Aeon Trespass: Odyssey (ATO) by Lawnor

As discussed in my last post and in the chats beneath it, this game is aimed a little harsher than I want for a game that will take me two years to play through.  I don’t want to have to wipe and replay two months of content when I feel I’ve not done anything stupid or wrong, and it’s just the game demanding I’m both smart and lucky.  I don’t mind losing a game.  I don’t mind having to replay content.  I just don’t have the lifespan to redo a 2 year campaign because the dice turned against me.  A 2 month campaign perhaps, but this thing is too big for how easy it is to lose and either start from the beginning, or restart losing your progress/story and being handed a randomised one instead.

It does feel sometimes like they’ve play tested fights and mechanics, but not had the time to repeatedly playtest the five cycle campaign as a whole.  How could they?  Who has that kinda time?

As such, there’s a few rules I’ve taken to bending, changing, or occasionally ignoring.  There’s some I’m starting to rewrite for my solo play purposes.  I’m going to compile a list below over the next few days, and probably keep adding to it when I get back in to playing C3 regularly.  Please comment below with your opinions on these, and your own house rules.

For extra context for all this, I am playing solo so I might be misunderstanding some rules, and I definitely make mistakes as I play. I misread stuff.  I forget stuff.  I get caught up in trying to keep track of everything and don’t see things I would have if I was one of 4 players at the table.  As a general rule I allow myself the “I’d have seen that if I was only controlling one titan” rewind/reset a lot of the time.  I only have one brain and it’s kept very busy, and it’s probably not up to code to begin with!

Things I definitely do

Trireme Argo Abilities

These are a type of Argo Ability.  You’re capped at how many Argo Abilities you can take in to a fight, and you’re also capped at 1 Trireme Argo Ability.  I assume your Trireme Argo Ability is supposed to count against your Argo Ability limit, but I’ve decided to not count it as such.  Their effectiveness (so far.  I’ve just finished C2) is very limited, and there’s very few fights they can be used in, so I don’t see the harm.

Argo Ability Tokens

You get some Argo Abilities and other powers that let you buy rerolls or add tokens to the Kratos pool a very limited number of times per fight.  You’re usually supposed to declare all of this before rolling your first dice.  It feels really bad when you blow your load and it affects nothing.  I try to play this by the rules, but on tougher fights I usually talk myself into making all my rolls first and applying the tokens once I know if they’ll be useful.

Black Tokens

These give you a reroll and apply a break token to the rerolled dice.  The rules say all rerolls happen at the same time, but these feel different.  They’re tokens you spend from the pool which feels like it has a different timing, even if this is never clearly stated.  I imagine they want them to count as standard rerolls, but I usually apply them separately, allowing me to potentially reroll the black tokened dice a second time.  I also allow myself to apply them as a break token while skipping the reroll part.

+1 to all tests

I misread some rules during C2 and made some of my voyage phase tests easier than was intended.  I’m pretty sure if I’d played them properly, I’d have lost the campaign halfway through.  I have decided that from the start of C3 I will be meeting the rules halfway, and giving myself a +1 bonus to all voyage phase tests, maybe including adventures.

Trireme Scout

Losing them is very expensive.  Argo Fate is far too expensive a resource for this.  I have decided the chance to recall the trireme is 100% if I’m on the same map tile.  I might boost it a little under other circumstances too.

Mnestis Theatre rewards

The Mnestis Theatre gets far too hard very early.  It is not meant for people who want to play the campaign.  It is meant for people who want to bang their head against a wall repeatedly, grinding the same fight again and again until they find the right mix of gear, tactics, and luck.  Some of the rewards from it do help with the game though, so I have decided that every 5 days of the campaign I can unlock the next line of rewards from the Mnestis tree.  You should probably play to unlock the Skyseer normally, though.  I got a little past that point naturally.

Mnestis Ascending Rewards

I forget what they’re called, but you get tokens from the Mnestis theatre that you can attach to equipment to ascend it.  They’re supposed to then be locked to that item.  There’s a house rule on the ATO discord that lets you swap these tokens around at will between fights.  I think this is a good idea.

AB Titans

I usually rule that any rule that calls out Argo Bred Titans applies to any titan I bred on the Argo, along with all special titans.

Finding AB Titans vs Capacity

The rules state that you can never get rid of a titan you own by choice, so if you find a better one when you’re at capacity you cannot keep it.  This also means that if you’re at capacity and remove one to turn it in into a special titan in 10 days, but then find another before then, you cannot keep the special titan.  I ignore this.  I can always set a titan free to keep a special titan.

Inwards Odyssey tokens

I finished C2 with an Inwards Odyssey score of 46ish, but it’s capped at 40 in C2.  I decided that for each point over the cap I’d allow myself to extend the Onwards Odyssey mini campaign by 1 day, or buy an extra Argo Fate.

Sisyphus Tears

These are supposed to be spent to let you reset and retry a fight.  I don’t need an in-game mechanic to let me do that.  I’ll do that anyway if I think things have gone horribly wrong through my lack of knowledge on rules or boss mechanics, or the RNG really skewing against me.  I have decided that I will allow myself to use these to draw again when a titan pulls a card that kills it (it might be a trauma card, an obol, or perhaps I decide it’s the fault of the AI card).  I’ll put the offending card back in the deck and reshuffle before drawing.  Tears are super rare so I almost never get to apply this rule.  I think I only have 6 after two cycles and I’ve only done this a couple of times.

Round 1 Insta Death

Sometimes the monster will activate and give your titan a paper cut and you draw a card that just kills it outright and you haven’t even activated that titan yet.  No roll to avoid, no chance to redraw.  You’re just dead.  It feels like you’ve lost the fight and you haven’t even started playing it yet.  At times like this I decide I could just reset and start again, or I could skip all the work and just draw a different card.  I don’t spend a tear for this (See above).  It’s a freebie because I hate this mechanic.  It’s a negative play experience with no interaction.  It’s the game telling you you don’t get to play it.

Pygmalion Stones

These things are rare and they’re the only thing that stops you losing your best titans for ¼ of the campaign when things go wrong.  You earn 1/3^rd of a stone every time an Argo Bred titan dies, but you really don’t want the AB titans to die.  These stones are to prevent that.  I count the deaths of Dreamwalker titans I bred on the Argo towards earning more stones, and I still only have 5 and I may have spent as many as 1.  I save them for emergencies, and saving long growth time titans.

Memnos Draw Deck

Memnos’s (menoses?) are geared towards their cycle and can feel useless in the wrong cycle.  When I’m told to draw a Memnos at random from my draw deck I restrict my draw to ones for the current cycle, if available.

Argo Fate for Memnos/Mausoleum

Sometimes I’ll spend an Argo Fate to gain a Memnos on a certain Argonaut in a week, and then they’re gone by then.  When this happens I let myself pick a different Argonaut.  AF is too rare to let go to waste.

Things I’m thinking about doing

Crit locations for special items

There was a discussion on their discord a while back about how sometimes you just can’t get the interesting items from critting the right BP cards.  I proposed this rule and it got a lot of appreciation.  I might test it out in C3.

“How about a house rule where every time you damage a BP with an item from a crit make a tally mark of it on the back of your campaign sheet next to the BP card name. For the rest of the campaign whenever you attack that card again add the number of tallies (or half?) to your to hit roll on the crit dice. This new value only counts for purposes of seeing if you qualify to get the item. It won’t make a miss a hit, and it won’t earn you any other bonuses. It could represent your past experiences with the monster letting you get better at grabbing that thing you saw last time. It’s not like you go through the whole BP deck every fight and I’m guessing most of these items will be on higher BP cards, and so be seen less, and be less likely to get damaged. I’d reset the tally marks between successes, if you can get multiple items from a single card.”

Reducing cooldown on AB titans?

The conversion time for making special titans makes me reluctant to risk them sometimes.  I made it through C2 without it actually becoming a serious problem so I’ll leave it alone for now.  If it does become an issue I might reduce the cooldown, or allow multiples from the same timer to run in parallel.

Extra cores from kills

I feel like I’m not quite getting enough cores to use them as much as the game allows.  It’s close though, so this rule doesn’t want tinkering much.  I’m considering a house rule where I roll a d10 after killing a primordial.  If I wounded more than 1 BP3 card I add 1 to it.  If I successfully used Carving I add 1 to it.  if the result is 10+, then I can gain an extra core.  It shouldn’t come up much.  I’d eyeball around 1 in 7 fights.  That would have given me around an extra 4 cores from C2 I think.

Toying

One of the popular house rules I see on the Discord is to apply the Hermesian Persuers “Toying” ability to everything.  I’m not doing this, but if things become unreasonably tough it’s an option.  I definitely turned this on for the tougher Mnestis theatre fights I tried.

Wandering Titan tokens

I’m considering making up a handful of Titan tokens for use in the voyage phase.  Any time I find a wild titan and I can’t pick him up because I’m at capacity I can drop the token down.  If I end up back on their tile later I can then collect them if they’re useful.  I could go one step further and have them move one tile randomly at the end of each day.  They move across land so don’t need rivers, and they wouldn’t step in to the ocean.

Advice

Saving Progress in their App

When you move the campaign along in the app it doesn’t create a new entry like I thought it does.  It overwrites your current save slot.  You will lose some information you might want later.  If you wipe and want to reset back to the start of the campaign then you have no save slot to revert to.  I suggest making a whole new entry in the app and manually importing your information and using one as a backup save and the other as your current saved game.

Tech Trees

Go to Board Game Geek and grab a tech tree.  Mark off what you’ve already got, and make notes on it about the things your aiming for (“This breeds titans”, “This is next quest goal”, “urgent” etc).  It’ll make life a whole lot easier.

Double Size Timeline sheet

Print the timeline sheet at double the size.  It’s hard to make legible notes on the one they give you.  It’s too small and cramped.  Then document everything.  You never know when it’ll be useful.

Keep all dead/retired Argonaut sheets

When someone dies or retires, mark off what happened, when and why at the top of their sheet and save the sheet.  They will be relevant later on.  Don’t assume that you can wipe the page and reuse it.  You will regret this.

Retirement is good

I didn’t understand this at first.  I would try and progress both Memnos on my characters to unlock their abilities.  This is a waste.  if you have to pick one to spend points in, go with whatever has the most.  When you max out the Memnos your character will retire.  This is a good thing.  You’ll gain something, and put a tick on the choice matrix.  Who knows what you’ve unlocked, or when it can come back to reward you?  Also, Memnoses are geared towards being useful in the cycle they are from, so you want all the C1’s removed from the deck so they’re not getting drawn in C2.

Fighting the Adversary resets fate

During C1 I spent a lot of time fearing the adversary, mostly because it cost 2+ hours of my time when I was trying to progress the plot.  It took me a while to understand that the Adversary is often a good thing.  The only way to lower your AF is usually to fight something.  The Adversary is an extra chance to fight.  It can be worth throwing away a few Dreamwalker titans to get some AF back and reset your dials.  Don’t underestimate the importance of this.
Timeline Flow Chart

Edit: 09/11/23

Voyage Phase Progress Tracker

I leave my game set up.  I usually stop playing just as a new fight triggers so I can start the next session with a fight.  There are a few different stages in the turn sequence a fight can trigger, and I don’t always stop before a fight.  This means when I get back to the game I’m not always sure what stage in the turn I’m actually at.  When playing you can trigger events and unlock things midway through a story event and it’s easy to forget them.  To help with all of this I mocked up this voyage phase sequence tracker, and printed out a photo of my Argo as a token to move along it.  I leave my Argo on the last resolve step, and put tokens in some boxes as reminders to resolve stuff when I get there.

I’ll likely revisit this post in the future as the game progresses.