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