome, Green Quand, DLC
  
• Spawning Ground Foliage, Reeds to Swamp, Added Riverbanks to Deepwater Swamp & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Manual Foliage Placement in the Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Adding Promethus Terrain Selection to Development Builds
  
• Connecting Faction Missions to Talent Graph for Prometheus
  
• Committed Completed Quest Objective Structure
  
• Adding Cheat functions for setting / getting account flags
  
• Adding new Map Icons for Various Transport Pods
  
• Adding New Texture tweaks for various drop pods
  
• Adding Basic Mission Structure in for two Prometheus Missions
  
• Swapping Contaminated Bear Creature to be Bat dog in Prometheus Intro Mission
  
• Adding in all base Needler setup, still needs ranged attack implementation and burrowing, but mimics the crocodile at the moment, physics asset setup to come, data table, blue print, montage and anim setup in
  
• Fix issue where sometimes neither water splash nor jump landing sounds would play when player jumped in shallow water
  
• Riverbanks LOD roughness fix
  
• Moved Avalanched Meshes to Red Quad from Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Basic audio setup for swamp cypress tree, including rough implementation of water trunk land sound
  
• Macro Tops - Trimmed down versions of SW macros for use in map as flat rock shelves/pieces. SW, TU, GL variants
  
• First pass of resource node audio setup for swamp foliage
  
• Increased Flat Fade Distance on Reeds to fix view distance
  
• Adding attack, Idle close and Idle distance audio and events for Striker
  
• Adding in alien fossil cave temp
  
• First pass on Glacier mesh and materials (red quad)
  
• Adding base Predator bird setup and new swoop animations, still missing the corpse behavior and dive bomb logic
  
• Missing dive bomb and swoop animations from last Predator bird commit
  
• Added UMG_AreaSelect for open world mode
  
• Added generic triplanar material for Avalanche on DLC1 Map
  
• Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in GL biome, Green Quand, DLC
  
• Added Macro Tops, Reeds to Swamp, Added Riverbanks to Deepwater Swamp & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
  
• Manual Foliage Placement in the Swamp and Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Added potato foliage assets. Created blueprints, foliage types and added to FLOD data table
  
• Adding Tech for providing prebuilt bases for use on terrains and missions
  
• Adding some prebuilt bases for missions
  
• Finishing up Another quest for Prometheus
  
• Adding Various quest markers and quests to the Prometheus Map
  
• Adding new Swamp and Volcanic Atmosphere types
  
• Adding in P Bird sweep audio and event and adding to animation
  
• Adding in full base setup for deer variant, D_AIsetup character and corpse blueprints, missing corpse description text and custom skeleton mesh
  
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