Icarus News

Survival game Icarus launched back in December of 2021, and since then developer RocketWerkz has not been sitting idle. The studio has delivered an impressive number of small updates, missions, and tweaks to Icarus every single week, along with bigger expansions and features along the way...
Read more.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Galileo is finally here.

Our first named update in our new cadence brings the long-awaited fishing system, with 53 species, 3 rods, 23 lures and so much more. Catch, record, display and fillet a range of marine life, with their own mini-game and dedicated fishing book.

The Bestiary is your one-stop-shop guide to all of Icarus’ fauna, giving unique lore, perks, unlocks and advantages as you hunt, kill, skin and display your conquests.

Finally, Steam Achievements, Trading Cards, Badges, Backgrounds and Emoticons have all been added for you to complete, trade, unlock and display on your Steam profiles.

We’ve also made balance changes to address all this new content, and included a small decorative DLC for people who wish to decorate their base with mineral lamps or artwork, and support our continued development of Icarus.

Jump in, enjoy, and we’ll see you out on the water.



Fishing provides a new way to engage with Icarus that’s not focused on combat. With enough challenge to keep you engaged and the serenity of a peaceful evening by the lakeside, the time just flies by as you cast your line.

Let’s start with the numbers.

There are 53 species of fish to catch in Icarus and they can be found in any body of water. From lakes and rivers, to babbling brooks and raging waterfalls, the world is your oyster.



There are three different fishing rods to use, from basic wooden rods to more advanced versions. The better the quality of your rod, the easier it is to catch the rarer species.

There are 23 lures you can craft and attach to your rod. Each lure is unique, with its own design and advantages for catching different fish species. Experimenting with different lures, fishing spots and rods gives you the best chance of catching all 53 species. Each catch will unlock more information in the fishing book, giving you tips and tricks to employ on your next expedition.



There are also two different fishing traps you can place in any body of water, that will catch fish native to that area of the map. These will also slowly fill up with trash as the water current flows through them so they require a little maintenance to keep them effective.



You can also craft and bring a tackle box that functions as a storage container, which is suitable for keeping your fish fresh when you're away from your base. It can also serve your lures and rods keeping them organized in one place.

You also have the option to display your impressive catches with three new wall mounts or keep a selection of fish in two new aquariums. Choose whichever suits your preference.



Finally, the new Fishing Bench is your hub for all things fishing. The left side of the bench is your workspace for crafting rods, lures, and traps. The right side is for filleting your catches into saltwater or freshwater fillets to be used in a range of new recipes to prepare for you and your fellow prospectors.

Fishing Mechanics

With all this content, we’ve spent considerable time working on the gameplay mechanics to create a unique experience that feels different from other parts of Icarus. To catch fish, players need to snag one on their hook, and then battle them in a mini-game as you wrestle to reel them in. If successful, you’ll then be able to admire your catch and check out its stats.



There are 53 different species of fish, each with varying weights and lengths. They come in four different rarities and have unique quality rankings. Additionally, fish can be found in either saltwater or freshwater.

Freshwater fish are more commonly found in the Forest and Arctic environments, while the desert is more likely to be home to saltwater varieties. To find all 53 species, you’ll have to get exploring, as some rarer species are only found in some of the more remote locations of Icarus.



The quality ranking of the fish determines how much resource it provides you, and how difficult reeling it in will be. The closer to a 100% quality ranking, the larger and heavier the fish will be. Heavier fish will provide more fillets or chunks if filleted, and be far more visually impressive when mounted on your wall or placed in your aquarium.

Finding high-quality versions of the rare species is incredibly challenging, so unlocking clues will be critical. Thankfully, the more fishing you do, and the more fish you catch, the more information you will unlock in your fishing book. This can give you clues as to locations, the type of lures that prove more effective, and other tips and tricks.



Traps also provide an opportunity to catch these rare species, however, they act far more passively and require more patience to return results. If you prefer to set and forget rather than casting out a line and waiting for a bite though, then these will be your best friend. Move your traps around, try different locations, and figure out your luckiest spots for catching all the fish you need.





The Bestiary is the all-in-one guidebook for all of Icarus’ creatures, earth-like or exotic.

When players kill, skin, fall victim to, or craft trophies of different creatures, they’ll increase their knowledge about the species and increase progress in the Bestiary.



Increasing your Bestiary progress unlocks knowledge about the species, lore about their creation, traits and weaknesses for players to exploit, and perks for when you encounter them.

Here’s your guide for what you will unlock as you progress through the Bestiary:

• 1% The creature's name and habitat
  
• 10% Lore about the creature
  
• 20% Creature traits: weaknesses, strengths and unique behavior
  
• 30% Additional Lore about the creature
  
• 40% Gain a perk related to the creature
  
• 60% The creature's unique loot table
  
• 80% Additional Lore about the creature
  
• 100% Another perk related to the creature
  

Additionally, every 20% progress provides 1% extra damage and 1% damage reduction against the creature.





Steam Achievements and Trading Cards are here.

40 Steam Achievements have been added. Some of these are easy to accomplish and will be completed just by playing the game like normal. Others will require you to complete unique objectives and tackle challenges that you may not have faced before.



The achievements all boast hand-drawn pieces by our art team. The inspiration for many came from our community. We wanted the achievements to feel native to Icarus, and reflect the experience that so many of you have had in the millions of hours invested into the game.

Some achievements will automatically be granted or gain a percentage of completion when they go live, as they retrospectively look at your previous play time. Others will start fresh, giving you the chance to earn them from day one.

You can find these in-game under the Accolades menu where your progress is tracked.



Steam Trading Cards and Emoticons have also been added to the Steam Workshop.

There are nine Steam Trading Cards to collect, all drawn in-house by our incredible concept art team (you may recognize the style from our weekly blog posts and game art).



Each of these can be earned for completing an hour of playtime in-game, but you’ll only be able to collect half through this method and will need to trade with other players if you want to complete the set.

There are also four profile backgrounds to collect, an Icarus Steam Badge to craft, and eight emoticons.



By collecting a set of trading cards, you can craft an Icarus Steam Badge, an Icarus background, and an emoticon to use across Steam. The more you play, the more you collect, and the more you’ll unlock.

Originally posted by author

[h2]Like what we're doing?[/h2]

It has been a big two weeks for updates on Icarus! Last week's performance patch received awesome feedback, and we were able to push out a hotfix in under 24 hours too for a multiplayer issue caused by Steam Presence. This week is our first big update in the new cadence, and as you can see, it’s been a lot of work, love, and effort to bring it to life.

If you are enjoying Icarus, and liking the progress our team is making with our weekly and larger updates, please consider leaving us a review on Steam. It can make a big difference to the project, so we can keep bringing you new content, improvements, balances, and bears.

All this new content means we need to review our level cap and point allocation for your characters.

Last week we made the increase of talent points from 60 to 75 per character, by adjusting how many points were allocated at odd and even-numbered levels.

This week, we’re also increasing the level cap to 60. This will mean 15 more talent points (90 total) and 5 more solo talent points will be available to earn and spend, allowing you to enjoy the new content without having to skimp on other areas of your character's development.

We’ll keep reviewing these numbers closely as we add more content, and make adjustments where necessary to find the balance between over-saturation and point starvation.



The final piece of this update, is a small decorative DLC we’re releasing for a few dollars on Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2445280/Icarus_Interior_Decorations_Pack

This includes some fun decorative content for your bases, including 12 mineral lamps in Copper, Gold and Oxite, and six painting frames with a range of our concept art team's creations to display around your base.



This will be instantly granted to all our Supporters Edition players, and anyone else can buy the pack on Steam.

If you like what we’re doing with Icarus, and want to support our continued development, consider purchasing for a few dollars, it would mean a lot to us.





New/Galileo/DLC

• Fixing FishData pointing to the incorrect fish causing double ups in the fishing records
  
• Fixing issue where Fish that have not been added to the game where being displayed in the bestiary
  
• Adjusting FishData table validation to show issues where fish have / haven't been added to the game
  
• Colour adjustments to saltwater fish
  
• Bestiary landing page image adjusted
  
• Adjust the Fish Quaility and catch rate equation to balance out the quaility of catches for both low end rods & talents to high end rods and talents
  
• Added pronghorn creatures to PFG/Bestiary
  
• D_BestiaryData updated
  
• Fixed the scale of dark paintings so the image fits the frame
  
• Landshark added to bestiary images
  
• D_Bestiary updated with new creature images
  
• saving bestiary scenes
  
• Changed painting scale to fix protruding pictures from the frames
  
• Greatly increased the effectiveness of lures.
  
• Fixed some lure stats.
  
• Rebalanced recipes on lures, ensuring lures of a similar tier have similar costs, and lower tier lures cost less.
  
• Reorganized lures so they show in order of tier and stat
  
• Removed the bonus fish quality provided by the base fishing rod.
  
• Reduced the fish quality provided by rare fish lures but greatly increased the rare fish chance.
  
• Lowered the fish quality provided by talents
  
• Changed inspect to stop inspecting once you press left or right mouse button rather than after a short delay
  
• Updating Fish Utility Widget for Zone counts so it displays percentages next to zones and all terrains now have their own column
  
• Fixed missing fishing zone data for Olympus and Styx
  
• Add editor debugging for fishing zones in Lakes and Rivers
  
• Standardized Fishing Zone Quality values to 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7
  
• Added a small build up to the unlock bestiary sound since the visuals start earlier. This ties in better to the UI
  
• Fix Fish03_Var2 pointing to Var1 icon
  
• Update fish spawn zones to ensure that each fish is in at least 1 mid or high quality zone
  
• Removed 2 extra still frames on first person reel anim
  
• Changed the animation blend float on the rod to match arm reel anims
  
• Slowed the fishing rod reel animation to match the speed of the arms
  
• Adding Pronghorn bestiary cre event and data table entry
  
• Added missing material function used for fishing line
  
• Increase all 0.5 fish zone quality to 0.6 per balance tweaks
  
• Increased fishing max_quality_roll constexpr to 135 from 120. When calculating upper range limit when rolling fish quality, values above 100 are now reduced by 90% (150 becomes 105)
  
• Readded timer event time based on fishing rod (was removed for debugging purposes)
  
• Added VFX for Fishing, LureHit, LureGrab and Thrashing
  
• Updated Decorations pack PackageData row to use correct Steam Package ID
  
• Adjusted the timing of the Rod Reeling animation to match up with the hand while reeling in, still needs somm position reset in between casts to ensure consistent timing throughout
  
• Deleted old fish recipes. - ADVANCED ORDER: Updated quest requirements to instead be a new fish recipe
  
• Updated task-list accolades to use an Icarus font for list items, also made completed items more readable and gave them a strike-through. Accolade task-list items now scale down to prevent text items clipping
  
• Added art icons for fishing talent tree
  
• Updates and improvements to fishing audio based on new vfx
  
• adding prometheus image to stage select screen
  
• adding prometheus image to stage select screen
  
• Added text "Press J to open Field Guide." for when a creature or fish is unlocked
  
• Reeling anim now auto sets back to its original position when reinitializing a reel animation so the fishing rod always syncs up with the hand
  
• Fixed Fish_13_Var4 D_FishData entry to correctly point to the Fish_13_Var4 fish item
  
• Fix Bestiary Images using the uncompressed UI texture setting
  
• Delete unused FieldGuideBackground texture
  
• Disabled the ability to reel while still in the 'release' animation so that the rod reel animation doesnt become disjointed from the arm reel animation
  
• Updated AllTalentsInTreeAccolade to only count talents that aren't blocked behind required flags. This means that the Blueprint Tree Accolades should no longer count Blueprints that require a specific player talent
  
• Item icons optimization
  
• Updated Fish Finder to say Low, Med or High for quality, including colored text.
  
• Updated Fish Finder fish list to always be ordered by the type of fish
  
• Small balance adjustments to fishing to better reflect vfx pass
  
• Reduced sizes of individual entries in field guide.
  
• Fixed highlight being stuck when hovering over bestiary entries on the stat screen.
  
• Added additional spacing for bestiary traits
  
• Removed Cave biome requirement from biome visiting achievement requirement, as players can not visit a biome listed as Cave
  
• Edited fish descriptions slightly to better match colour variations
  
• Re-added Pronghorn's desert Bestiary data, as they can spawn in the desert
  
• Fish thrashing particle effects are now only active when there is a valid fish on the line. Made MULTI_OnBobLure a reliable multicast
  
• Added skeletal mesh with start, loop, and stop animation for the T2 communication device
  
• Change the way creature images fade in as percent unlock increases to a basic black to color (Galileo feature level locked)
  
• Fix incorrect fish mesh assignment
  
• Fixing skeleton weighting for the T2 fishing rod to match the others during the bend forward animation
  
• Upping player max level to 60 for Galileo, and adjusting talent growth for both player & solo talent point growth
  
• Fixing up values in Accolades and adjusting Steam Values to reflect proper values
  
• Unlocking Paints, Painting Frames & Geode Lamps for their release with Galileo
  
• Removing Fish Dish and Crumbed Fish Fillet (Old Fish Recipes) from 'Yes Chef' Accolade
  
• Fixing Arctic Scorpions Carcass Description
  
• Swapping Fish Mounts Variation 1 & 2 because 2 looks visually better
  
• Readding animation and delay for opening the field guide to match the audio that is played when opened
  
• Updated Arctic Scorpion to differentiate themselves more from desert versions, they now have more health and projectile resistance, but are slower by default and enrage when hit.
  
• Arctic Scorpions now grant slightly more bones when harvested.
  
• Slightly increased critical area on scorpions
  
• Change fishing reset sound to only play if resetting a previously cast line
  
• Added Bestiary trait icons
  
• Update references to biomes not using text which can be translated
  
• Update fishing lure splash VFX implementation to replicate correctly
  
• Adding Fishing Lure attach audio event
  
• Fixing stretched bestiary image popup when unlocking
  
• Fixing 'Yes Chef' Achievement to remove New Frontiers Food
  
• Added manual invalidation to text boxes on UMG_AccoladePopup after initialisation, also added a scale box to title to make sure title doesn't ever obstruct accolade image
  
• Fix a crash when clients exit when a tackle box has been placed in the world (experimental build only)
  
• Field guide open animation fix
  
• Fish wall mounts are now correctly destroyed at 0 durability
  
• Update bestiary trait text for AP and explosive weakness to better communicate that it is a weakness.
  
• Disable creature audio button if bestiary record has not been unlocked.
  
• Fix bestiary trait icon being scaled incorrectly.
  
• Fix bestiary stat unlock listing unlock requirement as 80 instead of 100%
  
• Items crafted at the fishing bench can now correcly be destroyed to return resources
  
• Tackleboxes will now only drop items in an overflow bag when destroyed, not when picked up
  
• Fixed spelling mistake in Large Advanced Aquarium flavour text
  
• Fixed geode lamps not saving their enabled state between prospect reloads
  
• Widget invalidation is now temporarily disabled on UMG_AccoladePopup when widget is visible on screen, should fix issues where longer Accolade titles/descriptions clip or have incorrect spacing
  

Fixed

• Fixing Carved Wood decorations to be called 'Carved' and not 'Caved'
  
• Fix Large Desert Antelope bones mesh receiving incorrect material assignment after refactor
  
• Fix ice/heat affect can jam onscreen when mounting/unmounting with afflications
  
• Various fixes to Stats data, descriptions, symbols, etc
  
• Formatted DataValidation event graph to be more readable
  
• Cull Distance on Waterfall BPs
  
• Improve constraint setup on Mammoth
  
• Move LightShadows option to be beside PlayerLightShadows option under Settings > Display and grey out PlayerLightShadows option when LightShadows are off
  
• Fixed enzyme geysers not loading state. This was being caused by attempting to match save data to geysers using UId's which were failing to match up. Have disabled UId matching in favour of instance name matching, as the geysers are static fixed objects which have reliable names
  
• Fix LC stalags referencing the same material twice on an invalid slot
  
• Extra safety checks for alterations benches to prevent a possible crash
  
• Cave culling distance settings optimizations
  
• Add culling distance override support to Lakes
  
• Culling settings on Caveworm BPs
  
• Delete faulty cave light setups
  
• Fix an issue with cooking some cave prefabs that was preventing all materials from being correctly applied
  
• Fix various edge cases with being mounted (or not) when entering/exiting/being in caves and lighting
  
• Fixing Dialogue line spacing being way to big which wass an issue caused by the last patch
  
• Fixed bug where mission boards didn't have their mission list updated when another board was interacted with.
  
• Fixed bug where drop pod dynamic lights weren't functioning correctly if the pod hadn't landed before (was spawned on ground by mission)
  
• Preserve tackle box contents (inventory) when the tackle box is destroyed
  
• Fixed quest objectives panel not appearing for clients
  
• Fixed environment temperature not updating on HUD for clients
  
• Fixed weight stat being visible on envirosuit loadout selection UI. Stats can now be flagged to be hidden in various UI elements via the D_Stats table
  
• Added source file changes related to previous UI stat hiding changes
  
• Added additional logging for failure to create unreal session error (error 005)
  
• Removed some caching of text from the chat box as it was causing messages to not show correctly
  
• Removed some caching with the displayed weight on the encumberance bar on the HUD as it was showing old values until animating out
  
• Fixed picking up a partial stack of items not triggering an inventory weight recalculation
  
• Fixed issue with pickup animation not selecting the right animation to play in certain situations
  
• Picking up items with both hands empty will now randomly select a hand to play the pick up animation with
  
• D_Atmosphere names are now FText instead of FName (so can be localized)
  
• Put some more bullet proofing around context interaction and entering/leaving photo mode
  
• Upping map level clamp to 60 in rich presence
  
• Removed spoilage from Pickled Freshwater Fillets
  
• The time remaning for resources (biofuel/water/oxygen) will now display correctly in the fuel inventory just like when burning wood in the campfire
  
• Fixed crash caused by the chat box once messages move beyond the top of the window
  
• Restored some caching to chat messages
  
• Fixed mammoth carcass fur not being cleaned up correctly.
  
• Fixed mammoth carcass not using correct carcass mesh.
  
• Dampened physics setup for mammoth's trunk
  

Future Content

• General clean up, polished around megatree manual cave, foliage, resources and decals, Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Fixed a few typos discovered by the localization team in item and accolade text
  
• Adding broodling flinch audio and event and data table entry
  
• Adding first pass audio for Landmine
  
• Adding painting deploy audio and event and data entry. Also fixed some wooden items not having the small wood item deploy sound
  
• Setup for landmine audio, altered landmine item description, landmine will no longer auto trigger when creature enters proximity if player is within proximity. Optimized landmine VFX
  
• Deleting normie horsie static meshes
  
• Adding Normie Horsie skeletal meshes and variants 2 & 3
  
• Updates to the collision audio event. BP has been shelved until we can test further
  
• Aligned Prometheus Prefab Cave Entrances To Ensure the Player Overlap Modifers Happen at the same time
  
• Added art assets and updated BP for Rug_Jaguar
  
• Added art assets and updated BP for Rug_Cougar
  
• Added art assets and updated BP for Rug_SnowLeopard
  
• Fixed issue with recent ducking used which caused the crit hit sound to be slightly too loud with the increase of ducking other audio
  
• Added hanging ferns and roots/vines to manual cave and added rock formations to manual cave, Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Adding chamois variant flinch sound, adding pronghorn data table entry and adjustments and added missing reverb on flee audio and fixed flee using a loop state instead of a one shot flee event sound.
  
• Updating logic of lava flyers to play on event begin play and stop on detonation. Fixes issues with multiple lava flyers not triggering the audio and removes hack to stop audio when destroyed
  
• Enabled 2-sided DF generation on all MAC and IMP meshes, increased DF self shadow bias to 50 on all Cliff, CanyonWall and CaveEntrance meshes (GL, TU, SW, LC)
  
• 2 sided DF generation on MTN, Macro, DC CanyonWall meshes, increased DF self shadow bias to 50 on CF, DC cliffs (OLY and STYX)
  
• ADDING Lava flyer death and flinch audio event and data table entry
  
• adding male & female heavy obsidian armor skeletal meshes
  
• Added SM_BLD_Floor_Half_Wood_INT & set up Materials for Buildable Rework Investigation
  
• Increased the size of the bear rug and adjusted the shape
  
• Added art assets for Polar bear rug and updated the BP
  
• Fixed Collision Issues in prefab caves where players could get blocked by Macro Cliffs, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Concrete BLD rework - added SMs, material, mask texture for Railing + RailingStairs
  
• General clean up of cave tunnels, decals and vines in Grasslands, Green Quad, DLC
  
• Added BLD_Stairs_Wood and BLD_Beams_Wood
  
• Added art assets for buffalo rug and updated BP
  
• Setting up test event for bramble foliage setup
  
• Adjustments to bramble loop volume and eq. Also lowered top end in footstep mud as it was too different next to dirt
  
• Adjustments and improvements to bramble audio. Added 1 shot with a cooldown at beginning of event. Added bramble tag and UE BP data
  
• Added art assets for desert wolf rug and updated BP
  
• Replaced Mask Textures for INT Wood Meshes & Updated Materials for Buildable Rework Investigation
  
• adjustments to bramble scratch audio and volumes
  
• adding male and female obsidian armor skeletal meshes
  
• General clean up around lava biome, on cliffs, resources and geothermal pools, Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Fixed Collision Issues in prefab caves where players could get blocked by Macro Cliffs, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Update world generation to enable bespoke caves in Prometheus:
  
• Additional world gen step which combines in-world cave actors and any connected prefabs into cave groups which are deserialized as cave instances
  
• Updated cave prefab deserialization to ignore some components if they're part of a combined cave - flags can be applied to override this on a case-by-case basis
  
• Added editor widget function to assist world builders in initial required setup of cave entrances
  
• Improved the tear sound of bramble and also updated the creature collision audio for better balancing. Adjustments to both events
  
• rescaled prom image to pow2
  
• Creating new needler 'attack vocal' for ballistic whip so it can be controlled more. Also adjustments to tail whip volume based on amount being played to stop sounds being too much when multiple needlers are spawned
  
• Remove Vehicle Scale reference from RWVisualDebugger as indexing was getting stuck on it, and we have no need for it
  
• Adding lava hunter hatched egg audio loop and hatch audio and BP implimentation
  
• Fixed Collision and Seam Issues in swamp prefab caves where players could get blocked by Macro Cliffs, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Updated Deer rug asset with more thickness, lower polycount, and normals fixed
  
• removed collision from deer rug fur mesh
  
• Updated cougar rug to match size and colour of the regular cougar instead of the alpha cougar
  
• Tweaked colour on dessert wolf rug
  
• Added snow wolf rug art assets to DCO folder and updated BP
  
• Added updated Alpha wolf rug art assets to DCO folder and updated BP
  
• Added updated conifer wolf rug art assets to DCO folder and updated BP
  
• Improve DF settings on several assets
  
• Improve collision on AlienBoneFossil meshes
  
• Disable RVTs on LOD materials
  
• General clean up, polished around manual cave, foliage and added cliff formations, Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Balance tweaks to the lava hunter hatched egg audio
  
• Added SM_BLD_Roof_PyramidHip_Single_Inverted_Wood_R, T_BLD_Roof_PyramidHip_Single_Inverted_Wood_R_Masks_AO & SM_BLD_Ramp_Half_Wood, T_BLD_Ramp_Half_Wood_Masks_AO
  
• Added fisrt pass of Iron Kit Assets as well as a test of BLD_Wall_Iron
  
• Small audio adjustment to brambles event. Also shortened the mushroom harvest audio slightly to accomodate better for the bigger tree mushrooms as well. Removed unused assets
  
• Updated polar bear rug to fix minor texture issue
  
• Fixed Collision and Seam Issues in Arctic prefab caves where players could get blocked by Macro Cliffs, Blue Quad, Prometheus
  
• General clean up of cave tunnels, decals and vines in Grasslands, Green Quad, DLC
  
• Fix manually lake spline generation editor button in WT_Lake which wasn't generating edge splines correctly. It now calls the existing generic spline creation function on the edge spline itself
  
• Added SM_BLD_Floor_TrapDoor_Wood_INT, SM_BLD_Wall_Doorframe_Wood_INT & Set Up Materials for Buildable Rework Investigation
  
• Concrete BLD rework - added SMs, materials, mask textures for window walls, angled + half pitch walls
  
• Fixed issue with predator bird idle audio sounds cutting off abruptly when crossing over various distant thresholds
  
• Cave Polish in Blue Quad Swamp and Regenerated Edge Splines in Prefab Caves LC_MED_004, 005 and SML_004, 005 , Prometheus
  

Week Seventy Seven is here, and it’s a big one.

We’ve got a ton of performance improvements, with weeks of the team's hard work on lighting, shadows, UI, meshes, and more to share.

Based on your community feedback, we also have a bunch of early-game QoL improvements, increases to talent points and new creatures in Olympus and Styx.

Finally, we’ve dropped a video explaining the new features in the big upcoming Galileo patch plus a sneaky release date announcement for those who reach the bottom of this blog.

Jump in and have a read.





Light Shadows

Our performance team has been actively working on a few pain points we identified for AMD GPUs and lower-end nVidia GPUs caused by point/spot light shadows. This week, we’re bringing you some fixes that we hope will address this performance bottleneck.

Light shadows can be incredibly impactful on performance, sometimes up to double-digit FPS numbers, and our testing on GPUs internally confirmed this.

Additionally, we also looked at the render distances for both shadow and light distances in outlier assets, which were hindering performance without much actual gain for the experience.

Therefore we’ve added a new setting called ‘Light Shadows’ to the graphics menu to toggle dynamic shadows from light sources. This will be preset to ‘off’ for AMD GPUs and can be turned off by nVidia users manually.

Volumetric Skybox Detail

Our skyboxes generally occupy a third of each frame so we’ve added a setting to reduce the complexity of these, at the cost of some visual fidelity.

Setting this to ‘low’ in the graphics menu can provide a small FPS boost for certain graphics cards, per our internal testing.

Static Mesh Distance Fields

Icarus has a substantially larger number of assets than most games, which causes a large strain on our systems to render these meshes. So, we’ve reduced the Distance Field (DF) resolution and improved the settings across thousands of meshes, which should limit the sporadic issues and lower-quality visuals that occur on some meshes intermittently.

A sweeping, project-wide optimization pass freed up a ton of ‘system budget’ which means that systems that rely on DF can operate correctly. A more optimized DF allocation should also equate to a decrease in hitching when loading sub-levels, and we would love to hear your feedback on any noticeable difference in the frequency of hitching after this update.





On top of our improvements to assets and lighting, we’re also introducing improvements to our user interface to address its impact on performance.

Why is UI so impactful on performance you might ask?

The UI is processed on the CPU (not the GPU) at the end of every frame before being rendered on top of the final image. This creates a bottleneck at the point of UI generation, as if this runs slowly, the whole game must wait for this to finish processing before it can render the final frame.

We’ve noticed a small amount of performance degradation as new UI elements have been added over the last six months. We also did a general clean up of some parts of the UI, which haven’t been running as well as they could be.

Internal benchmarks from our testing have shown that the UI cost is as high as 3.8 milliseconds while standing idle on a prospect. With today’s optimizations, this time has been reduced to about 1.3 milliseconds, a saving of 2.5 milliseconds, depending on machine specs.

We have achieved this reduction by doing a pass on the main Heads Up Display (HUD):

• Removing old, unused UI elements
  
• Simplifying layouts
  
• Moving ‘performance expensive’ UI logic code where possible
  
• Removing or minimizing UI element ‘ticking’
  
• Caching text and UI element layouts
  

Caching text provided a big boost to our UI 'pre-pass' time investment, where the sizes of UI elements need to be calculated. Text in particular is expensive to calculate the size of, as the system needs to work out the sizes of each individual letter in a piece of text based on the current font, font size, style, and more. Caching all of the UI text alone saves almost 1 millisecond of time on our benchmarking machines.

Many elements on the main HUD also used a ‘retainer box’ which renders the UI elements inside it to a temporary texture (a ‘render target’), which effects are then added to. For example, this is used for creating drop shadows on iconography and text in the UI, helping it stand out against different backgrounds. The way 'retainer boxes' normally work does not allow reuse of the render target, so once it has been used to draw the drop shadow, that entire part of the HUD would then need to be drawn a second time to display the actual UI over the top of the shadow. With some engine modifications, we can now reuse the render target to draw the actual UI on top of the shadow in a single pass, effectively halving the time required to draw the effect.

The compass was also running slower than we wanted. When investigated we found that it was actually updating a ton of markers that weren’t visible to players. These markers were for objects in the world that required certain stats to be set in order to be visible, however, the marker would be added to the UI and continue to update whether it was visible yet or not. This has now been changed so that markers are only added to the compass and map screen when the marker is actually visible. As a side effect, this has also provided a considerable boost to the frame rate while viewing the map screen.

It is worth noting that the UI changes from this patch have focused mainly on the performance of the in-game HUD, not the inventory/crafting/talent/map/accolade screens. These will be looked at in the future, but the general in-game frame rate was the priority of this UI pass.





Alongside our optimization fixes for this week, our design team focused on the quality of life and community suggestions that have been provided across our Discord, Feature Upvote and other channels. We’ve also added a couple of new friends to Olympus and Styx for you to meet, greet and eat.

Our first balancing pass was done on the new player experience, aiming to provide a more intuitive experience and increase the options for players throughout the early game.

Players are now granted four blueprint points and one talent point on ‘odd’ levels, and three blueprint points and two talent points on even levels.

Alongside this, we’re also increasing the maximum number of talent points for a character from 60 to 75.

(note - players who were granted additional talent points incorrectly or outside of the game systems, may not receive the extra 15 points)

We’ve also made balance changes to a range of other in-game systems, focused on improving player progression and providing variety in playstyles.

• Rebalanced the Skinning Bench to provide more XP per skinned animal
  
• Updated Talent View to have spacing between the ranks of talents
  
• Steam Rich Presence now supports friend grouping
  
• Coal weight has been reduced
  
• Deep Ore Drills are now faster
  
• Pills weight have been drastically reduced
  
• Bread Dough can now be placed in fridges/iceboxes etc
  
• Short Range Radio, Orbital Exchange Interface and Radar now require being outside
  

(Note: The ‘outside’ requirements added to these devices are due to them requiring either orbital uplink or the ability to scan the local area, but this also aims to prevent the strategy of scanning from inside caves to avoid any wildlife retaliation)

Lastly, we have added two additional creatures to Olympus and Styx.

• Pronghorn: A relative of the Chamois, slightly larger and with bigger horns. These are found anywhere Chamois are found on Olympus.
  
• Arctic Scorpion: A much larger cousin of the Scorpion, as the name suggests these are located in arctic areas, on both Olympus and Styx.
  

As always, we appreciate all the feedback and discussions on Discord and Feature Upvote.





The Styx map was released one year ago. It was initially free but was always intended to be a paid DLC in the future. Back in December, we mentioned this would be happening in the coming months, so this is a reminder of that coming soon.

We are now waiting on Valve to make this change, so it could happen at any time in the coming weeks.

People who already have Styx will not have it removed retroactively, but new players in the future will need to buy it.

If one player in your party has Styx, however, any prospect or Open World they host or launch will still be playable by anyone they invite, regardless of their ownership status.





Finally, the wait is very much, almost over. Check out our preview for the Galileo patch below.

P.S. It’s releasing next week.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



Community Feedback/Optimisation

• Switch out all Item and Deployable actors with Shadow Casting Lights to utilize new Icarus Light component. This component will listen to the new 'Light Shadows' Graphics Setting and enable/disable shadows on the light as per the setting. Given the large number of actors with lights that could be on scene at any given time and the expensive nature of casting shadows, this could yield big performance gains, at the cost of visual fidelity
  
• Add editor utility to print out Item/Deployables with shadow casting lights that aren't Icarus Lights
  
• Adding new Recipe on Mortar&Pestle and Material Processor [1 Wood] -> [2 Sap]
  
• Adding new Recipe Mortar&Pestle and Material Processor [2 Spoiled Meat] + [1 Sap] -> [100 Units Biofuel]
  
• Add new Controls Setting 'Crouch Ledge Safety' to toggle the ability to crouch walk off a ledge if disabled
  
• Disable Setting LightShadows (on deployable light sources) by default for AMD and low tier cards (GTX1060/1070 et al.)
  
• Hook up new Crouch Ledge Safety setting to Player Character
  
• Cleaned up BeginPlay logic a bit as it was getting pretty messy and difficult to add new events to
  
• Slightly increased blueprint growth rate, granting 3 points per level plus 1 per odd level (total of 4 at level 1, 7 at level 2, 11 at level 3 and so on)
  
• Increased the xp granted by the skinning bench by 9x. Predators will now grant slightly more xp when skinned on a bench compared to in the wild, passive wildlife will grant 4-5x more xp when skinned on a bench compared to in the wild
  
• Reduced Coal Weight from 600 -> 500 to make it slightly easier to carry
  
• Reduced Weight of pills from 250 -> 10 to make a bit more sence in terms of carry weight being a T4 medicine
  
• Modifying player talent point caluclation to provide 15 extra talent points at level 50 (1 talent point per level, +1 per 2 levels on even levels as opposed to 3 blueprints per level, +1 per 5 levels)
  
• Increased speed of all deep ore deposit mining (except the special node on ABYSS) by 37.5%, increased speed of electric drill to 33% from 25% and increased slots to 20
  
• Fix a rare crash retrieving and saving the weather forecast
  
• Improved performance with regards to inventory operations and stat containers on items that are still in item form (i.e. in the backpack). Item stat containers are now cached so that subsequent access can use relevant old cached versions of the container. This is beneficial as during the item creation process the stats were being accessed approximately 12 times, which could lead to a small hitch as the container would previously have to be rebuilt each time it was requested. Item access has also been changed where possible to reduce internal copies of items being created while performing operations on items (e.g. moving an item, updating stats, etc)
  
• Large pass on main game HUD to improve performance
  
• Cached text layout on a large number of elements. This improves frame time by reducing the need to recalculate text size each frame
  
• Removed old unused UI elements
  
• Cleaned up UI layouts to remove unwanted layout elements
  
• Changed Inventory Item slots to only redraw when the contained item changes
  
• Modified remaining mission time system to only update when the time changes by a visible amount
  
• Rebased several frequently updating widgets to native code to improve performance
  
• Modified Retainer Box's AlsoRenderContent functionality to reuse the render texture for the second draw pass. This prevents the elements using this option from having to fully tick and render a second time each update
  
• Improved performance of the Compass element on the main UI. This was previously ticking a number of debug markers that weren't visible, but still carried a cost
  
• Compass markers now no longer tick and instead have their positions updated by the compass itself in a single batch
  
• The compass and map screen will now only add markers when they are visible. Previously they could have multiple hidden markers on them which would cost time to update their positions
  
• Marked deep vein ore deposit markers as being development only so they will be stripped out from cooked builds entirely (These were being used internally to help devs find deposits for testing)
  
• Improved performance of temperature and survival states (food, water, oxygen gauges) on the UI
  
• Removed multiple unused layout elements
  
• Rebased the temperature gauge and survival gauges to native code to improve performance
  
• Changed survival gauges to only update when their underlysing values are updated
  
• Added current player validation to Steam Rich Presence, should prevent issues where a character of level 0 was being reported
  

Fixed

• Remove obsolete Cloud BP actors from Olympus which were producing errors
  
• Duplicate and delete original cliff mesh from Olympus which produced an error during build
  
• Recompile Sand FX shader to hopefully fix shader compilation error during build
  
• Fixed a typo in an extermination quest
  
• Readding Firearm and Bow Stat Value retrieval from the correct components, this was inadvertantly removed, missing this data resulted on firarms and bows being unable to be fired or reloaded, this is now fixed
  
• Fix Wildboar carcass/bones mesh having material override applied incorrectly
  
• Fixed bug where clients would see the 'Press F to Harvest' on animal carcasses that had become a skeleton already
  
• ForceNoPrecomputedLighting enabled on IcarusStartMap to match all other levels and get rid of cooked package error
  
• Remove deprecated RecursiveBuildingSearch function from BP_Grid_Base as its causing warnings to appear in logs and hasnt been utilized in a long time
  
• Fix numerous processor recipes with no audio assigned which plays when crafting
  
• Add DT validation to pick up on processor recipe rows with no audio assigned
  
• Add an option to reduce skybox detail and default to low on AMD GPU and low tier cards (GTX1060/1070 et al.)
  
• Default to FSR Performance on AMD GPU
  
• Completely removed stat container and actor state from the Inventory Manager. This fixes the managers stat container overriding the stats on the inventories that use the manager. Notably the stat that disables inventory spoiling
  
• Fix a shimmering issue with reduced skybox detail + resolution scaling when looking at thin branches against white clouds and fall back to normal quality by default for all GPU
  
• Update sun position every 10ms instead of 200ms to fix issue with solar panel not being able to line trace it periodically
  
• Update crop plot UI to show the correct greenhouse effect amount within the greenhouse tooltip
  
• Reimplement slowtick optimizations on atmo controller
  
• Change solar panel trace logic to classify no hit as success for enabling power, for the instances where the trace misses the sun
  
• Fixed equipment and survival slots on inventory screen not updating. This was caused by them not being registered for inventory updates with the new faster inventory UI callbacks
  
• Fixed focused item UI binding to wrong focused item changed event, causing it to not update when the item changes
  
• Disabled new fast inventory mode for space inventories (loadouts/meta item storage) as the event bindings do not currently exist outside of survival. This was causing items to not be visible when purchasing new items or moving items to/from a loadout
  
• Fixed alteration bench incorrectly using newer inventory item UI elements
  
• Fixed not being able to drop inventory items by dragging them out of the UI. (Had disabled too much mouse interaction with the main HUD as part of optimisation efforts)
  
• Removed caching of mission objective text as it was causing an unintended double line spacing. Will reintroduce in future when cause is found
  
• Fixed biome name and temperature not updating on UI correctly
  
• Commenting out the early return in UInventoryItemLibrary::CreateCustomItem to aid in tracking down bug where axes aren't able to damage trees after a reload
  
• Updated Icarus' Steam Rich Presence to support Friend Grouping
  
• Fixed axes not being able to cut trees when reloading prospect
  
• Updated radars and orbital communication boards to require being outside, this prevents some strategies to avoid animal spawns by placing radars within caves.
  
• Communication boards (Orbital Exchange Interface and Short Range Radio) no longer take storm damage
  
• Fixed issue where ItemData that was passed between Client and Server wasn't re-initialising some properties, caused issues like MaxDurability on Items and Deployables being set to zero when Client crafted an item.
  
• Added validation inside StaminaBarBase to prevent crash if StaminaBar widget ticked too early.
  
• Added default values for members of FPlayerRewardSchedule.
  
• Fixed error when trying to play the pick up animation without a currently focused item
  
• Fixed multiple UI panels incorrectly using new inventory slot element. These have been changed back to old style slots for compatibility
  
• Fixed health bar segment lines being offset from intended position
  
• Fixed temperature bar not updating when mounted
  
• Temporarily disabling 'CanCache' on UMG_InventoryItem's TopLevelInvalidationBox in an attempt to fix inventory slots rendering behind background blur element
  
• Fixed outposts not being visible in non-development builds
  
• Fixed survival gauges (food/water/oxygen) not visibly updating when on a mount
  
• Fixed food segments on health bar not matching up with their intended X positions
  
• Fixed case where survival gauges would not bind to characters stats during startup
  
• Fixed task-list accolades not recording completion info when all tasks are completed. This would cause the accolade to show as the default completion date of 01/01/2001
  
• Fixed task-list accolades not loading from saves correctly
  
• Fixed arctic scorpion spawn cap to ensure there are no swarms of scorpions in the arctic
  
• Remove PlayerLightShadows option under Settings > Display replaced by more agressive LightShadows
  

Future Content

• Added third person anim to catching fish
  
• Added new icons for fishing UI
  
• Fixed replication bugs preventing client/server from seeing the inspected fish in each others hands
  
• Added error messaging for when the lure instant reels back in
  
• Fixed Collision Issues in prefab caves where players could get blocked by Macro Cliffs, Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Added SM_BLD_Roof_Peak_Wood & SM_BLD_Roof_PyramidHip_Single_Wood_L for Buildable Rework Investigation
  
• Added Cave diorama for creature renders
  
• Updating all of the Lure Stats to include the new ones related to the fishing minigame and doing a general balance pass
  
• Adjusting the ordering of the field guide category enum so that the bestiary is presented before the fishing records in the field guide
  
• Adding Bestiary Progressive Player Bonus Stat information to the Bestiary Page UI as well as a tooltip explaining how it all works
  
• Resized the Bestiary Rewards and Lore Screens to make sure they are in line with the Progress tracker shown in the bestiary entry screen
  
• Adding some title text in the field guide into string tables so they can be translated
  
• General clean up of cave tunnels, decals and vines in Grasslands, Green Quad, DLC
  
• Added updated lighting and layout to the cave creature diorama
  
• Shifted animation pause validation on NPC to Asset Data Validation (from DT Validation). This prevents force load of all AI upon opening of D_AISetup and removes hard-reference to BP GOAP Character
  
• Add tooling to get talent point info
  
• Adding 'fish swish' and rod creak when fishing mini game starts up. Adding BP implementation
  
• Added Metallic to new creature shader
  
• Added cameras and updated dressing to fit large creatures in the dessert creature diorama
  
• Added AnimBP for fishing rod that snaps the 'line' bone to player hand when inspecting fish. Adjusted component hierarchy inside SkeletalItem_Fishing_Rod to make sure lure is attached to rod 'line' bone
  
• Fixing physical material for stone rabbit statue. It was set to PM_Wood, now set to PM_Rock
  
• Resave audio anim notifies in a creature anim to suppress errors about loading soft paths
  
• Doing a balance pass on Fish Spawn Zones and enabling feature locked fish, these new fish can now spawn caught in game
  
• Adding an editor utility widget which scrapes the datatables for information related to fish, their zones, types, terrains, quality etc and presents information on fishing fo designers to balance
  
• Linked T3 Spawn Blocker spray effect to the active state of the device.
  
• Updated torch toggle BP to be named ToggleGenerator, as this was all it was doing and it did not have other references, updated relevant data table entries.
  
• Updated T3 Spawn Blocker to have option to toggle as well as access fuel
  
• Update Pronghorn corpse preview item, add Pronghorn Carcasss item template and added skinning bench recipe for Pronghorn
  
• Retaking Fish Pictures as some meshes / textures had been updated
  
• Updating Galileo Items, Fish, Talents, Blueprints so they are feature locked to Galileo and not Development
  
• Removing Old Fishing Rod & Fishing Trap Items & Talents which are no longer used within the project
  
• Added Extra Fishing Recipes for the Filletting station so they fish can be filletted into raw ingrediants
  
• When Chamios now spawn on Olympus there is a 50% chance a Pronghorn will spawn instead
  
• Updating Fish images in the field guide so there are no more missing images
  
• Updated fish 1-14 to the correct shader. Updated fish 14 Var2 and 3 textures
  
• Swamp water now slows you slightly, with a chance to give you swamp parasites, making you sluggish
  
• Adding in metal shield audio and adjusments to a few fishing layers for better realism
  
• Stone BLD rework - added APEX meshes for ramp and roof pieces
  
• Adding new shield to correct shields in data table to play back the correct audio
  
• Added fishing rod item animations. Fixed lure->hand attachment when inspecting fish. Fixed cable->rod attachment, now bound to bone on fishing rod
  
• Updating caught fish sizes and scale to the fish can be seen easier in animations and adjusting min and max sizes and weights of caught fish to make it more realistic
  
• Added New Bramble Bushes to Blue Quad Swamp Biome and Made Collision Fixes In Prefab Caves Within The P2 Area, Prometheus
  
• Changed the leftmost button details to be darker, as to not be confused as active buttons, and did a pass to sharpen some details lost on resize
  
• Readded the stats driving how long it takes to fish depending on the rod
  
• Temporarily disabled detecting shallow water due to it spamming the client
  
• Reduced the amount of bending the rod is able to do by half
  
• Readded the lure reseting if it gets to close to the player without a fish
  
• Added a larger lake to the dev prospect
  
• Fixing up fish03 & 04 Skeletons as their mouth_socket which attaches to the lure was misnamed and the fish where not attaching to the lure correctly
  
• Adjustments to the Category Select Buttons in the Field Guide as well as fixing blur state of the Field Guide as it was seethrough when it shouldn't have been
  
• Removing Old Unused Bestiary Images as these are being replaced with the new ones
  
• Added Rig and Animations for DEP_SpawnBlocker_T3
  
• Adjusted Lava Flow points on lakes and rivers, checked all cave tunnels volumes, polished lava biome manual cave, Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Updated the names for geode lamps to be more descriptive
  
• Fixed a typo in a mission item
  
• Adjusting feature level string name for Galileo to be spelt correctly
  
• Setting Galileo Talents / Blueprints to be Galileo feature locked, not Development locked
  
• Updated fish15 to the correct shader. Added gradiant to variant 2 and 4 fins. Corrected metalic map on fish 7 variant 3
  
• Adding Fishing Talent Tree and rearrganging existing talent trees into new configurations
  
• Adding fishing rod creak unique event and updated all fishing rod creak sounds to be slightly longer and warmer
  
• Arctic creatures, and arctic background images added for bestiary
  
• Committing Fishing Talent Tree Talents and Stat Implementation ready for Balance and Description Pass
  
• Adding lava hunter ground break slam lava sounds and event
  
• Setting Geode Lamps and Paintings lock to use the Deluxe Edition Product ID and enabling in Galileo
  
• Adding in lava anim notify to play sound on lava hunter when it does the super attack
  
• First pass polish revision of BP_Landmine. Player collision triggers a timeline sequence, Creatures cause the mine to instantly trigger
  
• Adjusted Lava Flow points on lakes and rivers, checked all cave tunnels volumes, polished lava biome manual cave, Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Adjustments to lava hunter slam crack sound and timing. Added new socket for the sound and other small improvements
  
• Fixed Bestiary not logging fish caught on clients
  
• Fixed the reaction timer on the fishing minigame not replaying after missing the prompt
  
• Removed the lure bobbing through adding force
  
• Stone BLD rework - added APEX meshes for all wall pieces + stairs + frame
  
• All Fish can now be right clicked on and converted to fish chunks
  
• Removing fish chunks from fish filletting recipes so you only get fillets now instead of both resources
  
• Fish weight stats are now displayed in Kg rather than grams
  
• Fishing traps now correctly display their interaction prompts as it was hidden before
  
• Setting up new Tackle Box item which can store Fish & Lures, this item can be picked up with items inside and placed down and items retrieved
  
• Stopped using GetFishStatsFromItem inside fishing rod AnimBP, should fix anim-update related crash when fishing
  
• Added list of talents required for Highly Skilled accolade/achievement
  
• Fix Bestiary Unlocks previously unlocked are replaying on login to dedicated server (internal dev builds only)
  
• Added New Bramble Bushes to Blue Quad Swamp Biome and Made Collision Fixes In Prefab Caves Within The P2 Area, Prometheus
  
• Add some sentry breadcrumbs and logging around player drop ship spawning for events that 'should not happen' collected info should enable us to retroactively find and fix issues (internal dev only)
  
• Add new Video Setting for 'Light Shadows' which will disable point/spotlights on any item which uses the new Icarus Light component
  
• Adding in Bone Shield Audio, event and data table entry
  
• Added ranks, names and descriptions for fishing talents
  
• Adding composite shield to data tables
  
• Adding composite shield audio
  
• Update a boar, crocodile and scorpion boss biome list in the bestiary
  
• Added SM_BLD_Roof_PyramidHip_Single_Wood_R & SM_BLD_Roof_PyramidHip_Single_Inverted_Wood_L for Buildable Rework Investigation
  
• Remove bestiary array On_Rep as these arrive too late on a loaded dedicated server (internal dev only)
  
• Fix a logic bug showing fish popups (internal dev only)
  
• Fixed fishing rod lure glitching out/bobbing up and down on clients.
  
• Re-added lure bob when fish is hooked, made sure it is only getting called on server.
  
• Returned fishing minigame reaction timer to non-debug value of 0.5s.
  
• Consolidated several Client->Server RPCs into a single call made when fishing minigame is completed.
  
• Added function to SmoothSyncComponent to get current enabled state
  
• More Landmine improvements. BP Cleanup for best practice, more to come. Landmine can no longer be disarmed, only picked up. Change made to create tension when clearing mines. Various emissive value tweaks
  
• Undo range //Icarus_Stream/Trunk/Icarus/Content/Maps/Black.umap from revision 16 to revision #head
  
• Added new row to D_Interactions and referenced in D_Interactable. Added custom pickup text for landmine
  
• Fixed bug where fishing minigame would never trigger.
  
• Increased fishing reaction timer from 0.5s -> 0.75s.
  
• Stopped server from executing fishing minigame timer logic.
  
• Shifted initial lure bob logic to a Client->Server RPC now that server doesn't track minigame timers.
  
• Reduced fishing rod bend amount.
  
• Fixed bug that occured when cancelling out of active fishing minigame that made lure float in mid air for clients
  
• General clean up of cave tunnels, decals and vines in Grasslands, Green Quad, DLC
  
• Removing Feature Lock from Fried Fish Chunks
  
• Adding Grilled Freshwater & Saltwater Fish Fillets
  
• Adding feature level lock on fish so if killed with a knife / bow etc outside fishing they will reward fish chunks
  
• Fishing Rods and Lures now degrade on sucessfull fish catch (with no stats the T1 rod should catch 20 fish, T2 40, T3 80, lures will degrade every 10)
  
• Fish Carry Weight Talent now applies correctly so fish weigh less and hooked up missing Fish Talent stats so they all affect the player correctly
  
• Stats can now apply to individual inventories of an item and not the entire item itself, this means we can make one inventory spoil and another not on the same item
  
• Added the ability for inventory container objects (such as guns / bows / anything with attachment slots) to specific traits on their inventories seperate from a normal inventory
  
• Fixes to various errors and warning during cook and startup. Delete numerous unused shaders from ORB folder
  
• Removed array population logic off tick and onto overlap events
  
• Adding correct hover audio for bestiary category select
  
• Adding Normie Horsie SM, marterials, textures and variants
  
• Adding SM_CRE_NormieHorsie_Carc,materials and textures
  
• Adding SM_CRE_NormieHorsie bones, materials and textures
  
• Fixed bestiary completion achievement using the wrong Steam achievement id
  
• Locking Geodes Lamps into Development
  
• Adding chamois variant events and data table entry. Also fixed chamois flee sound not being set as the correct playback event
  
• Enabled destruction on fishing bench and lures.
  
• Enabled repairing on fishing rods
  
• Updated swampbird IK ctrl rig and anim BP to remove errors
  

For the first time Icarus has exceeded the character limit for a Steam post! Will continue in the comments below:

Week Seventy Six is here and with it comes a bunch of new home decor options that expand our Carved Wood Decorations set with new furnishings to adorn your base.

We also go deeper into the upcoming features of Galileo such as Fishing, as we move into closed beta testing. Jump in and have a read.





We’re adding to our existing home decor options, by adding six new carved wood pieces with a new bed, wardrobe, narrow wardrobe, nightstand, display cabinet and dresser.

For our Open World base building aficionados, these are the first of a range of new options to style your base, your way. They provide more bespoke personalization, but don’t add any new gameplay features.

These are craftable on the carpentry bench, and most can be found by using the R key to look for variations on the base item.





We’re currently in the process of performing a round of closed beta feedback on the upcoming Galileo update, working with our ‘veteran prospectors’ in Discord who have been providing valuable insight into the update's features.

These have included daily playtests, providing pages of balance changes, fixes and improvements that we’ve been applying as we go. Internal playtests with the entire studio have also provided a range of fixes, testing functionality and performance along with both client and host-specific experiences.

The main improvements have been across sound, animation, UI polish and tweaking QoL, all areas that add to the immersion and player experience. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed their time and effort.



As we get closer to everyone hooking on lures and casting off into the sunset, we wanted to talk more about the Fishing coming in the Galileo update as there is more to do than just ‘catch and release’ fish.

Let’s run through what this could look like:



Step one is going fishing. Fish can be found in all bodies of water, but each body of water has a different variety of species. Different species are also more challenging to catch, requiring different lures and putting up more of a fight to be reeled in.

All-in-all, there are 52 unique species of fish to catch. Some are far more common, others will require meticulous planning and quality gear to catch.

When you’ve caught a fish, you have a range of different options on what you want to do with it.

Hungry? Fillet it on the fishing bench and cook different dishes that give unique perks and buffs.

Proud of the size? Mount it on the wall, fit with its own name plaque for all to see.

Want a new friend at home? Put it in your aquarium and spend your evenings talking to your new pal.

All fish you catch are also registered in the fishing record as part of the Prospector Field Guide. Here, you can see your record size, different locations where you caught this species, and information you’ve learned from your fishing expeditions, such as the types of lures that are effective for that species and information about the biomes where you’ll most commonly encounter them.

With 52 species, you can probably imagine that we’ve got a lot of new species to introduce! Do you think you’ve got a cool name for a species? Drop it in the comments and it might end up making it in-game.





New Content

• Enabling Carved wood Talent and enabling carved wood recipes so they can be seen in game, also enabling storage tags on the items that have storage so they are effected by the talent that provides extra storange space when crafted
  

Fixed

• Add more checks around position of overflow bag when respawn from gravestone
  
• Updated Pneumonia debuff description to mention that it can be countered with antibiotics
  

Future Content

• Added new LRG and SML Frames, Dark_Basic_Scroll_T3, Metal_Basic, Gold_Wood, Gold
  
• General clean up, polished around manual cave, foliage and added cliff formations, Purple Quad, DLC
  
• Added BLD_Wall_Angle_Wood_R, as well as fixed materials for BLD_Wall_Angle_Wood_L
  
• Lots of additions to the fishing sounds. Now each Rod has it's own unique audio
  
• Added SK_ITM_Scan_Handheld_Fish_T4, including SM and textures
  
• Changed visuals for field guide intro screen
  
• Adjustments to the bestiary, adding traits table and traits type table so they can be customised individually and displayed with icons in their unlock area, adding widgets to go along with these so the information can be displayed on screen
  
• Adding some bestiary text elements to reference a string table so they can be translated
  
• Initial pass on fishing rod audio implementation - cast, fly and land sounds
  
• Prometheus Shadow Geo - set DF resolution to 0 on all meshes
  
• Prometheus Shadow Geo - set DF resolution to 0 on all meshes (part 2)
  
• Added weaknesses to Bestiary entries, fixed and tweaked stats provided by bestiary unlocks
  
• Lots more additions to fishing. Unique cast loop sound for wood rods vs refined rods, updated fly sound for better realism, adding rod equip sound
  
• Add hooks to allow designers to pause the normal creature spanning routine in a given biome whilst a dynamic quest is running that is also spawning creatures
  
• Adding new creature images for PFG test
  
• Adding unique bestiary fish unlock audio to play when a fish is caught
  
• Added New Bramble Bushes to Purple Quad Swamp Biome and Made Collision Fixes In Prefab Caves Within The P2 Area, Prometheus
  
• Added Brambles modifier, enabling brambles in Prometheus to slow the player
  
• Adding more creature images for PFG
  
• Added cliff landmarks and rock formations, general clean up, polished around manual cave and nav blockers, Blue Quad, DLC
  
• Reset all Static Mesh Distance Field resolution multipliers to 1x to decrease memory consumption
  
• Remove 2-sided setting on all Distance Field meshes to fix artifacts introduced by using this setting
  
• Adjusted Distance Field Self Shadow Bias setting on Ice Shrund meshes to fix artifacts
  
• Update AssetInfo tool to support checking and modifying DistanceField settings
  
• Adding Edtior Utility widget to cacluate what lures relate to each fish so we can go over and adjust stats and attributes on fish and lures
  
• Updating Fish Field guide page so it displays its related lures correctly and the widgets do not get clipped and hidden
  
• Fix missing return node on AISpawner Blueprint that could potentially lead to unexpected behaviour (internal dev only)
  
• Added AC and DC creature render dioramas for making beastiary images
  
• Updated Fish01 to the correct creature shader
  
• Added Support meshes for several Wood Buildable assets, as well as shadow geo, all for the Wood Buildable Rework
  
• Bestiary: Updated traits to better communicate critical areas vs weaknesses, tweaked view of traits prior to unlocking
  
• Adjustments and additions to the lava hunter. Added roar short sound to play before the vomit
  
• Adding metal shield audio
  
• Visual changes to Field Guide unlock notifications
  
• Updaed fish 2, 3, and 4 to use the correct shader
  
• Updated fish 5, 6, and 7 to use the correct shader
  
• Removed dev-only map icons on in-world fish actors
  
• Added new Lava Rumble and Fissure special attacks to Lava Hunter.
  
• Adjustments to Lava Hunter turn-in-place, especially while playing other attack animations.
  
• Reduced cooldowns on each Lava Hunter combat phase's egg lay action
  
• Further Adjustments to the field guide based on a round of UX feedback, its now more consistent with the style of the rest of the UI
  
• Incorperating new images and titles into the bestiary and adding a biome mask for creature backgrounds
  
• Reevaluate the actor terrain anchor after teleporting the player when respawning (more checks for potential race conditions/ bad player spawn positions)
  
• Adding in spawnable slug for external testing with minimal setup of locomotions and attacks
  
• Added Field Guide unlock notification animation
  
• Added VFX for SpawnBlocker T2,T3,T4
  
• Remove Distance Field generation (by decrease resolution to 0) from Static Meshes in the project which didn't need it. This includes chopped tree pieces (~9500 meshes), distant landscape proxy meshes (~200), and around 1000 other various meshes from various folders
  
• Further updates to AssetInfo tool to support DF tweaks
  
• Bestiary Pages in the field guide not load the biomes of the creatures based on their atmosphere type, this extra data was added to the Atmopshere data table
  

s long as there have been videogames, there have been penalties for dying in videogames. In the earliest days dying meant losing out on a high score or having to put another coin in the arcade machine. As technology progressed, so did our protections against the harshest deaths—we got saves, checkpoints, bonfires. But a few game developers decided all that progress was nonsense. Games didn't just need to be harder, actually—they needed to be mean as hell...
Read more.