How to Create a Shelter – ICARUS

The weather on Icarus is not your friend, and wind and rain will make quick work of anything useful you leave out in the open. If you want shelter from the storm for you and your stuff, you’ll need to build it yourself. In this guide, we’ll go over exactly how to create a decent-sized shelter that should be perfect for a new player’s purposes.

While this guide is geared towards beginners, we won’t be going over all of the key stuff you need to do in order to survive on Icarus — for detailed info on keeping yourself alive, head over to our Beginner Guide!

Tools and the Tech Tree

In order to build a shelter that will last, you’ll need to be able to harvest wood from trees, so you’ll want to craft a
Stone Axe if you haven’t already done so. You’ll need Fiber (2), Sticks (4), and Stone (8)– harvest bushes and pick up rocks from the ground with [F] to collect your Axe ingredients, then open your menu [TAB] and use the Crafting tab to create your Stone Axe.

You’ll also need to spend Blueprint points on the Tech Tree tab of the menu in order to unlock structure blueprints. (Blueprint points are currently earned at a rate of 3 per level.) At a minimum, you need to unlock the Beam (to move further in the tree), Floors, Walls, and Roofs/Ramps in order to create a structure. We recommend hunting animals and collecting wood until you’re level 5, and then unlocking the Wood Beam — this will allow you to unlock the Wooden Floor/Wall/Roof pieces you need. However, there is another option, which we’ll discuss in the following section.

Thatch vs Wood

Before we get into the details of how to create shelter, we need to discuss Thatch structures. In the game’s current state, creating Thatch structures isn’t a particularly appealing choice. While they are slightly easier to build materials-wise, they require constant maintenance and get ravaged by storms. The only advantage to Thatch is that you don’t have to be level 5 to start creating Thatch structures.

Long story short, if you’re desperate to start building a home, you can certainly spend Blueprint points to unlock Thatch structures. However, you’ll probably regret doing so once you reach the Wood tier; you’ll then have spent nearly 2 levels worth of Blueprint points on obsolete tech.

The following instructions for creating your first shelter will work whether you make it from Thatch or Wood, so you can still follow along regardless of if you decide to build with Thatch or not — the only difference will be in some of the material costs.

Creating Your Shelter

Before we start, it’s important to note that if you don’t care about how your shelter looks, you can save yourself some blueprint points by using Floors as roofing.

Required Materials

There’s nothing worse than getting halfway done with a construction project only to realize you need more materials. With that in mind, here’s all the stuff you’ll need to create a small wooden house:

• Wood Floor – 6 pieces
• Wood Wall – 10 pieces
• Wood Roof Corner – 8 pieces
• Wood Roof – 2 pieces
• Wood Door – 1 piece

To build the above wooden construction pieces requires:

• 450 Wood
• 272 Fiber

Building

Try to find a flat spot not too far from where you landed — this should be a safe area and likely has a nearby source of water. You don’t need too much space, and you can see exactly how big your structure will be by right-clicking one of your floor pieces from your inventory and selecting “Place”. If the perfect spot is blocked by a tree or a stone deposit, use your axe or a pickaxe to get it out of the way — you can even remove stumps with your axe. Once you’ve got your spot picked out, just follow the steps below!

1. Place your six floor tiles in a 3×2 rectangle.
2. Put walls around the edges of your floor. One wall will need to contain your door — hold [R] while placing the wall and select the Door Frame variant. It’s also a good idea to create a few walls with the Window Variant to let the light in.
3. Place your door in the wall with the door frame.
4. Place Corner Roof pieces on top of your walls, where the long sides of the structure meet the short sides. You’ll need to hold [R] while placing the Roof Corner, then select either “Left” or “Right”, depending on which side of the corner you’re placing the current piece.
5. Add the regular Roof pieces to the two spots the corners don’t cover.
6. Put your stuff inside your new shelter!

If you misplace something, no worries! Press Y while your camera is centered on a construction piece, and you’ll deconstruct it (and it will be placed in your inventory).

Setting a Spawn Point

A shelter isn’t a home without a place to lay your head, and it’s nice to be able to sleep through the night instead of fumbling through the darkness. It’s also great to know where you’ll respawn when you inevitably die to a bear. To set a spawn point, you’ll need to unlock the Bedroll on the Tech Tree, and then craft one. This requires a decent amount of animal byproducts, so make sure you’re killing and skinning any prey animals you come across.

A Bedroll requires:

• 20 Fiber
• 10 Sticks
• 10 Fur
• 20 Leather

Once you’ve got a Bedroll crafted, you can place it in your shelter and then set it as your spawn point by pressing and holding [F]. When night comes, you can use your bedroll by tapping [F]. You’ll need a nearby source of heat, like a Campfire, in order to sleep in your Bedroll. For now, it seems as though it’s safe to put a campfire indoors, though make sure there’s no grass or bushes clipping through your walls or floor that might catch on fire.

Note that you can pick up your Bedroll and move it to another location whenever you like — don’t forget to reset your spawn point if you do so.

We hope this guide on creating a shelter in ICARUS was helpful! Please feel free to leave any questions or suggestions you have in the comments below.