Hello, pilots and civilians! Welcome to the nineteenth installment of the eXode lab report, back after over a year-long hiatus. Although I have been long silent on the subject, eXode itself has been all but stagnant. For most of that time updates were few and far between so some of us went into cryo-sleep. In recent months, however, development has really made some leaps and bounds. Let's check out some of the major advancements, shall we?
Updates
Entered technical beta as of June
-testing of some beta content available4 new Origins (starter packs) added to collection
-brand new cards plus a new faction revealedThe CCC, a very early version of Colonization mode, is available for testing
A unique pack, Refit Talent+, has been made available in shop!
27 new cards found in the three main beta starters!
These are the new starters available in the shop, my personal favorite being the utopian thinker because it merges my favorite faction, Scientific, with another that I like, Civilian. This could make for some very interesting hybrid builds! One that comes to mind is using this starter with the Civilian high passenger capacity alpha ship Amarasia. Fill all those slots with Science Students and maybe throw in a few Tech Experts and Unstable Geniuses (fingers crossed) and you've got yourself one big colony of civilian scientists. Imagine the research output!
The Self-Made Savior has an interesting synergy with Family Ties. The epic card Nuclear Family from the alpha booster collection can benefit from this. I sense a focus on the Civilian faction (among others) in beta. The Religious Visionary also has this trait but also introduces the new faction: Religious. I don't know what to make of this faction. They come off as finnicky and difficult to handle but I imagine it would meld very well with characters with the Religious Ties trait such as members of the Flesh Cult. Maybe the Flesh Cult Leader will be able to keep the people in line.
For a chance to see these origins in action and to catch a glimpse of their officers and crew, please check out the evacuation tests made by fellow π[MELN] member @veryanprime.
One more Special Starter
More origins are to be found in the beta booster packs, which might be openable later this month along with the new beta contracts. This will be aligned with the introduction of a new play mode called EXODE Factions!
But proto26, why are you mentioning all this? This is old news.
Well, this may be true for those of us actively following the project. However, the latest update adds novelty to all character cards!
Refit Talet+ Packs
This latest pack, released on Black Friday, is not to be opened perse. Instead it gets used up when you click on a character card and select the new option "Refit". Upon doing so, you can discover a brand new talent that will be permanently added to that card! There are up to 7 different talents from which the refit action will randomly choose from. Here are their probabilities.
Currently, you can refit any character card (excluding origins, which might be able to be 'improved' by some other mechanic yet to come). However, you won't be able to actually see the talent until it is revealed. Talents are being revealed one by one starting with legendaries and going down along the rarity scale. A few legendary cards have already had their discovered talents revealed.
Once you've refitted a card with a talent, you may click on "Details" to see what exactly it does and who discovered it first. If you discovered it, your Hive account name will always show up for every talent of that variant discovered for that particular card! You are immortalized in the world of eXode! Soon this data will be added to the deck expert tool and to the blockchain.
New Card Traits Revealed
Speaking of being immortalized, a long awaited mysterious card has finally been revealed to us!
Important note from Elindos:
All traits and descriptions may be modified at any time.
This is true for all content in EXODE but especially more for cards like this one.
This card is a content from early presale respecting the theme kindly suggested by a sponsoring player, and with mechanics we as EXODE creators designed to their best ability.
Yet this does not mean that the card sponsor approved all the details in it yet! thus granting us creative freedom and room for speeding the process. There may still be adjustments for balance and theme, as we exchange more and deeper on little refinements.
Thoughts on the new card
At first I thought one could install 4 software programs into this entity but now I realize that since it is a non-physical AI, it must be installed somewhere and in fact takes up 4 spaces. Also the synergy with Robots is a great and unique boon! It inspires me to create an all-robot crew including such characters as the Maintenance Droid, Programmed transactor, Galvin-4, an elite Little Buddy, and even the AA / AT Automatic Turret! They're going to need a lot of spare robotics parts for repairs, or perhaps to make even more friends! I wonder when the Mysterious Robot card will be revealed. It can tag along, too.
As this report is now starting to become lengthy, I think I will cut it short and save the Colony Command Center discussion for another time. We are awaiting an update anyway and should I write on the subject, that information may become obsolete. If you wish to test it, log into exode.io with your Hive account and click on "Resume Colonization", assuming you have already Evacuated successfully and passed the Scanning scene.
What is eXode?
eXode is a real-time strategy space colonization game here on the Hive Blockchain. If you still have not purchased your starter pack, use this referral code (de7ed45) and you'll also receive 2 free Alpha Booster Packs with 5 NFT cards each along with a free Epic Alpha Character!
In the future, these lab reports will contain much more substance (and numbers!) including season objective rewards, legacy rewards (when your game...ends), and of course π [MELN] activities.
π [MELN] is the alliance I co-founded with @birdbeaksd , the Market Expansion Leaders Navy.
For a in-depth eXode guide, you can take a look at this post.
Other Useful Links
- Lead Developer's Blog: https://peakd.com/@elindos
- Discord: https://discord.gg/EFZjmzUhd6
- Exode Deck Expert: https://exode.io/tools/deckExpert.html
What is The 1UP Cartel?
The 1UP-Cartel is a mix between a gaming guild like YGG (that invests into gaming assets and creates scholarships for gamers, sharing the gaming revenue), a dividend token (similar to BRO, LBI, INDEX and UTOPIS, paying out regular dividends to token holders from part of the revenue stream) as well as one of the most extensive curation service initiative on the Hive-Engine ecosystem thus far.
Thank you for this excellent post!
Happily reblogged!
It's true that since the food demonstration on graphic colonization in December last year, all 35 developer logs until June were instead sharing progress on a lot of topics - from EXODE identity (logo) to work on a gameplay mode (EXODE Missions) to cards coming to beta contracts to new tutorials - but aside from tutorials and website, players could not experience the rest!
Haha as you guess this is to address the stagnant note! :D
But you are absolutely correct.
In hindsight this is also when I recruited and trained more people, a busy period that ended a couple of weeks ago and partially ended last summer, exactly when things started to kick again on gameplay.
January-March were focused on ships and space (ship modules in our beta contracts mean that we have refined our space equipment concepts) but more importantly a first draft on player shops (and player-made currencies!). This concept once refined enough will be a major leap forward in Web3 exode content, the ideas tested there are very positive... acccording to the biased person I am! But that's still to come out as a playable content.
Our earlier work was about making & testing a gaming and staking draft (EXODE Missions) but in the end it was felt too complex as a gameplay. The idea of a player commander and other players staking cards to that person in 2325 is interesting. But it's too "delegated" and we wanted something with a broader audience. In the end we picked EXODE Factions to come out instead!
EXODE Factions will be a more accessible and larger-audience-capable gameplay that is exactly what we need to make sure new players are not "overwhelmed with what EXODE proposes"! and your guides will help players too to get into the full EXODE experience.
Thank you again for the guide.
We could not work on EXODE Factions before as we intensified work on colonization since August and the C3 console ;and we could only give a glimpse of the colonization gameplay loop before Black Friday!
But we are thrilled with Talent+ and the way it develops uniqueness in collections. Things are coming together!
Ah, we have a special guest appearance! And with that I think we are all caught up now! Thank you, Elindos.
We'll see what novelties next week brings.
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Really great article. Exciting times in 2325β¦
Indeed! Thanks very much.
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I am anxious to continue exploring and learning as collections grow in this brave new world! I can hardly wait to see how some of this comes together in action. Thanks for the updates!
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I can't wait to theorycraft with the community! This month is a big one for the game!
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