[2023] Icarus Week Ninety Nine Update | New Vestiges and a rebalanced Bestiary

Week Ninety Nine’s update is here, and we’re focusing on the Bestiary this week, rebalancing how you earn points and how many points each unlock takes to achieve.

Our focus has been to reduce the grind for this feature and make it more enjoyable for players to complete.

We’ve also added new animal trophies, with all creatures now having their own craftable version. Alongside this, we’ve made ‘Vestiges’ a harvestable item from any kill.

Jump in and have a read.

Notable Improvements

• Buildings will now burn and melt when placed in lava (Thatch & Wood destroy right away, stone, concrete, glass, aluminum, and brick will slowly burn and be destroyed, Scoria Brick & Scoria will be unaffected)
  
• Add stats display to blueprint unlock tooltips for the building pieces
  
• Added minimum distance culling to fur shader, brown bear armor fur strands should no longer obstruct vision when using a hunting rifle
  
• Tuskers can now use the Wooden Cart and Cargo Saddle
  
• Renamed Mammoths to ‘Woolly Mammoths’ (the ones with wool) & ‘Columbian Mammoths’ (the ones with no wool) for differentiation.
  
• Fixed swamp vapor condensor event second wave, as Stryders do not attack, swapped to Komodo.

This Week: Bestiary Balance
We’ve given the Bestiary a balance pass this week, aiming to make this less ‘grindy’ for players and more enjoyable to complete.

This has been done by doubling all the points (if not more) that are gained in the bestiary, and balancing the point requirement by reducing the total points required for bestiary unlocks where necessary.

You can check out the table below to see the rebalanced points you’ll gain for specific activities completed:

Event Old Points New Points Kill 1 3 Skin 1 2 Skin with Trophy Knife 2 4 Skin on Bench 2 4 Be killed by 2 4 Kill Boss 3 40 Craft Trophy 2 4 Scanned 3 6
Kill 'Epic' Variant 2 6


This Week: Creature Trophies & Vestiges
As of this week, every creature in Icarus now has a trophy you can craft of it. We’ve made some tweaks to the system also, adding ‘Vestiges’ which can be collected by using the taxidermy knife.

Heads have been renamed to Vestiges as a result, as this offers a more generic term for this part of the animal, and one more widely used amongst taxidermists.

The icons in your UI however, will still look the same, this is purely a text change.



Coming Soon: Hypatia Part II: OLYMPUS OPERATIONS
Olympus Operations are going well, and all phases of the project have moved into pure testing now, with improvements, changes and bug fixes the priority focus.

We’re also heavily testing the Open World Exotic respawning and a big focus here is still balancing. This requires quite a delicate touch, so we’re likely to be actively adjusting these numbers as we get more feedback in the future.



Next Week: New Backpack!
Next week’s update will feature a new backpack added to the orbital workshop for players to spend their hard-earned ren and exotics on. Keep an eye out for the unique perks and benefits, they may be suited to your playstyle.



Future: Batteries & Networks
Another ongoing project on the side is the process of reworking our resource networks (think power, water and fuel). The goal here is to provide a system that enables finer control for players along with batteries for storing generated power.

This is in the development phase, so don’t expect a working product soon, but it’s ongoing development will get more focus once we have released all of Hypatia, and we’ll aim to give you updates on this in the coming weeks.



Support our Project

Originally posted by author: 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/34141/Icarus_Outposts_Bundle/

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

Changelog v2.1.2.117241
New Content
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• Added in Mission Trophies & Heads for Komodo & Tusker
  
• Renamed Creature Heads to be Vestiages as it allows for more use than just head mounted trophies
  
• Adjusted all trophy decription text to match so there is no discrepancy between the old and new
  
• Unlocked all new trophies in the trophy bench
  
• Added animal heads to loot tables so they can be aquired with a taxidermy knife
  
• Rebalanced trophy recipes so they require refined wood rather than sticks and basic wood
  
• Rebalanced trophy crafting times to smaller trophies take a short time and larger ones take longer
  
• x2 all the points gained from all activities that contribute to the bestiary making progress twice as fast
  
• Further increased bestiary points granted by killing bosses, 6.6x the increased value. This is to reward players more for killing the boss, rather than dying to the boss (now requires 10 deaths to equal a kill).
  
• Increased Alpha Wolf boss requirements by 50%, as it was an outlier for the boss requirements.
  
• Tweaked many creature bestiary point requirements to bring creature requirements closer to each other, details below.
  
• Reduced Cave Worm bestiary point requirement by 45%.
  
• Reduced Teenage Cave Worm bestiary point requirement by 55%.
  
• Reduced Snow Stalker and Arid Striker bestiary point requirements by 55% and 60% respectively.
  
• Reduced Ashen Drake bestiary point requirement by 40%.
  
• Increased Terrenus bestiary point requirement by 30%.
  
• Reduced many passive creature bestiary point requirements by 10-20%, exceptions listed below.
  
• Increased Drifter bestiary point requirement by 60%.
  
• Reduced Blueback and Redback bestiary point requirements by 40%.
  
• Reduced Swamp Roat bestiary point requirement by 50%.
  
• Reduced Pygmy Lop bestiary point requirement by 60%.
  
• Increased Bestiary kill points by 1 (total of 3, compared to last patch's 1 point per kill).
  
• Added support for Wooden Cart and Cargo Saddle to Tusker, renamed items. Increased size of Tusker's head blocker
  
• Fixing Teenage Caveworm loot so it has a 25% chance to drop a teenage caveworm vestige
  
• Fixing the zebra incorrectly giving the boar vestiage when skinning
  
• Adding missing snow rabbit vestiage item icon & Fixing trophy name
  
• Fixed Pygmy Lop & Tusker Vestiage reward items for harvesting with a taxidermy knife
  
• Fixing Desert Mammoth Trophy name
  
• Vestiges now stack to 5
  
• Fixed Wolf being called Conifier wolf and fixing its vestige item icon
  
• Added missing text for item descriptions for the Antelope Trophy
  
• Renaming 'Desert Mammoth' -> 'Columbian Mammoth' and 'Mammoth' -> 'Woolly Mammoth'
  
• Fixed Terrenus not hiding fur when skinned so you can see its skinned state
  
• Fix making caveworm head trophies not awarding bestiary progress

[/expand]

Fixed
[expand type=details]

• Adding ability to add alterations directly to crafting outputs
  
• Low tier building pieces burn when placed in lava
  
• Removed leaves from the bottom of DEP_RES_SML_Wood
  
• Add stats display to blueprint talent unlock popups where the talent is a group of building types
  
• Updating Encroachment mission/operation to no longer use a quest flag for completion and instead
  
• Further increased the long load detection timer as it is still returning false positives
  use a quest variable
  
• Fixed swamp vapor condensor event second wave, as Stryders do not attack, swapped to Komodo.
  
• Added minimum distance culling to fur shader, brown bear armour fur strands should no longer obstruct vision when using a hunting rifle
  
• Further increased the long load detection timer as it is still returning false positives
  
• Fixed issue where frozen movement logging would be fired off for players on the server other than the local player

[/expand]

Future Content
[expand type=details]

• Added in initial functionality for tier 2 purifier. Oxidiser mesh that you can input waterskins and charcoal and it will fill water containers within it
  
• Removed unused processor inventory slots from the purifier
  
• Adding spawn ai bat as a variable and adding different version to spawn (Audio) for each different nest type. Adjustments to spacial for arctic bats
  
• Fixing build error. Missing file
  
• T1 Water purifier - added meshes, textures, materials for floating version (DEP_WaterPurifier_T1B)
  
• Mesh, material, SSS texture for Ice tier Kit mesh, added to Mesh_Ice_Kit in D_meshable
  
• Adding Brutalist Decoration Item Setup
  
• Fixing Rustic Deployables so you can sit on the chairs / couches as intended
  
• Fixed Metal Depoyables so you can sit on the chairs / couches as intended
  
• Fixed Metal Deployables so you can interact with the ones that include storage
  
• Adding missing 2D art item images to repositiory
  
• Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Red Quad and Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Adding sickle damage specific stat
  
• Adding brutalist deploy audio and data table entrys
  
• Updating brutalist deploy sound to have slightly more weight
  
• Adding IceMammoth Shield, Item Setup, Icons, Talents and Recipe
  
• Adding IceMammoth Spear & Javelin, Item Setup, Icons, Talents and Recipe
  
• Adding Scorpion Fishing Rod, Item Setup, Icons, Talents and Recipe
  
• Added animation for Meteor even UI element
  
• Collapse UI on construct to temporarily fix a bug where UI would always be visible
  
• Early stage implementation of Meteor VFX
  
• Added ability to add alterations to water containers within the purifiers. Disconnected for future use
  
• Added Caves, Ice Cliffs & Landscape Sculpting Pass, Ice Sheet - Yellow Quad on Prometheus
  
• Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Red Quad and Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Re-saved D_ModifierStates
  
• Initial pass for Living Item system
  
• Freed up additional Linker Library Objects
  
• Added DEP_Cleaning_Device_T3
  
• Re-saved data tables to fix build validation
  
• Pre setup for meteor. Adding event and current audio
  
• Fix the build, static class member data table row handles crash during load in Game builds (internal dev only)
  
• Adding proper crafting recipes, talents and available meshes for the T1/2/4 Water Purifiers
  
• Adding Setup for Biofuel Cleaning Device, Mesh, Implementation, Icon, Recipes
  
• Added second shield socket to be able to offset the larger shields in 3rd person to be away from the face during the active pose
  
• Updated visuals for biolab
  
• Resaving DTs to fix build validation error
  
• Adding blueprint data for playing audio for meteor. Adjustments to spacial and balances for various distancings etc
  
• Building out New Cave Network, Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus
  
• Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Red Quad and Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Adding post-process blend to meteor event, scales based on time of day
  
• Resaving FMOD session with repaired assets / reimported asset that got in a weird state due to crash
  
• Lots of updates and additions to the meteor strike. distance finessing, explsion build, close, far, and very far
  
• Second pass VFX for Meteor event
  
• Adding meteor impact sounds and echos and event. To be adjusted to fit once visuals are in
  
• First pass VFX for Meteor event
  
• Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Red Quad and Purple Quad, Prometheus
  
• Blocked Out the New Cave Network, Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus

[/expand]

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