Beta Weekend 1 was a huge success!
Welcome back, Prospectors.
We topped Steam’s Global Top Sellers chart for our first Beta Weekend, which blew us away for a two-day Beta. Thank you to everyone who pre-ordered, joined us and gave feedback!
Message from Rocket (Gamerunner)
For us Beta Weekend 1 (BW1) was primarily about testing the core of the game, both in a gameplay mechanics sense as well as architecturally. Our servers held up, and the game held up pretty well too. The base survival mechanics were generally solid, but it was clear we needed to develop more on the exploration and survival aspects of the game, even beyond our original schedule. So we did. One of the key lessons I have from past projects is the importance of being able to iterate very quickly. This allows us to adapt the game every Beta Weekend without taking on huge amounts of technical risk.
In Beta Weekend 2 you will see a huge focus on increasing exploration, testing the limits of pacing, as well as slowly opening up more content of the game for us to balance and develop further. We've also started to hints how we will approach the lore.
We'll be watching your videos, livestreams, and VODs and, as always, reading and replying to your posts on the forums and Discord.
Dean Hall
Gamerunner
What’s new in Beta Weekend 2
The key addition this Beta Weekend is storms and extreme weather events. Expect severe winds, flash storms and thunderstorms that can damage your structures and lightning strikes that could even spark forest fires. Don't worry, you'll receive a warning as they approach to give you time to find or build shelter and to unlock your fire whacker, repair hammer or stronger building tiers.
Read our Weather System blog for more details on what to expect.
There's so much more than just storms. We've also added four times more playable area to explore, caves full of valuable metals, more building options, varied animal danger levels and more survival challenges like infections and fractures.
Surprise, we dropped 24 hours early!
We think there are so many new gameplay systems in this Beta Weekend that we’re giving you an extra 24 hours to play. We turned on the servers a whole day earlier at 5pm Thursday instead of 5pm Friday PDT.
That's right, Icarus is LIVE NOW.
There is no change to the end time. The Beta Weekend will continue until 10pm Sunday PDT. We can’t promise that we'll launch early for future Beta Weekends, though.
A Character Wipe
Unfortunately your characters and prospects from Beta Weekend 1 have been wiped. While we prefer not to do this, we had to this time due to the extensive gameplay changes and some big backend improvements. You'll find the levelling up progression much different this time around.
A 4x larger map
Beta Weekend 2 comes with a big increase to the playable area, as shown in orange in the map below. With 4x as much space to explore, expect to find more caves, lakes, waterfalls and cliffs as well as a sneak-peak into edges of the arctic and desert biomes.
Oh, but also, something has happened to your in-game map… It’s temporarily unavailable for this Beta Weekend. The above map is all the info you’ve got to go on - best of luck!
Caves and Mining
Credit: ArmyVet
One of the larger balance changes affects metal ores and caves. While in the first Beta Weekend metal ores were abundant and easy to find, we’ve adjusted their availability in Beta Weekend 2. Almost all valuable metal ores, such as gold, copper, aluminum, are now found exclusively in caves, of which there are more than 30 scattered around this Weekend’s map. This means you'll need to explore deeper into the wilderness as you progress through the planetary tech tree.
More building options and tiers
We were impressed with the amazing structures players posted on social media and Twitch last Weekend, and we’ve listened to your requests for even more building pieces.
Added to the mix are roof corner pieces, half walls, inverted corner pieces, double doors and the option to choose which side of the frame a door hinge will be on by moving your mouse to either side when placing. This Beta Weekend also unlocks two whole new building tiers, Aluminum and Concrete. We’re excited to see what you create with all the new options available to you.
More survival mechanics
Beta Weekend 2 also scales up the survival challenges and solutions with new mechanics, modifiers and debuffs that require careful planning and quick responses. Look out for infected wounds, deep wounds, fractures from fall damage, food poisoning as well as new bandages and poultices to provide relief.
Scaling animal strength
While there were many brilliant animal encounters in Beta Weekend 1, we’ve expanded their complexity and variety as we introduce animal scaling. As you explore further into the wilderness the more aggressive, dangerous, powerful and populated animals will become. Animals will also scale as you level, so be prepared to be challenged at all times.
Basic Firearms
Your weapons are due for an upgrade. Beta Weekend 2 unlocks two highly-requested firearms, the Shotgun and the Hunting Rifle. We’re keen to hear your experiences with these items and look forward to all the amazing clips you’re going to capture.
Credit: StixxAus
Graphics compatibility
While we’ve made many graphics optimizations for this weekend and there will be many more for our full launch, we also learned a lot about how Icarus runs on different people’s graphics cards. We’ve built Icarus to take advantage of many of the latest graphics rendering techniques - so updating your PC to the latest graphics drivers and using DirectX12 will improve performance for many users, including those with AMD cards.
Last chance to win!
Our gleam.io competition to win some sweet Logitech G peripherals and Steam Wallet funds closes at the end of this Beta Weekend. Enter here!
Give us your feedback.
You can submit suggestions and bugs and upvote other people’s feedback using Feature Upvote.
If you want to read a more detailed breakdown of our patch notes, you can find these here in the Steam Forums.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1149460/ICARUS/
