[2022] Icarus Week Forty Three Update | Improvements to all exploration missions + more

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

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.



Exploration Missions
All Exploration Missions with the exception of SPIRIT WALK have been improved with added exotic locations and the removal of all boundary limits to promote more adventure, free-roaming and discovery.

All exploration missions will now have a total of ten exotic locations, the ones from SPIRIT WALK plus four more throughout the map. These grant 200-400 exotics each over three spawns in total.

SPIRIT WALK was intentionally left untouched to not impact the popular farming set up that many players had developed.

We’ve also removed the ‘out of bounds’ limitations for all exploration missions, and changed how completion is achieved. Missions will now be considered finished when the attached scans are completed, rather than when the player leaves the surface of the planet. This allows players to spend more time completing the ‘exploration’ element of the mission and spend time improving their character with the time they have left.



Mammoth & Fixes
The Mammoth has returned to the arctic biomes of Icarus, after some much needed improvement and adjustment in its time away. We’ve also addressed a few long-standing issues worth mentioning.

The long-standing exposure issue has been fixed:

• Players do not immediately die due to prior weather exposure when respawned
  
• The storm exposure bar no longer stays full when players respawn, and will reset the exposure and shelter values when a player dies
  
• We’ve also addressed optimization through improving our textures setup, which should reduce RAM usage in-game for many players.
  
• And finally, we’ve added the ability to easily scale stockpile rewards by difficulty, providing more personalized and balanced missions.

There are many more fixes and improvements in the changelog below, so take a look at what we’ve been up to.



Beachhead
BEACHHEAD: RECON has been expanded upon and improved. Being the introductory mission to Icarus, we identified the need to make this educational and packed with valuable insights and guidance for new players. This includes two new quest steps which provide more direction into crafting, and prompts players to practice the process of mining and consuming Oxite.

We also aimed to provide a more peaceful and rewarding experience in this mission, updating spawn values and adding a small Ren payment to introduce players sooner to the mission reward system and workshop.



Livewire
LIVEWIRE: TERRAIN SCAN has received a range of improvements and changes to improve the player experience and mission flow. Your first introduction to bears may now be friendlier, but only a little.

• The Radar is now collected from the Dropship, and will also respawn here
  
• The pool of enemies encountered has been expanded to add more variety, including bear cubs and boars
  
• The radar will now have a durability limit and can be destroyed, similar to the system in Styx missions
  
• Quest objectives now mention that creatures will be attacking to give players more time to prepare
  
• The number and frequency of enemy spawns now scales with the difficulty and number of players present in-game, to provide a more balanced experience
  
• The scanning process will now stop if the player moves outside the designated zone, and players are prompted to move closer to re-activate the process

Changelog v1.2.18.101993
New

• Livewire Mission Radar is now Collected & Respawns in Dropship
  
• Livewire Mission Adjusted enemies who spawn to add more variety and use new creatures (Bear Cubs, Boars etc)
  
• Livewire Mission Radar's now have durability and can now be destroyed as part of the quest (same as Styx Scanning Logic)
  
• Livewire Mission The quest objective now mentions that creatures will be attacking
  
• Livewire Mission the number and Frequency of Enemies now Spawn based on both difficulty and number of players present
  
• Livewire Mission If players move outside of the scanning zone the scanning stops and the players are prompted to move back into the scanning area
  
• Changed all exploration missions except Spirit Walk to have 10 total exotics locations, the ones from Spirit Walk plus 4 additional throughout the map, all granting 200-400 each, with 3 total spawns. Spirit Walk was unchanged to not impact that popular farming setup, happy extracting!
  
• Updating BEACHHEAD: RECON mission to include 2 new quest steps which help explain crafting, adding prompts to mention where to find oxite and the needing to consume it, updating spawn values to provide a more peaceful experience for learning, adding a small Ren Reward to introduce the mission reward system to players
  
• Removed out of bounds areas for all Exploration missions. - Exploration missions are now automatically completed when their attached scans are completed, players no longer need to enter and leave these missions for completion
  
• Adding Mammoth into Arctic Zone Spawn Pools

Fixed

• Remove unneeded Alpha channels on Voxel Albedo and RMA textures, halving file size, saving almost 0.5GB of memory use while playing. (Reducing RAM usage)
  
• Fixed a bug where the setting 'toggle sprint' would not work when riding a mount
  
• Updated Shengong 'Sui Shi' Pickaxe description to not indicate that is is easily repaired, as it is no different to any other workshop item
  
• Fixed and issue where the damage indicator wasn't facing the correct direction
  
• Storm exposure bar no longer stays full when the player respawns, Reseting the exposure and shelter values when a player dies, Disabled any shelter traces until respawn,
  
• WeatherActions no longer add modifiers to dead players, This means that players do not immediately die due to prior weather exposure when respawned
  
• Fix river audio sometimes cutting out around river spline intersection points. FMOD voices were being inappropriately culled by virtualisation when the proximity parameter applied a volume offset as different river audio components moved close to one another. Moved the volume offset to a submix channel so that FMOD ignores it in virtualisation calcs, and also tweaked the proximity curve to blend more smoothly around braided river intersections
  
• Added the ability to easily scale stockpile rewards by difficulty
  
• Added missing file changes to ValidAmmoTypes.cpp/h. Reconciled offline work

Future

• Submitting Batdog, Batdog carcass and respective textures
  
• Landscape Sculpting and Decal Pass, Blue Quad and Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Painted Decals Volcanic Area & Added Cliffs to Base of Macros Volcanic Area on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Added Brick_Wall asset and added all required pieces to BP for testing
  
• Decals painting and cliff placement in swamp Yellow Quad transition, DLC
  
• Created GL_Cave_Small_02 and 03, created cave template assets for cave levels
  
• Added FTs for SW_Cypress variants, and added their FLOD descriptions
  
• Added Mesh Mask MF and added swith on BLD Shader, to add option for AO,Dirt,Edge Wear customization for Brick Tier
  
• Sledgehammer_Nodes Prototype for testing
  
• Corrected needler aggro bus routing
  
• Adding needler aggro event and fixing events where min max was not set to the same as the spacializer
  
• Added Run/Jump VFX for Mounts, duplicated Anims for Moa to add Notifies
  
• Scaled OPULENCE mission objectives with selected difficulty
  
• Scaled SPELUNKING mission objectives with selected difficulty
  
• Refreshing lake/river settings on Outpost 5 to fix generation errors
  
• Added ivy to the Mangrove_Var2 BP
  
• Decals painting in swamp and arctic/tundra, blend in between Green and Blue Quad, DLC
  
• Verified texture settings for all textures in the UI folder and used more optimized settings where possible
  
• Ensured UI TextureGroup is correctly assigned for more accurate profiling
  
• Converted to Pow2 format where possible for further memory reduction optimization
  
• Painted Decals Volcanic Area & Added Cliffs to Base of Macros Volcanic Area on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Landscape Sculpting and Decal Pass, Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Decals painting in swamp and arctic/tundra biome, added hollow trees in swamp and cliffs in tundra, Blue Quad, DLC
  
• Refreshed the grass cache on Terrains 016/017 and Outposts 2/3/5
  
• Added SW_Blackberry_Bush, SW_Mushroom_Shelf_A, and CF_Aspen variants, and also added them to the FLOD Descriptions data table
  
• Added Foliage Types and BPs for CF_Aspen variants
  
• Added Foliage Types and BPs for SW_Mushroom_Shelf_A variants
  
• Added Foliage Types for SW_Blackberry_Bush variants
  
• added dead prospector static meshes, materials and textures
  
• Added ivy to Mangrove_Var4 BP
  
• Update all PROC map textures to use correct settings, optimizing memory footprint
  
• Updated BP with some ivy, but turning over to Joe to finish ivy placement
  
• Fixup redirectors for IceCool folder after move
  
• Decals painting in swamp and arctic/tundra biome, Blue Quad, DLC
  
• Landscape Sculpting, Landscape Painting and Decal Pass, Green and Yellow Quad, Prometheus
  
• Painted Decals Volcanic Area & Added Cliffs to Base of Macros Volcanic Area on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Change paperdoll armor icons to use DXT5 compression and reduced resolution, reducing memory footprint from 24.5MB to 1.5MB
  
• Delete old unused static paperdoll texture, pre-rendertarget implementation
  
• Layed out swamp and tundra foliage in Cam's test level for review
  
• Added Foliage Types and Datatable descriptions for FT_CF_Aspen_Var1_A and FT_SW_Blackberry_Bush_01. Also added missing BP for SW_Mushroom_Shelf_A_Var1
  
• Added SW_Mushroom_Shelf_A with 6 variants
  
• Disable dithering pixel offset on by default on Seracs
  
• Added UV base layers to Master Rock Shader, Added textures, created MIs and set collision sets to Mangrove Hollow/Vine
  
• Icon Editor now has the option to specify an override mesh to display for situations where the item has no in world context eg. Clothing
  
• Landscape Painted Swamp Tile on Green on Purple/Green Quad, DLC Map
  
• Updated Textures for SW_Mangrove_FallenTrunk_Hollow variations
  
• Landscape painting and decal pass in swamp anbd arctic/tundra biome, Blue Quad, DLC
  
• Landscape Sculpting, Landscape Painting and Riverbank Pass, Green Quad, Prometheus
  
• Landscape Painted Swamp, Painted Decals Volcanic & Added decals in Swamp to Volcanic areas in Volcanic on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Added ivy to the BP for Mangrove_Var2
  
• Added a ValidAmmoTypes datatable and changed Firearmdata to use this data table instead of having an array of item static items. This allows us to create new bows and select 'All Arrows' instead of manually going through and hand selecting each arrow into an array whenever a new bow/gun/crossbow is introduced into the game
  
• Fix GOAP World Stats cheat duplicating content when toggled off and back on again by clearing children on Construct
  
• Added second material to vines for SW_Mangrove_FallenTrunk_Hollow_Var1, SW_Mangrove_FallenTrunk_Hollow_Var2 and SW_Mangrove_FallenTrunk_Hollow_Var5
  
• Added dev only Cured Leather crafting process for testing. - Allowed Platinum Weave to be crafted on an Advanced Armor Bench even if you don't have the bench unlocked
  
• Merged up consumable meta item tag changes from backend removal branch
  
• Flushed grass on Outpost 6,7 and Terrain 019 Blue & Yellow Quads
  
• Flushed Grass, Outpost 004
  
• Move lava river flow audio functions to C++ to improve runtime performance
  
• Landscape Sculpting, Riverbank Pass and Flushed Grass On Green and Red Quads, Prometheus
  
• Added the SPELUNKING mission
  
• Landscape Painted Swamp, Painted Decal in Volcanic & Added Mangrove Trees to Swamp/Approved Actors on Purple Quad, DLC Map
  
• Moved IceCool to TRD folder
  
• Landscape painting and decal pass in swamp biome, Blue Quad, DLC
  
• Added Grass to Tundra and Grasslands Layer, removed cliff blend to Tundra landscape