ICARUS Week 29 Update: Horde Mode, NVIDIA Reflex, and Soon Dedicated Servers

New Zealand’s Matariki national holiday is this week, and our present is an early Week 29 update! This week it is difficult to say what is the best part.

Horde Mode, An Exotics Minigame

After the updated exotics extraction tools in the Workshop, the action became heavily focused on the radar scanning phase. However, this week we have a new extraction minigame incoming that changes things up again: Horde Mode! Here is what we know:

• The minigame takes place at new Enzyme Geysers, which look like pink deep ore mining veins and give off smoke signals like the new world bosses.
• A Fabricator-made Vapor Condenser is needed to mine them, and turning it on starts a new stage of the minigame that brings waves of enemies to target it and the player.
• Each Enzyme Geyser has an infinite number of stages, and each new stage increases the size of the horde:
  • The first three stages bring exotics rewards deposited in the Condenser after completion.
  • Each additional stage completed produces a new material called Condensed Enzymes.
• The more players near the Condenser when it is activated, the larger the horde.
• Condensed Enzymes are currently used to make statues to show off animal trophies, but their use may be expanded in future updates.
• Enzyme Geysers are present on Olympus and Styx maps, as well as the Olympus Outpost map, although on the outpost only Condensed Enzyme rewards are available.

Technology Upgrades: NVIDIA Reflex and a UE4 Upgrade

The reason the patch this week is so massive is due to a UE4 upgrade, although this is said to have only minor performance improvements. RocketWerkz says the larger gain this week comes from incorporating NVIDIA’s new Reflex low latency technology, which they claim provides the best responsiveness to date.

The outages from the last few weeks have also convinced RocketWerkz to keep the “Remove From Prospect” button in the game for the time being.

A “Coming Soon” To Get Excited About: Dedicated Servers, Localized User Data, and an Outpost Respawn Fix

Anyone who has been on a prospect during a server disconnection may be excited to hear that RocketWerkz has confirmed dedicated servers are on the horizon.

Moreover, there are also plans to decentralize the storage of character and prospect data. This not only opens the door to more modding and user-generated content, but might reduce the chances that server and game errors compromise character data.

Fans of the new Olympus Outpost will be relieved to know that a patch for spawning locations is being prioritized. This fix should allow you to respawn closer to your outposts instead of the original drop zone.