Welcome to Week 177.

We're currently in the middle of a short week with Easter holidays, but we still wanted to keep things moving—so we're happy to bring you a patch this week! While it's a lighter update than usual, it still includes some useful fixes and improvements.

This week, we’re introducing the ‘Culinex backpack' in the workshop. This backpack will help with both the creation and consumption of food on Icarus.

We also provide an update on the Solo Play feature we mentioned last week - it is currently accessible on our experimental branch for anyone who wants a preview.

Notable Improvements:

• Fixed an issue which prevented fish from being killable with projectiles (thrown weapons, arrows, bolts and firearm ammo).
• Fixed 'Pain in the Bass' achievement as it wasn't always being granted correctly
• Fixing issue where custom crafted food would not scale its stats in their tooltip correctly

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This Week: The Culinex Backpack

The Culinex Backpack (or Chef's Backpack) is purchasable from the Workshop and can be equipped for use on the planet. It provides a range of benefits focused on food creation, buff enhancement, and survival efficiency.

While the backpack is worn, any food crafted by the player will have an extended duration and increased effect strength. Any player can consume these improved food items to receive the enhanced benefits.

Additionally, any active food buffs on the wearer are further amplified in both duration and effectiveness. This makes the backpack particularly valuable for extended missions or high-intensity scenarios where sustained buffs are critical.

The backpack also reduces the rate of food and water consumption for the wearer, decreasing the frequency at which sustenance is required. This makes it a strong utility item for long excursions or resource-scarce environments.

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Next Week: Multiplayer NPC Hitbox Fix

We're currently trialing an improvement aimed at enhancing the experience for players connecting to dedicated servers or friend-hosted games. This update ensures that creature animations are fully played on clients at all times, regardless of their distance from the host.

After a thorough investigation, we discovered that early optimizations made during Icarus' development led to desynchronization issues on the client side—specifically with NPC animations and hitboxes not always aligning correctly.

To resolve this, we've updated the system so that NPCs now check their distance from any active player, not just the host. This allows them to correctly play their full animation sets and ensures hitboxes are accurately positioned on all clients.

Internal testing and feedback from players on the experimental branch have been extremely positive so far with a noticeable improvement, especially on dedicated servers. A big thank you to our Veterans in Discord for helping us identify and resolve this issue.

This fix is available now on the experimental branch, alongside the other changes listed below.

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Next Week: Deep Ore Duplication Fix

We’ve resolved an issue where deep ore veins were being duplicated each time a prospect was loaded. This could cause veins to appear as if they had changed resources and led to significantly bloated save file sizes.

While earlier fixes made this more stable, we recently discovered a new issue with deep ore veins on the Prometheus map, introduced as part of the Null Sector update. Some objects were incorrectly configured during world generation, leading to duplication.

We’ve now addressed the root cause and added checks to prevent it from happening again. Additionally, any duplicated veins will now be automatically cleaned from player save files on load, with any attached drills preserved.

This fix is also available now on the experimental branch, alongside the other changes listed below.

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Next Week: Solo Pause

As mentioned in last week’s update, we will be introducing a long-requested feature next week: the ability to pause the game during solo play. This functionality is now available for testing on the Experimental branch.

The pause feature is limited to single-player sessions only and does not function in multiplayer or on dedicated servers. This ensures no disruption to connected players in shared environments.

We encourage players to jump onto Experimental and provide feedback. If you encounter any issues or unexpected behaviour, please let us know.

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Your support makes these updates possible.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/40692/Icarus_Pets_Bundle/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/35727/Icarus_Complete_the_Set/
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Changelog v2.2.52.136091

New Content

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• Unlocking the Chefs backpack so it can be purchased
• Renamed Chefs Backpack Astron -> Culinex
• Adjusting the Chefs backpack so its price fits more in where it sits in the workshop tree
• Fixing the Workshop Backpacks Talent Tree so the Chefs backpack can be selected and unlocked

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Fixed

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• Fixing issue where the BaseFoodStomachSlots_+ stat was being incorrectly scaled in the tooltip - making it seem like foods where consuming multiple slots - in cases where food was cooked by a player with the CookedFoodModifierEffectiveness_+% stat
• Fixed not being able to shoot fish with projectile weapons

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Future Content

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• Potential fix for clients not rotating to correct orientation when teleporting into an instanced level
• Quarrite: Liberation - Fixed issue where caveworms would spawn inside an object if there were too many worms around it and couldnt find a better spot to spawn
• Added FTs and temp meshes for geothermal dead trees
• Fixed an issue where BioLab_ShopItem widget was trying to check feature flags before they were available
• Fixed issue where BioLab_ShopItem was setting the required feature flag but the internal CachedFeatureLevelCheckResult wasn't being properly invalidated
• Added DEP_Fireplace_Gas and DEP_Fireplace_Electric with animations and destructibles
• Adjustments to spacializer and pitch variations and volume of analyzers to accomodate for multiple analyzers next to each other in mission. Small adjustment to general deployable volume over distance to help with same issue
• Improved prebuilt base building cleanup code
• Adding pause to the music bus as well as the others
• Enabling mutally exclusive talent connectors on the IM Tree
• Fixing Building Transform in IM_O1
• Doubled Scanning Range of the Recovery Beacon Tracker as there are cases where players could not find recovery beacons, relevant for IM_O1
• Tagging Organic Analyzer as a quest item
• Fixed issue on RG_O1 where the organic analzyer was not being saved as a relavent actor correctly
• Fixed issue on IM_B where the base would duplicate everytime the prospect was reloaded
• Fixed issue with IM_B where the viscid and mammoth spawners where never being spawned
• Fixing Spelling Mistakes on the Research Notes on IM_B
• Fixed issue on IM_B where a new search area would spawn every load / reload - incorrectly
• Added Code so that when prebuilt bases are cleaned up they now remove their building pieces as well
• Fixing issue with IM_D where the search area would duplicate every time the prospect is loaded
[*] Fixing issue where the base in IM_D would not call cleanup on an abandoned mission

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Source: https://steamstore-a.akamaihd.net/news/externalpost/steam_community_announcements/1797820624480924