[2023] Hypatia Part II | Olympus Operations and respawning Exotics

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

Hypatia Part II is here.

You can now play 21 Operations that have been transitioned over from Missions in your Olympus Open Worlds. These Operations have been hand-selected with a range of challenges to choose from.

We’ve also added Exotic respawning in Open World, with the new Meteor Shower event occurring every 3 hours and spawning new nodes, veins, voxels and exotic plants.

Jump in and have a read.

Notable Improvements

• Open World Selection Screen now shows Operations for Olympus and exotics for all 3 maps
  
• Fixing Desert Mammoth Trophy not being the Desert Mammoth Trophy when placed
  
• Fixed Tusker Trophy deploying as Komodo Trophy
  
• Fixed Viscid only granting Wolf kill experience by accident
  
• Encroachment: Extermination - Fixed clients seeing incorrect kill requirements for The Great River, showing the objective as complete when it wasn’t
  
• Meridian: Extraction - Added supply drop to deposit ingredients into rather than the same box to fix a bug where the box would clean up too fast. Changed the mission text to match
  
• Improvements and fixes for Strange Harvest: Research and Strange Harvest: Bio Research

This Week: Olympus Operations
Hypatia Part II is here, and as promised, it features Olympus Operations.

21 missions have been added as playable Operations in your Open World prospects on our original map, Olympus. These 21 missions have been hand-selected as missions that best suit the Operations model and Open World play. They provide unique challenges that suit a more established prospect where you often start with higher-tier gear.

We also recently reorganized the Olympus Missions, allowing for a smoother progression through Operations and allowing you to do more Missions without having to repeat every ‘scan’ Mission. When you’ve completed all the Operations, this will also fully unlock all of the Olympus Missions as individual prospects to play the traditional way.



This Week: Exotic Respawning & Meteor Showers
Hypatia Part II also brings the long-awaited Exotic Respawning and Open World Exotics to Icarus.

This means Exotics can now be extracted from your Open World prospects through exotic deposits, earned along side enzymes in Horde Mode, or farmed from plants on Prometheus. Next week, we’ll also add Exotic Voxels to mine.

Exotics now respawn in Open World games through the new Meteor Shower event.

Every 3 hours there will be a map-wide Meteor Shower that will only trigger if you have fully extracted an exotic deposit during that time period. This causes up to three new exotic veins to spawn across the map. On Open Worlds currently only three exotic veins can be 'active' at any one time.

This also resets your Radar scans, allowing you to rescan and find new veins in their new locations.

Regardless of whether the Meteor Shower happens or not, every three hours Exotic Plants on Prometheus prospects have a chance to spawn, and Geysers have their completion numbers reset, allowing you to gather exotics again.



Coming Soon: Batteries
Our Batteries project is making progress, and we wanted to give you an update on where this is at.

Our recent work includes adjusting outward network flows locally to allow for brownouts and modifiers to be applied when the power output isn’t high enough. We have also allowed for variable flow rates and crafting to still occur even when you’re lacking adequate power supply, but at a reduced rate of speed.

We are still in the testing phase of all of these adjustments, so they may change considerably from the current forms. To make sure this is effective and player-friendly, we’re doing a QoL pass at the same time as we play with these features.

We’re also looking to include a system which allows players to debug networks in-game, either using tools in-world or having a unique UI.



Each Week: Performance
While it may not be mentioned in our weekly blog each week, performance is an ongoing part of our work, and those who dive into the detailed changelog below will notice some of the improvements we’re making week-on-week.

As part of the performance work, we have been looking at a way to reduce the impact of loading across the map which can cause stutters. This is mainly focusing on adjusting the way caves are spawned in, and we’ve had some early positive results, but this is still very much in the early stages of testing.

We have also been looking into what impact we can have in reducing the pack sizes of the game and therefore the download size. As some of you have mentioned before, the process of downloading and patching the updates can be lengthy, due to the stark differences in how Unreal Engine packages build and how Steam wants to unpack them. What we’re hoping is this work will improve the download speed, which will at least impact this positively. This will go through rigorous testing before being released, but if all goes well this should be out in the future.



Next Week: New Deep Ore Vein Types
Next week we’ll be adding new Deep Ore Veins to all maps, increasing the possible resources that can be collected from them and the number of Deep Ore Veins available. In the past, this was limited to lower-tier resources the majority of the time. Next week we’ll be releasing the full list of all the new resources that can be gathered.

As part of this patch, we’ll be adjusting the way resources are set up which may cause the respawning of some voxels, trees and plants in various areas of the map. If there are any issues, make sure to report them here in feature upvote[icarus.featureupvote.com].



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

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

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/34141/Icarus_Outposts_Bundle/

Changelog v2.1.4.117586
New Content
[expand type=details]

• Hypatia Merge
  
• Enabling Operations on Open World & Allowing Exotic Respawning on Open World
  
• When exotic deposit resources are exhausted they will no longer show up on any future radar scans

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Fixed
[expand type=details]

• Strange Harvest: Bio Research - Changed final pod to a transport pod. Removed double up of icarus map icons on satelite
  
• Open World Selection Screen now shows operations for olympus and exotics for all 3 maps
  
• Adding pickup weapon sound for guns and crossbows
  
• Strange Harvest: Reserach - Decreased the search area radius' to more accurately represent the travel quest. Removed a description override within the first drop pod quest so it displays the proper mission text
  
• Adding bow pick up audio and balancing against other pick up sounds. Removed spacializer. Saved pickup spacializer as a preset and added to all pickups so they are consistent. Data table entry
  
• Change food modifiers from 'stack, max 1' to 'replace' and make datatable validation more explicit
  
• Adding pickaxe / axe pickup sound
  
• Fixed Corn (uncooked) not giving the raw food modifier
  
• Meridian: Extraction - Added supply drop to deposit ingredients into rather than the same box to fix a bug where the box would clean up too fast and changed the mission text to match
  
• Shortening pickup axe audio event to have less shing
  
• Small adjustment to axe pickup sound. Slightly reduced the fade to allow a tiny bit more tail
  
• Updated Trace and Entangle credits section
  
• Linked up player talent Unlock text to translatable text entry
  
• Added translatable text entries for sneak attack, bestiary open option and drill UI
  
• Tweaked the 1ST Cha shoulder in the gun aim animation to fix being able to see through the shoulder in 1st person while aiming
  
• Adding knife pickup audio event and data table entry
  
• Meridian: Extraction - Fixed a bug where on reload the drop pod would respawn
  
• Fixed Viscid granted Wolf kill experience
  
• Doing a pass on shortening all excessively long audio events (over 50 seconds). Sometimes splitting into multiple, sometimes just shortening
  
• Fixing Desert Mammoth Trophy not being the Desert Mammoth Trophy when placed
  
• Fixed Tusker Trophy deploying as Komodo Trophy
  
• Increase range when checking if a depleted deposit is occupied by an extractor, before clean up
  
• Prevent late joining clients on multiplayer from seeing UI for past exotic replenish events
  
• ENCROACHMENT: Fixed a bug causing clients to see an incorrect count for the The Great River kill objective, indicating that that step was complete when it is not
  
• Unlock Beachhead by default, allowing players to jump straight into Olympus Operations
  
• Enabled exotic rewards on open world from Vapor Condenser event
  
• Removed lock on exotic voxel spawning, and related flag on DEEP VEIN
  
• Removed obsolite unlock marker on MERIDIAN and PAYDAY
  
• Doubled Exotic Voxel spawn rate, as it was still not frequent enough for players to find
  
• Fixed Arctic Scoprion trophy incorrectly deploying as Scorpion trophy
  
• Do not clear radar scans on replenish event if no deposits have been depleted
  
• ENCROACHMENT: Fixed a bug causing clients to see an incorrect count for the The Great River kill objective, indicating that that step was complete when it is not.

[/expand]

Future Content
[expand type=details]

• Fixing Light emitter on NS_Meteor_Impact, alpha values dipped below zero causing issues when using epic settings
  
• Adding scorpion crossbow data table entry
  
• Decal Pass, Red and Purple Quads, Ashlands, Prometheus
  
• Set Dressing New Cave Network, Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus
  
• Adding unique scorpion crossbow audio and data table entries
  
• Submitting new/modified Spider Nest mesh and textures
  
• Adding screenshake to meteor impact
  
• Temporarily fixed build validation error by reverting NPC slow rotation update
  
• Implementing Meteor shockwave and distortion on impact system
  
• Fixed issue where AI-controlled mount movement speed was being overridden on tick.
  
• Added ability for mounts to rotate smoothly towards target direction
  
• Lots of adjustments and improvements to the meteor impact so it feels slightly less abrupt at very long distances. Balanced the close ear ring and added impact snapshot etc
  
• Added new icon for mount wander movement mode
  
• Added new voxel types for new areas of Prometheus
  
• Re Saving Dev Test 002 prospect list details to default
  
• Final adjustments to meteor event. Very small reduction to some low end to reduce low end build up
  
• Removed navigation data from LC_Cliff_14_ground (ground cover foliage cliff for phase 3) to reduce navmesh issues
  
• Adding scorpion crossbow fire audio, adjustments to other CB parts levels etc. Small adjustments to meteor impact ducking
  
• Changed crevasse nav modifier volume startup to try to prevent the modifiers body setup from evading the garbage collector
  
• Added 7 assets for the Art Deco Furniture set, all chairs and tables
  
• Adding sandworm tendon audio. Also added to meat and other items that feel similar for pick up sounds
  
• Decal Pass and Landscape Sculpting Pass in the Ashlands, Prometheus
  
• Set Dressing New Cave Network with Stalagmite, Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus
  
• Nesting events within meteor impact with limitations to playback to prevent excessive amounts of boombastics
  
• Added text for biolab weapon components and weapons
  
• Small EQ adjustment to meat / tendon pickup audio
  
• Additional tweaking of Prometheus section 2 voxel reward weighting, pending final voxel placement
  
• When meteor showers occur, do not clean up exhausted meta deposits that still have an extractor attached
  
• Scorpion Rifle - added meshes for all components (WEP/GUN_ScorpionRifle)
  
• Submitting in progress developer assets
  
• Added art assets for art deco fireplace
  
• Added new Biolab attachments
  
• Cliff Decal pass on cliffs in the ground and Cliff pass, Ashlands, Prometheus
  
• Set Dressing New Cave Network with Stalagmite, Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus
  
• Decal pass and Manual caves in Red and Purple Quad, Ashlands, Prometheus
  
• Added Item.Meta tag on biolab attachments so they will correctly return to the station when returned
  
• Set Dressing New Cave Network with Stalagmite, Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus
  
• Added new Biolab Inhalers
  
• Adding in destruction states for bats nests, both cave and arctic versions

[/expand]