ICARUS Talent System Guide

Hey Prospectors! Are you’re getting ready to drop down on your first mission? Maybe you are thinking about creating a new character that complements your others? Choosing the right talents can shave hours off your mission and keep you alive among deadly predators in the harshest environments.

Getting your perks right the first time is important since you can’t refund your points, and this guide will tell you everything you need to know about the Talent System in ICARUS to help you plan. If you would like some help picking specific talents after you are done here, head over to our dedicated Builds guide.

How Talents Work: A Tutorial

Simply put, the talent system allows prospectors to invest Talent Points to obtain certain perks which improve their character.

Earning regular Talent Points:

These points can be used in all available talent trees (Survival, Construction, and Combat), but not the Solo category.

• A character will earn 1 talent point with every level, up to Level 50
• They will also earn 1 additional talent point every five levels, up to Level 50.
• After level 50, no new talent points will be gained (you will continue earning blueprint points).
• Including the 3 talent points you start with, the maximum number of talent points is currently 63.

Earning Solo Talent Points:

These points are used in a separate Solo track for talents that are only active when playing alone on a prospect.

• Your character will get 1 solo talent point every 2 levels.
• This will result in a total of 25 at Level 50.

How to Respec Talent Points

Talent points can be reallocated by purchasing Respec Points for 150 each. You are provided 30 Respec Points at the start of the game which are shared between all of your characters. Each Respec Point will allow you to remove one Talent Point from a single talent. If it is the last point in that talent, you can only remove it if no other talents use it as a prerequisite.

You can use your Respec Points on the regular Talents and the Solo Talents: the process for both is the same.

It can get expensive to respec characters. Still it can be quite useful: remember that no additional talent points are awarded after Level 50, so the maximum number of talent points is limited. You can use the tools at icarusbuilds.app to plan out the talents you want to choose.

The talents are organized into several trees and sub-trees based on different specializations. These trees can be found in the Talent menu on the character screen, both in the Orbital Station and on Icarus.

In ICARUS, Talents provide a variety of ways to improve your character. You can:

• Improve character traits, such as health and stamina, mining and harvesting yield, weapon damage, etc. Invest more than one talent point to increase the strength of their effect.
• Learn new abilities, such as detecting the outlines of hard-to-see animals, increasing your food capacity, or stunning a predator during combat.
• Unlock specific blueprints in the Tech Tree to provide new crafting recipes. (We will explore these later in the guide.)

Talent Dependencies and Ranks

Not all talents will be available to a Level 1 prospector. Like skill trees in other role-playing games, you must unlock specific talents before you can access others. The branches of each talent tree indicate which talents are dependent on others.

Each talent also has a Talent Rank requirement that must be met before you can select it. The talent rank ranges from 1 for introductory talents to 4 for mastery talents that unlock powerful traits and abilities.

Your current rank in each talent tree is displayed by a rank insignia next to the name of that tree. Your progress toward the next rank is displayed in the black-and-gold bar below each tree name; each talent invested fills 1/4th of the progress bar.

• Rank 1 – No Insignia
• Rank 2 –
• Rank 3 –
• Rank 4 –

In other words, starting at Rank 1, every 4 talent points invested in a specialization tree will increase your rank in that tree by one level. You can learn any talent of rank less than or equal to your rank in that tree, as long as you have available points and unlocked the dependent talents.

Branching Out to Different Specializations

You can mix and match talents between different specialization trees and the Solo Tree. Plan ahead so you can reach the high-tier skills you really want in your chosen specializations before you run out of points. (Just remember that talents on the Solo Tree will become inactive if you join another player on the same prospect, or if they join you.)

How Solo Talents Work

In addition to the specialization trees, there is a Solo Tree with Talents that are only active if the character is alone on a prospect. Having another player join your game, or joining another players game, will remove any benefits you are receiving from Solo tree talents.

Talent Tree Specializations

There are three main groups with 3-4 specialized talent trees each, and the separate Solo Tree.

The specialized talents will be active whether you play alone or with other prospectors, while solo talents will only be active when you are alone on a prospect. Remember to invest your solo talent points in the separate Solo Talent Tree. Think of what you could use a boost on when alone on Icarus or the first prospector to land. Is it gathering, mining, hunting, building, or just surviving until help arrives?

Now let’s take a look at the different talent trees your prospector can specialize in:

Survival

Brave better the forces of Icarus with these talents that boost your character’s ability to survive the harsh conditions on Icarus and make use of its resources.

• Resources Tree: Extract more resources faster from plant, mineral, and exotic sources and transport them more efficiently.
• Exploration Tree: Enhance vital statistics, physical prowess, and resistance to the elements in each biome, and reduce consumption rates.
• Hunting Tree: Boost speed and stamina, master stealth and detect nearby animals, harvest more resources from animals, and learn special armor and trophy recipes.
• Cook/Farm Tree: Grow your own food and extract extra benefits from it. Develop an iron stomach that can process raw and spoiled food.

Construction

Improve your character’s skill in making and using tools and building materials with the talents in these trees.

• Repairing Tree: More efficiently put out fires with more durable fire whackers. Even throw a whacker to reach vaulted ceilings (or annoying prospectors).
• Tools Tree: Level up the durability and efficiency of axes, pickaxes, and sickles, as well as radars and exotics extractors. Learn how to throw an axe (at annoying prospectors).
• Building Tree: Reduce the weight and cost of wood, stone and concrete buildables. Smelt faster. Store more. Master defensive structures like lightning rods and hedgehogs.

Combat

These talents enable your character to make stronger weapons, use them more effectively, and craft them efficiently.

• Bows Tree: Wield a bow more quickly and accurately and amplify critical damage. Craft more durable bows with fewer materials. Slow, bleed, and stun with homing precision.
• Spears Tree: Craft more durable spears, become more deadly at close and long range, move more efficiently even while aiming, and tank more while bleeding your target.
• Blades Tree: More faster and more quietly with a knife that is more durable, critically damaging, and easier to throw. Blade masters will stun and sometimes kill instantly.
• Firearms Tree: Craft lighter, more durable, and deadly pistols, shotguns, and rifles with smoother reloading and cheaper ammo. Also, master hunting with grenades!

Solo

These especially strong talents are only for those who are willing and able to confront Icarus mono a planeta.

• Solo Tree: A collection of enhanced skills based on certain talents from the other trees. Many of these perks have multiple and more potent effects.

Special Blueprint Talents

Several talents you can learn increase your crafting capability by adding new craftable items or new recipes for basic materials. The blueprints for these recipes remain locked until you learn the special talent that goes with it. (You will still need to invest a Blueprint Point to learn the recipe.)

These talents usually help you accomplish a special task. The Ghillie armor allows you to move more stealthily. Crafting sticks and rope without workbenches can help you make better use of resources, especially in scarce circumstances. The skinning bench improves hunting yield, and mounting the heads of your furry friends and foes on the wall is—well, let’s just be honest—cathartic fun.

If you ever get frustrated when a blueprint won’t unlock even though you learned the prerequisites, you may need to learn a talent first.

Here is a list of the locked recipes, where to find the requisite talents, and the Rank you will need to learn them:

• Sticks from Wood without Carpentry Bench: Survival-Resources tree, Rank 2
• Rope from Leather without Textiles Bench: Survival-Hunting tree, Rank 2
• Ghillie Armor: Survival-Hunting tree, Rank 4
• Polar Bear Armor: Survival-Hunting tree, Rank 4

Stackable Talents

Many of the talents which increase one of your character traits, such as health or weapon damage, can be strengthened by investing more than one talent point into them. However, the description of the talent does not make it clear whether these increases stack. Sometimes the listed bonuses are additive, and sometimes they simply indicate the new level the bonus has reached.

For example, the Robust Explorer talent in the Survival-Exploration tree adds +10, +25, and +50 to the base health of the character. However, these bonuses do not stack, and the Talent Menu of the character screen does not say this. After three talent points (maxing out this talent) the total bonus to base health is +50.

The Character Sheet aka Talent Rosetta Stone

The interactions between talents, food buffs, and weapon bonuses can be complex, but there’s a tool we can use to figure out how these character improvements stack up. In the Inventory Menu of the character screen, pressing the Show More button on the lower right provides detailed character statistics. Doing so will take you to another screen where you can see every statistic for your character and their values, such as maximum health and stamina, weight capacity, running speed, special abilities, etc.

Each time you are about to invest a talent point, eat a new food, or equip a tool or weapon you are curious about, check how they change the statistics on this screen. In this way, you can figure out how these stat boosts stack and which combinations well with each other.

Other Tips

• If all the talents are grayed out, you may not have any talent points available. If you have at least one talent point available, the talents you can learn next will be highlighted.
• Is the talent tree broken? Are your selected talents grayed out? Does the current talent point total says something crazy like -1? The “Refresh” button in the upper right corner can fix many simple graphical bugs.

We hope this guide on ICARUS Talents was helpful! If you still have questions about the Talent System or have any suggestions, you can use the comment box below!