Icarus News

Thank you for your fantastic feedback on Beta Weekend Two so far! We've been watching your streams and reading your chats on Discord and social media with great interest, and the occasional laugh.

This hotfix has some changes that will greatly improve the gameplay balance. We felt these were safe to make, and also important enough for you to play so we can confirm our approach before we refine Beta Weekend 3 content.

Normally, we won't do hotfixes during the weekend to try and keep the experience stable. Additionally, we like to let the team have a well earned rest after a busy few weeks. However, we want to make a few balance changes so we can verify our broader approach to experience and animals - before we start opening up other areas.

[h2]Try out the Beta Weekend risk free right now![/h2]
Want to try these out? Pre-order Icarus to get access to the Beta Weekend right now. You can play the beta as long as you like and refund at any time before launch no matter how much you play.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149460/ICARUS/

[h2]Experience from Crafting Increased Dramatically[/h2]
We made a lot of changes to the experience balance from Beta Weekend 1 already, but one area missing was the experience from crafting things. As an example, crafting a wall was only giving you experience of half that of recovering a bush. What the object is made of is a big determiner of how much experience you got - but we hadn't balanced it since our last big changes.

This will dramatically affect the pacing of the game. Previous to this update, crafting gave you effectively no experience. Now, crafting things will give you plenty of experience and will speed up your progress in the game.

[h2]Player Respawning[/h2]
In a future Beta Weekend we will be leaving your gear where you die for a period of time. This was considered too risky to include in a hotfix. We have also fixed an exploit where you had full survival stats when you respawn, this is no longer the case.

[h2]Weapon Damage Rebalance[/h2]
Significant changes have been made to weapon balance, specifically:

• Throwing spears will cause significantly more damage (x2 to x4 more, depending on spear type)
  
• Projectile damage for arrows increased
  
• Arrows now cause much more critical hit damage (10-25% depending on type)
  
• Rifle Round causes much more damage
  
• Rifle Round now causes dramatically more critical hit damage.
  

[h2]Predator Perception Nerfed[/h2]

• Wolf has perception reduced slightly, and its lost sight radius reduced.
  
• Bear has perception reduced slightly, lost sight radius reduced, and hearing reduced dramatically.
  

[h2]Miscellaneous Changes[/h2]

• There was a small section in the BW3 playing area, that was incorrectly set to the be the arctic biome - causing blizzards and storms that were killing people. This has been fixed.
  
• Reduce all Aluminum recipe costs by factor of five
  
• Increase Coal yield again, another 20%
  
• Reduced XP from Oxite and Sulphur
  
• Fixed Posion Arrow was not doing damage or slowdown over time
  

[h3]Beta Weekend 1 was a huge success![/h3]

Welcome back, Prospectors.

We topped Steam’s Global Top Sellers chart for our first Beta Weekend, which blew us away for a two-day Beta. Thank you to everyone who pre-ordered, joined us and gave feedback!

Originally posted by rocket2guns

For us Beta Weekend 1 (BW1) was primarily about testing the core of the game, both in a gameplay mechanics sense as well as architecturally. Our servers held up, and the game held up pretty well too. The base survival mechanics were generally solid, but it was clear we needed to develop more on the exploration and survival aspects of the game, even beyond our original schedule. So we did. One of the key lessons I have from past projects is the importance of being able to iterate very quickly. This allows us to adapt the game every Beta Weekend without taking on huge amounts of technical risk.

In Beta Weekend 2 you will see a huge focus on increasing exploration, testing the limits of pacing, as well as slowly opening up more content of the game for us to balance and develop further. We've also started to hints how we will approach the lore.

We'll be watching your videos, livestreams, and VODs and, as always, reading and replying to your posts on the forums and Discord.

Dean Hall
Gamerunner

The key addition this Beta Weekend is storms and extreme weather events. Expect severe winds, flash storms and thunderstorms that can damage your structures and lightning strikes that could even spark forest fires. Don't worry, you'll receive a warning as they approach to give you time to find or build shelter and to unlock your fire whacker, repair hammer or stronger building tiers.

Read our Weather System blog for more details on what to expect.

There's so much more than just storms. We've also added four times more playable area to explore, caves full of valuable metals, more building options, varied animal danger levels and more survival challenges like infections and fractures.

[h2]Surprise, we dropped 24 hours early![/h2]

We think there are so many new gameplay systems in this Beta Weekend that we’re giving you an extra 24 hours to play. We turned on the servers a whole day earlier at 5pm Thursday instead of 5pm Friday PDT.

That's right, Icarus is LIVE NOW.

There is no change to the end time. The Beta Weekend will continue until 10pm Sunday PDT. We can’t promise that we'll launch early for future Beta Weekends, though.

[h2]A Character Wipe[/h2]
Unfortunately your characters and prospects from Beta Weekend 1 have been wiped. While we prefer not to do this, we had to this time due to the extensive gameplay changes and some big backend improvements. You'll find the levelling up progression much different this time around.

[h2]A 4x larger map[/h2]

Beta Weekend 2 comes with a big increase to the playable area, as shown in orange in the map below. With 4x as much space to explore, expect to find more caves, lakes, waterfalls and cliffs as well as a sneak-peak into edges of the arctic and desert biomes.



Oh, but also, something has happened to your in-game map... It’s temporarily unavailable for this Beta Weekend. The above map is all the info you’ve got to go on - best of luck!

[h2]Caves and Mining[/h2]

Credit: ArmyVet

One of the larger balance changes affects metal ores and caves. While in the first Beta Weekend metal ores were abundant and easy to find, we’ve adjusted their availability in Beta Weekend 2. Almost all valuable metal ores, such as gold, copper, aluminum, are now found exclusively in caves, of which there are more than 30 scattered around this Weekend’s map. This means you'll need to explore deeper into the wilderness as you progress through the planetary tech tree.

[h2]More building options and tiers[/h2]



We were impressed with the amazing structures players posted on social media and Twitch last Weekend, and we’ve listened to your requests for even more building pieces.

Added to the mix are roof corner pieces, half walls, inverted corner pieces, double doors and the option to choose which side of the frame a door hinge will be on by moving your mouse to either side when placing. This Beta Weekend also unlocks two whole new building tiers, Aluminum and Concrete. We’re excited to see what you create with all the new options available to you.



[h2]More survival mechanics[/h2]

Beta Weekend 2 also scales up the survival challenges and solutions with new mechanics, modifiers and debuffs that require careful planning and quick responses. Look out for infected wounds, deep wounds, fractures from fall damage, food poisoning as well as new bandages and poultices to provide relief.

[h2]Scaling animal strength[/h2]

While there were many brilliant animal encounters in Beta Weekend 1, we’ve expanded their complexity and variety as we introduce animal scaling. As you explore further into the wilderness the more aggressive, dangerous, powerful and populated animals will become. Animals will also scale as you level, so be prepared to be challenged at all times.

[h2]Basic Firearms[/h2]

Your weapons are due for an upgrade. Beta Weekend 2 unlocks two highly-requested firearms, the Shotgun and the Hunting Rifle. We’re keen to hear your experiences with these items and look forward to all the amazing clips you’re going to capture.

Credit: StixxAus

[h2]Graphics compatibility[/h2]

While we’ve made many graphics optimizations for this weekend and there will be many more for our full launch, we also learned a lot about how Icarus runs on different people’s graphics cards. We’ve built Icarus to take advantage of many of the latest graphics rendering techniques - so updating your PC to the latest graphics drivers and using DirectX12 will improve performance for many users, including those with AMD cards.

[h2]Last chance to win![/h2]



Our gleam.io competition to win some sweet Logitech G peripherals and Steam Wallet funds closes at the end of this Beta Weekend. Enter here!

[h2]Give us your feedback. [/h2]

You can submit suggestions and bugs and upvote other people’s feedback using Feature Upvote.

If you want to read a more detailed breakdown of our patch notes, you can find these here in the Steam Forums.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149460/ICARUS/

Skalgrim - Icarus Discord



Wow, what a fantastic first Beta Weekend!

Not only did you get to play Icarus for the very first time, you also gave us your important feedback so we can make the game better, thank you! We will provide updates on the state of Icarus and our plans for the next Beta Weekend in another post.

Many of you chose to stream and create content on Icarus for your online communities, and it was an absolute pleasure for us at RocketWerkz to watch! We saw you hunt, swim, mine, build homes, cook, make armour, and more. We also witnessed a large majority of you setting yourselves on fire and deciding to run into the forest, as well as your homes. No judgement from us, Prospectors! We have been there too (it was very entertaining).

Alongside the joyful laughs that were had, we saw YouTube videos from creators sharing their opinions on our beta and providing advice for first time players! Whatever content you create around Icarus, we appreciate the diversity among our community. Don't forget to tag us @survievicarus or use our hashtag #surviveicarus!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Popular YouTube Vids[/h2] Nexxuz World PartiallyRoyal Seneral Gam Fooster Dr_Horse

[h2]Popular Twitch Clips[/h2] LIRIK Shroud GassyMexican Sacriel Sequisha

Content creators can apply for a Beta key via Rainmaker or Woovit!

[h2]Did you catch our Developer Livestream?[/h2]

Our developers streamed to Twitch and Youtube over the weekend, as well as right here on Steam! If you were watching us live on any of these platforms, thank you! The team had a great time playing and answering your questions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTUDCGB-WbY

[h2]Discord Community[/h2] 5,000 members joined our Discord server over the course of the weekend bringing our total to over 13,000! We prepared for this and set up specific Beta Weekend channels for you to chat in and use. One of these channels was for you to share your #screenshots! Here's a bunch of hand picked screenshots that we wanted to show off below, and credited because you deserve it!

Heffy

Deadly Warlord ThunderKitty

FinallyRage

Doug 'Kemble' Rock

Daedalus1134

Make sure to use the Beta Weekend #screenshots channel if you want the chance to be featured here! Thank you for sharing these pictures with us and the wider community.

[h2]Win BIG with Logitech G![/h2]
Our Gleam competition is still running from our first Beta Weekend! You could win some Logitech G peripherals and Steam Wallet funds! So what are you waiting for!? ENTER NOW! Competition ends on September 12th PDT.

[h3]Beta Weekend #2 is One Week Away![/h3] Our next Beta Weekend begins on Friday September 10th at 5pm PDT (Saturday September 11th at 12pm NZT / 12am UTC) where you will experience the wrath of Icarus's storms in the Forest Biome. We’re looking forward to seeing how you fare during these storms - your survival will depend on it!

Thanks to your feedback, we've been working on improving Icarus! Keep a look out for an upcoming post regarding bug fixes next week.

- Lorii

Helpful links
Reporting Bugs Discord Twitter

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149460/ICARUS/

[h3]The first Beta Weekend has begun and will be live until August 29th @ 10pm PDT.

All pre-order buyers can begin playing NOW![/h3]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149460/ICARUS/
[h3]We're also celebrating by doing a giveaway thanks to our friends at Logitech[/h3] [h3]Enter to win NOW:[/h3]

[h3]Good luck on your first drop on Icarus, prospectors!

Want to talk to us? Join the Discord![/h3]

[h2]Greetings, Prospectors![/h2]

In this update, we’re going to talk about expectations around our first Beta Weekend, discover who is in this month’s Creator Spotlight, and how to enter our exciting Gleam competition to win some sweet Logitech G gear and Steam Wallet funds!

[h3]Stay confident in the beta process![/h3]

From 5pm 27 August PDT you will touch down on Icarus’ soil for the first time and explore the Forest Biome! The surrounding areas are blocked off by invisible barriers where you will be warned if you get out-of-bounds. Storms will come and go, but are purely cosmetic in nature.

Check out our Quick Start Guide for tips and tricks on how to get underway in your first session!

We’ve heard how eager you are to get into the game, build your first cabin and make your first hunt! These are some incredibly special moments for you as new players, whether you are taking part in our beta, or choosing to wait until launch day.

For our beta players, context matters and so you should expect to encounter bugs and performance issues. We are prepared to work on these so that each beta weekend is an improvement upon the last, but larger issues may not make it in until launch day.

Please make sure to report any to us. Read more about how to do this, here.



[h2]CREATOR SPOTLIGHT[/h2]
We love supporting all creators whether they have small, medium or large communities. This weekend, you will get your first chance to stream and create your own VOD gameplay content around Icarus. We’ll be watching as many folks as we can, so keep it up, and maybe you will be showcased for our next Creator Spotlight!

[h3]Introducing WIRED_GAMING[/h3]

“Wired” has been regularly uploading gameplay, tips, tricks and impression videos to YouTube around titles in the survival genre for the past few years! We’re impressed by his level of enthusiasm and dedication to continuously create new and engaging content, including his recent videos about Icarus. We recommend checking out this video of his below!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
“I love all things survival from space to zombies, Icarus caught my eye earlier this year and I've been following the development ever since. The survival aspect with storms and a timer add to the difficulty and make it stand out from the crowd. I can’t wait to get stuck into different biomes and what looks to be a nice lengthy progression system.” - Wired_Gaming

Go subscribe to Wired's YouTube and follow him on Twitter!



[h2]WIN LOGITECH G GEAR AND STEAM WALLET FUNDS![/h2]
Prospectors, you could win yourself some sweet Logitech G peripherals and Steam Wallet funds by taking part in our gleam.io competition in celebration of our first Beta Weekend! We have prizes for our runner ups too!

Our #1 Winner will receive:

• $750 (USD) Digital Steam Gift Card
  
• 1x Logitech G PRO X Wireless Headset
  
• 1x Logitech G Pro X Superlight Wireless Gaming Mouse
  
• 1x Logitech G Powerplay Wireless Charging System
  
• 1x Logitech G915 TKL Keyboard.
  

First runner up will receive:

• $500 (USD) Digital Steam Gift Card
  
• 1x Logitech G PRO X Headset (wired)
  

Second runner up will receive:

• $250 (USD) Digital Steam Gift Card
  
• 1x Logitech G PRO X Headset (wired)
  

There are a bunch of ways to enter, so make sure you check it out here.

Entries are now OPEN and close at the end of our second Beta Weekend on 12 September at 10pm Pacific Daylight Time.

[h2]ICARUS MERCH IS ON THE WAY[/h2]
We have Icarus themed mouse pads and enamel pins which will soon become available! Keep an eye across our socials and future steam posts for more details.

[h3]GLHF![/h3]
There's only one more day to go, Prospectors. Thank you so much for your support this far. Keep a lookout for our updates across the weekend by following us on Twitter @SurviveIcarus. We will update everywhere else as necessary.

We also have a Discord server! Find friends and chat with our community! Discord.gg/SurviveIcarus

- Lorii

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149460/ICARUS/