ICARUS absolutely slams you with skills, and depending on your in-game goals, some of these skills are completely useless. All of them are related to crafting, and some stuff you’ll never, ever need to properly complete a mission. If you’re feeling frugal, you can save your skill points until the higher levels and get the best stuff even faster — if you’re willing to run around naked until Level 20. Instead of just listing skills, I’ll try to explain why certain skills are completely indispensable and others are easy skips.
Your points are valuable, and you’re free to use them however you want. This guide is just meant to inform players of stumbling blocks — it isn’t always obvious which crafting skills are actually going to be useful in-game. There’s no way to know how good something is until you’ve tried it for yourself. These are the items we think are required, and which ones you’ll never need.
More ICARUS guides:
Beginner’s Guide | How To Earn Credits Faster | How To Reach Level 15 Easily | How To Keep XP After Death
Best Skills | What To Unlock First
- Wood Rag Torch [Required for survival at night.]
- Bone Sickle [Very useful for gathering fiber. Earn x3 fiber when using the bone sickle.]
- Basic Bandage + Suture Kid [All you need for healing for a very long time.]
- Wood Bow + Stone Arrow + Bone Arrow [A basic weapon you absolutely don’t want to skip.]
- Clothe Armor Set [Can be skipped if you’re willing to wait until Ghillie Armor much later in the game.]
- Stick [Can be found in Forest Biomes easily, but rare in the Desert.]
- Wood Construction + Wood Ramp [Wood Construction is good enough to get you through the rest of the game. Ramps are most useful for creating a hunting stand in the wild where you can easily farm animals.]
- Crafting Bench [Required for everything.]
- Oxite Dissolver [You’ll need it for oxygen.]
- Stone Furnace [Needed.]
- Ice Box [Technically optional. Allows you to store food that will not spoil. Too useful to skip.]
- Anvil Bench [Required to craft iron and steel tools.]
- Iron / Steel Axe + Iron / Steel Pickaxe [Your most valuable tools. Absolutely upgrade to Steel when you can. They’re useful for the rest of the game.]
- Iron Knife [Needed for skinning and melee combat.]
- Skinning Bench [Get more yield!]
- Cooking Station + Potbelly Stove [Needed for cooking meals that give buffs. Very useful for hard missions.]
- Longbow + Flint Arrow [A straight up improvement. Very useful for taking out bears.]
- Mortar & Pestle [Needed for crafting the next items.]
- Flour + Epoxy + Gunpowder + Steel Bloom [Essential for crafting other items on this list.]
- Waterskin + Oxygen Bladder [Get these and you’ll never have to worry about water or oxygen.]
- Lantern [Huge upgrade over the Rag Torch.]
- Textile Bench [Can be skipped if you don’t want Leather Armor Set. I recommend getting it for leveling.]
- Leather Backpack [Carry more stuff. Incredibly useful.]
- Leather Armor Set [Crafting leather armor is a great way to earn XP Level 20+. Just craft then break down.]
- Fur Armor Set [Required for the Arctic Biome.]
- Herbalist Bench [Required for the following items. Great buffs. Skip everything but the items listed below.]
- Health Restoration Paste
- Stamina Restoration Paste
- Flatbread Dough [Incredibly good at boosted your stamina regeneration.]
- Machining Bench [Required to progress.]
- Biofuel Drill [You’ll get one for free but if you die, you’ll need to unlock this to craft a new one.]
- Recurve Bow [Best bow.]
- Bolt Action Rifle + Rifle Round [The only gun you need.]
- Carpentry Bench + Wooden Spikes [The only reason you need a Carpentry Bench. Place spikes and you can stunlock even the toughest enemies forever.]
Worst Skills | Skip These
- Thatch Construction [This entire set can be skipped for Wood Construction. Only get if you want to build aesthetically.]
- Crossbow + Stone Bolt [Skippable. Use the Long Bow until you can unlock guns later. You can’t sprint when reloading the crossbow.]
- Masonic Bench [Skippable. Only if you want to build cool stuff.]
- Spears [Any spears. Knives are faster in close combat, and you’ll mostly want to use bows anyway.]
That’s my recommendations for skills you absolutely need to get, and which ones are skippable. If they’re not on this list, they’re totally skippable — if they’re in the worst slot, they’re just totally worthless. Maybe they’re great for you, but I recommend avoiding for a straight-up playthrough that’s focused on completing missions.
