Week Twelve’s Content Update comes with another long-requested feature: the separate solo talent tree! Solo Tree also got a few new talents added to it, but there are now more Talent Points to go around in general (and infinite Blueprint Points!). The respec feature is still a work in progress, but devs revealed how it’s going to function and promised it as a part of the next week’s update.
More Levels: Hard-Cap Lifted, Soft-Cap Raised
Infinite Blueprint Points
Have you sacrificed Herbalist benches and recipes to spec into Armor Crafting, Furnishing, Trophies, or vice versa? Well, now you will definitely be able to unlock them all: hard level cap has been lifted, and now you can keep going past level 99 and keep getting more and more Blueprint Points.
The Tech Tree will continue to get new items to help you spend these points in the future!
Extra Talent Points
The soft cap of level 40 has also been extended to level 50: you can get extra 12 points for the total of 60 (up from the previous limit of 48.) Players with characters past level 40 logging back in will see those points applied to their build.
Separate Solo Talent Tree
And, for the spotlight of this week’s update: the Solo Tree!
First of all, the old community request to separate the Solo Talent Tree has been implemented. Now, characters will earn 1 Solo Talent Point every second level, up to a maximum of 25. The tree has also been noticeably expanded to make players choose where their solo strengths will lie, so don’t expect to be able to max everything out.
However, this does boost solo play in ICARUS, which until now often involved picking a solo-only character to take advantage of the Solo talents, out of fear that any multiplayer gameplay would put their main build at a disadvantage.
Of course, keep in mind that the Solo Talent tree is active only when your character is alone on the drop. Should anyone else join, these talents will be temporarily disabled; they will be re-applied once you are alone on the planet again.
Talent Point Respec Coming Next Week
The upcoming Respec options also deserve a mention here, since RocketWerkz has spent a lot of time designing a solution to this actively requested feature. Dean Hall, ICARUS’s GameRunner, thinks that the Talent Respec will be added to the game with the next week’s update.
Talent Respec will be applied in single points, to give players a choice between a large character respec or merely a small adjustment to the current build. You will be able to purchase individual “Retraining Points” using the Orbital Ren currency (), which can then be used to undo a particular Talent investment and put that point elsewhere.
This is a welcome, and long-awaited change, but we don’t yet know the cost of a single Retraining Point, so it’s not clear how easy it will be to take advantage of the new system. Regardless, the option to revert on a particular Talent you did not find so useful or even clicked on accidentally (certainly speaking from personal experience here) is already a game-changer in of itself.
It’s important to note that current players will get “a bunch of free Retraining Points” next week, so we will be finally able to adjust our old characters to accommodate the changes to our strategies since release (particularly useful for adjusting old characters for the gameplay). Of course, now that we also have the separate Solo Tree, perhaps some of those old Talent Points could be reassigned for something more unique!
ICARUS Patch Notes – Version 1.1.3.91832
Changed level 99 cap to an infinite leveling system which repeats once you reach level 50 to infinitely rewards blueprint points.
Increased Talent point soft cap from stopping at level 40 with 48 total spendable talent points, to continue to level 50, with 60 total spendable talent points.
Added solo talent points. The solo talent tree now uses its own talent points for progression, these are not shared with the other more general talent trees.
Added several new talents to the solo tree, and adjusted the layout of existing talents.
Added new sleep interface.
Added graphics setting option for contact shadows – an inexpensive way of rendering shadows
Fixed issue where distant mountains in outposts were not casting shadows correctly.
Fixed issue with visual artifacts in the distance.
Fixed not being able to remove the player waypoint by double clicking
Fixed issue where player could have more than one waypoint
Fixed waypoint markers not being given the correct colour
Fixed further instances of some water bodies (especially rivers) missing fish.
Improved the description of the hunting rifle to clarify that it is semi-automatic
Share this article:
Mila Grish
Dedicated contributor at EIP Gaming and a part-time collector of books she will never have time to actually read. Jumps on the newest releases just as quickly as on the uncovered dusty collections from the basement. For her, shiny graphics can never be an excuse to not have a polished player experience or an immersive story.