[2022] Icarus Week Twelve Update | Solo Talent Tree

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

For this update we wanted to start laying the foundation for some big upcoming changes to the talents system, including adding a respec feature next week.

One of the biggest requests we've had since launch was for more Talent Points. We've approached this in two ways:

1. We have straight up increased the Talent Points cap from level 40 to level 50, giving each character an extra 12 Talent Points. You can now gain 60 Talent Points, up from the previous limit of 48.
   
2. We've also split Solo Talent Tree Points into their own group which means you're no longer spending your main Talent Points on Solo Talents.

We're hoping this should alleviate concerns about not being able to unlock enough talents for a single character, whilst still encouraging you to create specialized characters and avoiding any one character being all-powerful.

More Levels and Blueprint Points


A significant change we've introduced is the concept of an ‘infinite levelling system’.

Before we had a hard-cap of level 99 which allowed you to unlock just over 300 Blueprint Points. So that you can access everything added to the Tech Tree now and in future, you can now level up past the soft level cap of 50 and keep earning infinite XP and infinite Blueprint Points. The Tech Tree will continue to grow and expand and we want seasoned prospectors to be able to access all of it.

Originally posted by author: For existing characters, depending on your level, you should now see up to an additional 12 Talent Points available when you next login.

Dedicated Solo Talent Points


In addition to earning more general Talent Points, based on community feedback, we have also separated Solo Talent Tree Points into their own group. This gives players the freedom of spending points for Solo play without the fear of "wasting" their points if in the event they start playing with friends.

Characters will now earn 1 Solo Talent Point every second level, to a maximum of 25 Solo Talent Points. To retain some player choice, we've also expanded the Solo Talent Tree with more talents and enhanced existing talents to make solo characters even stronger - but you will still need to make choices about where those strengths lie.

As a reminder, the Solo Talent tree is only in effect during solo play. As soon as another player joins your game the Solo Talents disengage and those buffs are disabled. If you find yourself alone on the planet again, those Solo Talents will re-engage and the buffs become active once again.

Next Week: Talent Point Respec

Originally posted by author: We wanted to ensure that we implemented a fair and balanced system when it came to respecing but to also make sure players had to make a choice when it came to deciding whether to do a large character respec or create a new character to specialize in different skills. The approach we've gone with is players will use their in-game currency, ‘Ren’, to purchase "Retraining Points". You will then be able to use this Retraining Point to undo a talent accumulation and earn a Talent Point back to spend elsewhere.

We'll go into more detail about the costs of respecing in next week's update, but we wanted to let you know ahead of time that we will also be offering a bunch of free Retraining Points as part of the next update to get you underway.

-Dean Hall, GameRunner

Patch Notes
Version: 1.1.3.91832

• Changed level 99 cap to an infinite leveling system which repeats once you reach level 50 to infinitely rewards blueprint points.
  
• Increased Talent point soft cap from stopping at level 40 with 48 total spendable talent points, to continue to level 50, with 60 total spendable talent points.
  
• Added solo talent points. The solo talent tree now uses its own talent points for progression, these are not shared with the other more general talent trees.
  
• Added several new talents to the solo tree, and adjusted the layout of existing talents.
  
• Added new sleep interface.
  
• Added graphics setting option for contact shadows - an inexpensive way of rendering shadows
  
• Fixed issue where distant mountains in outposts were not casting shadows correctly.
  
• Fixed issue with visual artifacts in the distance.
  
• Fixed not being able to remove the player waypoint by double clicking
  
• Fixed issue where player could have more than one waypoint
  
• Fixed waypoint markers not being given the correct colour
  
• Fixed further instances of some water bodies (especially rivers) missing fish.
  
• Improved the description of the hunting rifle to clarify that it is semi-automatic