Muse Games’ Guns of Icarus Alliance has already garnered plenty of love on PC.
And now that it’s finally been brought over to the PS4, it will likely gain even more interested followers. As a crew member of an air pirate crew, you’re entrusted with keeping your steam powered airship afloat. That task is quite difficult, however – rival airships try to gun you down, various factions vie for world supremacy, and the environment itself presents its own list of dangers to overcome. Muse Games wants to help new players get into the swing of things, which is why they’ve crafted this guide full of essential advice.
Here are the top 10 tips, tricks, and cheats you need to know for Guns of Icarus Alliance.
1. It’s All About Teamwork
Muse Games
• While being on the same ship, you all are responsible for different aspects of your collective survival. In the skies of Icarus, you triumph or perish together. Pilots need to steer the ship in the right direction and get into firing position. Gunners and Engineers need to frantically shift between blasting ships out of the skies and keeping the ship stitched together. Roles are not exclusive – Engineers can shoot and gunners can fix in a pinch. Combat is all about the crew carving out areas of responsibilities on a ship, and most importantly work together.
2. With Communication on Your Side, You’re Sure to Succeed!
Muse Games
• There are a number of ways to communicate in battle – voice chat, text chat, and voice commands that bridge language barriers. The teams that do well in combat tend to communicate with each other, constantly keeping the ship in arc of enemy targets, and afloat.
• The game is unique where Steam and PS4 players can talk to each other seamlessly in match. Take advantage! Voice chat is also multi-tiered and multi-channeled in battle. You have one channel to talk to crew mates, and one to other captains if you are one yourself. This way, you don’t have 16 people all shouting at each other.
3. Crossfire
Muse Games
• Ships in the skies can be taken in different ways. Every ship has a shield, a balloon, a thrust engine, turning engines and gun turrets. All of these can be damaged and disabled, and would affect the ship in different ways. Shatter the balloon? The ship will fall and crash. Disable the engines, and the ship would veer or stop. Deplete the shield? The ship will start taking perma-hull damage.
• There are over 30 unique and massive guns in the game, and they are all designed to optimally target different components. They are also best used in coordination – a gatling gun to pierce armor, followed a quick mortar or flak burst to kill. To play like the vets, know your guns, and fire them in sequence and good timing to rack up ship kills.
4. A Ship for Every Pilot
Muse Games
• There are 13 unique airships, and they have a variety of attributes that set them apart – size, number of heavy or light guns, layout, mass, armor, gun arcs, speed, etc. These ships are designed to suit different flying style. You like unchecked, rampaging aggression? The charging Pyramidion is the ship for you. You’re a fan of springing a powerful broadside onboard a hulking flagship? Test-fly the Galleon or the Corsair.
• Do you prefer a weapons platform with massive firepower all pointing in the same direction (but could shatter easily…)? The flying tower of Spire just might tickle your fancy. Or if you choose the Squid, you can float like the butterfly and sting like the bee (just don’t get squashed!). Picking the right ship before the battle starts will get you closer to victory.
5. Tools of the Trade
Muse Games
• The roles on the ship – Pilot, Gunner, and Engineer – are distinguished only by how many skill slots they carry. In a pinch, everyone can do everything, and often everyone does, because you’ll be in a pinch a lot. Knowing what tools to bring is best decided as a crew, because it’ll reinforce the crew and ship’s tactic and loadout. The ship of the crew is always the captain/pilot’s, and the captain has a loadout recommendation feature. Try to listen to the captain, and may you attain glory!
6. I Smell Something Burning…
Muse Games
• As a pilot, you have control of the helm and you’re the one weaving in and out of combat. To help with that, there are an array of skills that you can fill your 3 skill slots with. To ram and charge forward, you can use that jug of Moonshine or Kerosene. For dogfighting with boost of lift, drop, or turning, you can grab the Phoenix Claw (actually everyone calls it the “Chicken Foot”), Hydrogen, or Chute Vent.
• One important thing to remember is that, while all the piloting skills boost the ship, they will damage the engine or balloon over time. So you want to use them sparingly, opportunistically, then shut them off. And if you’re an engineer seeing the engines burn and burn, holler at the captain to shut off his Steampunk voodoo!
7. The Ship’s on Fire Captain!
Muse Games
• Fire is a lethal dimension to combat. Some people like to kill ships, and some people like to watch them burn. To light ships on fire up close and personal, there’s nothing more effective than the Flamethrower. Close-range isn’t the only way to start fires. Hades Light Cannon shoots out projectiles of fireballs and the Aten Lens Array darts a beam of light that could spark flames from afar. To combat fire, the crew can carry extinguishers to put out flames or chem-sprays to prevent fires from starting, if only for a short while. Survey the enemy ships in the match lobby, and don’t forget to leave home without your extinguisher!
8. Ramming Speed!
Muse Games
• Can ships ram each other, and kill each other even? You bet they can. In fact, some ships are designed to ram. The Pyramidion has always been a ramming favorite, and while the Galleon and the Corsair are massive and lumbering, they could be a frightening sight when smashed against them. Rams can be boosted by a piloting skill called Moonshine (yes, moonshine…).
• When you activate it, it’ll lock your ship and boost it forward. The resulting force from your ship’s mass times the the boosted acceleration from moonshine can, and has, crush ships, especially when the perma-hull is vulnerable. To buffer against a ram, a pilot can take a tool called Impact Bumpers, reducing the force of impact on the ship. Ramming is fun, we can’t deny it, but just don’t ram into the side of the mountain!
9. The Art of Popping Balloons
Muse Games
• How could these massive airships stay afloat? By their balloons of course! Targeting balloons is a tactic that a number of veteran players employ to great effect, and it is a great way to counter powerful but less maneuverable airships. Small and agile ships such as the Squid, the Goldfish, and the Shrike are great at circling, flanking, and chewing up enemies’ balloons.
• When using this tactic, be sure to hover above the enemy to gain altitude and “high air” advantage so that the enemy ship cannot easily return fire and take out your balloon popping weapons. The best anti-balloon weapons are the light and heavy carronades at close range, and the Lumberjack at long range. If you master the arc of the Lumberjack, you’ll be a prize that all the top clans would clamor over.
10. The Lobbies of Icarus
Muse Games
• This game may not be the best for Valentine’s Day. When a crew and ship falls in combat, it can cause everyone’s blood pressure to rise. But the umami of working together and succeeding is sweet. In the lobbies of Icarus, yes there could be shanty singing and people speaking different languages in piraty voices all in the same lobby, but given time across multiple matches together, people do talk about any random and interesting topics.
• Guns of Icarus Alliance houses a small indie community. Because the game is heavily teamwork focused, and because the community is relatively smaller, people get to know each other, and sometimes friendship forged in game could be meaningful and lasting. Take a chance, and enter the lobbies of Icarus!
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