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?
Entered technical beta as of June
-testing of some beta content available
4 new Origins (starter packs) added to collection
-brand new cards plus a new faction revealed
The CCC, a very early version of Colonization mode, is available for testing
A unique pack, Refit Talent+, has been made available in shop!
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 馃崏[MELN] member 
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!
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.
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.
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 馃崏 [MELN] activities.
馃崏 [MELN] is the alliance I co-founded with 
For a in-depth eXode guide, you can take a look at this post.
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.
