This week's focus is the Armor System, as we address some some balance issues and gaps in the overall structure. This includes a number of cost and stat adjustments - plus two brand new armor sets so there is now armor available at every tier. Alongside this are two new benches that better organize the different tiers of armor available.
Have a read into our process for identifying these issues, and how we addressed them with the changes we’ve rolled out. At the bottom, you’ll also find a note about recent character disappearances, and what to do if you have been affected.
Armor System Improvements
The Armor system in Icarus has received a re-work. As the game has evolved, we have looked at how armor has scaled alongside other game systems. In particular, we’ve looked at how to incentivize using different types of armor and added more tiered options to fill in some gaps in the structure.
Different types of armor are categorized internally in one of four buckets. These are Combat, Survival, Stealth and Workshop.
Combat focused: Leather, Cured Leather (new), Composite and Scorpion
Survival focused: Cloth, Fur, Wayfarer (new), Polar Bear and Sandworm
Stealth: Ghillie and Hunter
Workshop: ST-700, CX-400 and Naneo
The changes we’ve made today address gaps in how the categories scale and specialize.
We quickly identified we only had one easily accessible armor set for the desert biome, Cloth. As a Tier 1 item, this didn’t offer any scalability alongside other tech, so the addition of the Tier 3 Wayfarer armor provides an option for the warmer climates.
Previously, Fur and Polar Bear armor were both Tier 2 armor, providing similar solutions for Arctic survival and similar expensive costs. We have reduced the effectiveness and cost of Fur keeping it at Tier 2, and have moved Polar Bear Armor to Tier 3 using more advanced materials and reducing the Polar Bear Pelt requirement.
Stealth Armors provide a unique benefit with a large stealth buff, but became too heavily weighted in this direction while lacking in baseline performance. We’ve increased the baseline stats for this set but lowered the stealth buff as well, as with the addition of other talents they can still reach incredibly high-performing levels without becoming immune to threats.
Finally, Composite was asking a too high cost for the buffs it provided, so we have buffed them to account for the steep price. In particular, durability has received a substantial improvement. We've also removed Gold from the resources required.
New Armor Benches
We’ve added two new Armor Benches so you have an option at every tier, allowing for easier grouping of different classes of armor and providing a simpler system for us to add and adjust armor sets in future.
The Tier 1 Drying Rack is the same as before with the only addition being ‘Cured Leather’ as a recipe, a new requirement for the Cured Leather Armor, and rebalanced Hunter and Polar Bear Armors at Tier 3.. The Tier 2 Textiles Bench also stays the same, except for the move of Polar Bear and Hunter Armors to the Tier 3 bench, to account for their balance changes.
The two new benches are the Tier 3 Advanced Textiles Bench and Tier 4 Electric Textiles Bench.
The Tier 3 Advanced Textiles Bench can craft the new Wayfarer Armor, Cured Leather Armor and the pre-existing Hunter and Polar Bear Armors. It can also craft Platinum Weave, a new material required for the Wayfarer, Cured Leather and re-balanced Hunter Armors.
The Tier 4 Electric Textiles Bench can craft all Armor sets from Tiers 1, 2 and 3, alongside Composite Armor. The Scorpion and Sandworm boss armor can be crafted at any of the 3 Textiles Benches.
These two new benches clearly distinguish the armor sets into respective tiers and allows Tier 3 Armor to feel like a real milestone. This also provides viable options in comparison to workshop armors, making you less dependent on them and giving you more flexibility in what you choose to bring to the surface.
New Armor Sets
Wayfarer and Cured Leather Armor are now craftable at the Tier 3 Advanced Textiles Bench. These address the gaps we discussed above, Wayfarer for the warmer Desert Climates and Cured Leather as a more protective and durable step between Leather and Composite armor.
Wayfarer requires a new material, Platinum Weave, which is craftable on the Tier 3 Armor bench also.
Cured Leather Armor requires two new materials: Cured Leather, a new addition to the drying rack recipe list, and Platinum Weave as mentioned above.
The re-balanced Hunter Armor set also requires Platinum Weave and Cured Leather.
These two new Armor sets aim to provide players additional options for progression, and work alongside our new benches to provide more consistent options for multiple biomes and playstyles. Expect to see more work done on this system as we test out the performance and player pick-up of these new sets.
90 Day Limit Error
A number of reports were brought to our attention in the last few weeks about characters disappearing from player's accounts without explanation. After investigation, we have discovered that it is the result of an change made three months ago.
We had originally designed a ‘90-day timer’ on ongoing prospects as a failsafe for server storage, which cleanses unused drops and prevents our servers breaching capacity. This was never meant to be activated as we were able to come up with more sophisticated server solutions, but it was mistakenly activated and went unnoticed.
That 90 day window kicked into action in the last couple of weeks, causing the flurry of reports we received. To those players who alerted us and sent queries to Rocket and the team, thank you. You managed to raise the problem quick enough that we could quickly disable this feature before it caused more harm to the community.
For those players who have the ‘dogtag’ lost character screen appearing as a result, the ‘Remove from Prospect’ Button on the Character Select screen will revive them and return them to your list.
Changelog v1.2.15.101035
New Content
- Added T3 cloth armor pack ,first pass textures and materials
- Adding Talents for Advanced Cloth Armor & Advanced Leather Armor
- Shifting Polar Bear Armor to be in T3 and craftable at the Advanced Armor Bench
- Shifted Other T3 Armors to be craftable at the Advanced Armor Bench
- Shifted Composite Armor to be crafted at the Electric Armor Bench
- Adding Advanced Armor Bench & Electric Armor Bench Talents and Putting the appropriate Armor behind them
- Shifted Around T3/T4 Blueprint Talents to make the armors fit correctly
- Added T3 cloth armor textures and materials
- updated T3 cloth armor master material
- updated T3 cloth armor colors
- Adding in rigged advanced cloth armor set and hookup in the D_Armor Data table
- Optimized collisions on the platinum weave asset
- Added Upgraded Leather asset to the project
- Added platinum weave fabric asset to the project
- Adding in correct audio for advanced armor benches
- T3 armor bench - meshes, textures, materials, proxies added
- T3 Armor Bench - T3 cloth armor proxy meshes, added meshes/textures to collections and texture groups
- Added new stats for atmosphere-based modifiers to exposure resistance and animal threat increase, to be applied to armor pieces
- Unlocking Armor Benches, Talents, Advanced Cloth & Advanced Leather items so they can be accessed in the public build
- Remove capsule collision on Weave and add 18DOP. Set to 3 LODs instead of 4 as 3 is plenty
- Rebalanced armor sets, allowing better progression through tiers
- Increased durability on most armor pieces, notably Composite and Naneo armor
- Reduced recipe costs on Fur and Ghillie armor, greatly reduced polar bear pelt required for Polar Bear armor
- Reduced thermal resistances on workshop armor marginally, increased thermals on stealth armors
- Increased physical damage resistances on leather armors and scorpion armor
- Increased exposure resistances on stealth armors, ST and CX workshop armor and boss armor
- Updated Hunter armor set to use Cured Leather as for repairing
- Workshop armors are now repaired at the Advanced and Electric Textiles Benches.
- Updated Electric Armor Bench name to Electric Textiles Bench to avoid confusion
- Add icons for Adv Cloth Armor set, Platinum Weave, Advanced Leather, Adv Armor Bench and Electric Armor Bench
- Tweaked collision and LODs on Adv Leather mesh
- Updated Hunter armor set to use Cured Leather as for repairing
- Tweaked collision and LODs on Adv Leather mesh
- Add icons for Adv Cloth Armor set, Platinum Weave, Advanced Leather, Adv Armor Bench and Electric Armor Bench
- Workshop armors are now repaired at the Advanced and Electric Textiles Benches. - Updated Electric Armor Bench name to Electric Textiles Bench to avoid confusion
- Updated ItemsStatic for new Armor Benches
- Fixed RecipeSets DT not having icon references for new Armor Benches
- Allowed crafting of Leather, Fur and Ghillie armors at the Electric Armor Bench
- Fixed the Advanced Textiles Bench and Electric Textiles Bench was granting significantly more XP than intended
- Update Advanced Textiles Bench description to guide players to the Drying Rack to make Cured Leather. Updated Drying Rack description to indicate curing leather
- Removed Gold cost from the Composite Armor
- Added recipes for Advanced Textiles Bench and Electric Textiles Bench
- Fixed Icons for Crafted At for Advanced Textiles Bench, Electric Textiles Bench, Alteration Bench and Advanced Alteration Bench
- Fixed Advanced Cloth and Hard-Leather blueprint options in the Tech Tree
- Fixed broken Proxy setup on Electric Armor bench and Advanced Armor bench
- Added descriptions for Platinum Weave and Cured Leather
- Renamed Advanced Cloth Armor to Wayfarer Armor and Hard-Leather Armor to Cured Leather Armor.
- Doubled the amount of Leather required to make Cured Leather, but halved the amount of Cured Leather required to make armor pieces, this will result in a shorter time to make a full set of armor while still having a weighty crafting process
- Adding all new processor recipe audio to correct audio tag to play the right sound when new items are crafted
- Added basic descriptions to Wayfarer Armor pieces.
- Fixed an issue causing Rope to not be craftable at the Textiles Bench
- Add LODs to new Cloth Armor meshes
- Reverted change to Workshop armor repair bench options. Workshop armor is still repaired at Machining Bench and Fabricator, as indicated by the repair kit
Fixed
- Removed unused code relating to the old atmosphere enum
- Tweaked ABYSS: Research detection area for tower top floor location and relevant objectives, this should resolve issues where players can't complete the other objectives without building an additional floor
- Fixed a log warning that came from an unused rowhandle
- Delete old Cooked Meat icon and removed references to it in UMGs
- Remove unused icons
- Update all icons to use correct settings
- Moved icons into correct folders and simplified duplicated folder structures
- Minor item description tweaks
- Update all icons to use correct settings
- Moved icons into correct folders and simplified duplicated folder structures
- Fixed Wood Railing Stairs icon reference
- Update icons to use correct settings
- Add missing icons for items we have meshes for
- Final fixes for icon settings
- Fixed an issue where rustic storage options did not benefit from the storage increase talents. Any newly created storage will benefit from these talents
- Fixed crash where FindSessions would try to complete after the player had already left the HAB map, causing the world reference object to be no longer valid
- Fixed offline characters still checking real world time instead of game time for leaving characters behind
- Fixed an issue causing Advanced Cloth Armor Head and Chest appearing as Arms. - Enabled Hardened Leather mesh for dropped armor pieces
Future Content
- Added Icicle Stalagmites 1 to 6 and Stalactites 1 to 7
- Reworked BP_AISpawner to enable automatic, data-table-driven spawning of juvenile creatures when their parents spawn. Added new seeded random chance functions
- Fixed IcarusAIBlueprintFunctionLibrary build error
- Added remaining Fmod events for new generic dialogue
- Cliff Pass in Grasslands, Sculpted Landscape & Material Committed on Green Quad, DLC Map
- Tundra Cliff Polish Pass, Blue Quad, Prometheus
- Cliff pass in volcanic biome, cave placement, landscape sculpting, Purple Quad, DLC
- Juvenile creatures can now specify required or prohibited D_ModifierStates to check for during the taming process. Fixed bug where spawned in mounts could appear invisible
- Added collision to Geothermal Spline tool
- Added Frozen Lake Shader, Textures and options on WT_FrozenLake
- Added missing material functions that didn't get added with the Ice Cool Pack
- Added option to frozen water for WT_RiverSpline
- CAVE_AC_Entrance_Var1 mesh, material and textures
- Revert WT_RiverSpline frozen shader, causing issues with previous river setup
- Tundra Cliff Pass and Arctic Lake Pass, Blue Quad, Prometheus
- Cliff Pass in Grasslands/Tundra, Sculpted Landscape & Material Committed on Green Quad, DLC Map
- Cliff pass in volcanic biome, cave placement, landscape sculpting, Purple Quad, DLC
- Juvenile creatures undergoing domestication can now eat from filled food troughs and sleep in animal beds. Added new temporary animal bed item
- Adding in base pass of the Buffalo saddle with anim dynamics saddle bags as reference for further saddle creation, still need to hook into overriding the fur mask to stop fur clipping in final pass
- Tundra Cliff Pass and Arctic Lake Pass, Blue Quad, Prometheus
- Cliff pass in Swamp biome, cave placement and landscape sculpting, Purple Quad, DLC
- Cliff Pass in Grasslands/Tundra, Sculpted Landscape on Green Quad, DLC Map
- CAVE_AC_Entrance_Var1 updated mesh - flattened the top part
- Adding Rdog attack audio and event
- Mount audio implementation update:
- Add Unconscious GOAP property handling to the creature threat audio system so that angry creatures won't continue to cause battle music to play while they're unconscious
- Prevent an error in the threat audio system when an NPC character is temporarily unpossessed after going unconscious
- Add a BuffaloMount version of AIAudioData so that buffalo mounts play appropriate audio cues
- Adding RDog Flinch sounds and event
- Adding in base setup and skeletal mesh assets for Moa saddle including copy pose bp to conform with the Moa animations and anim dynamics on the saddle bag meshes
- Cliff pass in Swamp biome, cave placement and landscape sculpting, Purple Quad, DLC
- Added support for generic saddle items that can have unique meshes for each mount type they are equipped on. Added new D_Saddles data table. Edited creature fur master material to support an additional fur culling mask texture. SeatBase can now attach player to specific child component instead of just RootComponent
- Cliff Pass in Grasslands, Sculpted Landscape & Transition Cave Setup on Green/Purple Quad, DLC Map
- Cliff Pass in Grasslands/Tundra, Sculpted Landscape on Green Quad, DLC Map
- Tundra Cliff Pass and Arctic Lake Pass, Blue Quad, Prometheus
- Adding in outstanding Moa animation assets for base setup, Jump, Eat, Sleep and attack animation assets
- Adding in longer Moa Idle animation to break up the idle montage with less vocalization events
- Cliff and caves placement in Swamp biome and landscape sculpting, Purple Quad, DLC
- Added Moa attack, sleep, eat animations. Added ability to jump while riding mounts that support it. Added new anim curve to disable verlet player riding animation when performing certain montages (DisablePlayerVerlet)
- Updating Talent Tree and Prospects for New Horizons and organizing mission layout
- Create non-replicated versions of dialogue functions for cases where we only want dialogue to play for the local client - required for some dedicated server cases
- Cliff Pass in Grasslands, Riverbanks Pass, Sculpted Landscape, Cave Roof Added & Transition Cave Started GL to LC on Green Quad, DLC Map
- Adding in Rdog Idle Close and Distant layers and event setup
- Tundra Cliff Pass and Arctic Lake Pass, Blue Quad, Prometheus
- Added placeholder recipes for Saddle, Animal Bed, Food trough, as well as a developer prospect for testing mount taming/spawning. Added missing moa skeleton animation curve
- Adjusted temporary DEV mount testing prospect AI spawn rates. Increased juvenile spawn rate
- Remove Effected By Weather on Worklamps
- Add Tripod Spotlight deployable (not yet available)