ICARUS Week Eleven BIG Content Update: Light and Backpack Slots, Footprints, Inventory Sorting, and Much More!

Massive update incoming, prospectors! Though, if you checked in with us a couple of days ago, you knew exactly what was coming: we shared a full list of updates tested on the Experimental Branch of ICARUS, and pretty much all of them made their way into the Week Eleven update.

If you are one of the folks who followed the top User Suggestions for ICARUS, you will be excited to hear that among the updates is the separate backpack and light slots, as well as inventory sorting (for now just by weight) — two of the top-five most-requested features. Gone are the days of dropping your Torch near every node and inevitably losing it in the cave waters: hook that Lantern up to your belt, use the L key to turn it on and off, and keep on mining without any interruptions!

Among the featured updates is the new T4 Repair Hammer (along with an expansion and redesign of the entire tier being in the works) and leaving footprints and impressions in sand and snow — that feature is turned off by default because it is still being developed, but you can enable it via the “Terrain Deformation” setting.

Aside from a satisfying feel, the footprints serve an interesting secondary purpose: if you drop and lose an item in the sand or snow, try walking around the surface to see if you can reveal it. (This might not help with very small items, and devs are still figuring out how to address that particular issue.)

As for the Talent Respec: it’s in the works! Since it requires significant changes to the base design of the game it will take a bit more time for testing and tinkering, but they made it clear that they are not ignoring the community’s most popular request.

So… I don’t know how to tell you this, but… there are about 100 or so change log entries! Everything from performance improvements to less Fur drops, larger Squash in Crop Plots, and louder Buffaloes with a less awkward death flop. So, just in case you don’t want to read through the entire list — we did it for you and picked our top favorites.

Of course, we still included the full change log below for you to peruse as you wish!

Notable Updates

• Titanium Hammer added to Tech Tier 4.
• New light and backpack slots: carrying other items in the hand and on the back no longer interferes with having these items equipped.
  • Switch the light on and off by pressing L (the keybind can be changed in the Settings).
• Added terrain deformation, which allows for leaving footprints and impressions in sand and snow.
  • This feature could help locate lost quest and/or dropped items by making depressions in the snow.
  • This feature is turned off by default and can be enabled in the settings, under “Terrain Deformation.”
• Added inventory sorting by weight, with more options coming up in the future.
• Balance: added caves to the canyon biome, decreased Fur rewards for Chamois, Wolf, and Rabbit.
• Animals: added distant polar bear idle sound, improved cave worm death audio, fixed animals poking their heads through walls when attacking players or running away, added 2-second health regen delay, improvements to the spawning.
• More for Buffaloes: updated skeleton to be “meatier,” better dead ragdoll behavior, added buffalo footsteps and light movement sounds.
• Other landscape features: added new terrain features (for use in future missions), fixed the cave in F4 being underwater.
• Misc: added larger squash plant to fill the crop plot better, fixed Pumpkin Bread and Pickled Carrot decay, fixed Wine and Beer bottles not being given back on consumption, fixed Wine giving “Beer” buff, fixed Material Processor not needing fuel to function, improved underwater to not be so bright at night, added ability to delete Outposts in the menu, polishing character selection, character creation UI, prospect select screen.
• More sounds: added new repair hammer audio, “add Oxite” sound for Oxite Dissolver, metal pickaxe strike sound, rain sounds to concrete and stone roofs, sound for animals being placed on the Skinning Bench, sound for creatures when they fall, food-specific consume sounds, tweaked delays to Sol’s audio when they were too short.
• Performance: improved render of creatures and characters at distance, performance of rock material on higher settings, performance when opening the map, torch causing frame drops, overall memory usage.

We hope our little summary in this news post was helpful! What are your thoughts on the changes? Is Pumpkin Bread and Pickled Carrot nerf a bit disappointing? What about the Fur drops? Are you happy for a higher chance to hear murder machi-… uh, polar bears from a distance?

And, of course, what are your thoughts on the dedicated lantern and backpack slots? I don’t know about you, but I put out my torch in the caves way-y too often. Very happy about this one!

Let us know in the comments below!