[X] My Assistant

[Acadian]

Your game looks fabulous!

On that first picture, where is the other moon? Oh. . . nvm.

[SubRosa]

I had an interesting conquest battle last night, for the islands of Kos and Samos (they are combined into a single province). Instead of a land battle, it was a sea battle! It was a lot more fun than the land versions. Basically it was just my ship vs. 4 or 5 Spartan ships. It was tricky at first, but once I started to whittle them down it went pretty easily.

Sailing and ship combat is a lot of fun in this game. Once you get your trireme the Adrestia, you can start to upgrade it. There are a bunch of different areas you can improve. The Hull is a big one, it is basically your ship's health. It also determines how many lieutenants you can have. So I have put most of my effort into raising that. Rowing is another, basically it is how long your rowers can go without needing a rest. The Ram is how much ramming damage you do, etc...

I have built up my Hull, Rowers, and Ram. Now I do a ton of damage ramming. I do not even bother trying to board. I start out ramming, which usually cuts down an enemy ship to half its health. Then I hit it with arrows and back off. Then I go in for one more ram. That usually cuts the enemy ship in two and sinks it. When an enemy ship sinks you get a bunch of crafting supplies.

The crafting supplies in the game are almost entirely used for your ship. Some like wood are used for making new arrows. But mainly it all goes into the ship. There is Wood, Iron, Ancient Tablets, and Orichalcum. You will come across a ton of Wood and Iron just walking around the world. So they are never in short supply. Ancient Tablets are really rare, only found in a few preset locations. They are only used for upgrading your ship. You can also occasionally buy them from blacksmiths. Orichalcum is only used by a single merchant in the game, who can use it to make special items for you. I met him once, but have not bothered to really look into what he can make.

[SubRosa]

Today I tried out The Cheat Engine, which has a plugin/table for AC Odyssey.

I have never used it before. But it worked pretty easily. It is a memory hack. So you start your game, then Alt + Tab back to your desktop and start the Cheat Engine. Then you click on the Select Process To Open button and pick out the game. Then you click on the button right next to that to load the table above.

From there you can edit some things in your game. You can add some item packs, but it looks like not every individual item. I think most of these are micro-dlcs they want you to pay for. You can also edit your crafting supplies to give you however many you want. I used it to give myself more shards of the Spear of Leonidas, and more leather (since I do not like killing animals to get it).

If you want to add multiple items like the shard pieces, you can just click on the box for it, then unclick it, and click it again. As many times as the amount you want.

As this automatically updates the game as it is running, you don't save anything in the Cheat Engine interface. You can just turn it off when you are done. The changes you make will be saved when you save you game as normal.

The reason I was looking for this is tied into how the abilities work. Many of them are capped by the current level of the Spear of Leonidas. It is really just the broken off head of the spear, which you use as an offhand dagger. The only way to upgrade the spear, is to go along the main quest and find and kill Cultists. The Cult of Kosmos are the arch bad guys in the story. They are a secretive cabal manipulating the Greek World from behind the scenes, and it is implied that they engineered the Peloponnesian War, which is taking place during the game. Each Cultist has a shard which you can use to upgrade the spear.

I really found this process clunky. It is a mostly open-world game. You can travel anywhere you want. But each region does have a minimum level listed for it. That is the minimum level of all the foes in the area. So you don't want to go to the places above your current character level. It lists all these on the in game map, which is nice. So unlike Fallout New Vegas the game won't just kill you if you try to walk straight north to Vegas when you start. It at least warns you that you will be in over your head.

But as I was just exploring the open world, I was lagging behind in the main quest. Because I was not searching for Cultists. So I have been getting to points where I had ability points I could not spend, because I had not upgraded the spear high enough. This is why I looked into the Cheat Engine and the Inventory Editor table above. It allowed me to upgrade the spear and spend all those points I could not use, and keep exploring the world at my leisure.

[SubRosa]

An Athenian trireme firing upon a pirate ship

Acropolis

Find the assassin

The deep blue

Manta

Butt Kraken

[Acadian]

That's a beautiful Athenian ship; I imagine the pirate ship did not last long.

Must be wonderful having an eagle you can send up for aerial reconnaissance.

Nice underwater and city shots.

[macole]

But the Kraken shot is, um, er...

[SubRosa]

Some notes on items in this game.

First off, Odyssey is a loot whore's paradise. You are constantly getting a stream of new weapons and armor pieces. Do not get attached to any one thing in particular, because you will probably find something better in a half hour or hour. At least until you get to level 50, which was the original level cap for the game. (That was later expanded to 99 with a patch. But I don't think the items go up beyond 50 Nope, I was in error. Items do continue to level up to 99).

This is because when you get an item its stats will usually be set to your current level. Once and a while you will find something above your level, which you cannot use until you meet the level of the item. But that is rare. So as you level up, you find new gear at higher levels, with better stats.

Gear is also broken up into four types Common (gray), Rare (blue), Epic (purple), and Legendary (gold). Generally the more rare the better their stats are. But again, you have to take into account the level you got it at. A Legendary sword you get at 1st level will suck compared to Common one you get at 5th level.

You can stick with the same set of gear by Upgrading it at a blacksmith. What this does is bring it up to your current level. But this gets really expensive, really fast. I waiting until I got to 50th level, then pulled out my Legendary stuff, and upgraded it. I have played about 5 or 6 hours since, and have yet to find anything better.

Legendary items also come in a set. If you wear all items in the set, you get a special bonus.

Speaking of blacksmiths, they are the only merchants in the game you can buy and sell from. As I just said, they buy and sell weapons and armor, as well as ordinary trade goods you can pick up - amphorae, animal fangs and claws, bowls, cups, food, etc... Just sell all that stuff. They also sell crafting supplies. I highly advise you to always check every blacksmith from ancient tablets. Those are hard to find in the wild, and you need them to upgrade your ship. Blacksmiths also do the aforementioned upgrades on items.

Finally they do engraving. These are little bonuses similar to enchantments that you can put on items. Stuff like more fire damage, moving faster in sneak mode, etc... The number of engravings you can have depends on the type of the item in question. The better type, the more engravings.

Engravings become available by finding Ainigmata Ostraka, which are also rare. They look like stone tables, and when you interact with one it will give you a little mini-riddle to go to a certain place. Basically it is an unofficial quest. When you find the goal it points you toward, you unlock an engraving. All engravings have levels, so the more duplicate ones you unlock, the more powerful the enchantment is that it grants. I like doing them just because they are fun.

[SubRosa]

Sailing the Aegean

Here there be monsters

And Seagulls

The Minotaur

I used to have a little statuette just like this

Dark lands

Boarding action

Ramming speed

[Acadian]

Great pics! That is a well done minotaur.

Gosh it's hard to imagine the fact that ramming was, at one time, an effective nautical tactic and ship bows were actually made to do it. "Aye, bring her up to ramming speed, lads!"

[SubRosa]

Acadian: The Minotaur was really cool. There are Cyclopses (it looks like there are 3) were really neat too.

The Corinthians were never as good at sailing as the Athenians. So to even the odds at one point they reinforced the bows of their ships, and then started the tactics of ramming the Athenians head on in the first pass. It helped a little, but they still could never match Athens on the sea.



Balance

Athens

Some pirates were attacking Athenian ships. So Kassandra swam out and boarded the pirate ship.

The Athenians look on as Kassandra takes out the trash

Flipper!

Who didn't let the wolves out?

A Greek town

[Acadian]

Magnificent shots of Athens and that town. And what a neat shot of flipper in the air!

[hazmick]

More great shots!

I love the pirate ship with the bones on the prow/figurehead - gives it a really distinctive look compared to the military vessels.

[SubRosa]

When horses fly

Gravity was not a law in Ancient Greeece

Kassandra

Cyclops

The sword in the stone

The Sea God

Kassandra again

[Pseron Wyrd]

The sword in the stone

That's a cool outfit. I'm going to have to get this game someday.

[Acadian]

I thought your character had a flying eagle familiar - not a flying horse.