EXODE just announced another huge milestone in its ongoing development. This Friday it's going to have its origin opening event. Today I'm going to take a look at what to expect from this event and what the next steps will be afterwards. In case you haven't heard about EXODE yet, it's a collectible card game space exploration colony management game... or something like that. The game takes place some centuries in the future. Mankind has colonized the stars and started spreading across the universe when one day an alien invasion obliterates almost every single human in a single day. The game consists of two interwoven stages: A fast paced evacuation where you scramble to save your ship, crew and anything or anyone you can get a hold on before the aliens destroy everything and a more complex, longer lasting colonization stage. The special thing about EXODE is that you can enhance all parts of your experience by using collectible cards. Those cards can be ships, crew, weapons, robots and many more things. If you want to learn more about the game there are plenty of articles here on Publish0x and over on Hive. I also made an article about the games manifesto which might also help to better understand what the game is going to be all about. Without any further ado, let's have a look at what to expect from the coming event this Friday.
So what are origins?
Whenever you start a new game in EXODE you first play through the evacuation stage. To do so you chose the origin you want to use in this run and then pick the ship, crew and equipment to use along side it. In many ways, origins can be compared to starter decks in other games. They consist of a number of fixed cards that go well together and allow you to start a game right away without any further adjustments. There's more to those origins though. The origin determines what kind of ship and crew you are allowed to use. Is your ship a military cruiser? Is your crew made up of criminals? Picking an origin can be compared to choosing the color for your deck in Magic the Gathering or the element you want to play in Splinterlands.
At the moment there are 3 different origins being sold at a prize of 8$ each. An origin is needed to play, so you'll have to make that investment in order to pick up the game. Afterwards anything else is optional and the game will be fully playable (and enjoyable) without any further investments. There are 4 more origins to be found in the Alpha collection but these come from boosters. Since booster opening is scheduled to follow in the coming weeks only the origins you can buy in their shop are going to be opened this Friday.
Each origin consists of twelve fixed cards that every origin will have so we'll see a total of 42 different cards. The three origins to be opened are the Navy Lieutenant, the Ark Scientist and the Elected Leader. Next we'll take a look at each of those origins and discuss what to expect from them.
The Navy Lieutenant
The Navy Lieutenant commands a disciplined military star ship. His crew is mainly focused on combat, both in space as well as on the ground. His cards reflect that specialization with crew members better suited to fight off aliens or hostile crews as well as weaponry and armor suits to go along with it. Playing as the Navy Lieutenant, you can expect to have an easier time getting through the evacuation but you'll also lack specialized personal to use in the further colonization of your new home planet.
As you can see those guys mean business. There's no subtlety here, the trooper is good at shooting stuff without getting shot himself. I anticipate that the Navy Lieutenant is going to be the easiest origin to use for the evacuation. At the same time he'll have the least suited crew for day to day colony business so it'll be very important for him to gather as much resources and save as many civilians as possible during the evacuation. Otherwise he might make it out alive only to slowly starve during the colonization game.
The Ark Scientist
The Ark Scientists crew is made up of fellow scientists. This origin is not really interested in combat and fighting but rather wants to explore the universe and learn about its every secret. Their origin cards specialize in the different branches of science and its applications. Instead of weapons and armor they bring additional scientific equipment to the table. Consequently the ship he uses is also more focused on advancing science and less well suited for an actual confrontation with hostile aliens.
In Evacuation I expect the main focus of the Ark Scientist to be with actual survival. Your crew won't be made up of hardened veterans able to fight back aliens or hostile crews. Since you can already bring your own research equipment and you have some very able crew your number 1 priority will be to get everyone out of evacuation alive. Since you'll still have to upgrade your hyperdrive and load enough fuel to make the jump this is not going to be an easy endeavor. If you manage to make it out alive though you'll be rewarded with a strong start in the colonization game.
Cards like the Space Surgeon are also an interesting part of the origins. While he's associated to one origin his Versatile stat allows him to be used with any crew. This opens up some more interesting decisions when deciding what origin to use. Since you can change some of your crew for crew members from other origins you can try to counteract the weaknesses of your chosen origin. The crew slots on your ship are limited though so you can't just add more crew but you also have to decide who's going to be cut. This allows for a lot of additional customization if you want to. Since the origins are balanced to work well with the cards they offer, this is strictly optional though. If you don't feel like putting too much thought into your initial line-up, you can just use what the origin offers you.
The Elected Leader
The Elected Leader finally is the commander of a civilian ship. His crew is going to be less specialized than the other origins. He has a bit of everything, some fighting capacity thanks to his personal guard and a ship with a lot of room to add additional passengers.
While the Elected Leader will be a bit better at fighting off the aliens and enemy crew than the Arc Scientist he's nowhere as good in doing so as the Navy Lieutenant. Consequently I expect his evacuation difficulty to be between the scientist and the lieutenant. With a more flexible crew he'll be all about opportunities during the evacuation. The huge number of passenger slots allows to recruit a lot more personal during evacuation. This won't be an easy endeavor though. You have to screen available civilians for their skills and decide whom to take with you and whom to leave behind. Those that you don't want to take to your ship won't be please to be left on a doomed station so you should expect some resistance the more passengers you screen. Once again this will make for some interesting decisions. Do you take in as many people as you can as quickly as possible or do you keep screening civilians to pick the best candidates for your future colony, risking damage both from the aliens and hostile people on the station?
What's next?
After the origin opening event this Friday we'll see the contract opening a few days later. Contracts are also sold in EXODEs shop. They come with their own unique loot tables from which they'll drop 3 cards every week as long as you hold the contract. While those are a little more expensive than the origins they'll provide you with new cards every week so they are a great addition to any collection if you want to get invested more in EXODE. Cards from contracts are meant to offer additional gameplay options. So again, having those cards will be completely optional and in no way necessary in order to enjoy the game or be successful during evacuation or colonization.
Once contracts start working we'll get towards booster opening next. Like in most trading card games boosters are made up of 5 random cards out of a collection of more than 200 different cards. This is obviously going to be the biggest of the opening event.
Conclusion
Personally, I'm really hyped for EXODE. The game is already showing so much potential that it's mind blowing to me. The developer is really active, releasing new stuff every single day. Once all cards have been distributed we'll get closer and closer to the complete gameplay with permanence and rewards. EXODE already created a separate account on HIVE that's used for storing the HIVE that's going to be used as reward pool. The developer is also very active on the games discord answering all kind of questions and giving insights into his reasoning and ideas for the future. If EXODE manages to take off and deliver everything it's aiming for, this will be a game to look out for in the future.
In case you haven't checked it out already, if you join the game using a referral link both the referrer and you will gain and additional 2 booster packs which are sold at 2$ each currently. Since I really believe in the game and want to aid it's development I'm doing a little referral incentive program: If you join using my Referral Link (https://exodegame.com/?ref=5ea4142) and tell me your Hive account afterwards I'll send you an additional booster pack.
Thank you all for reading and please let me know what you think about EXODE in the comments. See you all next time!