It’s a special weekend. A whole new slew of PvE MK2 weapons are in the dev app after we tested them all weekend.

Testing will be at 5 pm eastern today (July 14th) and 12 pm eastern tomorrow (July 15th.) To hear all the latest updates first, join our Discord Experimental Crew!

Our notes are below, but we can’t wait to hear your thoughts.

MK2 Light Weapons

Gas Mortar-
New effects have made this weapon stand out with it’s fading and dangerous clouds. Like WW2 flak it bursts in the sky in a brief moment of destruction.

Lightning Gun-
This one is definitely on the overpowered side, we’re doing our best to relook at this weapon.

Lens Array-
A cone of death! We spent the week tweaking the effects, but enjoy the new wide spread laser. True area clear.

Tempest Missiles-
Guided single missiles fired more rapidly, this weapon has gone from under to over powered then reigned in. Test it out and try for yourself!

MK2 Heavy Weapons

Cavitation Gun-
Amazing at stopping convoys, we used this to abuse ships that had a goal and control them. Can you?

Remote Launcher-
throwing out a storm of explosions and shrapnel. It looks cool, but are there any masters out there that will make the most of it?

Ammopocalypse

New content:

• Monuments on the map for the last winning faction during war. Also special events such as the Pirate Week winners will be shown here. The world will now be permanently marked with the wins of your faction so try your hardest to dominate the world!

• Ashen King—King of the hill version of Ashen Scuffle. More deadly than the leviathan the Ashen King tunnel is high value target, but also a deathtrap. Controlling the point guarantees victory, but also a bloody battle of attrition. Don’t let your claustrophobia get the best of you in this tight battleground

• Voyager’s Cove Night Maps. Night descends on Voyager’s Cove. Bright greens and flora find themselves plunged into darkness with only explosions to light the landscape. Defend your base from a daring night raid and punish the invaders.

• Misty Mutiny Night Maps. PvP also gets another night map. There’s danger around every corner as the darkness conceals your enemies. Do your best to hunt them down as you find yourself fighting shadows or light up the world with the false sun of flares.
• Magnate now available for PVP. Our testers have put it through the wringer and now the Merchants find themselves in PvP. Take this unique golden ship into the skies against powerful crews. Extremely deadly and durable, push your enemies from the field.

• Aten Lens Array Mk. S now available for PVP. Embrace laser life. Make the skies a deadly rave with the Aten Lens Array. Bringing piercing and fire damage there are few parts of the ship that can withstand a prolonged assault. Remember the gun can’t move while firing though, so as soon as you see that laser, DODGE!

• Conductor Pride. Show your support for LGBT with these tweaked items. Proceeds will be donated to LGBT charities. So look stylish, help a good cause, and show off your pride!

Changes:

• Character Customizer now acts as class changer
• World Map Territory Improvements: New UI to better inform players of progress, change, and movement in individual territories.  Periodic buffs can be unlocked for completing major ‘battles’ to increase sense of progression and achievement.  Buffs are activated when a Captain deploys at a territory where buffs have been unlocked for their entire ship.
• Magnate (Player Council): -10% armor, 15m/s2 turn acceleration (from 21), 15m/s max turns peed (from 12.5), 3.5 vertical acceleration (from 3)
• Burst Rounds (Player Council): +10% AoE damage (from none), -15% rate of fire (from none)
• Heatsink Clip  (Player Council): Vanilla clip size (from +30%), extinguishes all fire on reload (from 3)
• Charged Rounds  (Player Council): +20% projectile speed (from none), -20% jitter (from none)

Fixes:

• Include BLOCKADE in rematch vote option
• Fixed excessive hit lag on Aten Lens Array
• Fixed inconsistent warm up time calculations (most obvious on Aten Lens Array – correct behavior is that the trigger must be held for 1.75 seconds before any shots are fired, resetting whenever the trigger is released or the gun reloads)
• Fixed Aten Lens Array beam not appearing when fired more than 300 meters away
• Anglean Raiders/Fight over Firnfeld maps are the wrong scale
• “A Perfect World” achievement now correctly counts base health in Defense (base must be at 100% health when match ends, can have fallen below that and been repaired by cargo)
• Fixed missing map for Misty Mutiny (practice)
• Engine sound issue when turning
• Banshee keeps emitting smoke after reloading
• Windows: incorrect rendering API fallback order
• Strange behavior (disappearing, lagging) of beams

Internal testing is back and just in time for next weeks patch!

Between cons, updates, broken test server and a rock climbing trip for the office, we’ve definitely had a break between Gazettes, but now’s your chance to get a sneak peek at everything coming your way.

If you want to hear about it first hand, follow us at twitch.tv/gunsoficarus where we show off every internal session and give away the password to the dev games early (and your chance for free items.)

New Night Map: Voyagers Cove

Night is no longer unique to Parous Glen. We’ve updated the solar cycle to also affect the normally bright and cheerful Voyagers Cove. Explore the darkened corners of this defense map and make your own light with flares, fire, and explosions. This definitely isn’t the last map where darkness will become your greatest ally so keep an eye out!

New PvP Map: Ashen King

Desert Scrap may no longer be the most deadly map with the introduction of Ashen King. Fight for a single point in the middle of the cave structure. Forced together in some of the bloodiest close quarters maps. Fight the correct assault angle and work together to hold onto the point. Tar and Mines recommended!

What a weekend!

Firstly, a big hello to all the people that visited us at our booth at Too Many Games! We really enjoyed seeing all your smiling faces and showing you all our new game!

Secondly, thank you to our devoted community. So regularly are we able to find volunteers from our game to help us at our booths, and it really speaks volumes to how awesome you all are.

As for the details, we had some awesome neighbors all around us down in Indie Row, and it was a real treat to just go around and try everyone else’s games, show off our own, and practice our pitches before we were open to the public. The sense of indie community was fantastic, with lots of us going around just to say hi and watching after each other’s booths when those inevitable bathroom breaks needed to take place. We even got invited to an indie dinner, where we all went out to grab some food after the con and really got to talk about the nitty-gritty bits and pieces of game development. It was a great time.

That’s in no way to take away from the attendees, who were also excellent. We had a whole plan to show our game trailer when there was nobody actually playing the game, and we probably got to play it for 2 minutes total. Everyone was super active and engaged, and we saw several faces coming back time and time again! We had a few special guests appear at the booth as well, and it was great to be able to talk to them and show off our game.

I love being able to show off the game in person, and I really feel like Guns of Icarus shines extra bright when a whole ship is sitting in the same room. Seeing groups of friends playing for the first time, getting excited in the chaos and screaming to ‘get on the hull!’, only to hear ‘I don’t know where the hull is!’, watching them explode, hearing them all laugh, and then watching them turn around and asking if they can try again was truly magical; I can’t wait to show off Guns of Icarus: Alliance at the next convention!

Clear Skies!

-Cameron

We’re partnering with Steam on a one of a kind sale just for Guns of Icarus owners and friends.
Owners of Guns of Icarus titles get 50% off for a limited time*, when you buy a copy for a friend on Steam!

*Offer ends June 7th at 10AM PT

The war ends with a begrudging surrender. The Northern Guard claims victory and an uneasy peace settles across the land. A peace that is more of a mask for the next insidious attacks from all the factions, piracy.

Those that don’t accept the fight as over are taking to raiding and pillaging. Some are loyalists looking to fight for honor others are opportunists looking to take the post-war chaos to make a quick buck.

So hide in your safe territory and strike out and plunder the world. Do it for your faction, for your pocket, and for an exclusive title!

The faction that has the most successful attacks by the end of the mission will all earn the exclusive Pirate title. No need to hold the territory, just capture, plunder, and move on!

This will continue until the 30th when a new patch drops and new factions join in with even more content!

Greetings Fellow Sky captains and Crews!

We created the Tower of Babel! A maddening structure made by an angry god of code for our attempts to break the sky. While last night our new buildings looked good for Ambush, check out the violent dealings of our newest test build!

If you want to be the first to see all the content we’re working on. Follow us at twitch.tv/gunsoficarus where we show off every internal session and give away the password to the dev games early (and your chance for free items.)

NEW Bug: Towers of Babel

The new ambush building scaled up massively, but its collision box didn’t so the start of our test was in the middle of a massive structure that was impossible to find the top or end of. Do not test the jealous gods of code for they will smite you!

NEW Ship Naming: Yeshan

We were testing out the Yeshan ship with our latest fixes and something struck the team. We have not named the Yeshan craft (player and enemy) yet, but it’s something we’re working on right now. If there’s something that strikes you from what you’ve seen. Let us know!

Greetings Fellow Sky captains and Crews!

We crashed our testing server! We were testing a bunch of MK2 weapons and broke the server!  In Between crashing everything we got to try some truly exciting things that we can’t wait to share with everyone.
Congrats on the Shrike and Tempest Launcher being earned. Your hard work in game has brought this new ship and weapon to PvP!

If you want to be the first to see all the content we’re working on. Follow us at twitch.tv/gunsoficarus where we show off every internal session and give away the password to the dev games early (and your chance for free items.)

New Gun: Mk2 Project

We’re trying to expand on the success of the Heavy Flak Mk2 which has been amazing to see players use. Today we tried everything from shotgun lasers to the newest room clearing Mk2 Cavitation Gun. We’re not 100% sold on it yet, but it was a great test especially when combined with Mk2 Telsa! The Mk2 Tempest with a slow moving missile offered a unique take on the weapon, but we have quite a few more ideas for all the weapons before we settle.

New Gun: Fan Made Mk2

Eric hasn’t been the only one trying out crazy new weapons. We took the Mk2 Carronade into Search and Destroy to a solid victory. The cannonballs over grapeshot approach was intriguing. There’s a lot of potential there and it was great to see how guys from the art team and engineering team reacted to this new and exciting beast.

New content:

Night descends on Icarus!

• Parous Glen (Night)
• Ashen Scuffle (Night)
  • Enjoy a new visual experience as you navigate a dark and ominous lava-scape. These are the first of many night maps and have been testing for a while. This comes with a lighting change to lamps on ships to make sure even if you have a hard time seeing ahead of you, you’ll still know where you are on the ship!

PvP gains Alliance ship and gun!

• New PvP Ship: Shike
• New PvP Gun: Tempest Missile Launcher
  • Global community challenge. Since PvE players have to unlock new guns and ships, we wanted to attach the same idea to new PvP content. To make sure some players don’t have tools that others don’t, it’s a global challenge. Once 4700 matches of PvE are completed both the ship and gun will be available to everyone in PvP! We want to use this system for a bunch of rewards so let us know what you think!

• Leadership medals
  • The first leaders earned a special reward for taking the top spots on the leaderboard. This was something we did manually, but now every leader will automatically get a medal and title for the work they’ve put in.

War begins!

The merchants hit their war goal over the weekend and with that, the small squabbles between factions have blown up into a full blown war! Merchants join arms with the Chaladon as the Immortal Insurrection and find themselves squaring off against the Northern Guard the combined forces of the Republic and Baronies.

Get into game to vote for your alliance’s goals. You decide your reasons for fighting and what you need to fight for next.

Changes:

• Added a message that appears when a running Steam client is not detected, and prompts the user to restart Steam and then the game (used to quit immediately)
• Changed display of Wall and Mission Reward to display approximated real efforts and % change instead of abstraction of curve that these are based on
• Crusader visual adjustments
• More accessible wanted leaderboard
• Reduced leadership time to 4 days (from 7)
• Updated opening cinematic
• See skills and guns and ships locked and show how to unlock them with rollover
• Added instructions for the world map
• Tutorial improvements
• Enemy AA Ordnance: Muzzle speed 500m/s (from 350)
• Infiltration: Increase enemy budget, increased VIP hunting task force 0.5 (from 0.4), fixed issue with walls and enemy spawning interaction
• Assault: Increased enemy budget, Mining Outpost (intermediate base) hull +30% and armor +25%, Manufacturing base (final base) hull +25%
• Hard difficulty: Enemy base and AA ordnance damage -13% (from -25&)
• Veteran difficulty: Drill & bases durability +35% (from 0), Enemy base and AA Ordnance damage +50% (from 0)
• Hell difficulty: Drill & bases durability +55% (from 25)
• New menu for books

Fixes:

• Achievement adjustments and fixes
• MAC: When displaying function keys to the player, macs now add ‘fn +’ in front of it
• Chat overlaps window
• Fixed a pathfinding issue that could cause matches to freeze up on certain maps (Thornholt Crest most notably)
• On the statistics screen, if one hadn’t played a class yet, the most played ship is no longer shown as a white square
• Infiltration: fixed mismatch between in-game and match-end display of VIP health
• The CA list no longer continues off the UI when there are more than 7 CAs online
• Fixed glitched world map when a system language other than US English was in use
• Fixed typo in Lochnagar description
• Fixed broken storm sky transitions after exiting a match while a transition was active
• Fixed an error caused by people trying to activate special abilities in PvP
• Team tab now properly displays the teams when spectating to the end match screen of a PvP match
• Increased flare gun’s light brightness and fixed it overbrighting the helm
• Fixed lights not falling back to vertex path (should improve dark maps on low settings)
• Clan membership button disappears
• Inconsistent load-out preview when joining ongoing match
• Character customization lighting darkened
• Fixed resource display during war
• Fixed unlocked faction ships are not accessible in Evadne’s Ship Reports
• Fixed missing loading screen images