Icarus Week 143 Update | Sugar, Strawberry Hard Candy, and Watermelon Lollipops

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

Welcome to week 143

This week, we introduce a new growable plant: Sugarcane, which can be purchased as Seeds in the Orbital Workshop. Fully grown Sugarcane can be ground down in the Mortar and Pestle to make the newest ingredient on Icarus, Sugar.

With the addition of sugar comes new recipes and Candy, a new food group that doesn’t count towards the total active food buffs but provides small situational buffs for escaping dangerous situations.

We’ve also got a quick snapshot of what’s to come next week, and where you’ll find it nesting.

Jump in and have a read.

Notable Improvements

• Aluminum buildables have received a LOD pass, meaning there are no more black lines that ascend when viewed from a distance
  
• Added a new master glass material and reworked all the current glass BLD materials, to reduce the excessive amounts of fog that could be seen through the glass
  
• Adjusted the weight and curve of throwing a grenade to a more accurate motion. We’ve also balanced this against other throwables for cohesion and synced it better with the audio speed
  
• Turrets will no longer attempt to shoot a target if they don't have a line of sight (e.g. behind solid walls)
  
• Upped the stack size of kiwifruit to 100 to match most other harvested small fruits/veggies

---

This Week: Sugar & Sugarcane
Sugarcane seed packets can now be purchased from the Orbital Workshop, and subsequently grown on the surface of Icarus. Fully matured sugarcane can then be harvested and ground into sugar using your Mortar and Pestle.

Sugar allows us to expand our food choices in the game, providing different alternatives with new buffs that facilitate new ways to play, just as the previous addition of salt did.

The beauty of adding Sugar is that it also allows us to explore other chemical applications and how food groups behave with this compound. The obvious area we may experiment with in the future is fermentation.

---

This Week: Cookies & Candy - New Recipes
We have added a few new sugar-based recipes: an Energy Bar crafted on the player, Salted Caramel Pastry and Caramel berry Tarts craftable on the Biofuel Stove, and Chocolate Chip and Coconut Cookies craftable on the Electric Stove.

All of these sugar-based recipes provide a boost to the charge speed of bows and the reload speed of guns, making them an excellent choice for enhancing ranged combat.

We’ve also added two new recipes for Strawberry Hard Candy and Watermelon Lollipops, which give you a short buff to movement speed and penalty reduction for being over-encumbered, respectively.

Candy won’t take up any food buff slots, allowing them to be used on top of other foods, countered obviously by the shorter window of effectiveness. Think of them as a get-out-of-jail-free card for those sticky situations when you need to hot-foot it.

---

Coming Soon: NullSector
As mentioned in previous weeks, the NullSector (our Free Prometheus Expansion) will include new Operations, a new exploration mechanic, new mutated creatures, and one new giant creature.

We are still actively working on the NullSector, with some big mission revamps in the works, more narrative, more dialogue, and more missions to provide the experience it deserves.

This region is not for the faint of heart. All the adjustments and differences are geared towards this being a hardcore survival challenge, so make sure you enter it prepared.

If you are interested in reading about what we plan to do with missions in the future, click here.

---

Next Week: New Creature - Arctic Vesper
Next week, we plan to introduce a new creature that emerges from nests in Arctic zones. This creature will come with its own trophy, bestiary entry, and new resource type that will offer an alternative to some existing recipes.

---

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/

---

Changelog v2.2.18.126568
New Content [expand type=details expanded=false]

• Unlocking Sugar Recipe
  
• Unlocking Sugar Cane Seeds, Workshop Packs and Sugar Items
  
• Sugar now requires a blueprint and is craftable on the marble kitchen bench
  
• Adding new sugar food recipes and Item setup
  
• Sugar is not only craftbale on the mortar & pestle and material processor
  
• Fixed Sugar Cane crops having too low seed drop chance
  
• Fixed Sugar Cane seed rewards
  
• Added Sugar Cane seeds to dynamic quests rewards list
  
• Increase the water requirements for cookies and candies, working around a bug with processors turning off at low water requested
  
• Adding crunch default food to crunchy new edible candys instead of soft sounding chewing

[/expand]

Fixed [expand type=details expanded=false]

• Added second batch of aluminium buildables with improved LOD pass
  
• New master glass material, rework of all glass BLD materials
  
• Railings place with less of the railing underneath the floor when snapped, and some of the railing buried when not snapped. This looks more natural and has railings appear as a more similar height on stone floors particularly
  
• Fixed a typo in quest step for heal device
  
• Fixed a typo in item flavour text
  
• LOD and material fixes for various windows and doors, art deco and stone fireplace meshes
  
• Fine tuned the throwable curves to be in line with each other so the grenades dont fall right on the floor at a light tap.
  
• Adjusted weight and curve to feel like a grenade. Balanced against other throwables for cohesion and synced better with the speed of the audio
  
• Turrets will no longer attempt to shoot a target if they don't have a line-of-sight (e.g. behind solid walls).
  
• Did an optimisation pass on Turrets to reduce the cost of their target selection and status/material updating
  
• Fixed texture errors on glass door, added tempered glass variant materials for window and door, added texture tiling controls to MA_GLS_BLD to adjust scale of reinforcing
  
• Shields durability now reduce based on total damage rather than mitigated damage
  
• Increased shield durability maximums to reflect damage intake change, higher tier shields will have the same or higher durability
  
• Fixed issue where beehive upgrades would collide with player even if they weren't visible or attached to hive. Added additional inventory slots to Larkwell meta backpack (shotgun), previously gave none. Upped stack size of kiwifruit to 100 to match most other harvested small fruits/veggies
  
• Fix character talent weapons are not repairable at bench. Add a validator to pick this up in future
  
• Fixed incorrect material assignment on scoria trap door floor
  
• Fix typo in IDs on dynamic collection mission
  
• Slightly offset refined wood halfpiece floors so they line up correctly
  
• Adjusting smoke grenades bounce audio from feeling like its bouncing on the spot. Adjusted friction to prevent continuous sliding of grenade triggering constant annoying audio
  
• Adding grenade bounce impact event for spacial awareness of grenade proximity. Setting up for new boss grenades etc
  
• Added additonal aluminium buildable LOD Improvments
  
• Added batch of aluminium buildables with LOD pass done

[/expand]

Future Content [expand type=details expanded=false]

• Ice Mammoth Arena - biome overide added
  
• Fixed bug where exotic infused creatures weren't getting their particle systems initialised with the correct colour.
  
• Fixed bug where exotic infused creature particle systems would reset when switching from NPC -> corpse on death
  
• Re-added Itemable row that was lost in DT merge
  
• Remove (editor only) AtmosphereController_Spawner as is causing a crash for world builders edit time
  
• Fixed dev transform tool not working on actors with static mobility
  
• Altered text for living weapons as they are tbc
  
• Added item text for ape, cat, and hornet boss drops
  
• Added text to lava hunter boss drops
  
• Added text for Slug boss items
  
• Added text to Rock Golem items
  
• Fixed issue where opening bunker medical cabinet in-game rotated it
  
• changing light source to be a warm light, range and intensity of the lantern
  
• changing cone angle and alighnment of spotlight for the flashlight
  
• STRANDED: ASHLANDS - The timer has been increased by 1 hour on each difficulty, added another optional step for food & water
  
• changing intensity and range of the flashlight
  
• Ice Mammoth Arena - additional lighting at ice falls
  
• Ice Mammoth Arena - placed initial lighting under ice as night time lighting
  
• Added new developer tool to fine-tune actor transforms in-game
  
• Adjusted ice shader for armor/items sss base opacity
  
• Added text for Marrowraith items
  
• Removed emissive and replaced the shader for the ice crystals with ice mammoth icicle shader for the ice mammoth shield
  
• Added text for new boss vestiges and trophies
  
• Added text for boss biomass items
  
• Deal with (internal editor/tools) issues with instanced levels and the atmosphere controller. WITH_EDITOR gates
  
• Deal with (internal editor/tools) issues with instanced levels and the atmosphere controller. Engine divergence mod (WITH_ENGINE gates)
  
• Deal with (internal editor/tools) issues with instanced levels and the atmosphere controller. Engine divergence mod
  
• Deal with (internal editor/tools) issues with instanced levels and the atmosphere controller
  
• Added Ice Breaker Footstep Decals Prototype
  
• Added cheat to temporarily disable deployable placement collision / stacking rules
  
• Adding New Function for retrieving utility item data so it can be queried from different places in the code base
  
• Added SK_GUN_Rock_Golem
  
• Add viewport blocker for instanced levels (for the player that is entering + loading)
  
• Cliff Placement Pass and Riverbank Pass, Outpost 11
  
• Changed flicker to prevent escessive flickering
  
• Added meshes, materials, mask textures for Inverted Concrete Ramp and Floor
  
• Teleport mounts to instanced level exit when instanced level is being torn down
  
• Adding hornets throwing knives audio and data table setups. Fixed flying audio sounding a bit fake
  
• Added and replaced ice crystal material for the ice shield
  
• Added a tag water.NoShow to disable an objects mesh from being displayed when slotted into a water purifier.
  
• Added the tag to water jerry can and t3 water can to fix mesh clipping into the purifier
  
• Add implementation of inverted concrete floor and ramp
  
• Setting up player audio component and FMOD parameter to play audio when container is full VS empty
  
• Adjustment to medical scanner audio. Shortened it since the UI is instant. Also adjusted truck in same mission PM to be metal since its metal. Was set to plastic which we dont have footstep layers for
  
• Cliff Placement Pass and Riverbank Pass, Outpost 11
  
• Adding blueprint information and FMOD event volume adjustments to adjust the audio balance of emtpy container vs water sloshing dpending on water fill state
  
• Fixed BP material overrides for inverted concrete floor and ramp pieces
  
• Adding deploy audio for swamp ape trophy
  
• Added on animation and emissive for DEP_Cooler_T4
  
• Adding hornet wing pickup audio and event and data table
  
• Fix Ape trophy preview mesh
  
• Adjusted LOD distances for Portable Generator
  
• Trunk Merge
  
• Enabling ASHLANDS: RESCUE, adding quest markers and adding Small Mission Fixes
  
• Enabling ASHLANDS: RESCUE, Fixing mission flow - fixing mission markers, fixing mission droppod so it actually drops at the correct location
  
• Adding Action Promp to Empty Stasis Bag when focused
  
• Empty Stasis bags are now consumed when you use them on injured NPC's
  
• RESCUE: ASHLANDS - adding new mission, adding new recipe, quest flag and new items for stasis bags, adding new NPCs for the quest, adding new medevac ship, adding full quest steps and tag queries
  
• Making adjustments to quest objective enteries so that we can display 'info' quest information
  
• Adding new Prospector map marker
  
• Adding new Rich text style for quests
  
• Adding new modifier for near death
  
• Adding new Prospect Row & Talent for RESCUE: ASHLANDS
  
• Added some subtle spine rotation in new NPC lookat ctrlrig. All attached skeletal components are now correctly highlighted on mission NPCs
  
• BP_Mission_NPC_Base::ShouldLookAt is now replicated
  
• Added first pass AnimBP for mission NPCs and simple LookAt control rig
  
• Adding unique cave mission audio, event and scatter ambient rocks
  
• Adding in NPC Skeletal mesh and Anim states to use for NullSec mission
  
• Added textures and materials for first kit of the Wood Beeswax building tier
  
• Updated skinning on ITM_Backpack_FoodPrep_or_Chef
  
• Cliff Placement Pass and Riverbank Pass, Outpost 11
  
• Fixed Scyther bolt recipe output
  
• Outpost_012 - rivers, riverbank and cliff placement, terrain adjustments
  
• Added dev tool cheats to the Field Guide UI
  
• Cliff Placement Pass and Riverbank Pass, Outpost 11
  
• Demoved dev-lock on transform tool so it works on test builds
  
• Enabled skeletal component update rate optimisations on deployables
  
• Blockout Split of the Volcanic/Arctic Outpost
  
• Tag items for Field Guide placement
  
• Add Husbandry category to Field Guide
  
• Adding appropriate ice mammoth audio setups
  
• Added inverted concrete ramp and floor icon image
  
• Splitting quests up [CRISIS: ASHLANDS] - Finding Location and Healing the Crew, [STRANDED: ASHLANDS] - Helping the Crew Resupply, [RESCUE: ASHLANDS] - Saving the 2 crew members who where off scouting
  
• Adding concept for persistent mission actors that are spawned as part of missions but can exist and be retrieved outside of missions if required
  
• Adjusted logic for CRISIS, STRANDED and RESCUE to retrieve persistent actors rather than spawn and delete every time
  
• Fixing issue with RESCUE where the stasis bags did not mention where they where crafted
  
• Cliff Placement Pass and Riverbank Pass, Outpost 11
  
• Adding deploy sandworm wood building tier audio and data table setup
  
• Added remaining textures and materials for the Wood Beeswax building tier, including adjusting data table entries for the skinning, as well as tested each piece
  
• Fix Rimetusk head trophy mesh
  
• Added Sandworm frame/pillar to beams set
  
• Additional checks and logging for Foliage Instance Actors in WorldGeneration job
  
• Added line to dry atmosphere modifier that the temperature will fluctuate throughout the day
  
• Adjustment to sandworm wood deploy audio volume and fixing workshop grenade not having correct trigger audio setting for impact event
  
• Cliff Placement Pass and Riverbank Pass, Outpost 11
  
• inital lighting pass, adding far shadows
  
• Added implementation of reinforced glass doors and windows
  
• Lowered the price of glass window types
  
• STRANDED: Dev locked mission as this is not yet available

[/expand]