After a surprisingly tiring week at my new job, I finally found the time to finish (at least until the Rebels are released) my series of Beta Starter Reviews. If you have yet to read them, you can follow the links below:
- Religious Visionary Review (with sample videos)
- Self-Made Savior Review
For those of you who’ve read my previous Exode posts, feel free to skip the next paragraph. For those who aren’t familiar with Exode, here is a quick summary of the game:
Exode is a blockchain based space colonization game currently being developed. Considering it's a one man team, progress is going fairly fast. There is a playable alpha of the first phase, Evacuation, a short scanning scene where you can learn about your eventual planet, and colonization gameplay on the horizon.
All you need to play is a single starter deck, though having more cards obviously gives more options. This is also a game first, currently the only way to earn is through reselling cards. You will be able to play to earn in the future, but the gameplay will ALWAYS come first and the design is fairly resistant to abuse. Along those lines, anything gained from a referral bonus is account bound. There is no financial benefit to spam referrals, but plenty of game benefits as you get account bound boosters and an elite officer for free.
If you decide to try out the game based on this article, make sure to use my referral code - 984a3c4
Now that the overview is out of the way it's time to tackle the Utopian Thinker starter. As with the other two beta starters, this is a civilian deck. This means a lot of the cards from the other starters can be used instead of, or in addition to those from this deck. It also has the drawback though, of being less evacuation focused and more geared towards the upcoming colonization phase.
ORIGIN
The origin card sets the flavor for the deck, and in this cases it Scientific Civilian. This means your crew will be a bit light with respect to survivability but quite adept at growing their colony. You will want to be cautious when playing this deck, unless you load up on equipment from the player market.
SHIP
This ship is comparable with those from the other Beta Starters. It is fairly small compared to the ships in Alpha, but that's just fine when you have a small collection and are just trying out the game.
This ship can house 5 crew, which is one more than comes with the starter. This gives you the opportunity to tweak the flavor of the deck to better meet your needs. It only has 2 cargo, which gives space for 4 items, and 1 passenger, which means you don't need to spend much time during the evacuation phase searching for supplies and people.
The part which I find most interesting is the farscanner. While we don't know for sure what that does at this time, it likely means your well trained crew will be able to hunt for a more suitable planet instead of grabbing the first planet you find. Alternatively it may make it easier to examine the planet before landing. This is very important with a low combat crew.
EQUIPMENT
Even thought this deck does not come with any equipment, the ship has space for one set. Once you decide you like the game, and colonization is released, you can fill this as appropriate. Until then you are unlikely to notice its missing.
OFFICERS
You three officers are the most skilled members of your ship. These officers are also a good tease of one faction we expect to see heavily expanded in Beta, the corporate faction. As opposed to Alpha Scientific decks, this one may have a larger focus on profit in the future.
- Astrophysicist: Specializing at Signals and Radar, not only will she help you escape the alien threat, she will help you find the best planet and resources. As she seems the most useful to me, I'd promote her to XO when you investigate your crew.
- Groomed Leader: With his unknown agenda, and social skills, I expect him to be the shadow leader of your colony.
- Mandated President: Having strong leadership and popularity she will help hold your colony together even when things get rough.
Personally I feel the Groomed Leader and Mandated President are a bit too similar. As someone who has been around since alpha, I'd like to swap one out, but, not knowing what Beta holds, there may be some very good reasons to keep them both.
CREW
This starter provide 4 out of the 5 crew you can load aboard your ship. Its a very practical crew for evacuating quickly. They can't put up much of a fight, but they also should have everything you need to escape - a pilot, repair skills, and at least some muscle.
- Tech Trainee: While scientific units typically have strong academic / technical skills, having someone with cybernetics makes the hyperdrive upgrade much easier to do. You can quickly assign them to the task and forget about it.
- Colonial Security: Every crew needs at least one physical unit. This one has the added bonus of having planetary skills which will be very helpful after landing.
- Test Pilot: A lot of the other decks end up with a random crew member piloting. This means you need to take the quick and easy way when it comes to finding a planet. The test pilot gives you more options.
- Lab Trainee: This crew member is the biggest gamble. You really don't know what her strengths will be until she's rolled. She is a good little corporate scientist.
EVACUATION TIPS
This deck has low physical strength, unless you add some muscle and gear you need to play it safe. That being said, the apparent redundancy of the Groomed Leader and Mandatory President gives you a little extra leeway.
- Having missing crew members can hurt, if anyone has their comms off during evacuation send your Colony Security guard, or your toughest/fastest character to find them.
- Have your Tech Trainee start repairing the hyperdrive as soon as possible. This can take a while and you usually need to do it twice.
- If you are feeling daring, send either the Groomed Leader or Mandatory President to collect cargo. Repeat this until it gets too dangerous. You are unlikely to fill your hold.
- If neither your Groomed Leader, not your Mandatory President are particularly fast you should send the one with the strongest social skills to escort one passenger.
- If you are feeling particularly daring, do both of the above, collect cargo AND a passenger.
- Send everyone else to gather fuel. Also, send anyone who finishes their tasks to get fuel.
There are various other things you can try, such as putting someone on shields to try and buy more time, but really unless you fully geared out your crew you want to launch as soon as possible.
DECK IMPROVEMENTS
As with all starter decks, there are some basic improvements you should do to prosper - Guns, Armor, Crew. All of these will help with evacuation and colony survivability. You can find these cards on the player market after logging into the website.
Guns
Thanks to the Alpha Rekatron Contract, the player market is FLOODED with guns.
- The Rekatron SD is my personal favorite. It's a well rounded rifle with good power, good accuracy and good ammo. It's relatively inexpensive and you should get one for anyone you expect to fight. Honestly it wouldn’t hurt to get one for EVERYONE in your deck.
- The Firetalker is a bargain option. It's the least expensive option if you are looking to save money. It's a good weapon for those characters who won’t actively look for a fight.
- Defensive Ammo is a useful extra. It ensures you won’t run out of bullets.
Armor
Armor will literally save your life. If you are unlucky, some low toughness characters will die from one or two shots.
- Eisen Suit - Arctic Edition is my armor of choice. While not cheap, it's certainly one of the less expensive options. I’d give it to all my officers and anyone I expect to go looking for a fight.
- “Universal Fixer” Suit is a good option for the rest of your crew. It grants mechanics and basic protection at a low price.
Crew
This is the hard part. Who you choose to complete your crew will be based on your strategy. This deck is particularly weak, so choosing a physical character is probably a good choice.
There are a lot of cards to choose from. If you really want to look at all the options, you can view them yourself through the deck expert. You can use anyone from the civilian, scientific, or robots factions. You can also use anyone who does not already have a faction..
My suggestion to you though, is to simply buy the other two beta starters. You can try each deck individually and combine them as desired. If you limit your choices to the other beta starters, you have five options.
- Religious Clerk: This is a non-combat character who will help keep your colony running smoothly. Of course the religious side may lead to some complications and you already have multiple strong administrative characters.
- Cult Station Security: Some much needed combat power for your colony. Again, we don’t know what, if any, issues will arise from them being religious.
- Versatile Worker: A tough, physical crew member. He will be helpful for physical tasks. This is probably the safest way to add muscle, but its also the weakest.
- Tough Worker: Of the physical workers, he fits the worst with your utopian scientific colony. I'd pass on him.
- Maintenance Worker: As you already have a techie, and a group which is inclined to be strong academically, there is little reason to add this card to your deck.
Ultimately you need to decide what works for you. Also we will get MANY more options once Beta Boosters release. I’d love to hear what you decide to do in the comments!
Video Links
While I hope to update this article with some sample evacuation videos, for the time being I only have an unpacking video available.
Unpacking Video
Sorry, no editing and no sound.
As always, thanks for taking the time to read this!
I apologize if its on the rough side, but as I said my new job has been incredibly busy, and I wanted to post it as quickly as possible.
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Also, please let me know what type of article you would like to see next! Currently I'm thinking of simply reviewing some of my favorite cards, but I'd rather focus on what my readers find the most helpful!
Thanks again for reading!
Thanks for doing this review.. I just realized I never looked for any tutorials or reviews on the game yet.. now I gotta read this and look for other stuff.
Most of those posts are probably a bit hard to find since they are on the older side.
The resources channel in the discord should have a lot of links though.
And apparently in my rush to post this, I didn't link to my older posts...
Hi Elindos, I've been supporting eXode from the start and see that you have developed many elements that can make a great game.
However after many years, you still don't have any real gameplay. Sure the Evacuation was a little bit, but Colonisation seems to have stalled, with many different and confusing UIs, all f which end in "still in development" signs.
When are we going to get some real gameplay?
I'm not sure you meant to post this here!
There's no guarantee Elindos will see it since I'm just a fan like you!
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