Introducing the next big bad boss: the Giga-Beamer! Equip yourself with a shiny new powershot and a spooky new item to take it down!
Changes with the '📡 ' icon in front of them are changes or additions suggested by the community!
Fear the giga-beamer!
General
-NEW BOSS: The ☠️ GIGA BEAMER ☠️ This boss can be encountered in the second bossfight after defeating wave 10, and should be quite the formidable foe!
-The new boss introduces a new debuff: 🐌 Sticky 🐌 This will slow your movement speed and cripple the recharge rate of your combat roll. When afflicted with this debuff, you have to time your combat roll perfectly, use it too early and you're toast!
-Ammo UI has been reworked for greater back-end flexibility, this should fix issues related to the ammo bar getting messy at high ammo counts
-New Visuals for Rusty Magnet, Mineral Scanner, Unstable Isotope, Whispering Lantern, and Burning Enemies
-Added special art for stunned detonator enemies
-Shortened "Elder Plasma Spitter" to simply "Elder Spitter"
-The game no longer exits you from a store when you Alt+Tab or Shift+Tab
-Integrated steam rich presence! Now you can see which mercenary your friends are playing as and where they are in their runs!
-📡 New Setting: Controller Cursor Distance This setting allows you to customize how close or far your cursor is to your weapon when using a controller
-📡 New Setting: Show Mini Cooldown Indicators This setting toggles on two small indicators by your character that show you the cooldown status of your combat roll and your ability
Minigunner
-Powershot Added new ability visuals! Rotated burst projectile orientation by 180 degrees
Now you won't get that pesky projectile that's sent straight back towards you
Engineer
-Shotgun Tightened projectile spread by +27% This should make it significantly easier to do higher damage without needing to be in point blank ranges to enemies
-Custom Minisentry Increased projectile speed by +75% This allows the minisentry to hit moving targets easier, which helps it deal damage better damage when it's alone
-Scrap Efficiency (Passive) Scrap back from armor purchases in shop increased +25% -> +50% Small buff to make this aspect of his passive a bit more impactful
Drillminer
-Drillmine Launcher Reduced base firerate by -6% Increased drillmine explosion radius by +15% Small Stat tweak to lean the drillminer into his strengths as an AoE damage dealer
Items
-Mineral Scanner 💻 OLD: 9 second scan (+9 seconds per stack)
12 deposits that yield medium scrap
NEW: 12 second scan (+12 seconds per stack)
8 deposits that yield small scrap
4 rich deposits that yield golden small scrap
rich deposits can be scanned 2-5 times each
every deposit has a +18% chance per additional threat level to yield triple scrap values!
New Mineral Scanner Visuals!
-Royal Jelly 🐝 Bee targeting range reduced by 25% (New range: 5) Bee damage reduced 30 -> 20 Bee recharge time reduced 2 seconds -> 1.25 seconds NEW: Bee recharge time now reduced by an additional 0.15 seconds per stack
-Tasty Honeycomb 🍯 Bee targeting range reduced by 25% (New range: 6.5) Bee damage reduced 30 -> 20 Bee recharge time increased 1.25 seconds -> 1.5 seconds NEW: Bee recharge time now reduced by an additional 0.35 seconds per stack
Previously the Tasty Honeycomb was essentially a direct upgrade to the Royal Jelly, it had a higher bps (bees per second) and could fire bees onto enemies from nearly double the range of the Jelly. It also didn't help that stacking them was neat but not that interesting.
Now, the Royal Jelly will have superior bps in the early game, with the condition that you need to remain closer to enemies to fire out the bees, when compared to the Tasty Honeycomb. But, if you gain multiple stacks, the Honeycomb will surpass the Jelly in sheer damage. Both of these items will also benefit from scaling considerably better with additional stacks now that the bee recharge rate is improved by them.
The range adjustments also make the Jelly more useful in prolonged close quarters combat, whereas the Honeycomb will be more suited to longer range playstyles.
-Multi-Stimpack Injector 💉 Movement speed reduced 25% -> 20% Firerate, reload rate, damage, ability recharge speed, and projectile speed & range increased 25% -> 45%
Week Eighty Five brings a new mission for the fishers and anglers amongst you. You’ve been tasked to go catch some endemic species to the oasis, so get your rods and go cast your line.
We’ve also got an update on Hypatia and our ongoing work into the new mission system and performance elements.
Finally, we’ve got a sneak peek at a future patch for crop plots, and would love your thoughts on our proposed changes.
Hop in and have a read.
New Mission: OASIS: Angler
This week's mission is for the fishers and anglers among you. You’re tasked with building a fishing hut and catching some species endemic to the oasis of the desert biomes of Styx. Your briefing is as follows:
// OPERATOR: SINOTAI // BIOME: OASIS, Styx map // BACKGROUND: A VIP is requesting to have a taste of what Styx has to offer. // MISSION: Setup a fishing hut and use the provided equipment to catch and prepare fish for delivery. // TERMS: Deployment locations will be provided as suitable launch locations arise.
Hypatia Update
Our next large content update after Galileo is Hypatia, which we are working on at the same time as regular weekly updates and our upcoming New Frontiers expansion.
Hypatia’s first major feature is Open World Missions, the ability to launch and complete missions from within an existing Open World without having to leave the planet and start a new prospect separately (However, you can still do this if you wish). This is the most popular request on the Icarus Feature Upvote page and integrates our two most popular game modes into one coherent experience.
This is a huge undertaking as we have well over 80 missions, many of which have been here since the launch of Icarus, which requires a lot of work to transition. We are making good progress, however, and are also taking this opportunity to tweak and improve many of the missions.
Alongside this work, we are actively looking into the performance of level streaming and object loading that is responsible for the vast majority of hitches players encounter when travelling the map. We are testing out some solutions internally at the moment, and while a fix may be a while off due to the sheer size of the task at hand, we are optimistic with some of these changes and feel we are on the right track.
Crop Plot Revamp
An upcoming project we have been working on is a crop plot revamp. The biggest changes we’re proposing are potentially removing the crop plot inventory entirely, and allowing in-world planting and harvesting with a sickle, without needing to open up any UI to access your fruits and vegetables.
If you have any suggestions or thoughts on this system, leave them in the comments below, and we’ll go through and have a read while we tinker with the system.
Changelog v1.3.7.113609
New Content
Basic outline for new fishing mission
Finishing off the Fishing Quest
Adding Quest Tag to Styx Oasis lake so the fishing spot for the quest can be marked
Adding prospect difficulty adjustments for number of fish required to catch
Added Ren/Exotic rewards for completion of fishing mission
Unlocking Fishing Mission
Adjusting completion fishing broadcast so it is called after catching the fish and not when hooked on the line, relevant to new mission
Adding Fishing Mission Images and Modifying Mission Name
Removing feature lock from feather lures
Fixed
Updated credits section
Updated 'additional thanks' section under credits
Drop ships now atomize overlapping foliage during descent
Some more timing and logic tweaks on Smoke Grenade
Improve Smoke Grenade visual effects (converted to Niagara)
Smoke Grenades will now obstruct creature vision
Increase Smoke Grenade throwing range
Decrease Grenade throw charge time 1.5 to 1.25s
Update Metal Oxite Dissolver to use new V2 mesh
Hook up custom logic to rotate dials for each oxygen slot and fuel slot (large dial)
Fixed incorrect Komodo mesh
Reordered Hyenas above Alpha Hyena to grant credit for Hyena Trophy to Hyena bestiary entry
Fixed Inverted Left Concrete Roof missing from radial selection menu
Future Content
Added modifier states for all new weather types, linked to base testing events
Resaving WeatherPools data table to resolve build error
Added AXE_IronWood
Added bestiary text for Arid Striker and Redback
Setting up quest variables for Daisy to replicate
Adjusted Dialogue locations for PRO_Story_1
Adding new Icon for the 'UDA Communicator Upgrade'
Timer for PRO_STORY_1 now starts AFTER the tomato is planted
Adjusting V2PromNomadEvent8.7 to have a lower priority than V2PromNomadEvent7 so dialogue interruption does not occur
Add BoundsMap texture mask for Prometheus visual map to only show north portion of map
Added 50 second delay before starting objectives in PRO_Story_1 so dialogue can play to completion
Adjusting dialogue for entering area's Alpha, Beta & Delta so the dialogue plays only once instead of each time you enter the area
Updating PRO_STORY4 weather forecast, also preventing natural spawns of arctic area's during the phase where you are tracking down an Group 15 agent
Fixed skinning for heavy obsidian chest armor male and female
Hooked weather visual effects for all new weather types, tweaked modifier values
Adding slug spot audio event and notif
Updated visual map textures for Prometheus, reduced textures size, reset MipGenSettings and Changed texture group to UI
Importing Desert Striker assets and setup character and carcass + bones assets and relavent DTs
Adding cave specific river audio to play when in the cave river.Adding event and BP entry
Add creature threat audio settings to swamp slug so that it triggers combat music correctly
Adding direction eq and distance eq and reverb to slug movement layers
Adjusted collision on SM_BLD_Wall_Solid_Stone so that picture frames should no longer clip into the wall
Adding in slug carcass assets and Lava slug assets + carcass assets, updated character etc and Corpse characters
Made Sulfur reaction effects more customizable to suit different scenarios
Repositioned in-world actors
Adding komodo variant mesh along with carcass state, updated character BP, Corpse BP and D_Meshable entries
Added new Gas Flyer creature alongside first pass of behaviour set.
BallisticData now supports Niagara trail particles.
NPCs can now override GetSightPerceptionOrigin in Blueprint to specify an arbitrary location/rotation for sight traces to originate from.
Improved Swamp Slug's slime trail material and spline generation
Updating PRO_STORY4 body3 search area, as the body was outside the area
Adding Caught Fishing Notifiers and FishingNotification Subsystem
Added new weather events, tiers and modifiers. Still requires additional tweaking of exposure rates, and tierified visual effects
New entries added to Bestiary Data for lore text entry
Update swamp wind modifier to communicate that it makes creatures see you easier
Update temperature modifiers of weather events to offset new weather modifiers
Update many weather events visual communication, fixing many linked curves and values
Scaled AcidFog damage to reasonable levels
Resaved WeatherPools to resolve build issue, again
Adding slug flinch audio, event and data table entry
Adding grasslands track Icarus_25 to Music data
Adding music asset for grasslands
Adding slug attack vocals and adjustments to notifier timings
Added Lava Slug variant setup to AI Setup and Item static for the corpse
Added translatable entry for the mount following indicator
Added lore text for remaining creatures in the bestiary
Update ModifierCosmetic BP to support new approach for SulfurGas (missing from 113273)
Optimized existing Sulfur effect
Added Missing Source Files for adjustments to the Aura component manager and fishing functionlibrary
Removed debug print from PerformAction_SpitAttack
Adding Aura distance overrides on modifiers so the sulfur actor pools can spawn their effects and aura's dynamically and to the correct size
NPCs using the 'Spit Attack' BTTask can now specify a delay in seconds when spawning multiple projectiles to spread out construction cost over time, default delay is a single frame
Added roat carcass sk mesh, material and textures
Added swamp bird bones skeletal mesh and textures. Updated Swamp bird corpse BP to include the new bone asset
Added noise and additional blending to slug trail material. NPCTrailComponent can now be given a socket to use as origin when generating new spline points
Added validation for new weather types, fixed some bugs found due to this
Fixed ticking modifier scaling effectiveness which caused damage over time effects to do no damage (dev only)
Adding slug death audio and small adjustments to embers storm based on new length and speed
PRO_A_Stockpile: Updated to remove the return to dropship objective
Adjustments and improvements to the gas flyer
Rasied terrain to prevent gaps between landscape and cliffs, Purple Quad, Prometheus
Adding gas flyer horn audio, shoot ballistic audio and BP logic to play explosive sound when corpse blows up
Updated building damage tag effect for storms to not completely destroy buildings, instead leaving the building fully stripped like other storm damage
Reduced AcidRain damage
Added smoke effects to acid fog storms, to emphasise the increased fog
Scaled player item damage of the toxic gasses storms
Increased exposure for Prometheus lower tier storms
Creature images added
Creature images added
Creature images added
Creature images added
Creature images added
Creature images added
Adding sounds to all new slug animations
Added additional weather action validation and scaled temperature effects by weather tier
Add Weapons Utility widget which shows damage output
Flushed Grass on Blue & Yellow Quad, DLC Map
Lots of adjustments and improvements to the gas flyer projectile sounds
Daisy Death Dialogue no longer players when escort is complete in PRO_STORY_1
Flushed Grass to fix grass patches, Green Quad and Purple Quad, Prometheus
Fixing up bestiary & AI setup for the lava slug so it has different behaviours, stats, growth, loot tables from that of the swamp slug
Added music timing hooks and validation to new weather events, minor fixes to timing for other weather events
Fixing dialogue timing PromOffender5. Added 4 second start delay
Add swamp minimap material for generating LODs/minimaps
Added PIC_IronWood
Removed damage from new weather events that have damage within the modifier
Added debug CVar to disable shelter traces for performance testing
Adding gas flyer audio events and data table entrys for the ballistics
To make sure the stability of the game operation and improve the service quality and experience, the maintenance of Blood of Steel on July 21 will be extended to 14:00(utc+8). After the server maintenance, we will also inform on steam as soon as possible. Please pay attention to the announcements and inform each other. Sorry for the inconvenience!
On July 13th, Haven welcomed runners both new and old. Our host and Community Manager at NExT Studios Jake Rosenblum brought on both Kevin Shortt, the Narrative Director for SYNCED as well as Liv Peelen, a Narrative Designer who specializes in storytelling and item naming. The topic of this week’s stream was all about names in SYNCED, and how they were created. The stream started out with the naming process and the stories behind some of the names we’ve come to know and love. Later, the guests were challenged to a word trivia game, to test their knowledge of the item names in SYNCED. To end the stream, our guests strapped on their boots, and went into the Meridian to show off their preferred weapons as well as their favorite Runner.
If you would like to get synced, watch the video on demand below.
Things added in Update 6.4 -A new user-friendly layout for the safe, stash house and vault. Adding sliders to the mix, removing the need to click buttons a million times -A new status layout with the office that gives you a quick overview of; how much drugs/ money your distributors have on hand and the supply/ money levels of all the businesses you own -Upgradable safes -removed audible card from battle mode wild cards -fixed a bug that caused the game to freeze after exiting battle mode