ICARUS Mining Build

Whether you’re finding it tough to get enough metal, or you just want to level the lazy way by left-clicking stone while you watch YouTube videos, we’ve got you covered with a guide on what talents to choose for fast, efficient mining!

Best Mining Talents

The following talents are listed in order of unlock priority. Note that the [brackets] indicate the Tree — Tab that the listed talent is found in. The key Mining talents will cost you 17 Talent Points, while including all the optional talents will cost you 24 Talent Points.

Key Talents

1. Picksmith I [Construction — Tools]:1 point
   • -5/10/15% Stamina Consumed by Pickaxe Actions. For now just put one point in this to unlock Speedy Mining. Once you’ve maxed out Metal Miner, you can come back and put more points in this if you’re finding yourself out of stamina while mining (this generally only happens with stone, so if you’re mining stone to level, max this out).
2. Speedy Mining [Construction — Tools]: 3 points
   • +5/10/20% Attack Speed with Pickaxes. This is the first skill we max, since swinging your pickaxe faster means you mine faster.
3. Miner Endurance I [Construction — Tools]:1 point
   • -5/10/15% Stamina Consumed by Pickaxe Actions. For now just put one point in this to unlock Speedy Mining. Once you’ve maxed out Metal Miner, you can come back and put more points in this if you’re finding yourself out of stamina while mining (this generally only happens with stone, so if you’re mining stone to level, max this out).
4. Dense Packing I [Survival — Resources]: 3 points
   • +5/10/20% Weight Capacity. We max this out early because being able to carry 20% more weight means far fewer trips back to base, and you’ll need to spend at least 8 points on this tree to unlock Metal Miner.
5. Rock Star [Survival — Resources]:1 point
   • +10/15/20% Yield from Mining Stone. If you have specific plans to create a huge stone structure, feel free to max this out, otherwise just spend the one point needed to move further down the tree.
6. Oxygen Thief [Survival — Resources]:1 points
   • +10/15/25% Yield from Mining Oxite. It’s very easy to get all the Oxite you need for Oxygen, so there’s no need to spend more than the 1 point required to move further down the tree.
7. Slinging Stone [Survival — Resources]: 1 point
   • -5/10/15/25% Carry Weight of Stone. Stone is abundant in every biome, so you unlikely to haul it long distances. It is required to access most of the high-ranking talents we will be discussing below.
8. Dense Packing II [Survival — Resources]: 1 point
   • +5/10/20% Weight Capacity. We will pick this one up for the same reasons we outlined under Dense Packing I, but also because we wanted to get the Exotic Sprinter in the Optional Talents. You can max this one out for a 40% weight capacity increase between the two talents.
9. Metal Miner [Survival — Resources]:3 points
   • +10/15/20% Yield from Mining Iron. Iron is not only a key ingredient in many recipes, but it’s also required to make Steel. Increasing your yield to 20% will save you a lot of time spelunking for more iron deposits.

Optional Talents

The optional talents either add convenience or some fun luck-based bonuses. Arguably, Unburdened is so useful it should be in the above list.

7. Exotic Sprinter [Survival — Resources]:1 point
   • +5/8/10% Movement Speed while Carrying Exotics. Can be useful, but for our purposes it’s only needed to unlock the following Talent.
8. Unburdened [Survival — Resources]:4 points
   • -5/10/15/25% Carry Weight of Ores. If you’re going to be collecting a lot of ore, making it lighter is pretty useful — but you’re usually better off just bringing a furnace with you and smelting your ore into ingots in the cave.
9. Exotic Power [Survival — Resources]:1 point
   • -5/10/15/25% Carry Weight of Exotics. Like Exotic Sprinter, this will come in handy when transporting exotics, but for now we just need 1 point in it.
10. Lucky Strike [Survival — Resources]:1 point
    • 1% Chance to Instantly Break Mineral or Ore Deposits while Mining. For gamblers — it’s not an optimal choice, but it’s fun! Probability becomes much higher with large stone deposits, in case if you need a lot of Stone.

Talent Trees

Click the button below to see a visual representation of the above-mentioned Talents.

Survival — Resources and Construction — Tools Trees

Solo Mining Talents

If you’re planning on playing solo, there are some talents in the Solo tree that can also assist with mining.

1. Marathon Runner [Solo]:1 point
   • +10/25 Maximum Stamina. The max stamina isn’t useful unless you’re mining stone, so we just put 1 point here to unlock the next talent.
2. Lightning Recovery [Solo]:2 point
   • +10/20 Increased base Stamina regen. The increases to stamina regen is more impactful than an increase to base Stamina when mining stone over a long period of time, so we max this.
3. Mobile Stockpile [Solo]:1 point
   • -20% Carry Weight of Wood, Stone, Ores. If you’ve already maxed Unburdened it’s unlikely you’ll need this as well, but it does make ores even lighter. Note that you’ll need to spend at least 9 points on the Solo tree, and unlock a handful of prior talents, in order to unlock Mobile Stockpile. Rather than list specific Solo talents to take, try to pick based on your goals for your character/mission.

We hope this ICARUS build was helpful. Leave questions and suggestions in the comments below, and happy mining!