Icarus Week 102 Update | Rare high tier Ores now found in Deep Ore Veins

Week 102 is here and features new Deep Ore Veins of Titanium, Platinum, Salt, Clay, Scoria and Obsidian for you to drill.

We’ve also enabled Exotic voxels in Open World caves which will replenish using the Meteor Shower event we debuted last week.

This week we’ve also released two new architectural DLC, an Industrial Furniture Set with 36 pieces and an Art Deco Furniture Set with 26 pieces for you to purchase and adorn your base with. These support our ongoing development of Icarus and are some of the most detailed and unique pieces we’ve released to date.

Jump in and have a read.

Notable Improvements

• Exotic voxels will now spawn in Open World caves, these will replenish with Meteor Shower events
• You can now place deployables on top of rugs which was previously blocked
• Vapor Condenser rewards have been updated to include Enzymes in addition to Exotics when in its ‘active state’ which as of last week includes Open Worlds
• Fixed Teenage Caveworm and Landshark dropping Caveworm loot rather than their respective loot table

This Week: New Deep Ore Veins

New Deep Ore Veins have been added to all three existing maps. The new resources available include Platinum, Titanium and Salt on Olympus, Styx and Prometheus - and Clay, Scoria and Obsidian exclusive to Prometheus.

This adds some of the higher tier ores as options for your set-and-forget drills, and make those longer Open World sessions where resources become more scarce, easier to manage.

A big reason for the addition of these new veins has been to introduce these resources earlier for players in their sessions. Salt for example offers value in food preservation, so it makes longer journeys more accessible earlier in the game.

The addition of Clay, Scoria, and Obsidian also makes the Lava biome more accessible earlier in Prometheus, and Obsidian weapons offer great advantages when venturing into the Arctic. These have also been added to the Deep Mining Ore Scanner's and the veins are locatable with this device.

A lot of these have come via community requests and suggestions, so keep these coming in Feature Upvote. We’ve added more veins in total also, so you won’t find other resources now more diluted in the overall available pool.

There’s also now a chance to find Exotic voxels in Open World caves on all three maps. These will replenish with Meteor Shower events we introduced last week.

Each Week: Performance

While it may not be mentioned in our weekly blog each week, performance is an ongoing part of our work, and those who dive into the detailed changelog below will notice some of the improvements we’re making week-on-week.

As part of the performance work, we have been looking at a way to reduce the impact of loading across the map which can cause stutters. This is mainly focusing on adjusting the way caves are spawned in, and we’ve had some early positive results, but this is still very much in the early stages of testing.

We have also been looking into what impact we can have in reducing the pack sizes of the game and therefore the download size. As some of you have mentioned before, the process of downloading and patching the updates can be lengthy, due to the stark differences in how Unreal Engine packages build and how Steam wants to unpack them. What we’re hoping is this work will improve the download speed, which will at least impact this positively. This will go through rigorous testing before being released, but if all goes well this should be out in the future.

Industrial & Art Deco Packs

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/36462/Icarus_Architecture_Bundle/

We’re releasing two new Architectural DLC this week - the Industrial Furniture Pack and the Art Deco Furniture Pack.

Industrial Pack

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2679990/Icarus_Industrial_Furniture_Pack/

The Industrial Furniture Pack comes with two sets of items in their own theme and design. These are Industrial and Brutalist.

The Industrial Set includes 18 items in dark tones of black marble and flecked silver. These have a rough and practical design with sharp edges and little in the way of excess material, creating a dark yet simple feel to any room they adorn.

The Brutalist Set includes 18 items also, with an even more simplistic concrete approach, but a tad more design flair in their craftsmanship. These pieces have a geometric flair that applies the concepts of minimalism and physics to create timeless yet simple pieces that can blend into any environment.

The Industrial Set is unlockable at level 10 and craftable at the Decorations Bench with Iron Ingots and Steel Screws. The Brutalist Set is unlockable at level 20 and also craftable on the Decorations Bench, with the added material of Concrete required.

Art Deco Pack

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2686540/Icarus_Art_Deco_Furniture_Pack/

The Art Deco Furniture Pack is also available, and is by far our most lavish and luxurious set yet.

Including 26 items, this set includes pieces such as Chandeliers, Candlesticks, Safes, Vault style storage units and Rugs among other pieces, all adorned in lavish gold with gun metal grey highlights and a decadent, twirling design that brings a sense of class to any room you place them in.

Designed to celebrate the night sky above, the solar system theme can be found in every piece of the set, and the rich gold tones will shimmer in any light that bounces off it, be it from the Fireplace, Chandeliers or Candles.

The Art Deco Set is unlockable at level 20 and craftable on the Decorations Bench, and requires Gold Ingots, Platinum Weave and Steel to craft.

Support our work with these DLC

After 102 weeks of free updates, you can imagine the amount of work we have poured into Icarus is substantial, nearing the two-year mark of dedicated work and new content being added to the game.

Making games such as Icarus is expensive, and while other studios might have the size to sustain it, we are a much smaller team than our compatriots that produce the other games you love.

All our DLC support the ongoing development of Icarus, and without them we’d have to ask questions about the project's sustainability.

DLC such as these are concepted, then modeled and rigged by our art team, before being added to the game by the designers and having the lore and narrative for them written by our writers, and any sound created and added by our audio engineers. They even go through our tech and testing teams who make sure their features work and they don’t negatively impact performance. Even the Steam page for them and this weekly blog talking about them is done by our Marketing team, so everyone in the studio has a hand in bringing them to life, just like every other feature we do, be it free content or paid.

It really helps us out when you guys get behind the smaller pieces of the game we put out, as it keeps us moving forward and being able to work on the content, improvements and patches we bring out in our free updates. Thank you to everyone who has already bought any of our DLC, and we hope these give you something else to add to your bases.

Next Week: New Animal Rugs

Next week’s update will bring two new Animal Rugs for you to craft and adorn your bases with. These are Bear and Polar Bear Rugs, the true sign of a dangerous hunter when adorning their home.

These will require vestiges, pelts, fur and leather, so if you want to craft these the moment they launch, start gathering your materials now.

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/35727/Icarus_Complete_the_Set/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/34141/Icarus_Outposts_Bundle/

Changelog v2.1.5.117759

New Content

Fixed

Future Content