Icarus Week 120 Update | New water quality and purification process

Week 120 brings a new layer of depth to the water quality system and three new water purifiers.

We’ve also adjusted the modifiers applied by different drinking vessels, so hot drinks can be sipped on rather than consumed all at once.

We’ve also got an update on Laika, our upcoming creature-themed update, and the new paid DLC that is to be paired with it.

Jump in and have a read.

Notable Improvements:

• Wind turbines will no longer take damage when the selected difficulty is easy
• Wolves no longer howl every time they play their idle animation, this will now only happen ~1/3 of the time
• Wild Beehives now grant XP and Bestiary progress toward Bees
• Landshark now grants relevant XP and loot. Fixed killed Landsharks not being destroyed on death (was being hidden)
• Waterskins have been buffed to no longer leak water

This week: Water Quality & Purification

This week's big new feature is Water Quality & Purification.

Water will now have different levels of quality, so the purity of your source will matter when filling up your canteen.

Tainted Water:

• This will be any water source that isn’t purified, such as lakes or rivers
• These sources provide a 15% chance of getting dysentery (regardless if drunk from the source or a container)

Rain Water:

• This can be caught using rain catchers and is of a higher quality than water from rivers or lakes
• This gives a 5% chance of getting dysentery

Filtered Water:

• This is water that is filtered using charcoal, which eliminates any chance of dysentery but provides no extra buff/benefit

Treated Water:

• Treated Water is water that has been through a plumbing and charcoal filtration process on the Tier 3 Purifier (more info below)
• This provides a -10% in water consumption and a -10% decrease in stamina consumption so both last longer

Purified Water:

• This is water that is purified using plumbed water and an electrical process, on the Tier 4 Purifier (more info below)
• This provides a -15% in water consumption and a -15% in stamina consumption

With the new Filtered Water, Treated Water, and Purified Water variations come three new purifiers to achieve these states.

Tier 1 Purifiers:

• These run on charcoal and provide ‘filtered water’
• There are two variations, one that can be placed in water (rivers or lakes) and one that can be placed in open space to act as a rain catcher
• When provided with charcoal as a fuel, these will produce filtered water

Tier 3 Purifier:

• This runs on charcoal and plumbed water, and will provide ‘Treated Water’
• Plumbing requires connecting up a water network using pipes from a water source (lakes, rivers, or rain catchers) to the Purifier
• This machine has internal storage for filling and will fill water vessels when placed into the machine's distribution slots
• This machine also requires charcoal for the purification process as a fuel source, and the combination of the two will provide Treated Water

Tier 4 Purifier:

• This runs off a combination of plumbed water and electricity, and will provide ‘Purified Water’
• As mentioned above, plumbing requires a water pipe system, but this machine will also require an electrical source to operate
• This Purifier will fill up a vessel that is placed in its inventory when provided with the required electricity and plumbed water, before moving to an idle state when the vessel is filled/removed
• The Purifier will sit in an idle state unless actively filling a vessel
• Water produced by this machine will be the highest possible quality, ‘purified’

This week: Water Vessels

To pair with the new Water Purifiers, all Water Vessels like waterskins, canteens and thermoses have all received an upgrade.

Water Vessels will now attach two modifiers when being drunk from, one based on water quality and one based on the liquid property.

Water Quality - As defined above, either Tainted, Rain, Filtered, Treated or Purified

Liquid Property - Varies depending on the liquid, i.e ‘contains cool water’ which grants the ‘Drinking’ modifier or ‘tea’ modifier when the vessel is filled with tea

This change means that items such as tea or cocoa are no longer single-use items. When placed in a vessel these can now be sipped or consumed over time, rather than all at once. This also means that vessels containing them can be placed in the water slot in your envirosuit and consumed over time.

Because of this, the modifiers for any liquid inside a vessel have been standardized to 300 seconds. If a device contains a liquid such as tea or cocoa, the modifier can go substantially longer than this as every sip resets the counter.

The change to water quality does mean however you have to be conscious of the quality of water you are filling your vessel with. A vessel will always default to the lowest quality water applied, so if a device has Purified Water but you top it up with treated water, that vessel will now have the Treated Water modifier applied.

You can always remove all the liquid from a vessel by right-clicking the item, and clicking ‘empty’ or focusing on it in your hotbar and right-clicking it.

In addition, due to the changes to water, players will no longer drink or fill up canteens while swimming.

Future: Laika

Last week, we started talking about our big upcoming free update, Laika. This included the various features that are coming along with it, and if you want to read up on those, check out last week's post here. We’ll also be detailing some of these over the coming weeks.

Alongside Laika, we will also be releasing our Creature Comfort DLC. This is for those who want to support us in our ongoing development of Icarus, and will feature a variety of new items for your mounts and tamed creatures, and some more content we can’t wait to share with you.

If you want to wishlist the DLC, you can do so now over on the store page.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2790990/Icarus_Creature_Comforts_Pack/

Next Week: QoL

Next week we are planning to do a QoL pass, headlined by our bench consolidation improvements.

This will include doing a pass on all benches at each tier and making sure the Tier 4 variation of a bench can fully replace its Tier 3 counterpart.

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/bundle/36462/Icarus_Architecture_Bundle/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35727/Icarus_Complete_the_Set/

Changelog v2.1.23.120788

New Content

Fixed

Future Content