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Initial Player Settings Game stages Your first mission Your second mission

You're going to land on a beatiful but hostile planet. Basically you need to collect everything you need to survive while avoiding getting killed.

Landing - The screen. What will kill you. Reviving after death Finding your stuff again

You'll need to collect resources to first build a weapon and tools and later to build a shelter.

Sticks, fibre & stones Plants Wood Fur, leather, meat & bones Fish (optional) Water Oxite (Oxygen) Ores (optional)

First make a stone knife. Next make a stone pickaxe and stone axe. Third make a basic 2x2 shelter. Finally make a bed and fire.

Your first weapons Your first tools shelters Making a bed and fire

The first 'Beachhead' mission teaches you the basics of survival. You need to go down to the planet Icarus and return. You arrive with nothing other than your suit and must collect what you need to return to the space station. You have 7 days (real time) to do this in. It won't take you that long.

Landing on the planet The map weaponsandtools Wood and stone First shelter Making a bed Returning to the space station

In your second mission you are required to collect ores and send them up to the space station. This time you'll have to enter dangerous caves to collect some items. You'll be given a backpack and some special pickaxes to collect the ores.

Mission two The map Collect resources and make equipment The crate First shelter Bed and fire Survival and revival Caves Returning to the space station

A collection of utilities and websites which will help.

Icarus resource calculator The official Icarus Wiki The Fandom Icarus Wiki The Icarus Discord Channel

Icarus - What will kill you

"ICARUS is a PvE survival game for up to eight players. Explore a savage wilderness in the aftermath of terraforming gone wrong. Survive the Open World, complete timed Missions or build your Outpost. Explore, build, craft and hunt while seeking your fortune and prospecting for exotic matter." - What Steam says about it

Here's the dangers you face:

Hunger - find food
Thirst - find water or plants which contain water
Aggressive animals - create defensive weapons or RUN!
Too hot or cold - Take shelter
Storms - take shelter
Falling - don't

Recovering after you die

On this hostile planet you will die. Fortunately you can re-spawn. After a 5 second delay you can press and hold 'E' (or 'F' if you didn't change it) to restore yourself to life.

In this case a wolf killed me before I could make defensive weapons. I could have run away but... I needed the screenshot. (You can actually kill a wolf by hitting it on the head with your bare hands but you will take health damage.)

While you wait the 5 seconds to re-spawn, press the 'M' key and find out where you are on the map. When you re-spawn you'll either re-spawn at a random location or you'll re-spawn on a bed which you've set as a re-spawn point. The map will show you where you died, it's marked with a cross and medical staff. The medical staff won't be there if you look at the map after revival but the cross will, you can make your way back to that location and retrieve whatever items you have in your inventory. If your inventory was empty, you won't see a cross on the map

If you haven't created a bed yet, you'll re-spawn by landing in a pod…

Again press the 'M' key to view the map and find your death marker. Your position is shown by the faint red triangle and, in this case, the death marker is shown southwest of it. Head in that direction to reclaim your inventory items. Note that when you re-spawn you have nothing. It's a good idea to collect sticks, ferns, berry bushes and stones on the way (just collect anything which highlights when you point at it) to make a stone knife as a defensive weapon. That needs 2 fibre, 2 sticks and 4 stone to create.

You'll notice from the inset that I re-spawned in this case on an island. Not a problem since your character can swim well. You are wearing a space suit so you can swim underwater too.

When you get to your death marker you'll see that clicking E/F (not holding the key) on your keyboard allows you to retrieve the items you lost. You'll notice that there's a 'Take all' button, you can press Q or you can drag or Ctrl click to retrieve individual items. On this screen you'll also get a good idea of your oxygen, food and water status. You can't add items to the death loot so if your inventory is full you'll have to drop something.

The nasties in the game

Animal	Aggression	Detail
Bees	Aggressive	Will chase and sting you if you get near their hive. Often found in caves or in dead trees. Listen for them. Defend by running away (they'll chase you a long way). Swipe at the bee cloud with a knife or better still a sickle repeatedly - when you see a number on the screen you may notice a big increase in your experience points. If you break the hive you can get honey. Mission 1? Stay out of caves.
Wolves	Aggressive	Will attack on sight. Run or stab head with a knife. With a knife you can get fur, leather, meat and bones. Strangely, you can also get bacon! Even more strange you can also kill a wolf by hitting it with your bare hands but you will take health damage.
Terrenus (genetically engineered horse)	Aggressive	Will attack on sight. Run or stab head with a knife or spear. With a knife you can get leather, meat and bones, sometimes fur. You will get fur from the young ones. The young terrenus are not aggressive and later you can lead them away, raise them to adult and then ride them.
Cave worm	Aggressive	These appear in caves and throw poison bolts at you. Attack their mouth with knife or spear. Later in the game you can shoot them to get 1,800+ XP. You'll get various bits which will be of no use at this stage. Mission 1? Stay out of caves.
Moa	Aggressive	These attack when they see you. Fast runners. Attack their head with knife or spear. You'll get fur! meat and bones. Mission 1? Sneak away holding down left Ctrl key.
Wild boar	Aggressive	These are aggressive and sneak up behind you if they see you. Easy to kill with stone weapons. Attack their head with a knife or spear. You'll get lots of leather, meat including bacon and bones.
Bear	Aggressive	These are very aggressive, almost impossible to kill with stone weapons and they can run faster than you. Listen for their yowl and sneakHold the left Ctrl Key and move. away. Attack their head with a spear. You'll get lots of fur, leather, meat and bones but are more likely to die.
Bear cubs	Aggressive	These appear in threes and re-spawn rapidly when killed if you don't kill them all at once. They look cute but will attack. Attack their head with knife, pickaxe, or spear. You'll get lots of fur, leather, meat and bones.
Fish	Some, like this piranha, are aggressive	Most ignore or swim away. All can be killed for food. A few are aggressive but easily killed. They give you fish chunks which can be eaten raw or cooked.

Plant food sources

Here's the plants you can use for food and in some cases water

Plant	What you get
Berry bush	Small amount of food and water. It takes about 100 to fill your food and about 200 to fill your water. Once you are at level 5 you can make berry & seed bars which give+50 food +20 water +75 maximum stamina. Stack to 25
Soy beans	+20 food +30 health. Stacks to 100.
Pumpkin	Can be eaten raw or cooked over a campfire. Best cooked. Raw +20 food +30 health. Stacks to 20. Cooked +50 Food +75 maximum stamina +5% exposure resistance. Stacks to 10.
Watermelon	Both food and water +50 food, +60 water. Stacks to 20.
Corn	+20 food. Stacks to 100. When cooked to produce charred corn +50 food +75 stamina but stacks to 10
Carrot	+20 food Stacks to 50

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Game Hint If you DO get attacked by a wolf when you have no weapons then rather than running away try pressing H to show your hands. Use the left mouse button to keep punching the wolf on the nose. You stand a good chance of killing it. Leave the area quickly since a dead animal carcass acts like a magnet for other agressive animals.