ICARUS Week Fourteen: Farming! New Plots, Automation System, New Talents, New Mission and More

It seems that eager prospectors of Icarus tend to set things aflame all too easily… it was about time someone thought about installing an emergency sprinkler system! That’s right, fellow players — water piping is coming to ICARUS, and with it a whole new way of growing crops in the game!

And really, this time around Farming is getting quite a bit of love from the developers: from automatic watering, to using fertilizer, to new Farming talents, to the updated spoiling mechanic, and to the updated crop plot UI to reflect all of the new features. Oh, and have we mentioned the new mission — Agriculture: Hydroponics — that will test your knowledge of all this new cool farming tech? (Hint: prepare to build a proper greenhouse, piped and wired!)

New Crop Plots and Water Piping

Our good old pal Crop Plot is getting some upgrades — in addition to the wood variant we will now have the Iron Crop Plot, and the Hydroponic Crop Plot. The two new crop plots will come with automation built into them: both will have the option to be connected to the water piping, which will improve growth rates and overall efficiency of farming projects. The Hydroponic Crop Plot in particular will also be able to take power input to generate the greenhouse buff, making it an excellent standalone choice for growing.

The Crop Plot UI will now show the connection status and other modifiers to incorporate the new content.

icarus week fourteen new crop plot ui — *T-t-twenty Watermelon in one growing cycle…? What is this dark magick?*

Water piping comes with a nice bonus feature: it can serve as an emergency sprinkler system! I don’t know about you, but I keep setting my buildings on fire in all the dumbest creative ways (combined with the mighty power of the thunderstorms), and I am very much ready to use my Fire Whacker panic slot for something else.

New Talents and New Farming Mission

One consideration for ICARUS’s Farming Talents so far has been their steep cost, with most of it the points needed to be spent in non-Farming talents under the Cook/Farm category. That will no longer be the case: Farming is becoming its own dedicated specialization, with five new talents added to the two we had in the past!

Here is the quick list from the patch notes:

All-Nighter – Crafted crops in crop plots grow faster at night
Neat and Tidy – Crafted Crop Plots use less fertilizer
Speed-Gro – Crafted Crop Plots grow crops faster
Bumper Crop – Crafted Crop Plots yield more crops
Sturdy Stalks – Crafted Crops Plots crops spoil slower when harvested

Of course, you do not need these talents to use Crop Plots, but after this update Farming in ICARUS will become a very powerful tool that can quadruple the yields we have seen with the regular plots, meaning that it can definitely affect the default strategy for providing food for solo and co-op players in the game.

icarus week fourteen farming talents agriculture hydroponics — *Finally: the rotateable hot stinky barrel! The timeless bit of technology this game has been sorely missing.*

Speaking of which — you can get a chance to test both the water piping and the new powered features of the Farming system by taking on the new Agriculture: Hydroponics mission! This one will comes with the massive order for freshly grown crops sets a new bar on the farming system — to handle the challenge, you will probably need to outfit a proper greenhouse, which will require some gearing up! (Or, perhaps you have already decided to invest some Talent points into Farming?)

Added several new talents and changed an existing one based around farming:
- All-Nighter – Crafted crops in crop plots grow faster at night
- Neat and Tidy – Crafted Crop Plots use less fertilizer
- Shoot the Breeze – Grants the recipe to make gunpowder from the fertilizer on the Mortar and Pestle
- Get off my Lawn – Grants the recipe to make the Rusty Shotgun on the Machining Bench
- Speed-Gro – Crafted Crop Plots grow crops faster
- Bumper Crop – Crafted Crop Plots yield more crops
- Sturdy Stalks – Crafted Crops Plots crops spoil slower when harvested
- Gathering Guru – Increased yield from harvesting by hand
- Get Up and Go – Increase to base stamina
- The Old One-Two – Increased melee damage

Fixed issue causing data corruption that could result in unexpected loss of items, talents or prospect data in offline mode.
Updated ‘Fresh is Best’ Talent – Grown Crops in Crafted Crop Plots do not Wither away after they have finished growing
Adding crafting speed modifiers to cement mixer, composters and kitchen bench when connected to water network.
Added sprinkler to the game, which provides passive fire protection when connected to a water source.
Added new UI for water connections & crop plots.
Added new hydroponic crop plot which uses water connections to increase growth speed.
Added new metal crop plot which has a higher durability than the standard plot and can be connected to water.
Added new wood composter which creates fertilizer from spoiled plants, and speeds up the spoiling of organic items placed in it.
Added new fertilizer assets and mechanic. Fertilizers can be crafted in the composter or chemistry bench and applied to crop plots to increase yield and growth speed.
Added new watered crop modifier.
Added new crop yield stat which increases the quantity of crops from farming.
Added spoiled item variants for all fruit and vegetable types.
Expanded greenhouse detection to require multiple glass building pieces to be in range.
Added growth stages and dead stage for Lily crops.
Increased by 100% the amount of time it takes before crops spoil and can no longer be harvested.
Updated the crop visuals for Corn, Lily, Berry Bush, Squash, Watermelon, Pumpkin, Cocoa, Coffee, Green Tea and Wild Tea.
Increased waterskin consumption from 15 units to 500 units when watering crops.
Adding new Stat for grown crops which differentiate them from harvested crops.
Added new farming crop plot UI to display modifiers and connection states on deployables including in-world tooltips.
Added new Farming: Stockpile Mission.
Added the ability to be able to connect a water connection to Cement Mixer, Kitchen Bench, Biofuel Composter & Electric Composter (not the Wooden Composter)
Added a new ‘Wither’ Stage to crops, where they are available for players to access, but if the players leave the crop in the planter, after a period of time they will wither and die, and turn into spoiled plants.
Added Ranks to talents in the Cooking/Farming & Firearms Tree.
Changed Empty Plot key to be hold X instead of hold F (volatile action)
Added consumable setup and tags for Beans so that they can be put in the Icebox and consumed like other vegetables.
Fixed crash that could occur when completing quest objectives.
Fixed crash that could occur when a player joined the game.
Fixed crash that could occur when travelling around the map and loading in new areas with a large quantity of mineable rocks/minerals.
Fixed crash that could occur when unloading areas/objects as players travel around the map.
Fixed crash that could occur when loading a game with a large amount of cable/pipe networks.
Fixed crash when attempting to apply ‘aura’ buffs to objects around the player.
Fixed crash with operations locating items for quest and crafting.
Improved client side spline placement (for cables and pipes).
Fixed mission objective text not wrapping on Mission Briefing causing the window to stretch.
Fixed incorrectly calculated time it takes to craft Concrete.
Fixed case where incorrect stack sizes were being shown in the player’s inventory.
Fixed issue where the player could not sell exotics for currency in offline mode.
Fixed dropship inventory on planet still being 5 slots, now correctly 15 slots to match the Station.
Fixed instances of deployable UI not updating when looking between multiple UI’s fast.
Updated description and flavor text for Composter, Water Pump, Crop Plots, Spline Tools, Solar Panel and Deep Drills.
Increased Platinum and Titanium spear thrown projectile damage.
Disabled chance to mine voxel instantly on cave entrances (Lucky Strike talent).
Added ability to manually water crops with all containers that hold water by right-clicking the crop with a container in-hand.
Fixed issue where Shotgun sights were not correctly aligned.
Added more caves to the lower right arctic area of Olympus.
Fixed several instances where voxels were spawning above the ground.
Fixed issue where workshop items could fail to craft but still cost resources.
Added Fahrenheit option to temperature display.
Improved tree felling sounds of burnt trees.
Fixed issue where the sort inventory button was not always working correctly.
Fixed issue where multiplayer clients were not being able to climb ladders reliably.
Fixed several issues with the map, eg: holes in terrain, incorrectly placed objects & mountain collision.
Improved system that handles fire audio effects.
Fixed issue where the Elephant Boss in ‘Seven Pillars: Scan’ mission was not always aggressive after the player goes out of range.
Updated the audio for the wood rag torch when placed in the light slot.
Fixed crosshair of the bow not using the crosshair visible setting.
Fixed a bug where swapping from the bow while playing the reload animation caused the arrow to disappear.
Fixed a bug where player swim stroke sounds were sometimes not playing correctly.
Fixed a bug where happy music would still be playing when your building is on fire.
Fixed a bug where the middle of a dropship could disappear when viewed from a certain angle.
Improved the sound when the player levels up.
Improved the layout of the solo talent tree.
Fixed an issue with the dropship appearance in the ‘Voyager’ mission.
Improved the audio of the metal pickaxe.
Fixed an issue where resolution changes in windowed mode would not revert after denying them in the confirmation window.
Fixed issue where prospect mission art would not match the mission correctly.
Improved visibility of map icons on the ‘Ice Storm: Expedition’ mission due to icons having similar colors to the map background.
Fixed an issue where wolves made no sound while swimming.
Fixed an issue where player marker colors were not displayed correctly for hosts.
Fixed issue where several items had the incorrect weight.
Fixed issue where clients changing ammo types would transfer the unloaded ammo to the hosts inventory.
Fixed issue that would cause crafted Knives, Axes, Spears to disappear when crafting due to unintended interaction with the Crafty Fletcher talent.
Fixed refined wood half pitch recipe incorrectly only creating refined walls.
Fixed a typo in a talent respec prompt.