This is 2325 speaking.
Colonies go quiet. Witnesses change their story. Reports arrive with pages missing.
Something is behind all of it!
The Nemesis Campaign is live in the Colonization Challenges of EXODE!
It is a cooperative investigation for the holders of a NEMESIS Pack, and also comes with a smorgasbord of screens and features
(yes, I like that word! smorgasbord!)...
...including a new kind of mission: for Special Agents!
Do you want to know more?
Nemesis
Everything happens in the Crisis Room, a new screen accessible from the Challenge Browser.
Special Agents is the name given to cards you "activated".
You can do that now from our new collection screen, thanks to your hard-earned EXOCREDITS.
Nemesis has its own missions, clue system, comms, and its own rewards.
In NEMESIS, what you get is a full campaign running with an Investigation Phase first, before Strike Teams can be called in the next season, once you have identified the threat.
Investigate. You have six threats as suspects and only one is the real nemesis. You send agents after it, collect clues, share them between players, and name your suspect.
Combat. Investigation covers season 7, but you must keep some strength left for the next season, where you will face combat.
Inside the Crisis Room
The Crisis Room has five panels:
Threats: see all possible threats, your clues, and select the one you suspect as soon as possible.
Comms: practical asynchronous message board. Read messages from other players there, and also write your own. This should help in sharing clues and putting a reminder of what letters have been found.
Assignments: request missions and send your agents, in a new mission screen.
Rewards: missions give you Operation Points, and you can spend them here to create your own procedural random reward table, and then decide on which one you want to get.
Comms is where the campaign becomes cooperative:
Each player can customize his message board there and share what he has found. It saves by itself while you type and other channels refresh every 30 seconds.
Use your message as a notebook: your suspect, your clues, and maybe information about some opponents you fought, because that information too can prove to be useful.
Six suspects, one real threat
The Threats panel shows six encrypted files. One of them is the real nemesis.
Click a suspect to make it yours. You can change it at any time during the Investigation.
Your suspect matters more than it looks:
- Every assignment played while your suspect is the real nemesis: +30% Operation Points.
- Every assignment played while your suspect is a wrong one: -20%.
- If you name no suspect, you'll get no adjustment.
These adjustments and bonuses will remain hidden until the end of the Investigation.
So pick early if you have a feeling, and switch as soon as the clues say otherwise!
Clues come from being successful in missions.
The first clue will come after challenge week 1, as your first assignment, the one Level 1, will be completed then.
from your assignments:
A clue is either one letter of the nemesis name or an information: something the nemesis is made of, does, or leaves behind.
You never get the same clue twice, but another handler may get the letters you miss.
Some of the risks your agents meet in the field will also come from the nemesis itself. Read them closely, and compare them in Comms!
Special Agents: one agent per objective
Nemesis assignments are played with our new mission system, Special Agents.
A Special Agents mission sends one person only to face one objective. But you can equip that agent with armor, weapon and equipment cards.
You have one starship for the whole team, and one agent for each objective: Alpha, Beta, Gamma.
Only activated cards can go: every card you send needs at least one yellow star.
Every agent has health: 3 to start, +2 with a starship, more with every piece of gear. Fights and hostile air take it away. At 0, the objective fails.
A failed objective is lost for the rest of the season. But other objectives can go on.
After each validation, a mission report tells the story of every objective, dice included, and fights can be replayed round by round.
Three assignments per month
Press REQUEST NEW ASSIGNMENT to receive a mission. You can hold up to three during the Investigation, each one harder than the last.
You are free to set all your agents at once, this was they are set for the entire month.
Remember that agents you commit won't be available for the next Phase, the one allowing Strike Teams!
The Nemesis Campaign has its own pool of cards. What you send there does not block your colony missions, and the reverse is true.
Hostile Files
Your agents will meet opponents in the field.
An opponent you have never fought is hidden: showing only its name and a question mark! Its health, attack, defense, speed and abilities remain unknown.
But once you have faced it, some information will be added to your Hostile Files.
Portrait, kind, stats, abilities (Armored, First Strike, Explodes when down, Regenerates...), and how many times you fought and defeated it.
Of course, you are free to share some of that information to other players, or not.
Create your unique reward table
Assignments earn Nemesis Operation Points.
You can use them right away on the Rewards screen.
3 OP unlock a new random reward.
It will have its own price, and you can decide to take the reward or not.
Rewards can include new consumables to equip on your agents, buffs, or permanent cards.
Each exploration reveals one new line, generated randomly only for you.
Exploring costs:
- 3 OP per line for lines 1 to 5,
- 6 OP per line for lines 6 to 10,
- 9 OP per line for lines 11 to 15,
- then 12 OP from line 16.
A revealed line shows its price: pay it to take the reward. Each line can be taken only once.
Lines hold resources, special resources, rare or epic cards, consumables for your agents (16 different items!), and four new special resources: Quantum Energy, Exotic Alloys, Xeno Samples and Encrypted Intel.
Consumables once taken from your reward table are kept for the whole campaign, Season 8 included, or until used for most of them.
Follow your lead, or drop it
When the last week of the Investigation is over, the Crisis Room asks every player one question: do you believe in your theory?
FOLLOW your lead:
- +40 Operation Points if your suspect is the nemesis.
- -40 if it is not.
ABANDON it:
- no gain, no loss.
Then the nemesis is revealed.
All your hidden adjustments are added at that moment.
Example from our rulebook. Vega and Orrin both suspect the wrong file in week 1: -36 OP each, but they do not know yet about it.
Vega's switches to the right one. And gets +69 in week 2, +90 in week 3, then follows: for a total of +163 OP at the reveal.
Orrin keeps his wrong suspect. When other players finally share what they have found, he starts to doubt his theory and abandons it. Orrin still had less rewards in week 2 and week 3.
Had Orrin read Vega's message in Comms after week 1, he might have switched too ;)
NEMESIS rulebook
Click here to get your copy of our campaign rulebook!
EXODE NEMESIS CAMPAIGN (16 pages): the Crisis Room, suspects, clues, assignments, rewards and the decision.
Need a pack?
If you don't have a Nemesis pack:
it is still time to get in!
Offers were removed from the exode.io shop but when logging in:
just access your Challenge screen, and you'll see the offer.
Remember it is WEB3: the pack can be traded from your collection screen at https://exodegame.com/collection/?account=XXX, replacing XXX with your account name.
Fun Note:
Our NEMESIS content borrows its soundtrack from another of our game prototypes from 2008.
Which had Nemesis in its name too!We revisited it and found the atmosphere fitting.
Do you like it? maybe we'll show this game soon, then, as we refreshed it last month!
This was a busy week!
We still have half a dozen articles to write to mention where we have been in previous weeks: EXCHANGE CENTERS became usable yesterday, EXOCREDITS last week, we have new 2.5 features, a new evacuation cooking and new free content coming to regular challenges.
Thank you pilots, and good hunting!
Good luck to all investigators protecting us from the Nemesis of this month!
EXODE is a WEB3 game with a Challenge game loop that you can play regularly, a new colonization gameplay coming up, and an Evacuation scene that you can experience.
Feel free to ask questions by joining our discord!
You will be very welcome.
You can also explore our other blog articles here!