ICARUS Week 35 Update: New Attachment System, Alteration Benches, and Upcoming Map Developments

The update for Week 35 has been in the works for some time, and now it comes to the public branch. The new Attachment System improves or modifies the stats of tools and weapons (just melee, for now). Attachments provide greater equipment customization to optimize virtually every prospect operation, from mining to hunting to combat and more.

New Attachment System

Equipment attachments are common in many games, especially when combat is involved. For ICARUS, this first iteration of the Attachment System will allow melee weapons and tools to be modified. Here are the highlights:

• Attachments are crafted in one of two new Alteration Benches, and you can add attachments to or remove them from tools and weapons using the same Benches.
• Removing attachments does not destroy them or what they were attached to.
• Not every attachment can be added to every weapon or tool. For example, a gold production buff only makes sense on a pickaxe, not a knife.
• The type of attachment added to a tool or weapon will show up as a small symbol in the lower-right corner of the icon for that tool or weapon.
• The description for a tool or weapon will also show the modifications provided by any attachments added to it.
• More attachments are coming in future updates, and more types of equipment will be alterable, such as ranged weapons.

New Alteration Benches

Recipes for two new workbenches and the attachments they produce have been added to the Blueprints Menu. The Tier 3 Alteration Bench is used to craft Basic Attachments, while an electricity-powered Tier 4 Advanced Alteration Bench crafts Advanced Attachments. You only need to learn one recipe for all the Basic Attachments, and another recipe for all the Advanced Attachments.

Attachments are crafted on one side of the workbench, and are added or removed from equipment on the other side. This allows teams to work simultaneously on making attachments and altering equipment. This is especially helpful because attachments take 3 minutes to be added or removed from a piece of equipment.

Basic attachments enhance existing properties of equipment, such as attack speed and damage, or the yield from activities like harvesting, hunting, logging, and mining specific ore types. Advanced attachments can be more powerful versions of the basic attachments, or provide unique abilities like a chance to cause Bleed, Poison, or Shock.

Future Map and Other Work in Progress

The patch notes are chocked full of clues on the world-building work being done for the next map, as well as new equipment and animals. Many of the map notes are tagged with the codename Prometheus and cover several new biomes, including Grasslands, Tundra, Swamp and Volcanic environments. While extinct in the real world, a model for a Moa is being worked on. This flightless bird is a New Zealand native. Also on the horizon is the HIGHRISE mission, a new Inaris crossbow, and Inaris arrow sets.

A number of other interesting changes and additions showed up in the patch notes:

• Unbroken arrows will no longer despawn from animal carcasses before they can be collected. However, they may disappear when collected if their decay timer has expired.
• Wolves will more consistently face their targets when attacking, instead of sometimes running at a slight angle.
• Skinning can no longer be cancelled by left-clicking, only by pressing the interact key (F by default) a second time.
• The cooked prime meat food buff can now be refreshed by any cooked prime meat, and not just the same type that was previously consumed.
• Skinning rewards (like basic meat) will more correctly scale with player stats.

It’s time to fine tune some equipment. Maybe you’re looking forward to filling a chest with titanium or finally finding enough copper and gold. Perhaps it’s time some scorpions feel the shocking poke of an electrified spear. Take your Dropship planetside and test out those new recipes! Let us know what you think of the new update in the comment box, below.