The first part of our Hypatia Update is here adding Operations ('Open World Missions') to the Styx Expansion

These have proven really popular in the Prometheus map of our New Frontiers expansion, so we’re excited to bring these to Styx - a map rich with challenging geography, unique missions and violent fauna.

Styx was released back in 2022 and has since undergone a major transformation, with 27 missions, unique fauna, fish species, SMPL3 quests, and more. If you’ve enjoyed New Frontiers, or even Olympus (the original Icarus map), then Styx provides a new challenge for you to sink your teeth into.

Notable Improvements

Mesh and Texture adjustments to most building tiers which will provide some performance benefits and allows us to cosmetically skin these in future
Fixed Longbow being unable to be crafted or repaired on the forge or foundry as it was supposed to be
Fixed some collision issues present on the Arcticus Outpost
General cleanup of many Styx and Olympus missions using new technology and replacing the tech from 2 years ago to provide a better mission experience

This Week: Hypatia: STYX OPERATIONS

Styx has now been completely overhauled adding Operations ('Open World Missions') to the Styx expansion. This updated functionality is free for everyone who already owns Styx.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e3HZGKfwTw

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1995690/Icarus_Styx_Map__Missions_Pack/

These have proven really popular in the Prometheus map of our New Frontiers expansion and will be coming in the next few weeks to the Olympus map.

We’ve converted 19 Missions over to ‘Operations’, meaning they can now be launched and played from your Open World sessions rather than a session that resets itself. This really changes how you play and engage with Icarus.

Styx is a paid expansion, and if you already own it you don’t have to purchase it again to play the Operations. This included people who received Styx for free back when it was initially released.

While we have converted 19 Missions into Operations, we haven’t converted all of them. Some Missions, such as pure exploration ones or time-limit ones, are still best suited to a session-based experience. You can also still play all the Operations in their original Missions format if you prefer.

Extra Detail: Styx as a stepping stone in our development

[expand type=text]The initial intention was for Styx to be a brand new map introducing new creatures and to provide more missions and to present a high quality map to players for free at the time as an apology for the poor quality of Icarus at launch. This was put out as we worked our way towards a more alien environment which we brought with New Frontiers. We learnt a lot in the development of Olympus and were able to implement a lot of these learnings to Styx which made it a much better map for gameplay and in a design sense.

Not only does it employ far better landscape design and points of interest it also broke up a lot of the linear pathing established with Olympus presenting a much more beautiful and interesting map that people wanted to explore. With the inclusion of operations Styx is now a fully formed expansion allowing for the persistent open world experience it was always meant to have.

- Dean Hall, CEO[/expand]

Due to the conversion process of some Missions to Operations some existing prospect saves on Missions for Olympus & Styx may not be able to be completed in their old state. So we have provided a branch on steam that will keep the current build on before this week's patch so you can complete your Missions before switching over. Icarus[pre-hypatia] You can find the full details below.

Icarus[pre-hypatia] branch information

This Week: PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS - Buildings

A couple of weeks ago, we made some improvements to the building system and asked for feedback, along with more suggestions of what you’d like to see. This week, we’re implementing many of those suggestions, which also lead to performance improvements.

Roof Corner pieces now allow placement of other Roof Corner pieces in the same location. This allows you to create your own roofing with two different materials in a V shape.
Half walls now have an upper half variation which can be placed in the same location as the lower half wall, allowing you to make walls from two materials with a horizontal split. Notably, you can make large windows by using glass half walls.

To improve the performance of buildings we’ve converted all building tiers to the kit-based asset system, similar to Stone and Brick tiers. This kit system means each building tier shares a base set of textures, with each piece being created from a kit of pieces that use those textures. This results in much lower graphical memory usage for building within the game.

As an example, the wood building tier has 26 assets with unique textures, that’s a total of 78 textures at 4k resolution. Each piece uses the base kit of 9 textures, plus some individual smaller textures, resulting in 17.25 textures, compared to the original 78.

These kit-based assets provide the best of both worlds - allowing us to use high-resolution textures while keeping the memory usage low. You’ll also be able to see some more of our upcoming building improvements in the future updates section of the patch notes!

Coming Soon: Hypatia Part II: OLYMPUS OPERATIONS

Hypatia Part II will focus on bringing Operations to the original Olympus map. This is making steady progress and we are in the phase of doing detailed testing on mission flow, player interactions and bug sweeping.

This update will also bring Open World Resource Respawning, and we are currently testing this feature. We’ll have more news on when to expect Hypatia Part II: Olympus Operations very soon.

Next Week: Tusker - New Styx Mount

Next week's update will bring a new mount, that will be exclusive to the Arctic region of Styx for now.

This is the Tusker, which is a large, formidable beast with a much higher resistance and health total. It also has a faster stamina regeneration and the highest carry capacity of any mount but is slightly slower compared to the buffalo.

Support our Project

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/app/1648532/Icarus_New_Frontiers/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/33813/Icarus_Complete_the_Set/

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

Changelog v2.1.0.116866

New Content/Hypatia
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Glass BLD rework - added assets to BPs and fixed DM material slot assignments, fixed materials on APEX meshes for Wall_HalfPitch_R upper and lower
Implimented all Iron Buildable asset meshes and materials for the Buildable rework
Concrete BLD rework - added assets to BPs and fixed material assignments, revised APEX mesh for roof piece (added more chunks)
Implimented all meshes for Wood Buildable Rework, as well as removed metalic mask parameter that wasn't needed for wood, scoria and stone buildable materials
Interior Wood BLD rework - Added assets to BPs, added missing support DM for Solid Wall
BLD concrete rework - fixed Roof piece destruction (set damage threshold to 0.1 in DM editor)
Hypatia Stream Merge
Unlocking Styx Operations
Initial branch of files from Trunk to HypatiaMissions
Fixed an issue where t3 and 4 communicators use only prometheus missions
Removed old map icon actor and replaced it with IcarusMapIconComponent.
Removed old drop pod and replaced it with Recieve Transport Pod
Transport ships now stop recording once theyve taken off as a sanity check.
Map icon now stays removed after reloading back into a mission with a deactivated icon.
Transport pod now doesnt stay if you relog while the trasnport ship is taking off
Removed the return to dropship mission on stockpile missions
Removed the mission 'travel to dropship' on Agriculture: stockpile mission
Big shot stockpile mission now cleans up wolf dens once the quest is completed
Removed the final travel mission from 'Preservation: Stockpile'
Removed the final travel mission from the remainder of the stockpile missions.
When the spawn crate quest is ended a 5 minute lifetime is set on the object to clean it up and the recording is stopped
Pay out on quest completion, removing the requirement to return to dropship for CONCEALMENT: Recovery
Payout on quest completion for CLEAN UP: Extermination
Set a 5 minute life time for the supply box and the laser on quest completion for 'Avalanche: Expedition'
Quest automatic clean up CARAPACE: Research
Cleanup quest DEEP VEIN: Extraction
Cleanup quest DRY RUN: Expedition
Changed the search area to be a component on 'Big Shot: Stockpile' mission
OMPHALOS: Expedition is now an Operation
OMPHALOS: Expedition - Cleaned up AI Spawners on mission end, players now collect beacons from a supply pod instead of their dropships, swapped out search area blueprints so the quest now uses the search area components
Fixing up some binaries that couldn't be automerged in the trunk merge
ZEPHYR: Expedition is now an Operation
Updating ZEPHYR: Expedition so the AI spawners cleanup, swapped out search area and map marker BP's for components, replaced dropship collection with supply pods
You can now request resupplies in ZEPHYR: Expedition
You can now request resupplies in OMPHALOS: Expedition
VERTIGO: Expedition is now an operation
VERTIGO: Expedition swapped out search area and map marker BP's for components, replaced dropship collection with supply pods, added resupply, adjusted map markers
OMPHALOS: Expedition added map icons to beacon deploy
RICOCHET: Expedition is now an operation
RICOCHET: Expedition swapped out search area and map marker BP's for components, replaced dropship collection with supply pods, added resupply, adjusted map markers, adjusted quest steps to be more decriptive
ALCAZAR: Construction is now an operation
ALCAZAR: Construction, Swapped over map icons and search areas to use components
HIGHRISE: Construction is now an operation
HIGHRISE: Construction, Swapped over map icons and search areas to use components
BALLISTIC: Extermination is now an operation
BALLISTIC: Extermination, Swapped over map icons and search areas to use components, stockpile ship is now a sinotai retrieval pod, supply ship is also a sinotai pod
ENCROACHMENT: Extermination is now an operation
ENCROACHMENT: Exterminationn, Swapped over map icons to new component
LUPINE: Extermination is now an operation
LUPINE: Extermination, A Supply pod now comes down instead of collection from dropship
Replaced the map marker with icarusMapIcon. All stockpile missions have replaced cargopods with transport pods
HALCYON: Extermination is now an operation
HALCYON: Extermination, swapped to use map icon components and removed boss spawner after mission complete
Replaced map markers with icarus map markers. Added 200 second lifespan to quest droppods when mission is completed
Adding in new map icons for plaving beacons
Added a resupply mission and changed setting lifespan to destroying actors
GOSSAMER: Research -On quest completion all nests are destroyed, map markers are now icarus map icons. Added new resupply mission
IRONCLAD: Research- 9 snap actors clean up after a delay
Opulence: Stockpile -Changed polar bear pelts name to Arctic Pelts in quest description
Crecendo:Surver -Added resupply. Changed search areas to be new bpq search areas. Deleted sandworm on mission completed
Removing return to dropship step from LUPINE
MAELSTROM is now an expedition
HUSK is now an expedition
OASIS: Angler is now an operation
OMPHALOS: Removing search area's and adding map marker instead
GOSSAMER: Fixed Map Marker not showing in the (explore the cave step), also adjusted the mission to it calls down a sinotai pod instead of requiring a dropship
GOSSAMER: Adjusted quest steps to make more sence
OMPHALOS: Fixing Resupply to provide beacons and not radars
Adjusting Olympus Prospect Tree so it works with Hypatia Open World
LIVEWIRE: Terrain Scan- Changed map marker to icarus map icons for all bpq_scan missions. Changed drop pod to new supply pod mission. Added resupply for radar
HOMESTEAD: Construction - Changed search area to new search area type
LIVE WIRE: Construction - Search area changed to new search type
Dry run: Expedition - Added resupply mission
ICESTORM: Expedition. - Added optional resupply mission
Crecendo: Survey. -Changed purple search area to use the beacon icon
HALCYON is now an Operation
Adjusted Bloodclaw spawning location in ANGLER and adjusted fishing icon size
Converting Search area in ZEPHYR to a map Icon
Flatline:Research - Fixed bug where drop pods wouldnt delete on quest complete
Waterfall: Expedition -Changed 3 map icons to be the new icarus map icons. Blockers now are destroyed on quest complete. Added Resupply (Portable_Beacon)
EL Camino: Expedition - All search areas switched to new search areas. Cleaned up debis. Cleaned up containers
Spirit Level: Survey - Removed return to dropship mission. Added resupply. Changed map markers to be new icarus map icons. Changed glacier mission resupply name to match the other missions
Migrating Sands: Survey - Sandworm cleanup on death. Map icon changed to new icarus map icons. Added resupply
Nightfall: Survey - 3 boss icons/SurveyDevice/Crystal have been changed to icarus map icons. Cleaned up 3 wolf dens/Scorpion arena/SurveyDevice/Crystal on mission complete (5 min timer). Sandworm/Scorpion Arena cleanup on death
Fieldtest: Recovery- Changed search area to be new search area. Cleaned up satellites on mission complete. Added resupply
Broken Arrow: Recovery - Cleaned up 3 satelites on quest complete (5 min delay). Removed return to dropship quest
MERIDIAN: Extraction - Added resupply optional mission
WETWORK: Extermination - Changed Search Areas to be new search area types. Removed return to dropship mission. Changed map icons to be icarus map icons. Destroy footprints clue on quest ended
UNEARTHED: Research - Clean up analyser on complete, Changed map icon to new icarus map icon
Kill list: Extermination: - Wolf dens/Clues clean up after 3 min. Switched search areas to be new search areas. Switched map icons to be new map icons
STRANGE HARVEST: Bio Research - Changed collect from dropship to supply pod pickup.Cleaned up flower/satelite/supply pod.changed search areas to be new search areas.Changed map icons to new icarus map icons

[/expand]

Fixed
[expand type=details]

Fixed a typo in the health regen modifier
Fixed Thatch Inverted Right building pieces not being available to build
Adding unique events for scorpion large (arctic) for footsteps and vocals. Duplicating montage to be used for war cry so unique war cry can be used. Increase in volume and pitch to compensate for size
Adding alt surfaces to scorpion arctic footstep events to accomodate for snow etc
ABYSS: Fixed description text of the biome progress step to correctly show the biome name and percentage
Fix Thatch inverted wall right classification
Thatch BLD rework - added assets to BPs and fixed material slots, fixed some APEX and static mesh materials, adjusted rotation/offset of inverted triangle walls as they now use unique meshes
Adding surface check and adjustments to arctic scorpion and adding unique events for warcry vocal and attack and idle snip
Fixed no collision on Arcticus Outpost
Adding cooldown to take satellite inventory sound that plays on caches to avoid multiple sounds playing at once with large caches
Adding sound for when a mission type is selected in the communicator board
Delay the resolving of quest audio music condition changes. Attempts to fix situations where quest music can stop suddenly if quest logic is temporarily waiting between active subquests which contain quest music conditions, which was notably affecting the final music cue of Story6 mission
DEEP VEIN: Re-added dialogue to bonus quest objective, now updated to not mention returning exotics in the dropship
Fixed Ember Gar fishing journal icon
Fixed Clay Brick Beams having Clay Brick Frame durability, this will result in a slight loss of stability
Fixed Longbow being unable to be crafted or repaired on the forge or foundry
Added several extra validation points during Quest initialisation to help prevent cases where Quests may be getting setup before their relevant soft classes have been loaded
Fixed bug where building skin materials were being reverted when building pieces were damaged without 'cracking' beforehand (due to weight)

[/expand]

Future Content
[expand type=details]

Added Tusker lore to the bestiary
Added text for the Seed Pouch and Tusker carcasses
adding addition bat animations to assist with spawning from the nest, idle animation and flight from idle
Adding seed pouch audio for opening seed pouch. Not currently hooked up in BP
Add hooks for exotic deposit replenshing (gated/not called in game right now)
Add hooks for exotic deposit replenshing (gated/not called in game right now)
Added scorpion boss trophy asssets to the project
Added Tusker Bestiary traits and rewards
Added Bat Bestiary traits and rewards
Rebalanced Pronghorn and Chala Bestiary traits: Both give Collision resistance, Pronghorn now gives 5% at rank 1 (was 10%) and Chala now gives 10% at rank 2 (was 5%)
Added small sandworm trophy assets and adjusted position of large sandworm trophy
Updated collision on scorpion boss trophy
More debug hooks for open world exotics replenish (internal dev only)
Placed cliff meshes & painted deacls, Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus
Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Red Quad, Prometheus
Added SMs, Materails and textures for Brutalist Bookshelf, Coffee Table, and BedSingle
Creating bestiary input for tusk and juvi tusk. Adding event, audio and data table entry
Added attack animations for the Bat to choose when attacking the player
Adding bat nest cave and snow variants for spawning the bats, including material and textures
Added IMP & ice cliff meshes then blended in meshes, painted decals, Ice Sheet Yellow Quad on Prometheus
Added fixed placement rules for new building type
Added the remainder of the furniture pieces for the Brutalist Decorative set, including all SMs, textures and materials. DMs still need to be added after a Houdini pass by Ben
Fixed some skewed UV's for DCO_NightStand_Brutalist
Added tusker bestiary image and added it to the bestiary data table
Adding Missing Heads & Trophy Items
Resave child class
Additional placement rules for new building types
Added first implementation of bat nest and cave bat behaviour
Reimport of Bat Nest for the snow to include the base mesh underneath
Adding in missing D_Tames entry for the Juvie Tusker to make taming possible
Clean previous radar scans from map when replenishing world exotics
Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Red Quad and Purple Quad, Prometheus
Disabled the automatic replacement of placement markers swapping to the single dot when using block like placement type
Additional building progress on new pieces
Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Red Quad and Purple Quad, Prometheus
Added Cave_AC_SML_006_NoFoilage, Cave_AC_SML_009_NoFoilage
Adding in Tusker Juvie variant texture and mesh, tweaked fur length and physics asset base pass, still need juvie specific bones and general bone texture for both variants
Adding seed pouch open logic and sound to BP. Audio to be adjusted
Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Red Quad and Purple Quad, Prometheus
Added new functions and cheats to manually spawn World Bosses of type, Regenerate all World Bosses with given Prospect data, destroy all existing World Bosses
Added CAVE_AC_SML_011_NoFoilage, Cave_AC_MED_006_NoFoilage, Cave_AC_MED_009_NoFoilage, Cave_AC_MED_010_NoFoilage & Cave_AC_MED_011_NoFoilage for Ice Sheet
Adding unqiue cave bat wing audio
Modified conditions for logging Preparing Geometry issue as it was receiving a LOT of false positives
Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Red Quad and Purple Quad, Prometheus
Added Cave_AC_MED_007_NoFoliage, Cave_AC_MED_011_NoFoilage, Cave_AC_MED_012_NoFoliage for Ice Sheet
Adjustments to cave bat audio, added disembark from wall / nest, adjustments to reverb, updated flying notifys and BP logic to play in Idle state right away
Added the Exotic Meteor art asset to the project
Adding cave bat idle audio, events and data table entries
Improvements to Tusker mount behaviour and setup. Increased size of Tusker mount to match naturally occuring NPC.
Added charge attack to Tusker (currently bound to right click).
Updated fur setup on Tusker Mount and Juvenile.
Tweaked health, damage, weight, mining radius of Tusker Mount/Juvenile.
Tusker now has a high chance to apply Bleeding debuff on attack
Removed unused and incomplete Iron Frame blueprint and related assets
Added Aluminium building tier durability setup, still uses the same settings but avoids any incorrect adjustment of other tiers in the future
Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Red Quad, Prometheus
Submitting in progress developer assets
New building pieces: Addition of the rest of the base classes and stone tier pieces
Added Interior Wood building tier durability setup, still uses the same settings but avoids any incorrect adjustment of other tiers in the future
Initial blueprint and datatable setup for new frames, pillars, angled frames, roof peak connectors, and roof peak caps
Added cooking related stats to Chef's Backpack, future content
Adding attack voc notifys, reverb and spacial adjustments and fine tunes. general finessing of cave bats
Submitting Slug (reskin) with its texture
Added APEX meshes for Concrete/Brutalist furniture set
Added Half Wall Uppers
Added the ability to place Half Wall Lower and Half Wall Upper in the same position
Added the ability to place Roof Corners in the same location where applicable
Adding cave bat audio event and data table entry
Adding Tusker bone textures and hooking up to SK meshes for Tusker and Juvie
Fixed bug where Autonomous Spawn Behaviours were getting spawned more than once per type
Added Cave_AC_MED_008_NoFoliage, Cave_AC_MED_013_NoFoliage for Ice Sheet
Adding cave bat death and explode audio events
Added arctic bat nest.
Enabled autonomous spawning of arctic bat nests in several arctic zones.
Bats now return to nest if they travel too far away.
Autonomous spawners can now spawn IcarusActors instead of NPCs.
Improved async loading of autonomous spawners and their relevant behaviour / spawn classes.
Removed debug printing from BTTask_RandomFlight
Adding in bat insta gib when dying
Added SPR_IceMammoth_Melee and SPR_IceMammoth_Throwing
Added ITM_FishingRod_Scorpion
Landscape Sculpting Pass and Cliff Pass, Red Quad and Purple Quad, Prometheus
Added new function to reset World Bosses back to prospect default (for use with Operations on Open World Prospects). When World Bosses want to be cleaned up, they are no longer destroyed immediately, instead they wait until tile has been unloaded first (or prospect is reloaded)
Fixed bug where building skin materials were being reverted when building pieces were damaged without 'cracking' beforehand (due to weight)
Adjusting World Boss Spawns to match the prospect data for operations

[/expand]

ICARUS

Icarus Hypatia: Part I Update | 19 new Operations in Styx Open World to play