Icarus First Cohort has revealed its huge talent tree, and in it, there are 250 talents and three archetypes to choose from: Survival, Construction, and Hunting. This time around only Survival and Hunting is being shown off, with Construction coming later for all of those who are ready to go full Bob The Builder in the woods.
What is Icarus First Cohort?
Icarus First Cohort is an open-world survival player versus environment game with up to eight co-op players or solo. You and up to seven other players will explore a "savage alien wilderness in the aftermath of terraforming gone wrong." You are there to make your fortune, and to do so you'll explore, harvest, craft, and hunt.
To facilitate your money gathering, the survival tree will be quite useful, as it's designed for "general character survival on the planet," which sounds pretty useful. You'll also use it to detect storms, for resource gathering and consumption, farming, and essentially anything to do with what your character will need to, well, survive.
You can also complete missions to mine exotic materials and return them to the orbital station. Once you do so, you'll become a Exotic Specialist, which will make one Exotic Deposit on your map so you can get started right away. Gimli would approve.
If you find yourself under attack by a predator, you can also choose a talent that will let you swim through the water just as or even more quickly than running. Through the survival tree you can also unlock storm detection, better-shared XP gain, and Field Medic, which will allow you to revive your friends with more health.
The combat tree deals with, well, combat, and you'll have talents focusing on weapons such as the bow, spear, and firearms as you advance through the game.
With the bow, you'll be able to unlock talents that will let you bleed your prey and/or completely immobilize them, which is good for a quick and efficient kill. For spears, you'll be able to use them for both melee and projectile (thrown) damage, and if you use stamina regeneration talents, you'll be able to catch your breath more quickly. You can also choose a talent that will allow you to create spears more cheaply or even set it on fire.
There are also talents for your blades so you'll almost be undetectable and instant skinning to name a few things. I'd say more, but that's all the development team was willing to talk about for those who are waiting to become students of the blade.
For those looking forward to Icarus, it'll be available on Steam on August 12 for $26.99. It's currently 10% off until August 20, so if you're interested you should probably let others be the guinea pigs and test it for you first.
