Icarus Week 136 Update | Changes to weather's impact on crops

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

Welcome to week 136.

This week we’re implementing comprehensive changes to how seeds and crops interact with biomes and weather patterns.

One of Icarus' unique foundations is the immersive weather system, which requires genuine consideration in many decisions you make including building materials, biome selection and even structural design. Biomes add unique resource pools and availability, along with impacts to survivability and ailments.

One area of the game which has not been affected by these impacts, however, is farming. While rainfall amounts and glasshouse bonuses have a modest effect, it has largely ignored many of the other impacts that are prevalent on other game features.

We are expanding on that this week with biomes, extreme storms, freezing temperatures and exposure now playing a part in the crop growth simulation, making this feel more natural and connected to the rest of the game.

This includes new tiers of shovels and crop plots hat provide different tiers of storm resistance to mitigate the impact of storms, and the effect that more inhospitable biomes have on their success rate.

We’ve also got updates on some upcoming World Bosses on Prometheus, and next week's Farmers Satchel.

Jump in and have a read.

Notable Improvements:

• Crops planted with a shovel no longer incur a negative modifier added to crop growth
  
• Sunlight now increases growth speed by 20%, with no sunlight reducing speed by 20% instead of 50% (this will be replaced by the Greenhouse bonus when there are glass building pieces nearby)
  
• The Kiwi trophy can now be placed on the ground as intended

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This Week: Seed Biome Preferences
Seeds will now have preferred biomes. Crops will have more success growing in environments with favorable conditions, and certain crops will incur large debuffs if they’re not appropriate. For example, nothing will be able to grow outdoors in the Arctic.

However, unsuitable conditions can be negated by building greenhouses using the Glass building piece.

The impact on openly planted seeds in each biome is as follows:

Environment Unsuitable Modifier Volcanic Crop Wither Speed +500% Grasslands Crops Growth Speed -60% Conifer Crop Yield -60% Desert Crop Spoil Time -80% Swamp Crop will be Spoiled on harvest 60% Arctic Crop will not Grow

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This Week: Crop Quality
Alongside the impact of biomes on crops, the quality of crops will now play a role in farming.

Crops now have a quality which will be slowly reduced during storms. Once a crop's quality reaches 0 it will become withered and unable to bear any fruit. This is a slow process and it will take multiple storms to fully reduce a crop's quality to zero. Outside of storms the quality of a crop will recovery slowly if the crop is watered. When harvesting crops, yield will be scaled based on the crop quality after any talents and stat bonuses have been applied.

Crop plots and mounds have a new property which lets you know what tier of storms will not effect the quality of the crop, as shown in the table below. If the tier of a crop plot / dirt mound is higher or equal to the tier of storm, no crop quality will be reduced. In addition to the crop plots having high resistance as you move up the tech tree, we’ve also introduced new shovels that allow for the creation of better dirt mounds so that their crops can survive higher-tier storms.

We have also added two new fertilizers craftable on the herbalism bench at T2. One focused on crop resistance, which will reduce the quality loss of crops in storms, and another focused on recovery which will drastically increase the recovery rate of crops.

Originally posted by author: If your game is set to easy (either Mission or Open World), these new changes will not impact you, and no quality loss to your crops will occur.

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This Week: Crop Plot & Shovel Tierification
As mentioned, crop plots, dirt mounds and shovels have now been ‘tierified’.

One important change is that from this week, dirt mounds no longer incur the -50% growth speed debuff. This has been completely removed.

Item No Crop Quality Loss for Storms Tier Stats / Bonus Wooden Crop Plot 2 and below - Iron Crop Plot 3 and below Water Connection Hydroponic Crop Plot 4 and below Water Connection
Power Connection Aeroponic Crop Plot 5 and below Water Connection
Power Connection
+25% Growth Speed
+25% Yield
+25% Crop Spoil Time Wooden Shovel Dirt Mound 1 - Iron Shovel Dirt Mound 2 and below -25% Tool Stamina Cost
+25% Digging Rewards
+10% Yield Platinum Shovel Dirt Mound 3 and below -33% Tool Stamina Cost
+50% Digging Rewards
+20% Yield Titanium Shovel Dirt Mound 4 and below -50% Tool Stamina Cost
+75% Digging Rewards
+20% Yield
-20% Crop Wither Rate The Excavator Dirt Mound 6 and below -25% Tool Stamina Cost
+100% Digging Rewards
Planted Crops will not Wither
The weather forecast will now show what tier of storms can happen during certain periods, and different environments will also show what tier of storms you can expect. There is a small chance that tiers either one above or below can spawn during that forecast also.

While dirt mounds have more bonuses than crop plots making them suitable for mass farming, crop plots are focused on automation rather than individual boosts, while mounds are focused on buffs and mass farming.

Mounds that are created with the animal plow are equivalent to the iron shovel dirt mound.

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Coming Soon: Prometheus World Bosses
We’re currently working on enabling a final World Boss to spawn on the Prometheus map after completing the last story mission. This will spawn in the Volcanic Biome. We’re also working on adding another new world boss that will spawn in the swamp areas of Prometheus.

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Next Week: T3 Farmers Satchel and Fixes
Next week we’ll be adding a new Tier 3 Farmers Satchel, along with any necessary fixes or changes from this week's comprehensive list of adjustments. Remember to keep giving us your feedback via Feature Upvote (linked on the title screen).

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Your support makes these updates possible.
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/40692/Icarus_Pets_Bundle/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35727/Icarus_Complete_the_Set/

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Changelog v2.2.11.124669
New Content
[expand type=details]

• Adding in Crop / Biome / Weather Interactions
  
• Seeds / Crops now have optimal growth biomes, when they are not planted in the correct biome they will suffer a biome specific penalty, for example nothing with grow unshelted in the arctic
  
• Seed / Crop un-obtimal biome debuffs can be countered by growing crops inside a greenhouse
  
• Crop plots / Mounds now have a tier associated with them (shown as a stat) and their crops will take damage if they are out in the open and a storm of higher than their specified tier occurs
  
• Adding Upgrade Code for Existing Dirty Mounds so they are assigned the correct tier
  
• Adding new logic when placing dirt mounds or ploughing them with an animal cart so they have the correct stats and modifiers applied
  
• Adding UI on Seeds so they display their optimal biome
  
• Adding UI to crop plots to display their tier and storm resist
  
• Adjusting stat descriptions for crop plot / mound tiers
  
• Reassigning stats of shovels & crop plots so they match their associated storm tiers
  
• Unlocking all shovels at t3/4 and workshop
  
• Fixing shovel dig as it was assigning the wrong dirt mound modifiers
  
• Crop Plots / Mounds can now be inspected without seeds
  
• Adding new modifier on crop plots / mounds if deployed in the arctic and not in a greenhouse so players know crops will die
  
• Fixed ability to spawned ploughed dirt mounds and added new modifier to reflect
  
• Adjusting Item Popup so the optimal seed biomes are not shown for every item
  
• Updating Item Rewards for digging
  
• Swapped Damage Effect for Ground Dust
  
• Adding ability for seeds to have multiple optimal biomes
  
• Adjusting crop plot tool tip location so its easier to read
  
• Adding tier information to crop plot tooltip
  
• Missed files from last commit
  
• Fixing issue where yields of 0 can be possible when the yield modifier of crops was less than 1.0
  
• Crops will take damage in storms slowly if they are not the correct tier for the storm rather than instant death, this will regen slowly when not in a storm, this is seperate from the crop plots health
  
• Added small effect for when crops take damage
  
• Fixing Dead State Collisions for the Squash, Yeast, Carrot, Kumara
  
• Adding in world tooltip for crop plots to show storm damage and growth status
  
• Update dug hole modifiers for better desciption
  
• Update Shovel to Iron Shovel
  
• Update hand made hole to only reduce crop growth by 25%
  
• Fixed build errors - AIGrowth stat enum name changed/Itemstatic missclick
  
• Adding audio for crop plants taking damage and being destroyed. BP imp
  
• Fixed a typo in the dirt mound modifier
  
• Lots of improvements and additioanl layers and tweaks to the ice breakers footsteps. Multiple events. No longer linked to footstep event for better control
  
• Update tier display on building pieces
  
• Update stat wording for crop plot tiers
  
• Adding Storm Resistance to Crop Plot Inspection UI
  
• Update crop preferred biomes
  
• Increased The Excavator workshop shovel price and storm tier
  
• Update UI text for storm resistances and tiers, and related modifiers
  
• Crop plots crops will take 2 damage every 10 seconds if their storm survival tier is lower than the crop plot or mound tier
  
• Crop plot crops will regain 1 health every 10 seconds while not in a storm and they are watered
  
• While on an Easy difficulty crop plots will not take damage in storms
  
• Removed destructible mesh from the crop plot damage so only a particle effect plays now when storm damage occurs
  
• Removed negative modifiers from using dirt mounts & adjusted tierified dirt mound stats
  
• Fixing issue where you could not dig up dirt / sand / ice with a shovel
  
• Adding Modifier Sections to Blueprint and Workshop Tooltips
  
• Modifying wording on crop plot tool tips
  
• Added new UMG that collects all building pieces/deployables/active mounts and displays them next to how many we recommend before performance is expected to slow down
  
• Adding storm tier images to crop plot tool tips

[/expand]

Fixed
[expand type=details]

• Updated credits section
  
• Kiwifruit recipes now use Mature Coconuts instead of Ripe Coconuts, giving players a bit more time on their decay to use them
  
• Fixed Kiwi trophy being unable to be placed on the ground (and able to be placed on a wall)
  
• CONCEALMENT: Fixed collection objectives being set to 0 requirements when not on normal difficulty

[/expand]

Future Content
[expand type=details]

• Added mission text for ASHLANDS and ICESHEET missions
  
• Setup PRO_D_Research mission steps
  
• First pass of IceBreaker implementation
  
• Added projectile attack to the spider
  
• Changed texture group for IceBreaker textures, allowing them to be 4K. Added additional IceBreaker idle/attack animations to engine
  
• DROVER: Moved quest locations, fixed completion state
  
• CARAVAN, DROVER: Add locations and update quest steps to use base classes. Fix some collision for quest actors
  
• IceBreaker can now properly navigate on unloaded world tiles.
  
• Fixed issue with BTS_SweepBoneDamage that was causing actors to be damaged more than once during the cooldown period
  
• |Move Aerosol Emitter active state to single bool, for audio and particle sync
  
• COMPOSITION: Moved crafting unlock/lock to their particular objectives
  
• COMPOSITION: Added dialogue triggers
  
• CARAVAN: Setup dialogue and fixed some setups
  
• CARAVAN and COMPOSITION: Setup briefing objectives
  
• Added IK CtrlRig for IceBreaker (used up to LOD 1)
  
• IceBreaker now uses it's new idle animations. Increased blend time between various IceBreaker loco anims
  
• CARAVAN: Update quest steps / logic and locations
  
• Added new icons for character creation redesign screen
  
• Added further functioanality to the mammoth. Mammoth now doesnt automatically agro to the player but waits to percieve first.
  
• Arctic bats adjusted to spawn more the less ice armor chunks
  
• DROVER: Implement initial quest setup and logic / requirements
  
• First lot of WIP assets for the ice breaker footsteps. Nowhere near finished atm
  
• Adding aerosol emitter audio event and BP imp
  
• DROVER: Add dialogue and fixes for mission steps
  
• Update collision on snap actors to match if mesh is hidden
  
• Update Ice Sheet spawn map
  
• Adjustments to ice breaker audio footstep notifys. And adding shake notify to the slams
  
• Adding new Wiget for displaying tier on crop plots
  
• Added montages and notify setups for most Ape attacks / behaviours
  
• Add Prometheus part 2 mission recipes
  
• ABYSS: Clear mission debuffs and recipes on completion
  
• Setup Aerosol Emitter to be set active when first placed for visual and audio effects

[/expand]