Week 89 is here and - with only one week until New Frontiers - we’ve decided to do a week of focusing on Quality of Life improvements and introducing some new benches that allow for all the new content to come next week.

A bunch of QoL improvements recommended by our community have been added, including new keybinds and adjustments to blueprints.

On top of this, we’ve added three new benches - a Tier 3 Masonry Bench, a Tier 3 Forge and a Tier 4 Foundry (which are the higher tier versions of the Tier 2 Anvil).

These provide a more streamlined progression for the items previously on the lower tier variations of these benches, and allow for simpler consolidation to save floor space as you progress through the levels.

Finally, the New Frontiers Gameplay Trailer premieres this weekend on YouTube, and you can sign up to watch with us at the link below.

New Frontiers: Gameplay Trailer

The New Frontiers Gameplay Trailer premieres on YouTube this weekend, Saturday the 19th at 6pm EDT.

Just like last week's ‘The Seeker’ premiere, we’ll be on Discord answering questions and watching along with you - so come join us!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxSXjL2nVAg

Quality of Life

Before we launch New Frontiers, we wanted to spend this week making some QoL adjustments that the community has asked for.

• We’ve added a ‘Loot All/Take All’ key-bind option for you to map in the controls menu
• We removed XP debt upon death this also removes any outstanding XP debt that remained from a death before this change was implemented
• The ‘drop’ keybind will now default to ‘unbound’ rather than Q, but can still be set manually. You can still drop items by dragging them to the drop box in your UI
• Building pieces can now be unlocked as ‘Building Pack Kits’ rather than individual items. This will save your blueprint points for other unlocks, only requiring three per building tier now for three ‘packs’
• If a blueprint provides multiple recipes, the UI will now show all the recipes that it will unlock
• Farming and Harvesting XP have been added to the new farming system changes from last week
• All T2 and above arrows now craft in packs of five and higher tiers of arrows have had their costs reduced to balance against this
• Fur has received a balance, with the amount found on aggressive creatures reduced, and increased on passive creatures. This is because of the lack of recipes requiring fur, and the abundance of engagements with aggressive creatures leading to players stockpiling so much of it.
• We’ve added an alternate ‘Steel Bloom’ recipe that uses charcoal
• We’ve added more seed packets for seeds which were currently missing from the workshop pool

Forge, Foundry & Advanced Masonry Benches

This week we’ve added three new benches in preparation for the new content to come in New Frontiers, and also to provide a consolidation route for benches as you progress up the tiers.

These are the T3 Masonry Bench, The T3 Forge and T4 Foundry. The Forge and Foundry are the higher tier variations of the Anvil found in T2.

All of these benches contain the recipes of the previous benches so, as you build the new versions, you can deconstruct previous iterations to save room in your base. This also means we have shuffled some recipes around to make this more streamlined and easier to navigate.

The new tiers of benches are:

Tier 2 Masonry Bench → Tier 3 Masonry Bench

Tier 2 Anvil → Tier 3 Forge → Tier 4 Foundry

The Tier 3 Masonry Bench will focus on brickwork, and while this week it only contains the recipes from the current Tier 2 bench, from next week it will include the brand new building items that come with New Frontiers. This means that once the Tier 3 Masonry Bench is built, you can scrap your Tier 2 variation as all recipes will be available on this option.

The Tier 3 Forge will now hold all the recipes for tools, shields, bows, crossbows, arrows and bolts that were unlockable at Tier 3 but craftable on the Tier 2 anvil. It will also have all the Tier 2 recipes, but the Tier 2 anvil will no longer have any recipe for an item that is above Tier 2.

The Tier 3 Forge requires coal or charcoal to fuel while you craft, and also needs to be placed outdoors to allow for ventilation.

The Tier 4 Foundry is the pinnacle of tool crafting on Icarus, and has all the Tier 2 and Tier 3 recipes of the Anvil and Forge, along with all the Tier 4 recipes that were previously available on the anvil also.

This is a large machine, and requires a lot of space. Because it requires electricity to run, it also needs to be placed inside, and a strong power source is necessary to keep it running.

This new system allows for you deconstruct lower tier benches as you craft the higher tier ones, alleviating any issues with the growing need for floor space, but also allowing for the evolution of items in your base as your level grows. Ideally, a base running high level electronics wouldn’t also be housing a basic anvil, and these new benches allow for that progression.

With the addition of these new benches, the blueprints tree has also been altered slightly to reflect the shift. You may notice some gaps, but these will be filled next week as all the New Frontiers content is added to the tech trees.

New Frontiers

We are now less than a week away from the New Frontiers expansion and the excitement in studio and among the community is palpable. For those of you who haven’t caught up on what’s to come, here’s our announcement blog to check out.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1149460/view/3684558162502822183

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/2445280/Icarus_Interior_Decorations_Pack/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1995690/Icarus_Styx_Map__Missions_Pack/

Changelog v1.3.11.114779

New Content
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• Setting up T3 Masonary Bench, Assets, Talents, Recipes, Icons, Animations
• T3 Masonary Bench Proxy Meshes Fixed Collision
• Added T3 Masonary Bench Proxy Meshes, Textures & Material
• Setting up T3/4 Anvil Benches, Assets, Talents, Recipes, Icons, Animations (Dev Locked for now)
• T4 Anvil - fix and reimport of output proxies to correct position and avoid stacking
• T4 Anvil - added destructible mesh
• Adding Charcoal steel bloom alternate recipes
• Adjusting all arrow and bolt recipes to craft 5 arrows or bolts, reducing recipes cost for the higher tier arrows and bolts
• Removing Tool / Weapon Recipes from the Machining Bench and Fabricator and placing them on the T3/T4 anvil Benches
• Removed unused references on T3 anvil destructable mesh
• Adding T4 Anvil bench impact sound, start / loop / end event, BP imp and data table entry
• Using parent class logic to replicate audio for anvil t3 instead of creating new logic. Simplified BP setup
• Set up start / loop / stop event to play when Anvil T3 is activated. Set replication to play for clients
• Added text for Forge, Foundry, and Masonry benches
• Updated name of the T3 Masonry Bench to Advanced Masonry Bench to differentiate it from the T2 bench

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Fixed/QoL
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• Update normal shovel description and flavor text to match new Stone Shovel description and flavor text, which better communicates its uses
• Updated the Supply and Demand talent to apply to crafted bolts as well as arrows
• Updated credits page
• Fur Rebalance: Significantly increased the amount of fur granted by passive creatures and significantly reduced the amount of fur granted by hostile creatures. This affects both skinning an the skinning bench. The aim is to allow players to gather fur earlier in the game easier, while reducing the abundance of fur as you progress through the tech tree
• Large deer now have their own loot distinct from regular sized deer, yielding more leather, fur and increased chances of gamey meat
• Adding in Additional Farming Seed Packets for thouse that weren't present in the workshop
• Enabled recipe set view for blueprint tooltips
• Cleaned up contents of blueprint tooltips
• Adding XP events for planting, harvesting, watering and fertilizing crops
• Combined building blueprints, refunding the existing blueprint points spent. Building sets are now split into 3 groups: Base, Advanced and Trim. Base Sets have beams, floors, walls, angled walls, ramps and doors. Advanced Sets have roof corners, half pitches and half pieces. Trim Sets have railing, trap doors, windows and ladders. All variants of the building piece type are now unlocked within the same building set
• LIVEWIRE: Reduced the spawn rate of smaller creatures to help new players get used to the game
• AGRICULTURE: Supply Stockpile has been renamed to ACCUMULATON
• ACCUMULATION: Reduced resource requirements across all objectives, but particularly cooked meat
• Fixed workshop gear with a large number of stats having parts of the tooltip UI not appear correctly
• Tweaked building sets, moving items into trim sets if it makes sense for the set. Renamed some trim sets to better communicate their aesthetic
• Removing Experience Debt, players no longer gain experience debt when they die, any existing debt is removed
• Watering Can now only grants experience once per water action and only if a crop plot required water
• Added new crop plot modifier icons
• Added UI to the blueprint tooltip to show if the unlocked blueprint recipe shown is for multiple output (eg arrows and bolts)
• Tweaked distribution of outside voxel resources, reducing salt and oxite, while increasing resources favored to each biome
• Setting up carpet data entry that was missed for player footsteps. All rugs will now sound like carpet
• Fixed Tomato and Potato decay setting to correctly grant spoiled plants
• Drop Key is now unbound by default
• Fixed Bean Seed Packet giving Squash
• Fixed Typo in Fertlize Crop tooltip when viewing crops with fertilizer
• Added action reminder when holding Fertilizer
• Fixed Wild Coffee granting Cocoa seeds
• Added to dynamic quest rewards: Shields, Seeds and Shovels
• Updated existing farming related dynamic rewards to use seeds instead of grown plants

[/expand]

Future Content
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• Lava Hunter Arena, Clean Up Landscape and Added Few Rocks in Purple Quad on Prometheus
• Fix damage numbers and audio feedback sometimes incorrectly presenting damage as crit or hardened.
• Spawn damage numbers function was re-checking crit status of hits for itself, and in some cases e.g. DOT effects would do this incorrectly - instead we now just pass it the crit area value from the damage packet which has already been calculated.
• This change only has a cosmetic effect
• Bulk commit of updated thatch buildables
• Fixed Ground Collision in Swamp & Floating Rocks in Cave on Blue/Purple Quad, Prometheus
• Adding Niagra system propogation to NPCTrailComponent,
• Adding first pass WIP VFX for slug slime trail, updating NPCTrailComponent_Slug with correct niagra system reference
• Updating mission communicator overlay for priority missions
• ProStory5: Increase spawn rate of creatures during defense phase, added swamp slug
• ProStory5: Fixed base being unable to be interacted with during final phase
• Fixed priority mission overlay appearing while already on a mission
• Added background blur to priority mission overlay to help separate it from the dynamic mission buttons behind it
• Final pass on slug trail VFX, culling setup.l
• Fixed issues with future collect and deliver item missions that require a stat on the item failing to find the correct item in the players or delivery targets inventories
• Setting up App Ids and DLC Flags for Outposts 4, 6, 7, 8 and assigning to talents
• Small update to subwave sound. Slightly less distortion
• Adding sound of the suit subwave harmonic generator intermodulator to play before dialogue event so the dialogue feels like its reacting to it
• Imprrovements to lava lake audio when in a cave
• Smooth landscape near Lava Hunter Arena, Added Macro IMP Meshes to Artic & Fixed Grass Floating in the Grasslands on Green/Purple Quad, Prometheus
• Adjusting displacement on slug trail material
• Updated slug slime trail RAO texture with minor seam fixed
• Adding the best sounding PM to the fortifications. Sounds less hollow than wood floor
• Adding optional curve to control trail fade out in BP_NPCTrailComponent, will default to PercentageTimeLeft if bool unchecked. Adding curve for slug slime trail
• Adding a more appropriate sounding PM to wood railing
• Fixing narrative music looping issue
• Adding gasfly explosion to play for clients
• Fix search area isn't shrinking as clues are discovered on PRO_Story6_Traitor
• Dialogue retiming for mission 6
• Added the updated verisons of the stairs and half ramp thatch pieces
• Fix shader parameter names, reversed normal map and highlighting for hunting trails
• Adjustments and improvements to the orbital laser kaboom. Adding bwaaaaah
• Lava Hunter Arena, Blended Rocks into landscape in Purple Quad on Prometheus
• Orbital Strike vfx iteration
• Added dev cheats for growing crops instantly
• Added several Wall pieces for Thatch buildable rework
• Fix hunting trails highlighting on clients and trails moving/resetting every save/load if entire quest objective not complete
• Added several reworked thatch roof buildable pieces
• Added several more wall pieces for Thatch Buildable Re-work
• Adding Map Masks for the OW Selection Screen to tidy up the Drop Point Selection View
• Added spawn rules to outposts to prevent multiple apex predators (such as bears or polar bears) from spawning in the area, the same as other play modes
• Update gas flyer loot bag mesh
• Fixing issue with texture groups for the Needler
• File name correction of the Needler Statue - Stone
• Resubmitting Komodo Variation textures and mesh due to wrong file names
• Submitting Komodo Variation Statue - mesh and textures
• Fixed bug where Slug's AimAssist sphere collider was including bounds of trail component.
• MegaTreeAudioVolume collision is now configured in Constructor instead of PostInitializeComponents.
• Slightly increased max spawn distance on Story5's swarm spawners.
• Remove water-type navigation modifiers from North-East swamp area in PROM
• Fixed Collision Near Mission Cave in the Grasslands on Green Quad, Prometheus
• Added Outpost 006 Minimap Data and created new in game map for Outpost 006
• Added Outpost 004 Minimap Data and Created New In Game Map for Outpost 004
• added sk meshes, missing textures and materials for larkwell armour
• Added new weather debuff icons
• Replaced priority mission border background
• Updated Prometheus In Game Map to reflect recent world changes, Prometheus
• Renamed Polar Bear Pelt to Arctic Pelt in preparation for new creature releases with New Frontiers
• Renamed Polar Bear Armor items, blueprints and talent to Arctic Armor
• Small adjustment to subwave generator before dialogue
• Adding additional BP imp to stop the G15 scanner from playing again if it's already activated. Also delay to dialogue line that interrupted important moment
• Added Outpost 007 Minimap Data and Created New In Game Map for Outpost 007
• Lowering the predator bird swoop whistle by 2db
• Fixed item rewards from dried trees in the lava to ensure they grant a small amount of wood when harvested with an axe
• Updating lava hunter event min max to be the same as the spacializers. Increased distance of roar spacial
• Setting up Exploration Missions for Prometheus
• Batch commit of thatch buildable rework assets
• Add a large scale damage component for the oribital laser
• Added the ability to spawn creatures with bonus levels as part of normal swarm logic
• PRO_Story_5: Added additional levels to spawns, as this is in a lower level area, slightly reduced spawn rates
• Adding in second version of the egg as well as materials and fixed main egg UV problem with a reimport of the correct UVSet mesh
• PRO_Story_5: Tweaked spawning parameters to improve mission performance, minimal impact on gameplay
• Added drop ship locations for Prometheus story missions
• Enabled new particle effects for Lava Hunter's Earth Splitter attack.
• Reduced base health of Lava Hunter, slightly increase per-player additional health.
• Fixed Lava Hunter's hard points not working.
• Cooldown between stumble anims caused when dealing damage to Lava Hunter in limping state increased.
• Improved Lava Hunter navigation ability when target not on navmesh.
• Increased damage of Lava Hunter ranged attack projectiles.
• Increased max range of Lava Flyer explosion damage.
• Fixed Lava Hunter eggs expanding infinitely for clients.
• Added IK to BlueBack
• Removed DropShip 6 from Outpost 008
• Datawise missions are now opt in, you will need to make sure to setup the mission correctly for it to be triggered in open world
• Updating prospect talent UI to display 'mission unavaible' if a mission is not triggerable on open world
• Rewording Achievements to future proof
• Prometheus: Update new canteen and oxygen tanks in the workshop to cost red exotics
• Rebalance Larkwell Oxygen tank modifier to grant higher health regeneration and some exposure resist instead of movement speed
• Adjusting Iceholm & Holdfast App Id's for DLC Flags
• Added DM supports meshes INT wood For Buildable Rework
• Removed Cliff Actors from persistant level, Readded the dropship spawns and Respawn Pods, Outpost 008
• Adding Quest Marker for Swamp Construction Prometheus Quest
• Ducking interior dropship sequence audio when dialogue is playing to allow clearer and more audible dialogue playback
• Removed DM supports meshes with wrong names For Buildable Rework
• Added RoofPeak_CapEnd_Thatch reworked buildable piece to project
• Updating Cultivations to have a forceset functions for prebuild structure setup
• Updating farm present in Story Mission 5 so it has grown plants
• Added Outpost 008 Minimap Data and Created New In Game Map for Outpost 008
• Added infographic icons to scoria building piece icons
• Removed All Respawn DropShip from Outpost 008
• Added infographics icons to scoria pitch buillding piece icons
• Removed All DropShip from Outpost 008
• Updating Feature Levels for the new outposts
• Fixed a few typos in highlightable and st_umg
• Replacing depreciated niagra modules on NS_WaterSplash. Adding NS_LavaSplash, hooked up in BP_PlayerEffectsComponent to play when jumping into lava. No longer plays water splash effect when jumping into lava
• Adjusting the blueback footstep spacial curve to be a little more audible over longer distance to assist with mission location. Also adjusting dialogue for Daisy mission Fail
• Fixed deployable preview for Organic Residue Cleanser
• Updating Drop Locations for Prometheus Construction and Research Missions
• Fixed Riverbanks & Cleanup on Green Quad, Prometheus
• Dialogue timing adjustment and lowering broodling attack sounds and spacial slightly to avoid volumes becoming overwhelming when surrounded
• Updated Blueprint Tooltip to prevent the Crafted At section from overlapping it's icon when the name is too long, this is both for future benches and translated text
• Setting up Prometheus Construction mission and enabling for NF
• Regenerated Visual Height Map Textures to fix blurry heightmaps, Prometheus
• Added shadow geo for reworked thatch buildables
• Added Outpost 008 Heightmap Data and Created New heightmap for the In Game Map for Outposts 008, 007, 006 and 004
• Adding Quest Marker for Swamp Research Prometheus Quest
• Added DM supports meshes Glass For Buildable Rework
• Removed DM supports meshes with wrong names For Buildable Rework
• Adding Notifiers for Extracted Item, Planted Seed and Crop Matured
• Setting up and Unlocking Prometheis Extraction Mission
• Fixing issue iwth being unable to unlock heavy obsidian armor
• Refreshed out of date D_Ballistic data table
• Adding in Quest Marker Locations for Arctic Extraction Mission
• Adding new Prometheus Research Mission
• Adding new crafting notifier subsystem
• Added ability to disable recording of Ballistic Actors via bDisableRecorderComponent flag inside D_Ballistic. Lava Hunter spit particles and all other pooled ballistics are no longer recorded. Lava Flyer spawn count per egg now scales with nearby players. SpawnAIAtCursor cheat now takes in an optional AI level parameter. BTTask_PerformAction_SpitAttack now correctly pools ballistics if required. Movement during LavaHunter_RetreatAndPowerUp action should now handle areas with no navigation better. Fixed bug where Lava Hunter wasn't playing it's heavy hit react / power up action when entering it's second phase of combat
• Fixed Cliff Actor sticking through cave in Lava Biome and Fixed Seams in Geothermal pools, Purple Quad, Prometheus
• Further improvements to orbital laser destruction
• Adding very small cooldown to transport pods to avoid double ups of playback on clients
• Setting up Bone Armor Twitch Drops and unlocking bone armor
• Added gasflyer statue stone static mesh, textures and material
• Small DLC dialogue delay
• Update story prospect names to match biomes the mission takes place in
• Shorten duration of orbital laser damage
• Fix Story mission faction selection and add datatable validation to ensure these do not play additional random dialogue
• Added commenting into 'GetSeedRow' to show that if the stat is 0 then the seed has no type to it
• Fixed Needler Alert Widget and Healthbar disappearing when attacking
• Adding Extermination mission to prometheus
• Adding common hunt mission
• Fixed issue where abandoned missions would show as completed in the on-prospect mission board
• Fixed a seam between landscape and geothermal pool and removed voxels in the pesistent level, Purple Quad, Prometheus
• Changed name of exotic node spawn cheat to not conflict with other SpawnAI cheats in search box
• Added cheat to spawn exotic nodes at cursor
• Updated all cave Template on Prometheus
• Added a keybinding to loot everything in an inventory (defaulted to Q)
• Added SM_BLD_Wall_Windowframe_Glass, SM_BLD_Wall_Doorframe_Glass, SM_BLD_Wall_Win_DBL_Glass_L, SM_BLD_Wall_Win_DBL_Glass_R DM Meshes, AO Masks & Set Up Materials for Buildable Rework Investigation
• Landscape Sculpting, Cliff Pass and Updated in Game Map to reflect these changes, Outpost 008
• Gate brambles overlap checks to server side only
• Remove instanced foilage actor from persistent level
• Adding time to prometheus missions
• Fixed being able to drop items while using orbital loadout request
• Adding rock dog explode attack audio and event. Not hooked up yet until new VFX are in
• Recreate water spawning rule
• Added art assets for ITM_Bio_Spray A-D
• Replacing the placeholder projectiles on the StoneJaw spit attack with projectiles that spawn lava spots on the ground, added entries for the modifier used for the spots
• Small adjustment / addition to increase the length of slug gas attack
• Fixing issue where the red workshop knife and blue workshop knife stats where switched
• Adjusted Burn, Electroshock, Miasma & Freeze modifier debuff stats, damage, descriptions
• Added new spawn rule for spawning near water
• Fixing Workshop Red Exotics text and image not appearring correctly when researching / purchasing items
• Fixing the timing of orbital laser damage
• Activating missing exotic nodes in prometheus
• Very small adjustment to blueback idle spawn rate and spacial setting
• Lava Hunter spawn count is now scaled by nearby alive players.
• Lava Hunter will now stop laying eggs mid-way through lay action if maximum nearby children count is reached.
• Un-hatched Lava Hunter eggs should now be counted in nearby children calculations.
• Lava Hunter eggs are now valid AITargetables and can be attacked by nearby NPCs that are hostile to them
• Fixed missing material reference in M_LavaBomber_Wings
• Predator birds will no longer dive bomb players inside shelter. Fixed predator birds not correctly tracking target when diving. Predator bird's dive target is now cleared periodically instead of persisting. Increased Predator Bird's melee attack radius. Disabled debug drawing of spawn EQS in PROM Story 5 mission
• Mark sickle only brambles as Resource_Node interactables
• Added SM_BLD_Floor_Quarter_Glass, SM_BLD_Wall_Half_Glass, DM Meshes, AO Masks & Set Up Materials for Buildable Rework Investigation
• Fixing Solarpanel step, chemistry bench step and seamp creature step in prometheus research mission
• Fixing up typo's in prometheus construction mission
• Adding post process material. Added post process to BigBoom, Will apply PP when within orbital laser AOE
• Added General Resorces PFS to Purple Quad Swamp to Allow Generation of Resources, Purple Quad, Prometheus
• Adding the sound of watering and feeding mounts, events and BP entry
• adjusting directional filtering for blueback footsteps for better clarity during mission
• Swapped General Resorces PFS to Purple Quad to Allow Generation of Resources, Purple Quad and Green Quad, Prometheus
• Landscape Sculpting, Cliff Pass and Decal Painting, Outpost 008
• Rename Swamp Stryder to just Stryder, for better recognition and flow
• Fix typo in Yes Chef! accolade
• Submitting Crocodile Statue - Stone - mesh and textures
• Bombers no longer agro untill attacked in Pro Story 6
• Added a light source to G15 Camp in Pro Story 6
• Adding additional quest steps to Pro Story 6
• Adding loot items in various base locations in Pro Story 6
• Updated Sledgehammer recipes, ensuring they use tier appropriate materials and consistent material costs
• Added Miasmic Sickle to tech tree
• PRO_Story_5: Remove duplicate crop plots from the prebuilt base
• Correct rifle/pistol ammo payloads for cold steel and iron wood
• Adding new modifier for the gas flyers, tweaking payload radius values and color for trail and explosion for use with the swamp variant

[/expand]