JayDax -  Icarus Survival Guide

JayDax Icarus guide to a more advanced base.

Once you are at level 20 you can create steel tools. The steel pickaxe will allow you to collect the titanium, aluminium and platinum ores and it's a lot faster to use than iron or stone pickaxes for other ores. Time to go mining those ores titanium, platinum,  aluminium.

Another major advantage of being at level 20 is that an array of extra deployable items are opened up in Tech tier 3 The first of these is the machining bench which will replace your crafting bench. Get it and install it in all that extra space you created. Then immediately use it to produce two cement mixers and deploy those too.

Use the cement mixers to start producing concrete mix. You'll need lots of it. Each bag needs 1 tree sap, 8 stone and 4 silica.

As and when you are able, make a concrete furnace (20 concrete, 12 epoxy, 12 iron ingots, 8 rope) a glassworking bench (40 copper nails, 6 epoxy, 24 iron ingots, 10 refined wood, 6 rope), a biofuel composter (12 concrete, 8 copper ingots, 20 iron ingots, 20 steel screws) and at least three biofuel cans(25 iron ingots each).

Make and add a final deployable for now - a forge. It needs 8 epoxy 20 iron ingots, 20 steel ingots and 150 stone.

Pumped water

You may have noticed that some of the items above can have a water connection. The glassworking bench won't even work without one. Our next step is to make a biofueled water pump and a water network to distribute it to our equipment. Make a biofuel waterpump using 16 copper wire, 4 electronics, 12 epoxy, 16 steel ingots.  It's made in the machining bench. To use it you'll need a container of biofuel made in the biofuel composter and a water pipe tool made in the machining bench (50 gold wire, 50 copper wire, 4 platinum sheath)

The base is located on a slight slope and that means you can add a water network of pipes underneath it. Remove the stone floor in front of the base (Y) to start then place a water terminal on each of the stone beams just under your base floor. Press Ctrl to crouch and get under the floor.

Next return inside your base and click with the water pipe tool on one of the deployable items which needs a water connection before going back under the base and clicking the nearest water terminal under the floor (no drilling holes in the floor required plumbers).

Don't forget to put the floor slab you removed back.

With a water connection deployables which need water will work much faster and the glassworking bench will now work to make glass objects. We're going to use it to make a greenhouse to protect the plants growing on the roof eventually. Before we do that though we need a better source of iron, copper, silicon, oxite and the other ores because you've probably used all the ores in those two caves nearby.

Fortunately there are other caves though. Here'a a map of all the cave locations in the Olympus prospect.

The Canyon is in grid box J14. The more chevrons each cave has the more resources the cave has. Caves with a line join to other caves.

Using Deep Ore Deposits

Caves aren't just limited to the individual ore nodes you break with a pickaxe. Look deeper against the back walls of most caves and you will discover massive, flat mineral outcrops embedded directly into the bedrock: deep mining ore deposits. You'll find them outside caves too.

These deposits cannot be harvested by hand. To exploit them you need a Biofuel Deep Mining Drill, unlocked in Tech Tier 3. Once placed on top of a deposit and fueled, the drill works away continuously, extracting raw ore into its internal hopper even while you are out hunting, foraging, or building back at base.

Building and Deploying the Drill

Craft the Biofuel Deep Mining Drill in your Machining Bench. Each drill requires:

• 12 Concrete Mix – mixed from tree sap, stone, and silica in the cement mixer.
• 16 Steel Ingots – forged in your concrete or stone furnace from steel bloom.
• 12 Copper Wire – drawn from copper ingots at the machining bench.
• 8 Epoxy – processed from crushed bone or sulfur and tree sap in a mortar and pestle.

Carry the drill and a filled Biofuel Can to the deep mining deposit. Point the drill at the center of the ore deposit until the placement silhouette turns green, then press left-click to secure it. Press E to access its inventory, drop in the filled biofuel can, and click Activate.

A single full biofuel can keeps the drill operating for roughly 30 to 45 minutes of real time, accumulating hundreds of units of raw ore. Keep a medium or large crate nearby so you can unload stacks into storage and run them back to your furnaces in manageable trips. With Iron and copper ores some distance from your base it's worthwhile to have a stone furnace nearby to smelt the ore before transporting it since ingots are lighter than the equivalent ore