Shamm

Happy One Year Anniversary! Today marks a year since the launch of Icarus and the 52 updates we’ve made to the game every single week since. We’re excited to celebrate it by giving power back to the players with our player data decentralization patch.

This week, all data will be migrated to players' local computers, shifting away from a reliance on cloud providers, allowing some new features and ensuring the player community can own their game data permanently. This opens the door for many more features and changes, including characters now being able to be used across multiple sessions simultaneously, the new Orbital Exchange Interface for Exotic extraction, and our Dedicated Servers Beta.

This is a big update and will require a full data migration upon launch of the patch, so have a read through all the details below.

Once you’re briefed on the changes, we’ve included a reflection on 52 weekly updates to Icarus, including... Read more

This week we’re introducing two new Open World Mission types, new Fortifications to deploy and a new mission.

BUILD and DRONE Open World Mission types have been added, and a range of bugs have been fixed to improve the other available missions.

Wooden Fortifications now give you a true defence system to protect your base or assets in missions or Open World, removing the need for makeshift solutions that players have used before.

And finally, a mission to tasking you to perform research on enhancing tonics and their effectiveness has been added, with your briefing below.

Next week, we’ll be celebrating Icarus' one year anniversary and 52 straight weeks of updates. This is something we’re incredibly proud of and can’t wait to celebrate with you.

Open World Q... Read more

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

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

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

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



Reloading Fixes
A lon... Read more

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

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

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

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

Finally, we talk a bit more about our upcoming Decentralization, and ... Read more

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.



Update On Performance Optimization
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 r... Read more

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.



Thrown Weapons Item Separation
We have separated knives and spears into their own variants. You will now be able to craft ‘thro... Read more

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.



Key Features
Open World will provide the traditional survival experience, placin... Read more

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.



Armor Durability Changes
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 damag... Read more

Week Forty Five’s update focuses on new features and fixes for our Mounts system that we introduced in week forty two. The new Husbandry Tree will allow you to invest into your Mounts prowess, in either taming, raising or riding.

We’ve also included a bunch of rebalances, tweaks and improvements to the system, addressing interaction issues with beds and troughs and overall general behaviour.

We’ve also included information on three upcoming features and systems. Read into the future of Mounts, Open World Mode, and Narrative Mission Chains.



Husbandry Tree
The new Husbandry Tree provides players with a way to become an expert in the Mounts' system, allowing you to either specialise into being the tamer, raiser or rider to support a team, or have a more ‘jack-of-all-trades' approach.

The left side of t... Read more

We’re following on with the second of our Early Missions Revamps, this time addressing six more early Olympus missions.

STRANGE HARVEST, HEADSTONE and KILL LIST have received large scale improvements, focusing on mission flow and player experience. This incorporates new features added to the game since we first made these missions such as more creatures in the spawn pool.

AGRICULTURE, VOYAGER and FORSAKEN have received smaller updates to improve the player experience.

Also below is an insight into the next big features coming to Icarus. We’ll keep sharing details as we work towards bringing them into the game.



STRANGE HARVEST Revamp
STRANGE HARVEST: Bio-Research has received a welcome rework to improve the mission flow and player experience, using new systems and changes we created for Styx’s mi... Read more

The next two weeks of updates are focused on improving and updating our early missions on Olympus. This week we’ve focused on the first two missions and a whole category - BEACHHEAD, LIVEWIRE and the Exploration Missions (minus SPIRIT WALK) - and re-introduced the Mammoth, alongside some key player experience and performance improvements.

These updates will benefit new Icarus players more than experienced prospectors who have already completed these missions, but are an important part of our ongoing focus of learning, optimizing and improving all aspects of the game. We’ve taken what we’ve learnt from 43 weekly updates so far and our latest Mission designs and applied them to these important first Missions.

Last week’s addition of Buffalo and Moa Mounts has proven popular. We’re taking on board lots of player feedback and will continue to improve this system in the coming weeks.

... Read more

Mounts have arrived on Icarus. After much anticipation, you can now tame a furry or feathery friend and use them as a mode of transport or a pack animal to cart your goods. Choose between a Buffalo or the newly added Moa, an ancient, large, flightless bird native to New Zealand that xeno-biologists have brought back to life on Icarus.

Mounts require you to seek out a juvenile version and capture it before raising it as your own. Craft new equipment such as saddles, food troughs and bedding to care for it and take it on your missions.

Have a read of what to expect with Mounts, and get in to test out our first version of this system.



Taming your Mount
Before you can take your Mount on your adventures, you’ll need to capture and tame one.

Mounts begin as Juveniles, found with their mothers and occasion... Read more

Every few weeks we do a Community Feedback update, where we gather up the feedback you have submitted via Feature Upvote[icarus.featureupvote.com] and our Discord community[discord.com]. This includes both some performance and UI improvements.

This week we also add a new mission, OPULENCE: Stockpile, and talk a bit about our future plans including mounts (next week!).



Mission OPULENCE: Stockpile
This week brings a new mission, OPULENCE: Stockpile. A wealthy client plans to come see the surface and you’re... Read more

This week's focus is the Armor System, as we address some some balance issues and gaps in the overall structure. This includes a number of cost and stat adjustments - plus two brand new armor sets so there is now armor available at every tier. Alongside this are two new benches that better organize the different tiers of armor available.

Have a read into our process for identifying these issues, and how we addressed them with the changes we’ve rolled out. At the bottom, you’ll also find a note about recent character disappearances, and what to do if you have been affected.



Armor System Improvements
The Armor system in Icarus has received a re-work. As the game has evolved, we have looked at how armor has scaled alongside other game systems. In particular, we’ve looked at how to incentivize using different types of... Read more

We’ve added 25 new Ranged Weapon Attachments to round off the recent series of Alteration Bench additions. This completes the set of Handheld, Armor and Ranged Weapon Attachments, bringing the total amount of options to 71. Choose from basic attachments that provide universal buffs to your bows, crossbows and firearms, or more specialized attachments such as Extended Chamber or Prototype Notch.

Included below we have an update on our two biggest upcoming features, Dedicated Servers and Mounts. We talk about our design intent behind Mounts and how they will address movement, game speed and more.



Basic Ranged Attachments
Ten Basic Attachments have been added to the Tier 3 Alterations Bench, in the same way as our Tool/Weapon and Armor Attachments. These attachments provide basic improvements across Bows, Crossbows and ... Read more