Welcome to week 112.

This week is a larger update, as we bring you the brand new Apicultural system where you can become a beekeeper in Icarus.

Fit with Wild Bees, Beehives, a bespoke beekeeping system and even Bee breeding, you can start producing honey, beeswax and multiple new recipes, right away.

Originally posted by author: We are committed to weekly updates in Icarus and to always be providing new content / fixes / optimizations from week to week. These updates can vary in size, as things like team availability and task size can range from ones that take half a day, to several weeks or even months. One thing we will try to do is be conscious of this and after a period such as the New Year Holiday where we kept things light and safe we’ll give you something we’ve been working on for a while.

Rocketwerkz isn’t as big as some other studios but are proud of our commitment to our games and want continue to make updates and provide something that players as well as ourselves want to play.

Something special did happen over the break for us. Despite a rocky launch two years ago we have managed through continual updates and improvements to reach an all-time Steam review score of Mostly Positive (over 70%). This is amazing and means a lot to us all here as this needle gets very hard to move over time, so thank you everyone who have been playing the game, providing feedback and leaving reviews.

A lot of effort from the entire team goes into making these patches, whether it be making designing a system, making the assets, implementing functionality, finding and fixing bugs, optimizing, balancing the features, testing the game, preparing the blogs and organizing the patches so they are ready ahead of time so we don’t scramble from week to week.

This isn’t the only big update we’ve got planned, as in upcoming weeks we will focus on optimization and the Batteries and Resource network update which we want to get into your hands as soon as possible.

Notable Improvements:

• Reduced the cost of glass building pieces, most pieces now use 2 Iron Ingots instead of 6, and 6 Epoxy instead of 12. This allows easier access to glass
  
• Ice Ore Deposits no longer spawn in each time when loading a prospect creating duplicates and causing unintended performance issues. This was caused by the multiple instances of each prospect being loaded and therefore, save files being larger than they needed to be
  
• Operations accessible through the CON4CT Device now show their operation information, play the briefing dialogue, and have a confirmation, so you can see the information on the operation before launching. (This slipped in last week)
  
• 'Wine Bottles' & 'Beer Bottles' have been combined into one item 'Glass Bottles' which is used for beer wine and mead
  
• Shifted Snow Stalker & Arid Striker critical hit location has been firmly attached to the head as it was incorrectly shifting without warning, making the creatures very hard to score critical hits on.
  
• Waterfalls and Lavafalls now have collision and correctly add wet modifier / set players on fire respectively. Due to this, you can now swim up waterfalls
  
• Added the missing recipe for the Brutalist Bed for the Industrial DLC - it is now craftable as intended
  
• Dehumidifier buffs now correctly affect objects, and can now block the ‘Ash Clogged’ debuff caused by weather events in the volcanic biome

This week: Wild Bees

Prospectors, gear up for a buzzing addition to the ever-evolving world of Icarus. Introducing the latest inhabitants of the wilderness – Bees! These winged wonders bring both challenge and reward to your exploration, making encounters with nature a bit more interesting.

Bee Hives in Forests and Grasslands

Keep a sharp eye out for what appears to be a broken tree – a disguise for the Wild Bees Nests. These nests are uncommon but can prove to be formidable foes if left unchecked. Once disturbed, these aggressive bees will swarm, delivering a painful sting that not only deals damage but also inflicts a parasitic debuff known as "Bee Swarm." This debuff slows down your movement and melee attacks, and beware, as it can stack up to 5 times.

Immune to projectiles, the only way to fend off the buzzing onslaught is to swat it away with melee weapons. Destroy the Wild Bees Nest, and you'll be rewarded with loot including precious items such as honeycombs, worker bees, and queen bees.

Cave Bee Hives

Venture deeper into Icarus’s various caves, where a new challenge awaits. Some are now infested with Cave Bee Nests, resembling more traditional wild bee hives. These subterranean sanctuaries house bees that are just as fierce as their above-ground counterparts. The diverse environments, ranging from Forest and Desert to Swamp, Lava, and Grasslands Caves, ensure that any part of the map could house these new nests.

Prospectors may find themselves encountering not only bee-filled caves but also other subterranean threats like cave worms. Brace yourselves for dynamic cave exploration, where each dark corner may hold a different surprise.

This Week: Beehive Loot

Worker Bees

Encountering Worker Bees is a common occurrence when raiding wild hives, constituting a guaranteed drop of 100%. These hardworking insects play a pivotal role in your beekeeping endeavors. Once acquired, you can strategically place them within your beehives to generate honeycomb, a highly valuable resource for your survival and progression in Icarus.

Queen Bees

The elusive Queen Bees add a royal touch to your loot, occasionally discovered in wild hives with a 33% chance. These majestic beings not only contribute to honeycomb generation within beehives but also hold a special place in Beehive Breeding Centers. Placing Queen Bees in these centers unlocks the ability to produce additional Worker Bees, fostering the growth of your buzzing population.

Honeycomb

The coveted Honeycomb is the golden prize found within beehives, serving as the cornerstone of your apicultural pursuits. Harvested from beehives, this sweet treasure not only fuels the creation of your own beehives but also acts as a primary ingredient in various upgrades and crafting recipes. Harness the power of honeycomb to expand your base and thrive amidst the challenges of Icarus.

This Week: Domestic Beehives

Prepare to enhance your base-building prowess with the introduction of the Beehive, a deployable structure boasting not just one, but four upgrades. From honey production to resource management, these upgrades will allow you to improve and expand your new beekeeping hobby.

Beehive (T2): Honeycomb Generator

Embark on your apicultural journey with the Beehive. This deployable allows you to use worker bees or queens as fuel to generate precious honeycomb. Construct it using a combination of 10 honeycombs, 30 refined wood, and 25 copper nails. While producing honeycomb the beehive will also provide a buff to nearby crop plots increasing their yield.

Small Beehive Expansion (T3): Storage & Efficiency Upgrade

Feeling the need for more storage space in your Beehive? Upgrade to the Small Beehive Expansion and unlock six additional inventory slots. This upgrade also makes worker bees more efficient increasing the time they can be active as a fuel source. The expansion requires 15 honeycombs, 20 refined wood, 25 aluminum, and 10 steel screws. With increased storage capacity, you can efficiently manage your resources and bee-related items while navigating the challenges of Icarus.

Beehive Breeding Center (T3): Worker Bee Generation

Take your beekeeping skills to the next level with the Beehive Breeding Center. This upgrade allows Queen Bees to produce Worker Bees, expanding your bee population. Invest in this advanced feature by spending 16 platinum sheaths, 20 beeswax, and 10 steel screws.

Large Beehive Expansion (T4): Further Storage & Efficiency Enhancement

Feeling the buzz for even more storage? Upgrade once again with the Large Beehive Expansion, unlocking an additional six inventory slots. As with the small expansion this further increases the bees efficiency. This storage expansion requires 20 honeycombs, 2 titanium plates, and 20 steel screws.

Beehive Extractor (T4): Automatic Honey Production

Transform honeycomb into valuable honey and beeswax with the Beehive Extractor. This advanced upgrade requires an active power connection within the beehive. Invest 30 copper wires, 2 titanium plates, 15 glass, and 8 electronics and you’ll have an automated factory line working around the clock.

This Week: Honeycomb, Honey & Beeswax

Honeycomb can be used at a Mortar & Pestle to create Honey or Beeswax at a ratio of 2:1. It can also be processed into Honey and Beeswax in the beehive extractor upgrade at a ratio of 1:1. Making the T4 Beehive extractor far more efficient.

All of the new resources can be use in some new and existing recipes including medicine, cured leather, food and candles. A quick breakdown is shown below.



One of the more notable of these is the inclusion of the Reinforced wood building pieces- craftable on the Electronic Carpentry Bench - these can withstand higher tiers of storms - making them the equivalent of stone building pieces.

Originally posted by author: Removal of Pre-Hypatia Branch

In the early stages of launching Hypatia 4 months ago we added this branch so people could finish their missions before they updated as some of the missions had changed and been converted into operations. We will be disabling this branch next week 2nd of February it is no longer required.

Coming Soon: Batteries & Networks

We are still hard at work on the batteries & networks, we are performing a closed experimental test with a few members of the community and are looking to open this up for public testing very soon. There are still a few crashes and optimizations we want to get cleaned up before opening it up to everyone.

Next Week: Rugs

Next week, we’ll be adding two new rugs to Icarus, the Buffalo and Thin Weave variations.

These will be added as craftable items to the Textiles Bench, and will require the individual animals pelts to craft.

Originally posted by author: 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/34141/Icarus_Outposts_Bundle/

Changelog v2.1.15.119165

New Content
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• Adjustments to bee audio. Adding volume increase based on very close proximity to add intensity and danger to the feel of the bees
  
• Audio tweaks and updates to bee BP behavior to play Idle and Aggro states
  
• Add cave bat nests and wild beehives to caves, DC Caves, LC Caves
  
• Added 4 new honey consumables, including recipe, modifier and item
  
• Moved Smoked Bacon icon to consumables folder (source file)
  
• Adding new stats and modifier for attacks causing a bee swarm, adding stats to bee creature and removing poison damage
  
• Adding Talents, Recipes and Items related to Beehives, Honeycomb and Honey
  
• Adding wild bee hive nest audio. Loop and destroy and BP logic to play and stop
  
• Adding bee hive loop, adjusting PM of bee hive and adding appropriate deploy audiuo to all bee related items
  
• Added bestiary entry for Bees
  
• Added text for bee related items
  
• Setting Bee's to Core and Setting up bestiary and stats for Bees
  
• Beehive upgrades inventory only accepts specific items based on their slot. If you add an item to the beehive through deployable it auto adds it to inventory. Cant add t4 expansion without t3. Removing t3 while t4 is up will remove t4 too
  
• Moved logic for adding deployed expansions into the beehive upgrade inventory from the Beehive UMG to the BP itself
  
• Bees now produce honeycomb into the beehive
  
• First pass generic turret fire audio. Also adjusting placement of bee hive audio on trees
  
• Enabled beehive generator and bees can now be used as a fuel
  
• Add cave bat nests and wild beehives to caves, AC Caves
  
• Updating Beehive Actionable Behaviour to use real items
  
• Updating Beehive Honeycomb generation to match the same way the extractor works
  
• Updating Beehive Inventory Expansions to expand and lock the inventory when the upgrades are added / removed
  
• Small bee hive loop adjustment
  
• Added bee bestiary image
  
• Adding bee make honeycomb audio and event
  
• Setting up Beehive Upgrade Lock UI and Fixing stat source issue when adding / removing upgrades
  
• Beehives can now produce honeycomb, the extractor upgrade can split honeycomb into honey & beeswax, the breeding upgrade can produce more bees, adde and adjusted the new UI so its all functional
  
• Adding make honeycomb audio to bee hive BP
  
• Adding Worker Bee item and balancing beehive extraction/processing/breeding times, Queens now produce worker bees in the breeding center, and workers or queens can be used to generate honeycomb, queens being far more efficient
  
• Added additional collider to bee creature to make it easier to hit.
  
• Cave Bee Hives now last 5 minutes after being destroyed (instead of 5 seconds).
  
• Wild Tree Beehives now despawn after 5 minutes once the player has moved at least 15m away (previously would immediately despawn at 150m)
  
• Fixed Beehive crafting sounds
  
• Adding Missing Code for the new Aura Code
  
• Fixing issue with Aura's where they could not effects objects as in some cases they where supposed to (this should fix the issue with crafting machines being effected by the lava biome ash debuff when in range of a dehumidifier)
  
• Adding beehive modifier so crops around the beehive will have increased yield when the beehive is producing honeycomb
  
• Fixing an issue where the T4 Expansion for the beehive was placeable without the T3
  
• Fixing issue where the breeding device was unable to be placed without the T3 Expansion upgrade
  
• Added the ability to feed tamed creatures honey and honeycomb
  
• Updated Wild Behive description
  
• Updated Honeycomb description to mention Mortar and Pestle and Beehive Extractor as the method for acquiring Honey and Beeswax
  
• Fixed recipe for Beehive Extractor
  
• Unlocking Bestiary Data for Bee and fixing the Honey Mead so it gives a glass bottle and not another bottle of honey mead when consumed
  
• Adding Bee Nest Spawns to Forest, Desert, Swamp, Lava and Grasslands biomes
  
• Removing death sound from bee BP and audio adjustments for smoother balance between idle and aggro
  
• Adding final bee hive audio. Breeding bee
  
• Added the ability to fuel candles with beeswax
  
• Adding Multi for bee honeycomb and honey audio playback. Queen bee loop to be reworked in BP tomorrow
  
• Added text for honey food items
  
• Committing missing honeycomb bar icon
  
• Adding Icons for Honey Recipes & setting up some of these new honey based items
  
• Beer & Wine Glass Bottles are now a single glass bottle
  
• Adding Reinforced Wood Building Tier - a tier which includes beeswax and craftable from the carpentry bench
  
• Modifying the way building reinforcement work so its a common stat rather than a specific one, so it can be applied to all building pieces if required without rework
  
• Adding Alternate Reciepes for candles to use beeswax instead of animal fat
  
• Beehive Honeycomb splitting now requires an active power connection for the T4 Extraction Upgrade
  
• Adding audio location for honey conversion, bee extract sound, honey make sound and queen bee attached loop and BP behavior for all

[/expand]

Fixed
[expand type=details]

• Fixed Rain Reservoir missing fillable UI and hid modifier UI
  
• Waterfalls and Lavafalls now have collision and correctly add wet modifier / set players on fire respectively
  
• Change the level so Ice Ore Deposits use the spawner system
  
• Rain reservoir inventory fillable display now updates on a timer, also fixed issue with spacing in title bar area.
  
• Removed unnecessary divider on NPC carcass's tooltip modifier list
  
• Removed debug collider on Desert Striker
  
• Shifted Striker critical hit location to be attached to head. Improved Striker physics asset - is less noodle-like now
  
• Blended cave with the terrain on Outpost, Cactus
  
• Reduced the cost of glass building pieces, most peices now use 2 Iron Ingots instead of 6, and 6 Epoxy instead of 12. This is to allow easier access to glass, while reinforced/hardened glass still requires a water connection (so has a higher starting cost)
  
• Fixed Plain Jerky modifier description

[/expand]

Future Content
[expand type=details]

• Added DEP_Turret_T4_Pistol, Rifle, Shotgun
  
• Added ITM_Hay_Bale
  
• Added Chicken color variations, bones and carcass materials, textures, and static meshes
  
• Manual Cave Polish Pass, Ashlands, Prometheus
  
• Added text for Limestone and building pieces
  
• Further tagging on Field Guide items to ensure dev only items aren't shown
  
• Updated tags on Clay, Obsidian and Scoria to now be Item.Ore (belefitting from Ore weight reduction)
  
• Added BLD_Beam_Curved_Horizontal_Diagonal
  
• Added BLD_Beam_Curved_Diagonal_Stone, with all variants
  
• Added BLD_Beam_Angle_Stone, with all variants
  
• Added BLD_Beam_Horizontal_Diagonal_Stone
  
• Added BLD_Beam_Diagonal_Angle_Stone
  
• Added BLD_Roof_Peak_Pyramid_Stone
  
• Added Voxels to Northen Part of Green Quad and Some Landscape Painting, Styx
  
• Added extra validation to AIcarusNPCCharacter::GetSightPerceptionOrigin
  
• Slightly reduced forward movement speed when mounted and turning sharply.
  
• Improved Zebra's locomotion blendspace.
  
• Added new function GetRotationInput to fetch current frame's pending rotation input (IcarusPlayerController)
  
• FieldGuide - fix DT inventory attachments for bows
  
• New Lavafall_02 mesh is now correctly set up inside WT_Waterfall / BP_WaterfallFunctionLibrary using mesh type index 01
  
• Added art assets for the exotic item
  
• Added materials and textures for exotic voxels 1-5
  
• Improvements to NPCCreator wizard. Added new DT entries for Sheep
  
• Small balance tweak to sandworm crossbow and added cave context to missing ambience creatures with reverb
  
• Updates to the sandworm crossbow audio. Improved fire audio
  
• Manual Cave Polish Pass and Swapped Lavafall Meshes, Red Quad, Ashlands, Prometheus
  
• Updating Purple Exotic Mesh and Item Icon
  
• Added updated BLD_Frame_Pillar_Stone
  
• Adding Turret Meshes for each Turret, adding blueprints, recipes, and item setup
  
• Added DEP_Trophy_Sandworm_Brazier, Hanging and Big Brazier
  
• Reduced the cost of the Reinforced Glass Window and Glass Door, this allows easier access to more cosmetic options
  
• Adding shotgun and rifle turret audio and events and data table
  
• FieldGuide - fix attachment query for workshop ranged weapons
  
• Adding add ammo out of ammo audio for turrets. BP behavior to play different sounds based on having ammo vs removing running out. Creating bullet impact events for turrets, not currently used
  
• Make slomo cheats work on dediserver (internal dev)
  
• Setting up cross diagonal beam blueprints
  
• General Polish Pass on bat nests and wild beehives on Template Caves
  
• Added two items with two variants. Sandworm trophy braziers and sandworm trophies
  
• Lots of updates and improvements to the turrets audio
  
• Turret Prototype fire multiple projectiles depending on ammo type (eg. shotgun shell)
  
• Added Roof Peak Pyramid and Roof Peak Connector to their blueprints
  
• Fixed cave void not covering cave
  
• Turret prototype - require power to operate
  
• Added curved diagonal beams
  
• Fixed redirectors in building folders
  
• Added icons for item procurement in the Field Guide
  
• Added text for sandworm trophy
  
• Added text for turret items
  
• Added HRB_Sugar_Cane with 5 growth stages and dead stade, as well as added them to the Data Table
  
• First pass weighting of chicken and subsequent meshes, tidy up of wings and legs to come
  
• Polished Lavafall blend with lakes and manual cave polish pass, Ashlands, Prometheus
  
• Added text for sandworm brazier
  
• Fixed cave void not covering cave
  
• Fixed rotation for BLD_Roof_Peak_Connector_Stone
  
• Fixed rotation of BLD_Beam_Horizontal_Diagonal_Stone
  
• ADJUSTING sound associated with the sandworm trophy brazier to be more appropriate. Adjusting ignite location
  
• Removed duplicate curved angle beams
  
• Turret Prototype - show yaw that turrent can turn to during highlight
  
• Adding sandworm trophy deploy audio and location
  
• Fixed curved beam orientation
  
• Updates to turret audio. Deploy turret tweaks, adding audio data to data table and small chicken volume adjustments
  
• Moved Reinforced Wood Basic and Advanced talents from Tier 2 to Tier 4, recipes are now crafted only at Electric Carpentry Bench

[/expand]