I lied -- Icarus Solo in the Styx

Yeah, remember when a couple weeks ago I said I was swearing off Icarus solo? I lied.

I also discovered the joys of riding an Emu!

I've played a ton of Icarus solo over my holiday break. Kind of a stupid amount of Icarus actually, so I thought I better write up an apologetic post where I walk it all back and tell you about the excitement that is The Styx!

I like earning those exotics as rewards! Woot!

Actually I just have my own darn self to blame since in that last post I went on explaining that Icarus has two mission paths, one in Olympus and one in the Styx. It put a bug in me that I wanted to check out the Styx, and I wasn't quite sure if the ol' Lessah, Mythery, and me team would actually get over to that side of the mission spectrum since there's so much Olympus to explore.  

And with that I was sent on a Christmas vacation journey of five Styx Missions:

• Headlong: Exploration
• Omphalos: Expedition
• Ricochet: Expedition
• Kismet Exploration
• Highrise: Construction

Yeah, that was a lot of playtime.  Whoops.  Not only was saying I was swearing off soloing a lie, it was a big lie. I played waaaaaay too much Icarus, and it was enough to kind of change my mind a bit about Icarus.

The Styx is massive in size compared to what you explore in Olympus. The map is just enormous.  You'll find world bosses that you must avoid when solo.  You'll find a plethora of new animals that crawl the floor, and in larger abundance! Caves seem to be a bit more hidden and with a bunch less copper. Missions asked for harder things to be crafted.  Overall, it just felt more tuned to a 50th level character than the Olympus missions, which is what I think might have been leading to some of my boredom.

Of those Styx missions listed above, the hardest were Ricochet Expedition and Highrise Construction. 

I'm a Scorched Traveller II now!

Ricochet Expedition had me drilling through the mountain to find a cave tunnel and then fending off waves of angry Cave Worms, then exploring around the desert and guarding two spots where I again fended off waves of Crocodiles, Komodo Dragons, and Jaguars. I had to end up building concrete walls in the middle of the desert to make this one work. Those Crocodiles are just too hard to kill. 

You don't think the new tenets will mind ducking under a few wires, do you?

Highrise Construction had me building an enormous seven story tall tower while the weather conditions were showing up as lightning storms every half hour or so.  The hardest part of this mission was finding all the copper I needed to build all the electronics I needed to fulfil the mission requirements, because it wasn't just building a seven story tall tower, it was filling it with working lighting, a bunch of other knick knacks, and topping it off with an observation deck made out of glass.

Sure it may not be pretty, but at least it's lightning proof?

So, I'm changing my analysis . . . Icarus can still be fun solo, but when you're level 50 . . . I'd recommend shifting over to the Styx missions. They're a lot more challenging and dangerous, which makes the gameplay more fun.

Happy Dueling! 

Swearing Off Icarus Solo Play

 My Steam profile says I've put in 128 hours on Icarus this past year, and the last 10 of that was done completely solo over this last weekend . . . and I'm swearing it off. I never want to play Icarus solo ever again.

Many wolves, boars, and bears died to collect this data

The problem here is that up until a couple weeks ago, I was just jumping in to my buddies' games (one Lessah Ismorah and Mythery). I was happy with this: I was leveling, and I felt like we were all progressing along nicely, but then I found out that because I hadn't done a solo mission or two right up front, my progress in my friends' games was all for naught. None of what we had done was counting for my actual mission progression. 

The first half of the Olympus Mission line in Icarus

So, to explain, there are two mission progression paths in Icarus: Olympus and Styx. We've been playing missions in the Olympus quest line. You land on the planet, you fulfil the objective, and you blast off. Each time you start over, building everything from scratch . . . but with the money you earn, you can craft equipment to take down with you on subsequent missions.

When I discovered that all my hard work wasn't counting for anything on my mission progression, I felt a little . . . angry? Like I had fully been putting in a lot of time on these missions, but not getting any credit . . . simply because I didn't do the first mission on my own. I'm sorry, but that's kind of a bad game design call. 

I appreciate that I can just jump into my friends' games from day one, but there was no warning and no compensation. What it SHOULD have done was either warn me that I needed to do those intro missions or instead retroactively marked those missions I've completed with my friends as complete after I completed the first mission. It could have just caught up and counted all those previous missions as done. Yuck.

Since we decided that we wouldn't be playing much around the holidays as a group, Lessah put it out there that maybe I could use the time to catch up my progression line. That sounded fair, and I've already done most of these missions with them, so it should be a breeze, right?! It wasn't bad too be honest . . . right up until the grindfest known as Agriculture Supply Stockpile.

Beware the 15 day tasks . . . just don't do them solo

Now, Icarus always gives you way more time than you need to get a mission done. A ridiculous amount of time in fact, and because of that I had no qualms taking on a 15 real-time day mission. This was another that I had done with Lessah and Mythery in the past, and as I remembered it, it's just a bunch of running around collecting pumpkins and carrots and stuff . . . no big deal.

Blasting off a billion supplies into space . . .

I got it done, mind you, but I had completely forgotten about collecting and cooking 1000 meats in addition to running around collecting pumpkins and carrots and stuff. By the end of the day yesterday, I was so done with that mission . . . what an incredibly boring grind fest.

And with that, I'm done soloing in this game. I never want to do it again. There are plenty of other games where I don't mind soloing around, but Icarus just isn't captivating enough for me (at least at this point) without my buddies there to talk to. We each kind of excel at doing one or two things, and we do our jobs well. It's fun to play as a group! Solo . . . no thanks. I've got plenty of other games I can play to keep me happy.

Happy Dueling!

Swimming too close to the bears in Icarus

Icarus, mythology's symbol of pride -- he flew too close to the sun on his wings of wax and feathers and plummeted to earth. Icarus, the survival game -- Bearcat McGee landed on the Terraformed planet gone bad and swam too close to the bears. They are similar tales of caution and woe, but one came courtesy of public education and the other cost me 35 bucks.

. . . and Bearcat McGee was born!

I've been playing a lot of Icarus thanks to my old buddy, old pal of mine Lessah Ismorah. Remember when she introduced me to 7 Days to Die, Far Cry 6, and Planet Crafter?  Well, like a sucker I followed the bandwagon and purchased this new game she was fascinated with, and then promptly began to lose hours and hours of time just chopping wood, mining iron, and crafting stuff. Thanks, Lessah. It's time I'll never get back is all . . .

Ok ok, it's a fun game. ;) She did it again! Lessah just has a way of picking these great survival games for me to have fun in. Well, it's a ton more fun when I actually get time to play WITH Lessah and her good buddy, Mythery. It's kind of funny because when I first bought the game, they were like . . . yeah, we're just going to stay on this mission for a while and level and learn.  I then spent a week of my life in a lonely game mission they had long since abandoned thinking that when Lessah was back online from working at her new job, that they'd come back and see my amazing Teen Titans tower I had built us.

The Tom Titans Tower . . . beware evil wolves

Nope. So here's the deal with Icarus. Once you finish a world's objective, you launch off the planet, receive your rewards, and then start over with nothing but the levels you earned and the knowledge you won. Both Lessah and Mythery had abandoned the game I was in, finished the objective, and were looooong gone doing another mission. I was busy digging through the middle of boulders, making stacks of the rock, and trying to spell "BEARCAT" with the piles.

B . . . E . . . A . . . that's as far a I got before I ran out of room.

When I finally was able to jump into voice chat with Lessah and Mythery again, they were like . . . dude, why are you still on that mission? So, I took one last look at my beautiful Teen Titans tower and jettisoned into space to leave it all behind in favor of the next mission.

We've been through a few missions together now and our most recent one is to kill a big bad boss on the planet below. Lessah and Mythery were off to Gencon for the week, and I once again have been left to wander the planet surface on my own. All my levels and learning from the previous missions had provided me with the knowledge to craft a bolt action rifle and bullets, so that was my goal while they were away: to craft each of us a rifle and a good supply of bullets.  I'm pretty sure we're going to need them. I gotchu fam.

This particular world seems FULL of small hidden caves, so I'm thinking this was exactly what we were supposed to do.  I mined up a metric ton of iron and crafted 120+ bars of steel with it so I could then craft three rifles.  We're all set.  The next time they log on to play, they'll both have their rifles and 20 bullets.

Crafting the Bolt Action Rifle! It'll one shot a bear!

I'm so ready to see what this boss looks like . . . knowing these two though, Lessah and Mythery will probably kill the boss unexpectedly while I'm offline. Haha! Look, I know my place in the world here. I am the tertiary player in this episodic series.  This is the Lessah and Mythery show . . . and I'm that plucky Bearcat McGee that shows up every 4 episodes or so for comedy relief and to hand the heroes of the story their guns with a wink and a smile.

Apparently Gencon ends today, so they'll be back online soon! I can't wait to kill a boss or die trying! In Icarus, this is the way!

Happy Dueling