This is a follow-up to my previous article Exode - Card supply & demand. My thought with this article is to do a deep dive into a subset of cards called "Upgradable". I plan to look at how many of these cards have dropped so far, how much can they be upgraded by burning additional cards and then I will speculate around the cards I think will have good use during game play.
If you go to the Deck Expert Tool and search for cards with "upgradable" you will find all such cards except one. The final card, Claymore Hyperfighter, you find by searching on "upgradable module". In total there are 61 upgradable cards in the game, of which 28 are common, 23 are rare and 10 are epic rarity. By looking at the source instead of rarity, we can see that 43 cards come from the alpha booster pack, and 9 each from TOM and Rekatron contracts.
In the graph above, I have gone through all the upgradable cards, and looked at their stats for how many times they can be upgraded. The x-axis shows the name of the card, and in the middle of the graph I have also indicated whether the card is a alpha booster, TOMs contract or a Rekatron contract. Keep in mind that due to the early state of the game, there are some inconsistencies on the card data, so I may have some mistakes in. In addition, most upgradable cards are relevant for colonization game play, and thus more balancing may be needed after more testing have occurred, which may require adjustments on how upgrades are done.
The first spot is taken by the Galactic Peacemaker, which can be upgraded an incredible 70 times! Being an epic card with only 632 drops in total, gives a limit of only 8 cards that can currently be fully upgraded (floor(632/(70+1))=8), ensuring a good demand of these cards, if the weapon turns out to be popular to use during game play.
In fact all the Rekatron weapons score high on the number of upgrades, followed by most of the TOMs contract cards. Escorts and Starships score relatively good here too, followed by some rare and epic installations. Software score in the middle, and most common colonization & vehicle cards from the alpha booster score low here.
In total 67314 upgradable cards have dropped at the time of writing, divided into 21998 Alpha cards, 24164 Rekatron contract cards and 21952 TOM contract cards.
By looking at the above graph of number of card drops for all upgradable cards, we can see clear step changes between different clusters. This is just a reflection of their rarity and their sources, e.g. all rare cards from alpha booster packs have similar number of drops. This is what we would expect and nothing to be surprised about.
Some interesting observations:
By combining the two data series we previously discussed (how many upgrades is possible, how many cards dropped) we can see how many fully upgraded cards can be created based on current inventory. This should give a good indication of cards where we can expect high demand in the future.
| # | Card | Upgrades | Drops | Max Upgraded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sabre Regiment | 13 | 38 | 2 |
| 2 | Octohome | 14 | 51 | 3 |
| 3 | Orbital Shield | 11 | 37 | 3 |
| 4 | Generator TR-100 | 4 | 40 | 8 |
| 5 | Rekatron Galactic Peacemaker | 70 | 632 | 8 |
| 6 | The Rebellion Secrets | 3 | 51 | 12 |
| 7 | Longsword Squadron | 17 | 256 | 14 |
| 8 | Claymore Hyperfighter | 14 | 273 | 18 |
| 9 | Drachian Mantis | 13 | 278 | 19 |
| 10 | Cruiser Task Force | 12 | 266 | 20 |
The list above is a more detailed look at the 10 rarest max upgraded cards. I expect most cards on this list to maintain a good value, also due to them being strong in their respective niche, even without upgrades!
One aspect that I have not covered today is the droppable trait. Droppable means that a card can be dropped to the colony during colonization play by burning the card. This can have a significant effect on supply, and even more so for upgradable cards. Just consider a fully upgraded Foodie Moodie, each drop of those will remove 5 cards from the game! I think this help to set a floor price for some of these cards, but hard to analyze this before colonization game play is out.
I also did not cover the elite cards in this article. But it is clear to me, looking at the data above, that any elite card for a card that needs many upgrades to max out will become very valuable, especially since the elite cards may even allow for more upgrades than their normal counterparts. I will wait with analyzing this aspect until all the traits and features of these elite cards have been released.
Another topic that may warrant its own article is to look at "best in class" cards in each category, and see how many upgrades an inferior card may need to match the better card. As an example, consider a fully upgraded TOM custom with 4 Habitat, 4 shielding and -1 energy, versus a non upgraded Happy five with 5 Habitat, 7 shielding and -3 energy. It is not an exact match, with the happy five having 1 more habitat and 3 more shielding at the cost of 2 more energy, but it may still be interesting to think about what the equilibrium point will be between the cards in this example.
I hope you enjoyed reading the article and as always, feel free to rate the article, provide positive and negative feedback below, educate me on new perspectives and let us have an interesting discussion around this topic!
