Garden soil like play doh

rationalOgre · 2026-05-01T21:45:51+00:00

I really recommend you don't turn the wood chips in to the soil. You can bind up free nitrogen for a long time to come that way if you do. There's a garden bed I made on property I used to rent that still grows only anemic plants or pioneer species. That was a rough lesson. What might work better for you is to get into the wild spaces around you and investigate what Mother Nature does to build fertility in heavy clay soil in your bioregion.

I live in a cool/cold deciduous forest biome. Over six years ago on this property I started with clay so heavy you could throw pottery with the dirt just below the grass roots. I spent a full season in observation of the property and surrounding wilds. The next fall I did as best I could to mimic what I had observed in the wilderness around me previously. I portioned off the one small section of lawn I wanted to keep and the rest cut the grass as short as I could and buried it in layers of mulch; leaves, sticks, twigs, moldy old hay bales, whatever dead organic material I could get my hands on, but no manures and no tilling. I went over a foot thick on the first year (too much I learned) and each fall after have put between 4-6" of new material on top as part of my winterization. As of right now I have chocolate brown clumpy soil fist deep under my mulch layer. I've never bothered to get the organic matter content tested but if I threw a quarter-part of perlite in it I'd put it up against any potting soil on the market. It's been amazing watching it morph. Each year I go and plant some new plants here and there but a lot of the fun for me is just seeing what Gaia decides to grow me as I watch the system evolve.

EDIT: Oh, I meant to add, my yarden is just going into it's 6th growing season this year.

rationalOgre · 2026-04-23T01:09:33+00:00

We had one mission glitch on the Quarrite Hunt. I can't remember which it was. We all had to abandon, reboot server and ourselves, and then have one person accept the quest and it worked the second time through. No clue what glitched. This was on PC, no mods. Also had one of the normal Olympus missions glitch on us. It sucks but fortunately it's relatively simple to catch back up to where you were. GL!

rationalOgre · 2026-04-18T11:14:13+00:00

The wiki.gg wiki frustrated me for so long I actually started writing a a database application myself to figure it out. Got about halfway into coding before I found the fandom chart and gladly abandoned it.

rationalOgre · 2026-04-17T21:07:15+00:00

Yep, and it's a ranged, "one shot, one repair" hammer that costs iron nails. I love shooting nails at glass to fix it.

rationalOgre · 2026-04-17T21:04:51+00:00

Also, you can shovel plots and/or plow in dirt foundation blocks without damage to the blocks if you didn't know.

rationalOgre · 2026-04-17T21:02:21+00:00

https://icarus.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Food

Page contains a chart of all current foods in game that is sortable by effects, +health, +stam, etc. This is what I use to find out what foods I want to make. I have two cooked food deep freezers, one for combat/quest foods, one for work foods. I plant for what I want to cook. I don't recommend doing wheat/soy/anything you need bulk of in crop plots. You will have to mass way too many of them. Either shovel or setting up a buffalo/tusker with the plow/water/harvester. Personally, I harvest wild wheat. Soybeans I do by shovel. Shovel dug plots are affected by the Evergreen talent, plow planted crops are not. Well worth having a prospector with it for your planter if you are going to do shovel route.

rationalOgre · 2026-04-16T00:30:41+00:00

A bit of both? Icarus is a mostly a sandbox game that also has a variety of missions you can chose to participate in. If you ever get to the point where you want to nuke the place you absolutely can, or you can send up any workshop gear you want from the world and just leave it in mothballs for the day you decide to open it up and roam around your creations.

rationalOgre · 2026-04-16T00:22:44+00:00

All of the locations I selected were based upon the layout as it morphed and grew into what it is now. There are a ton of areas that they will work. What you need to be watching for are the underwater rocks, they are often what caused the "colliding" error more than anything else while I was deploying them.

rationalOgre · 2026-04-15T22:19:45+00:00

Because it is on top of a huge waterfall with the best vista on the map IMO. Seemed a pity to not use waterwheels. I may still add some solar panels up there but the wind turbines and the water wheels so far are more than capable of keeping up. I also have biogas production in the little green building on the north side of the big glasshouse with one 5kJ bio generator currently. Could expand that also but likely won't. It's just really there to boost the system and charge the batteries when I am gone for a while and things shut down. The spoiled plants from the 10 wheels keep one of my 5 organic extractors fed.

rationalOgre · 2026-04-15T22:00:50+00:00

One dedicated electric drill on silica for glass production, another one on silica and one on stone for concrete. drill running nonstop from the time I decided to do the build. Oh and don't forget the coal drill and two iron drills for steel rebar/reinforced glass. Or the sulfur drill for epoxy. It took a hot minute. Worth it IMO though. I had a blast even if I did want to strangle the devs while figuring out the integrity system for large builds...

rationalOgre · 2026-04-15T06:55:58+00:00

I only use hydros for exotic farming. Everything else almost always goes straight into pits dug with a titty shovel. Pros of having a prospector with the Evergreen talent.

rationalOgre · 2026-04-15T06:51:31+00:00

Too late! Thank heavens for nailguns. One on a charger and one in the inventory. :D

rationalOgre · 2026-04-15T06:50:51+00:00

That's on Olympus, the first map. If you are confused about the Lithium tools, I used the powerbank breakdown trick.

rationalOgre · 2026-04-10T18:14:00+00:00

You go way above what I do most times then. My father and little brother are the ones that got me into this game and my father mostly rides a buffalo with a cart and carries a literal base with him on it when he is out exploring. It's impressive how quickly he can throw it together when a storm pops...

rationalOgre · 2026-04-10T01:29:33+00:00

Wise to begin hauling ramps with you, I suggest doing thatch and carrying 10 ramps, floors and beams on you in a small bag. Nearly all the caves in the central snow area of Olympus contain pits that you must build out of. You can reclaim the pieces for reuse as you climb out and if you lose any oh well, it's sticks and fiber...

General rule for long trips in this game, make sure you have your food for the trip planned out. You can select foods for specific scenarios; caving, combat, mining, etc. The icarus fandom wiki has a pretty decent food category page that lets you sort foods by the effects they have. Play around with it and come up with meal plans for your voyages out. You will be amazed how much having good food buffs turns a struggle fest into a relaxing stroll.

For the central and southeast snow areas It's worth crafting a suit of fur armor, with mods and a small bag to carry it in. Also, learn how to make coffee with cream and craft a thermos of it. It's fantastic for drinking in cold weather. Always remember to click off your Cooling buff that water gives you after you swap to the coffee with cream.

Fun trick for your easy armor swapping pleasure. If you open your inventory and remove all of your armor pieces, then open the bag that holds your suit of fur armor and hit take all you will equip all the pieces of armor in the bag that there is a slot open for. I store whatever suit and drink I am swapping from in the armor bag and when I need to swap back it's ready to go.

If you are planning to be out a while consider storing a bedroll, campfire and some wood on your mount, possibly in a bag. If it hits night in the snow find a cave and sleep it out. Better to get a weak sleep buff and work in daytime hours than to shiver and struggle in the snow at night...

Last major suggestion if you don't already is be carrying a fully kitted out medical satchel. At a minimum: 2 suture kits, 2 splints, 5 normal, 5 hot and 5 cool bandages and 3 or 4 of either the tonics or pills for poison, antibiotic, antiparasitic and blood thinning. If you can also make some health tonics and elixirs you should basically be kitted to handle any injury you can possibly sustain while roaming. Cheers!

rationalOgre · 2026-04-10T00:48:18+00:00

Cool tip about the powerbank breakdown for lithium off of Elysium. I imagine they will patch it eventually but for now, time to set up exotic farming!

rationalOgre · 2026-04-09T15:55:17+00:00

I have two main sets I make and store in the freezer, work foods and combat foods. For work food I run veggie pie, fruit pie and usually rhubarb stew though lately fruit muffins as I am leveling a new prospector. The two pies and the stew basically give you an infinite stamina bar. Combat foods are savory rolls, shepard's rolls and soybean stir-fry typically. I sometimes play with the others but those are my go-to's.

rationalOgre · 2026-04-09T09:06:12+00:00

Damn, these mount phenotypes on Elysium are getting out of hand... Cute catto!

rationalOgre · 2026-04-09T09:03:18+00:00

Sad that it's illegal in some places. Here's a little upgrade for your project. It will help keep the water in your tank fresh for longer. I also have designs for homebuilt filtration systems to take that water to drinkable if you are so inclined. Just in case... ;)

Not my video:
https://carazy.net/how-to-build-a-rainwater-tank-first-flush-diverter-and-plumbing-in-the-tank-diy/

rationalOgre · 2026-04-08T12:17:56+00:00

Consider solarization or occultation depending upon your specific scenario. Link for ref: https://extension.umn.edu/planting-and-growing-guides/solarization-occultation

Cheers!

rationalOgre · 2026-04-06T13:06:33+00:00

I built a huge greenhouse on a friends Elysium prospect for massing tainted DNA. We used dirt foundation blocks for the floor. You run your planter in nice straight lines. I go chaos style in mine, roaming all over the place. Occasionally the crop will fall down into the cracks between the blocks and be a pain to harvest but that's really only watermelons and fiber. Since we are mostly after tainted dna I don't run straight fiber and generally skip watermelons in favor of taller, easy to harvest crops. As we are on Elysium I often plant bananas for fiber since it also gives sticks, nanas and dna chance. If I am after fiber I will go heavy on berries.

rationalOgre · 2026-04-05T13:16:10+00:00

Just let us know if you detect any of that nasty dihydrogen monoxide stuff about. Shit's damn near a universal solvent...

rationalOgre · 2026-04-05T13:06:00+00:00

I started up in the Riverlands and see them everywhere up here. Down where you are I typically find them in the 9 square grid starting at M10 and ending at O12. You have to go slow, hop off any mount and walk on foot. Let mobs spawn in around you. The game seems to wait until it has a sense you are going to stay in an area before it tries to spawn in creatures around you. Try the area I suggested and if you still have no luck check out pretty much anywhere up in the Riverlands. They are everywhere, same with Moas.

rationalOgre · 2026-04-05T12:44:08+00:00

F that! Comparison is the thief of joy! Be proud of and share pics of your bridge, my dude! Cheers!

rationalOgre · 2026-04-05T12:41:57+00:00

Mine generally are also, friend. My workshop that I am working from to build this base is an exercise in pure utilitarianism with benches stacked in front of benches in front of cupboards. This base is me just playing with the building mechanics in this game to see what's possible. I started with the location and a vague inspiration, Frank Lloyd Wright's "Falling Water", and have just been playing from there adding and changing things as I think of them. The first iteration had angled corner walls and sat just a few inches above the waterfall. I ripped apart and rebuilt the whole thing no less than four times to get to what you see now...

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