STATION TO STATION: Extended Survey Mission Walkthrough - ICARUS

The Uniao faction wants someone to head to the Arctic and conduct a long-term survey on the weather patterns there — guess who’s going to go do it? Our guide will first list the relevant details of the mission, and then provide a step-by-step walkthrough.

Prospect Details

Approximate time to complete: 6 hours
Difficulty:
Recommended Level: 30 – Really, you can complete the mission at any level, but since you have 5 hours to kill after setting up all the beacons, it makes more sense to do this mission only after you’ve unlocked PAYDAY (and can mine Exotics while you wait for the scan to finish)
Location(s): Forest Biome, Arctic Biome
Objectives:
- Locate the device drop
- Deploy Multiple Devices to Speed up Scanning
  - Deploy sheltered device near Alpha
  - Deploy sheltered device near Beta
  - Deploy sheltered device near Gamma
  - Deploy sheltered device near Delta

Rewards

Variants Modifiers

Creature melee damage: -50%
Creature health: -50%
Creature movement speed: -10%
Bear spawn rate: -50%
Lion spawn rate: -10%
Polar bear spawn rate: -50%
Wolf spawn rate: -10%
Aggressive creatures perception: -50%
Neutral creatures perception: -50%
Passive creatures perception: -50%
Experience gain: -25%

Creature melee damage: +20%
Creature health: +30%
Creature movement speed: +10%
Aggressive creatures perception: +30%
Neutral creatures perception: +30%
Passive creatures perception: +30%
Scorpion spawn rate: +30%
Lion spawn rate: +30%
Wolf spawn rate: +30%
Experience gain: +25%
Player respawn count: 3

Prospect Notes

To complete the survey, you’ll need to reach a supply crate that contains four Portable Beacons, and deploy at least one device. Each device you deploy dramatically increases the speed at which the survey is completed, but with all 4 devices deployed, it will still take ~5 hours for the survey to complete. As mentioned above, it’s a good idea to complete PAYDAY first so that you can mine an Exotics vein while you wait for the survey to finish.

portable beacon shelter station to station — *The Portable Beacons require cover in order to activate*

objective locations station to station icarus guide — *The Supply Crate and Exotics Vein are both circled in red and labeled — the four yellow circles indicate the four locations you need to deploy beacons*

Preparing for STATION TO STATION

The bare minimum for completing this mission is as follows:

Wood Bow or better
Stone Arrows or better
Stone Knife or better
Bedroll
Campfire

The following blueprints aren’t required to complete the mission, but are needed in order to mine an Exotics vein:

Mission Walkthrough

Step 1: Retrieving & Placing the Beacons

You’ll land in the Forest Biome — open your map and find the red circle on the border of I-10/I-11, and double-click it to set a waypoint. Then prepare to enter the Arctic: gather resources to craft all the basic tools (bow, arrow, knife, axe, pickaxe), kill some animals and cook their meat, and craft at least Cloth Armor. You’ll also need to craft 20 Wood Walls and 10 Wood Floors, plus a Repair Hammer. A Bedroll is optional but should be easy to craft, and it’s nice to be able to sleep through the night. There are plenty of wolves the way we’re going, so make sure you have at least a couple dozen Bone Arrows before venturing into the snow. Once you’ve got all the building pieces, plus arrows, food, a Campfire, and some extra fuel, you’re ready to head into the Arctic.

Ideally, you’ll sneak past all of the predators you encounter on the way to the device drop. However, the detection range on predators in this mission is very high, so it’s unlikely you’ll be able to make it all the way to the drop without having to shoot a few wolves. If you don’t have at least 5 Cooked Meat to heal yourself with, it’s better to be patient than to engage larger wolf packs.

Once you reach the supply crate in I-10, open it and grab one of the beacons, then drag it into the [G] slot on your hotbar. The closest deployment zone is just to the south of you in I-11, so open your map and set a waypoint in the center of that yellow circle. Once you’re anywhere within the circle, place a Wood Floor piece down, then place the beacon on the floor. Then place 3 walls, another floor piece as a roof, and then the fourth and final wall — this will shelter the beacon and allow it to participate in the survey.

beacon sheltering 2 station to station icarus walkthrough guide — *Each beacon must be sheltered in order to function*

You’ll need to do this three more times: twice in H-11, and then in J-10. Deploy the beacons in H-11 first so you can leave the Arctic after you’ve placed the fourth one. For the northern beacon in H-11, note that you can build a shelter on the cliff-face, which will save you walking around or climbing up:

cliff face beacon h11 icarus station to station walkthrough guide — Place the floor on the side of the cliff

h11 cliff face becaon placement station to station icarus walkthrough guide — Place the floor on the side of the cliff

If you have successfully placed all four beacons in a shelter, the “Deploy Multiple Devices To Speed up Scanning” box will be ticked in your mission objectives. At this point, you can leave the Arctic via the eastern or southern pass (depending on where you’d like to set up your mining base).

Step 2: Mining Exotics While You Wait

While you could always read a book or alt-tab and browse Reddit for the 5 hours it takes to complete the scan, you run the risk of dying to a storm or a predator if you aren’t paying enough attention to ICARUS. With that in mind, it’s not a bad idea to take advantage of a nearby Exotics vein while you wait. As noted in the previous sections, you’ll need to have completed PAYDAY on the character you’re using in order to mine an Exotics vein.

We’ll assume that you are already comfortable with mining Exotics — if not, reference our PAYDAY guide and/or our guide on Exotics if you need additional guidance or information. That being said, here’s a brief reminder of the steps you’ll need to take:

Craft a Biofuel Composter and fill some Biofuel Cans
Tech up to T4 (the Fabricator)
Craft a Radar
Craft an Extractor (or, to save time, bring your Fabricator and the materials for the Extractor with you to the vein).
Get to the vein and mine it!

out of bounds icarus tile — *This area is out of bounds*

You’ll need to set up a mining base; J-14 is a good choice, as there are plenty of high-level caves nearby. If you need to go further afield to find ore, it’s important to note that the off-limits areas appear to be the southwest (the Desert), and the upper-left and upper-right corners (though the beginning section of both of those Biomes are in-bounds. Before you head to an area, make sure it doesn’t have the yellow cross-hatching that indicates an out-of-bounds section of the map.

vein location exotics station to station icarus walkthrough

Once you’ve teched up, it’s time to mine! Interestingly, it appears that the Exotics vein that spawns in this mission is the exact same one from the PAYDAY mission, as it appears on the border of J-11 and J-12. To save time, simply bring everything you need to J-11: the Radar, a Fabricator and the materials for an Extractor, plus Biofuel Cans and/or your Composter + materials for fuel.

With any luck, the time it takes you to tech up to T4 and mine the vein should be just a little bit longer than the time it takes the scan to finish. Once the scan is complete, you’ll get a notification from Sol, and your mission objectives will update. At that point, you can head back to your dropship and leave the planet!

We hope this walkthrough for STATION TO STATION was helpful. Questions, suggestions, or thoughts on the mission are all welcome in the comments below!