Mounts have arrived on Icarus. After much anticipation, you can now tame a furry or feathery friend and use them as a mode of transport or a pack animal to cart your goods. Choose between a Buffalo or the newly added Moa, an ancient, large, flightless bird native to New Zealand that xeno-biologists have brought back to life on Icarus.

Mounts require you to seek out a juvenile version and capture it before raising it as your own. Craft new equipment such as saddles, food troughs and bedding to care for it and take it on your missions.

Have a read of what to expect with Mounts, and get in to test out our first version of this system.

Taming your Mount

Before you can take your Mount on your adventures, you’ll need to capture and tame one.

Mounts begin as Juveniles, found with their mothers and occasionally other fully-grown adults, that need to be captured by exterminating their current parents, then taking them home with you to form the connection required for them to become loyal.

Finding a Juvenile is trickier than coming across their adult counterparts, so you’ll have to keep an eye out for them.

Make sure to exterminate any other adults in the area, as the Juvenile might run to them to seek a new parent when left defenseless. You’ll also have to protect Juveniles from nearby predators that prey on orphans.

The process to tame a Juvenile and raise it to adulthood should take roughly 15 minutes. Once you have engaged with the Juvenile, you’ll need to look after it until it is domesticated by meeting its needs (food, temperature, sleep, weather exposure). To help do this you can craft a pen to keep it close, a food trough, an animal bed and shelter.

Moa and Buffalo Mounts

The Moa and Buffalo are available to tame as Mounts from this week.

Each animal has its own benefits and limitations, but you can tame multiple mounts and choose whichever is the best for the task at hand.



Buffalo

The Buffalo trades speed for raw power and stamina, and offers the unique benefit a harness with extra storage space. While it can be ridden, using it like a ‘pack horse’ makes it incredibly valuable when mining ore, establishing new bases across the map and carting resources long distances that would otherwise have to be left behind.

While it’s not a combat Mount, the Buffalo’s headbutt attack is always available in a tight spot although it doesn’t deal a huge amount of damage.



Moa

Moa are a more agile creature and provide nimble movement at the expense of stamina and attack options. Moa are designed to be ridden and used as a form of transport, and while they do have limited storage when equipped with a saddle, they don’t offer expandable storage like the Buffalo does.

Their speed boost will allow you to evade danger, traverse landscapes and complete long missions faster. Using the Moa for its strengths will make it a valuable partner in your Icarus adventures.



Both the Moa and Buffalo are versatile creatures, and will be able to trek across any landscape, just like their owners. When tamed properly, they’ll be very obedient and can be commanded to be docile or aggressive, will swim through rivers and lakes with their owner on their back, and will follow you or stay put if commanded.

Your Mount can also be named whatever you wish by clicking on their name in the UI, but be careful not to form too much of an attachment as, in this initial version of the system, they will have to be left behind on the surface after a mission. With future content, Mounts may become a familiar friend as they persist alongside your base.

Saddles, Harnesses and more

To equip your new Mounts, you’ll need the right gear. Saddles, Harnesses, Bedding and Food Troughs can be crafted in-game and are necessary to raise your Juvenile into a usable Mount, ride it or use it as a pack animal.

The Moa and Buffalo Saddles are crafted at the Textiles Bench in Tier 2, and predominantly require Cured Leather as the core ingredient. The harness for the Buffalo is crafted on the Advanced Textiles Bench at Tier 3 and require Platinum Weave also.

The Food Trough is crafted on the Crafting Bench at Tier 2 and requires standard wood, sticks and iron nails. You can fill this with raw vegetables or a hay mix to feed your Mounts.

Bedding can be crafted on the Tier 2 Textiles Bench also, requiring fiber and fur. Make sure to place the bed near a source of warmth to help your Juvenile grow into a fully fledged Mount.

Future Content

We have big plans for where Mounts will take us in future with Mount persistence, Mount levels, a Talent tree, as well as being able to buff them in different ways with different foods. Travelling by Mount lends itself well to a new Open World mode which we have been working on. Everything going according to plan, we will share more plans about that over the next month.

As for the Data Decentralization, we are still working on some gameplay changes and are making a few more alterations to the prospect and character saving format. Specifically, this is going to allow greater control over players' loadouts, workshop inventory and what items can persist between drops, which allows us to look at the possibility of bringing some planetary resources back to station to take on another drop.

Next Few Weeks

Next week we as a studio are going to be undergoing a gaming Research and Development experiment for most of the week, playing some games, gathering data and running through various scenarios so that we can learn from them and incorporate ideas in our future projects. One of our founder Dean ‘Rocket’ Hall’s mantra is that “Games are Played not Made”, so we need to take time to research and study games together as a team. Don’t worry, we will still have an update prepared for you all next week with a revamp of some early missions and the reintroduction of creature to both Olympus and Styx that was long thought extinct.

Changelog v1.2.17.101928

New Content

• Juvenile creatures undergoing taming process are now valid targets for other NPCs hostile to player
• Juvenile animals now use their own custom BTs instead of using existing GOAP behaviours when taming process starts.
• Improved feel of juvenile follow behaviour. Added ability to specify delayed secondary montage sections in base BTTask_PlayMontage.
• Added temporary health bar UI when riding mount
• Added version 2 of the feeding trough as well as proxy meshs for hay, seeds, and veggies to fill it
• Parent NPCs now have child set as ProtectedActor by default if GOAP behaviour requires it. Moa are no longer fully aggressive, will only attack player if they near the moa or it's child
• Added weight component to mount base, mounts can now affect building stability when standing on pieces
• Added functionality to detect when GOAP NPCs are falling out of the world and clean them up correctly in this case
• Add combat music setup for M creature
• Added mount bed asset to the project
• Juveniles and Mounts will now freeze movement / AI when the world tile they're standing on is unloaded
• Adjusted geo on Mount Bed asset to accommodate placement on non flat ground
• Buffalo mount is no longer able to mine voxels
• Added maximum limit of 30 characters for tamed mount name
• Implement talents for unlocking animal bed, food trough and saddles.
• Balance recipes and weight for animal bed, food trough and saddles.
• Prepare future saddles data
• Added juvenile moa and juvenile buffalo carcass items
• Adding in new section to Moa idle montage and decreased the anim section weighting that contains the vocalization to cut down on the repitition, added in new entry for juvenile idle so that the audio can be tweaked to differentiate it from the adult
• SM_ITM_Saddle_Buffalo mesh, textures and material
• SM_ITM_Saddle_Moa mesh, textures and material
• Adding teenage M creature idle nip vocalisation to animation
• Fixed bug where juveniles could be automatically cleaned up by the global spawn manager when their parent died. PossessedPlayers EQS Query Context now includes mounted players
• Juvenile taming progress is now serialised correctly. Mounts and Juveniles now have their D_AISetup row initialised correctly on reload.
• Added new generic NPC recorder component that records AISetup row and survival values
• A server-wide chat message is now displayed whenever a juvenile undergoing taming is killed
• Mounts can now drink from water troughs and lakes. Added new water trough item. Removed developer-only feature flag from mount/juvenile related assets. Mounts will now only search for food in food troughs instead of using the same query as Kea (all containers with food)
• Added new inventory type
• Moved saddles to T3 at Advanced Textiles Bench. This slight additional investment will make mounts feel less required by all players.
• Renamed Basic Pack Saddle to Basic Pack Harness, to better differentiate ridable tames
• Adding audio for Juve Buff to differentiate it between the main buff
• Adding in full pass weighted skeletal mesh saddles for the Moa and Buffalo with physics asset setups to allow for anim dynamics
• Added processor recipe and talent unlock for the water trough as part of the domestication loop, currently using the same cost values as the food trough and in the same section of the blueprint tree
• Added proper pass mess for the food trough in the deployable and deployable preview, updated water trough BP to the same and swapped out the animal bedding BP mesh to the proper pass mesh
• Adding M creature aggro vocals in and data table entries
• Adding in Buffalo Pack harness mesh, previously called the saddle bag, and setup physics assets for anim dynamics, created copy pose anim bp and hooked up the assets to the D_Saddles data table, added in stat to D_ItemsStatic to enable for cargo use only so players can't ride on it
• Added flavour text for weekly patch items
• Added descriptions for weekly patch items
• Mounts now act like normal NPCs when killed (ragdoll -> freeze -> replaced with corpse).
• Players can no longer ride saddles if they're tagged as cargo-only.
• Shifted base ragdoll logic from BP_IcarusNPCGOAPCharacter to IcarusNPCCharacter. Adjusted IcarusNPCCharacter data validation to ignore socket requirements for NPCs without SkeletalMeshes
• Adding in M creature stomp sound and notify
• Adding Buff jump event, adjustments to velocity differences in footsteps and landing impacts
• Applied mount inventory design concept to UMG_MountInterface, added UMG_MountCommands widget, redid UMG_MountInventory and separated saddle from it into its own widget
• Added version of the Food trough to use as a water trough, slightly tweaked the mesh and hue shifted the interior boards to push away visually from the food trough, hooked up int he BP_Water_Trough mesh entry
• Added IsValid check to prevent warnings on getting the players state from the player seated on the mount
• Adding M creature specific whoosh attack sound, adjustments and general fine tunes to overall experience and spawn rates and small volume tweaks and spacializer improvements
• More general mount improvements. Tweaks to jump timing and better velocity transitions. other small mount improvements
• Added Gfur to the Mount Bed BP. Adjusted Mount Bed mesh and LODs to minimise crashing
• Resaved Trough DM with different material ID name to fix warning on startup
• Player can no longer 'claim' an unclaimed mount if they already have one, enforcing a limit of one active, alive tame per player.
• Mounts will now store whatever they had in their cargo / saddle inventories into their corpse when killed
• Add Moa to Conifer SpawnZones on Oly and Styx. Add to Desert for Styx
• Add OLY prefix to Olympus AISpawnZones and delete unused entries
• Add DT validation to detect unused AISpawnZone rows
• General improvements to both buffalo and moa mount audio based on playtest. Adjusted swimming audio to be more appropriate for buffalo etc
• Added Camera FreeLook support while riding mounts, currently functions the same as Player Third Person FreeLook
• Can now CTRL-Click items between mount saddle and cargo inventories
• Mounts can no longer sprint while jumping
• Items contained within mount cargo inventory are now dropped as overflow when removing equipped saddle
• Can no longer equip unsupported saddles on mounts. Added new IInventoryModerator interface that lets actors implementing it add additional logic when checking item/slot validity. Renamed pack harness item to make it obvious that it's for Buffalo only
• Juveniles can no longer trigger a killcam. Shifted generation of aim-assist target component to BP NPC GOAP Character
• When initially led by a player, juvenile mounts will now start with low hunger and sleep, to prevent taming progress from starting until player has returned to their base/camp
• Removed one mount per player limit
• Fixed moa & juvenile moa swimming above the surface of the water
• Amount of camera lag on mount saddle spring arm is now reduced when player is looking backwards
• Adding moa bones assets for after the skinned and harvested state which were previously missing and assigned to the Moa and Mount_Moa corpse BP's
• Audio implementation for creature vs creature hit sounds, audio still to be added. Implemented SpawnHitEffects event in mount base so we get visual hit effects when a mount damages an NPC
• More improvements to moa behaviors. Adding sit vocal and other small tweaks
• Add icons for AnimalBed, Food and Water Troughs and Saddles
• Remove unnecessary defines for ITEM_Missing icon itemable entries
• Refactor mount audio state update function to be more robust. Add Relaxing audio state when mount is in Lying Down movement state
• Renamed Basic Buffalo Pack Harness to Buffalo Pack Harness
• Moved Basic Riding Saddle to T2.
• Set PM for Saddle material
• Add/tweak LODs for saddles
• Add StaticMesh versions of saddles for world context dropping
• Update Meshable entries for Saddles and Water Trough to point to new meshes and correct BPs
• Increasing mount moa and buffalo stamina base regen delay and delay from empty, decreased both mounts base stamina regen flat rate slightly, greatly increased both mount base health and slightly increased buffalo base stamina, doubled the time from 15min to 30min to domesticate both juvenile creatures
• Adjustments and improvements to moa mount footstep blend layers for other surfaces and also adding relax idle event with lower more gentle layers
• Add support for Water Trough to fill when raining and not sheltered
• Disable shadow casting on water plane mesh
• Players can now only place raw fruit/veggies in the animal food trough
• Upping juvenile spawn chance to 75% when their parent type spawns
• Increasing the buffalo turn rate while sprinting to make it feel a bit more in line with the momentum
• Added default D_AISetup rows to both juvenile character BPs
• Added a local controller check to ToggleThirdPerson to fix possible desync when the client switches to third person
• Adding relaxing state audio for laying down for moa mount, adjustment to vocal sit timing, also adding gore sounds for creatures damaging creatures
• Can now activate/deactivate current light slot item when mounted
• Add default AI_Setup row to Moa BP
• Added Mount and Taming icons for UI. Added a button that swaps icons on toggle
• Adding modifier states to use for tame hunger and thirst levels to effect heath and stamina regen values as well as movespeed and regen delays
• ITM_Saddle for Moa, Buffalo and Harness textures update
• Extended functionality of new IconSwap button UMG. First integration of mount 'Commands' UMG with AI behaviours. UMG_Titlebar text now scales to fit if parent slot is too small
• Enabled Moa skinning rewards. - Added skinning event descriptions for juvenile Moa and Buffalo
• Added ability to fill water skins/canteens from water troughs
• Add unique Baby versions for Moa and Buffalo loot which is about half of adult
• Update Moa loot to be White meat instead of Gamey
• Reducing base time to domesticate both moa and buffalo to 20 min
• Adding medium distant moa idle sounds for better blending between close medium and far distances. Removing old unused assets
• Adding more appropriate deploy sound for the animal troughs
• General finessing to audio spawn rates of moas and distancing tweaking
• Adding in a lock to creature attack while sprinting, similar to the jump, this helps with the buffalo slide attack as well as provides another talent unlock opportunity
• Update descriptions on new Mounts related content, Troughs, Saddles, etc to be more descript
• Add Itemable descriptions for Komodo BearCub, Buffalo and Moa carcasses
• Shifted mount behaviour toggles into inventory screen. Added text to display current mount behaviour on commands panel. Mounts set to aggressive behaviour will now consider anyone who recently attacked their owner a valid, hostile target
• Removed developer-only lock on new commands panel in mount interface. Commands panel in mount interface is now hidden if you're not the owner
• Adding in a simple danger avoidance on the mount movement behavior tree, initial implementation
• Adding weight bar to mount display

Fixed

• Fixed bug where Kea wouldn't ignore food containers that were over the maximum distance when looking to eat
• Fixed bug where map icons wouldn't appear if player wasn't possessing their player character
• Fixed a bug where the 'Multiplayer Ghost Buildings' setting would be turned off but you could still see deployable ghosts from other players
• Fixed bug where juveniles wouldn't eat unless they were also tired
• Remove obsolete Beta Weekend UI assets from project
• Remove FTUE UMG content from Space Main Menu in order to not load assets not needed
• Remove hardcoded references to deleted string table entries for BW4 Satellites mission
• Fixed a bug where the multiplayer ghost settings being turned off would still show other players placement helpers
• Fixed a bug where if the player mounted a creature and was at a distance that the name UI over their head would dissapear, when coming back into range, the name would be visible but it would not be correct and instead show 'Test Human'
• Fixed bug where clients (and server) couldn't see current juvenile 'parent' in tool tip text
• Fixed a bug where when going into a cave while riding a mount wont cause the caveworms to reveal themselves
• Changed Accolade Ribbon texture compression to DXT1 to reduce memory consumption by ~75MB
• Set Texture Compression on Item Icons to be DXT5 in order to reduce memory consumption by around 250MB
• Fixed a bug where the player would be in first person perspective, mount onto a creature and then on dismount would always be in third person perspective
• Player Food/Water/Oxygen reset to 20% on revive, even if it was higher before, ensure player is receives the greater of previous values, or 20% of max food/water/oxygen on revive
• Add DT Validation for Talents DT to flag any rows with no Talent Tree defined as invalid. Deleted several entries that matched this criteria
• Fixed issue where players didn't get the prompt to cancel current taming operation. Fixed juvenile moa not animating.
• Fixed issue where juveniles would only eat from unsheltered food troughs.
• Lowered capsule size of Moa/Buffalo Juveniles and Moa Mount to ensure they can freely navigate through single doors and other small spaces.
• Fixed Buffalo LookAt snapping after finishing current montage.
• Tweaked location and size of juvenile/mount head blocker collision
• Fixed bug where player could be left in mid air if mount they were riding on was improperly destroyed (without going though ActorState damage path)
• Creatures placed on the skinning bench do not get ragdoll physics when loading game, increase both settle time and minimum velocity when corpses are placed on skinning bench, add physics shapes to edges of skinning bench to prevent corpses from falling off during settle
• Fixed a bug where hopping off a mount would do the setup for placing the players map icon allowing a single player to have many icons stacked ontop of each other and causing a heavier icon shadow every time you dismount
• Fixed missing 'NOT' operator when checking whether or not a player can ride on a cargo saddle
• Fixed a bug where when picking a carcass up, a button would pop up to 'place' the carcass. This button has been removed to reduce confusion
• Update Visual Map textures for T016/T017/T019 to use DXT1 compression which reduces memory consumption by 90% (80MB per map)
• Delete old (2020) unused PROC textures for Olympus
• Fixed issue where juveniles were slowly getting thirsty without a way of drinking, Juveniles no longer lose water over time. Fixed leather curtain doors incorrectly affecting navigation, NPCs should now be able to navigate correctly though.
• Fixed Buffalo Juvenile not having a correctly scaled cloth affector
• Fixed several mount interface UI display issues
• Fix splash sound sometimes not playing when player jumps into water
• Remove debug information from IcarusSplineNet showing in Debug builds by gating it behind a Bool in the BP
• Fixed game crash by adding 'Allow CPU Access' to new Animal Bed fur mesh
• Updates and improvements to mount audio. Fine tuned moa / buffalo footsteps, swimming volumes and general finessing of the mounting experience
• Remove Development feature level requirement from mount AI audio data. Remove threat audio configuration from juvenile buffalo audio data
• Fixed Buffalo mount using wrong collision profile for it's cloth affector component
• Fixed bug where mount cargo inventory UI would become invisible when re-opening the mount interface. Added temporary UI in Mount cargo inventory to suggest player equips saddle to access cargo. Hid 'Talents' tab in mount interface
• Added missing herbivore food tag query data
• Mount behaviour actions UI is now hidden behind developer feature level. Collapsed WIP survival value indicators on on-HUD mount health bar
• Fixed a bug that due to an oversight on removing the deployable component, the player could no longer harvest bones from a corpse. Added query for animal corpse instead of using deployable tag that fixes this
• Mount survival UMG health bar is now scaled 50%
• Corrected bus routing for mounts and also adding needler death vocals and event
• Fix creature death fall audio not playing on clients. Changes in how we instantiate NPC ActorState component meant it could be null when creature audio component initialised, so now am waiting until the ActorState is valid before binding to death events
• Fixed issue with juvenile tames where they'd get destroyed if there were no players nearby
• Fixed bug where cargo items wouldn't get ejected properly when removing equipped saddle; Mount item overflow location wasn't getting updated after initial spawn
• Replaced mount command icons and slightly adjusted spacing between buttons in MountCommands. Slightly adjusted animation in ToggleButton_IconSwap
• Shifted head collider for Moa to hopefully fix issue where they spawn underground
• Fixed a bug where the animal highlight talent wouldn't highlight juvenile animals
• Corrected timing for juvi moa nip idle vocal
• Remove ITEM_Missing icon defines
• Updating Mount UI, placed inside a border
• Mount Sprint speed is now displayed in stat list and attack information has been removed
• Fixing Mount UI Stats so they corretly show the Mount stats and not the players
• Reduced maximum distance mounts will travel to drink from nearby water bodies
• Adjusted commands layout, temporarily removed button animation. Slightly adjusted MountInterface Layout
• Changed mount/juvenile follow behaviour to allow movement off navmesh
• Tweaked CritHead spheres on Buffalo and Scorpions to make sure they encapsulate desired area
• Mounts set to 'Passive' combat mode will attempt to run from nearby hostile actors.
• Fixed bug where mount status effects weren't displaying properly in the inventory screen
• Mounts will no longer attempt to run from hostiles when following player
• Code Fixes and Cleanup for Mount Character Class
• Water and food trough deployables no longer block navigation
• Fixed collision on concrete, aluminium, thatch and wood stairs to allow mounts to climb them properly

Future Content

• Enable footstep and other movement systems to work with lava lakes:
• Add Lava physical material and surface type, and add corresponding data to D_Surfaces and FMOD surface types
• Update lakes to set physics volume PM override using their material's PM if it's non-default, and apply Lava PM to lava materials
• Update ground surface checks etc. to handle water objects with non-water surfaces
• Assigning proper texture groups to various DLC foliage
• Fixed warning that was being displayed because it didn't detect the keyword 'new' in the directory or name
• Added Rocks to Geothermal Lake, Replace Macros with IMP & Landscape Painted LC Area on Purple Quad, DLC Map
• Landscape painting, cliff placement, and frozen lakes placement, Blue Quad, DLC
• Landscape Sculpting, Landscape Painting and Riverbank Pass, Green Quad, Prometheus
• Initial setup to provide some lava flow parameters to lava river audio:
• Add a step to WT_RiverSpline content baking which finds lava flow point actors which overlap spline points, extracts relevant data and passes it to the generated river actors
• Add runtime functionality to river audio components to calculate lava flow values from the cached data
• This approach is a necessary workaround since we can't access the actual values calculated by the lava flow points at runtime or sample the RVT from BP
• Added BPs for SW_Mangrove_Var2, SW_Mangrove_Var3, and SW_Mangrove_Var4
• Adding more foliage to test scene
• Ice Waterfall Top - meshes, textures, material added
• Ice Waterfall Bottom - 3x meshes, textures, material added
• Reimported APEX_BLD_Wall_Triangle_L/R meshes to fix warning msgs about bad normals
• Testing texture setting optimization by removing a set of icons from the UI texturegroup to see if they're still fully loaded automatically
• Added RVT option for Lava Lake Material
• Update lava river flow audio values to transition more smoothly by lerping in weight when approaching boundaries of flow zones
• Added Deffered decals material for snow transtions to help frozen river to waterfall blend
• D_LC_ErosionRockBlend - edited material to increase displacement
• Adding Clay Brick Buildings & Depoloyables Datatable Setup, Blueprints, Recipes and Talents
• Fixing Various Building Tag queries which where returning true when the should not have been (For example Aluminium was thought it was Stone)
• Adding Iron Sledgehammer item to datatables
• Adding new stats for Shattering Damage and Shattering Yield
• Changes to the quality of code as per the code review: ICRST-CR-208
• Changed TextureGroup back to UI on test icon set as test (CL 101272) failed
• Adding Iron Sledgehammer Talent and Recipe
• Fixing Misaligned Masonary Bench on T2 Blueprint Tree
• Adding Shattering Damage and Yeild to the Iron Sledgehammer
• Adding T2/T3/T4 Mission Communication Devices Data table Setup, including Recipes, Talents, Account Flags
• LavaFlow mesh import adjustment on Z value
• Finished Adding Rocks to Geothermal Lakes, Finished Replace Macros with IMP & Painted Decals Around Lava Lakes on Purple Quad, DLC Map
• Swamp Macros - LOD pass, material edits on 01, plus GL and TU variants
• Landscape Sculpting, Landscape Painting and Riverbank Pass, Green Quad, Prometheus
• Landscape painting, cliff placement, and decal pass in arctic biome, Blue Quad, DLC
• Set FrozenLake to be a BP to allow vertex painting
• Adding Neelder Attack audio and event
• Adding needler flinch audio and event
• LavaFlow mesh - reimported with Z value adjustment (fixed bad import)
• Updated Prospect images to use DXT1 compression to save memory. Fix source file locations/names
• Add calls to a footstep receiver interface when the player stands on an actor. Enables us to add custom footstep sweeteners on specific world objects
• Fix generation issues on WT_GeothermalSpline
• Added spline rotation function to single mesh splines on WT_RiverbankSpline tool to improve general mesh placement
• Swamp Macros - LOD pass, material edits on 02, plus GL and TU variants
• Landscape painting, cliff placement, and decal pass in arctic biome, Blue Quad, DLC
• added larkwell armor textures, materials and mesh pack
• Landscape Sculpting, Landscape Painting and Riverbank Pass, Green Quad, Prometheus
• Added CustomPrimitiveData variable for Snow Height on Tundra Rocks
• moved larkwell mesh pack to it's correct folder
• Swamp Macros - LOD pass, material edits on 03, plus GL and TU variants
• Improve CF Grass LOD settings to prevent billboard meshes being loaded so close to camera
• Adding in a new moa sprint jump animation to be unlocked by a talent later on