Pleasure to finally meet you, prospector. Perhaps you have stumbled upon this manual after experiencing some… unexpected troubles during your first weeks on Icarus. Or, maybe you are erring on the side of caution, wisely studying ahead of the dangerous venture. Regardless, this guide will have some helpful advice to offer. Contractors such as you venture into the hostile environment bare-handed, faced with the planet’s challenging environment and their own human limitations, eager to get their hand on the first batch of the exotics.
However, your survival comes first. You need oxygen, food, water, shelter, and a set of tools that are essential to obtain all of the above. Icarus has little patience for the inexperienced, so we should not waste any more time.
You just landed in your pod with nothing but two tool schematics. Sun is high, you are getting thirsty, your oxygen meter is slowly depleting, and the first storm will be rolling in sooner rather than later. What do you do?
Great way to get started on experience: chop trees and mine everything. If you see rabbits, run after them with a pickaxe, too. (Sure, a knife is more efficient, but this is more fun.)
Once you land you need to supply yourself with first-order tools, take care of your basic needs, figure out your first shelter, and start gathering higher-level materials. Your primary goal is to level up and protect the resources you gather against storms and your own mortality.
GOT WATER?
Check whether there are any bodies of water nearby (a stream or a lake, for example). If there are, note the location on your map. You will need it to replenish your thirst once the meter runs low.
If you can’t find anything close by, note that you will need to search for water or locate a cave in order to hydrate yourself soon. For now, you should gather and consume berries to slow the decay of your thirst meter.
Don’t worry about catching Dysentery disease from water: for now, it will be a normal occurrence. Consume food before you drink.
One looming threat for a low-level character is getting stuck in the death loop. Every time you die you accrue an experience point debt. By the time you repay that debt, you die again, resetting your progress.
So, how do you stop dying in ICARUS? You might find your issue resolved if you follow this guide. Still, there are a few mistakes you should watch out for in particular:
Do not waste your Tech Points on what you don’t need. You don’t need an oxidizer: you can consume oxite ore as is;
Stay near your landing site and build your shelter near a water source;
Create a plan for taking care of your needs and a method for quick leveling, or follow ours in this guide!
FIRST TOOLS
Now, start picking up rocks and sticks from the ground. Your very first tools to craft are Stone Axe and Stone Pickaxe, requiring 2 Fiber, 4 Stick, and 8 Stone each. Begin mining stone, but focus on chopping down trees for faster leveling per time invested.
It’s a good idea to unlock and craft a Stone Knife soon after to complete your basic set and prepare for hunting.
A Campfire will help you process meat, and if you can’t see well at night you should definitely unlock a Wood Rag Torch (or try messing with your brightness settings).
You can unlock the Small Wood Crate to free up your inventory and protect your efforts if you are playing solo and happen to die accidentally. You can use a Bedroll to set your respawn point and skip through the night, earning you a Well Rested buff.
Repairing broken tools: right-click on a tool either inside your quick access panel or inside your inventory and select “Repair.” Repair costs are very cheap: you don’t need to wait for a tool to break before you repair it. Still, you will spend your resources more efficiently if you let the duration run low.
GOT AIR?
Pick up some blue rocks and find a light blue ore node of oxite nearby. Mine the ore node until you have a stack of 50 or so.
Once you are done, place the stack into the slot next to oxygen inside your inventory for automatic consumption. At any time you can also right-click oxite and select “consume stack.”
An Oxidizer provides a way to get a lot more out of your oxite ore, but is not necessary early into your leveling efforts.
GOT FOOD?
There are four methods suitable for gathering food on lower levels:
The safest and easiest approach is gathering berries. However, you will need to harvest a lot of berry bushes to replenish your hunger, so this method is impractical in the long run.
Diving into a nearby lake and attacking fish will with a knife or arrows (or axe or pickaxe, for that matter) will supply some fish meat to cook. Beware of poisonous species.Once you’ve got a bow, it’s much easier to hunt fish with arrows.
If you haven’t unlocked the bow, chasing slower rabbits and taking them down with a knife will produce a corpse you can skin for leather, bone, and some raw meat.
You should unlock a Wood Bow and Stone Arrows ASAP. When crouched, you can one-shot any prey animals from stealth if you hit them in the head. Then, skin them for their meat and other materials — you’ll need to craft a stone knife to do so.
Processing the carcass: Dead raccoons and deers need to be skinned to gather their resources. Make sure to have a knife equipped and hold the [F] key to skin the carcass. Skinning animals will yield a skeleton that you should mine for bone using your pickaxe.
For now it will be safer to stick to your starting area until you have better tools and weapons. We will discuss venturing deeper into the forest under Hunting Deer and Predators later in this guide.
FIRST SHELTER
Your inventory is getting full. Clouds are rolling in. Soon the weather will turn, and it’s never a good idea to gamble on the severity of the next storm. You need to shelter yourself, stash the resources you have managed to obtain, and protect your most precious tools. While your own life may be expendable, the progress you make is not.
Repair Hammer is a cheap and easy way to maintain your home against storm damage. Remember to keep a Fire Whacker handy in case lightning strikes your house.
It will not take long before the first storm. Light rain isn’t likely to cause you any harm aside from temporary slower speed and experience gain, but you should not count on weather staying mild.
Your first shelter will be a way to not only protect yourself but empty out your inventory, set your workbenches, and create a respawn point. The kind of shelter you should put together depends on your progress so far.
Playing ICARUS co-op with a friend or a few is a great way to allocate responsibilities by specializing in different talents and technology.
It’s also a great way to preserve your experience progress and items, since there is no penalty for dying when a companion revives you.
However, keep in mind that even a higher-level companion could end up dead trying to rescue you. Always prepare for the worst to come out on top.
THATCH OR WOOD?
Don’t be afraid to unlock the full thatch building set if you did not reach level 5 yet. Stone construction that you will unlock on Tier 2 will easily out-do any wood shelter you may put together right now. However, if you made significant progress in leveling, picking wood is a wise choice. Wood is a quick resource to gather and requires less repairs against harsh weather.
Basic construction: to produce a very basic sheltered space, unlock the floor and wall blueprints — you can use the floor piece as a ceiling as well — and the door blueprint. Start by placing down the floor and snap other elements to it. To place a door, remember that you can access the wall variant with the door frame by holding “R”. Press “Y” to deconstruct and recover a construction element.
OTHER FORMS OF SHELTER
HIDING INSIDE ROCKS
Don’t worry if you are taking a little more time gaining levels and do not have any leftover blueprint points. Worst comes to worst, finding a large rock node is not too hard. If there is a storm warning or you need to evade a predator, simply find a rock that’s taller than you and mine a hole into it that’s big enough to form an entrance.
USING CAVES AS SHELTER
A more permanent solution is finding a cave. There is enough space inside even a small cave for setting storage, workstations, and a bed to set a respawn point. Even if you build your own house as your first shelter, you will eventually want to discover some nearby caves to gather valuable ore.
Many caves are hidden in a way that makes them blend in with their surroundings, so if you need help finding your first cave we have a guide that will walk you through the process.
Your hard work has earned you much-needed tools and improved your survival skills. Your careful planning has earned you a warm corner where you can hide from the storm and rest through the night. Now that your basic needs are met, you are ready to venture deeper into the forest and obtain rarer materials.
HUNTING DEER AND PREDATORS
Earlier, in our section on food, we covered the easiest pray you can catch early on: fish, rabbits, and deer/chamois. All of this hunting can be done near your landing zone, where you are unlikely to encounter any predators. However, you will eventually want to undertake riskier expeditions deeper into the forest to improve your yields and gain better experience.
Hunting gets you good experience, supplies leather and bones for crafting, and provides raw meat for cooking.
We will not have a discussion over spears, knives, or bows in this guide, but here’s a quick summary: there is a Combat section under Talents you should definitely explore. It’s a good idea to at least start unlocking talents corresponding to your favorite weapon type — for your own protection. Specializing in stealth is also a sound approach.
Give a fair try to spears, knives, and bows to determine your favorite approach to hunting. Explore the Combat section under Talents, and consider unlocking talents corresponding to your preferred weapon type. Specializing in stealth is also a sound approach.
Check out our guide on How to Level Up Fast for some tips on how to make hunting a more safe and reliable source of early experience.
Dealing with bears: the further you venture into the forest, the higher is the risk of you encountering a bear. Bears are fearsome beasts that can take you down with little effort and dealing with them is a technique of its own.
Landing the first hit on your opponent can be critical to the outcome of the battle. With predators like wolves, you should try and deal as much damage as possible before the animal’s first strike.
Strategies like these are important to preserving your health points (health points restore slowly or stop restoring altogether if you gain a wound debuff).
Basic Bandage is highly recommended when facing wolves, and Suture Kit will be important when you are ready to fight against bears. These counteract the two grades of nasty wound debuffs.
The downside of spending a lot of time inside caves is a chance of catching pneumonia.
You will definitely want to stockpile some iron for advanced workbenches and better tools (and eventually stone construction), so it makes sense to prepare ahead of time. Mining rare ores provides higher experience points per hit than mining stone, so starting early will definitely not be a waste of time.
Once you reach Tier 2 and can smelt iron ore into ingots, a variety of upgraded basic tools will be available for you to craft (on an Anvil Bench that requires a few iron ingots to craft). Iron ore will also play a big part in crafting upgraded melee and ranged weapons.
NEXT STEPS: HOW DO I LEVEL UP?
The fastest methods for gaining experience in ICARUS vary depending on your level, goals, and specialization. When it comes to leveling from level 1 to level 15 or so, we have a few recommendations that make more sense when considering what tools you might have at your disposal.
Check out the link below to our full guide on this topic!
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.
Check whether there are any bodies of water nearby (a stream or a lake, for example). If there are, note the location on your map. You will need it to replenish your thirst once the meter runs low.
One looming threat for a low-level character is getting stuck in the death loop. Every time you die you accrue an experience point debt. By the time you repay that debt, you die again, resetting your progress.
