Odoacer didn't conquer the Roman Empire - he was a high-ranking soldier within the Western Roman army who staged a coup against the emperor Romulus Augustulus (who was really just a puppet of his father and not recognised by the Eastern Roman Empire). All Odoacer did was using his troops to attack those loyal to Orestes in Italy, the only piece of territory still vaguely under the Western Roman Empire's direct control. As far as I know there were no known foreign allies involved in this. In any case, Odoacer wrote to the Eastern Roman emperor Zeno after his coup to confirm that he was still a loyal subject of the Roman Empire and ruled in the name of the emperor Julius Nepos, an earlier western emperor who had been overthrown by Orestes a few years before. This was of course only a nominal loyalty, since Odoacer never allowed Julius Nepos to come back to Italy and may even have played a role in the latter's assassination. With Nepos' death, Odoacer's 'loyalty' was transferred to Zeno in Constantinople and he duly minted coins in his name. Still, it is clear that Odoacer was not attempting to bring down the Roman world and kept Roman institutions, such as the Senate, intact and involved them in his government. Moreover, the empire still existed and was doing perfectly fine in the east. 476 is an important date, but it was not recognised as a particularly important one for contemporaries - the same process had occurred in every other western province, so Odoacer's coup wasn't exceptional in that sense. It was only in the 520s, when the Eastern Roman Empire began to consider the possibility of restoring Roman control of the west, that 476 was recast as the end of Roman rule by contemporary historians.

thank you. good to know that I was misinformed and now properly informed. thanks again.